Despite Blowout Loss, Notre Dame Ranked Ahead Of Bama In One Computer Poll

January 10th, 2013 02:39 PM║ Posted By: John Pennington ║ Permalink ║ Schools: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Missouri, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt
Tags: Alabama, BCS, Fighting Irish, Notre Dame

On Monday night, Alabama thrashed Notre Dame 42-14 in the BCS Championship Game. Now one of the computer ranking services that makes up part of the BCS formula has posted its final rankings for the season and the Fighting Irish are still ranked #1… ahead of #2 Alabama. Nevermind that whole 28-point beatdown on Monday.

The Colley Matrix has a top 10 consisting of Notre Dame, Alabama, Ohio State, Florida, Oregon, Stanford, South Carolina, Texas A&M, Georgia and Kansas State.

So how can Notre Dame be ranked ahead of Alabama? The Colley system isn’t allowed to use margin of victory in its formula. The BCS power brokers decided a few years ago to take margin of victory out of their overall formula and the result has been a string of flawed computer polls. Alabama’s 28-point win on Monday might as well have been a one-point nailbiter won on a last-second field goal.

Kudos to those computer ranking systems that bailed from the BCS when ordered to remove margin of victory from their formulas. Had they done it, their rankings would be as useless as Colley’s are today.

Notre Dame still #1 over a team that beat it by 28 points? That just doesn’t compute.

Man Beats Computer.

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4 comments

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redav

Oh, boo-hoo.

The computers are cold, uncaring, unbiased calculations. There is no "correct" calculation--they are all estimates. That means you WILL get different rankings for different algorithms, and that's why we average them. There is no problem here, even if rankings return results that contradict results on the field. There would be a problem if computers consistently return results that contradict actual game results.

So, instead of whining about point differential (which, IMO, is better to leave out), why not campaign for computer polls to be added/removed according to their accuracy? At the end of each year, their overall results can be compared to all the actual game results, and if any computer system shows that it is consistently inferior to other systems, it gets replaced.

j_scott_o

This is also my problem with Georgia being ranked/tied w/ A&M in the final HUMAN polls. Both had 2 losses. A&M lost 2 games this season by a total of 8 points...3 points to Florida the 1st game of the season and 5 to LSU early in the season. Georgia, on the other hand, lost to Bama in the SECCG, a team A&M beat on their own field. And, they got absolutely blown out by 4 touchdowns to South Carolina. No one was playing better than the Aggies to finish the season...no one. Final polls should have been 1. Bama, 2. Oregon, 3. Texas A&M, 4. Georgia, 5. Notre Dame, 6. Stanford.

Jamesgoss

Nice pun to finish it off.

SouthernBoiSB

Why do we even have polls? The human aspect has that main flaw - HUMAN! Not all people see the same things the exact same way. & we all know that people are going to be pro/anti certain teams/conferences & will have that aspect in their mind when they vote. & now, you're telling us the computers aren't even measuring the same factors?

An example with this computer's rankings: it's putting Florida (who didn't go to the SEC CG & lost their BCS bowl) 4th, & Georgia 9th.

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