"Kent State...lost 47-14 to a Kentucky team that didn't win a single SEC game. How can it be in a position for a BCS berth?"Well, some would argue because they beat all the rest of their opponents, including Rutgers on the road, and will finish 12-1 if they win on Friday night. Others would agree that their MAC schedule isn't tough enough for a valid BCS team. But undeniably, by the rules of the BCS, they might actually qualify.
Feng blames the computers, then narrows the problem to a specific computer ranking:
"...the Colley Matrix, the one fully transparent computer poll, does not use...game-specific information. The system considers a team's win-loss record and strength of schedule; yet, the results of each individual game are not counted as an input. The method doesn't care whether Kent State's loss came against Kentucky or against Rutgers."Sounds like a valid complaint; this lack of game-by-game cognizance is one of the (many) things that makes the RPI so frustrating for its use as a March Madness tool. But Colley is only one of six computers used in the BCS. Shouldn't there be some diversity of method among the six? They're already fairly highly correlated due to the lack of use of margin of victory—another of his complaints, which also has validity but can't really be held against the computer algorithm creators. Why enforce more rules that make them even more similar?
Still, apparently it's the ugly loss to Kentucky that should ban Kent State:
"Losing to 2-10 Kentucky would presumably hurt the Flashes' ranking. If they had lost to 9-2 Rutgers instead, the computer poll could assign Kent State a different, and presumably higher, ranking."That's a good point, but tell me why a team should be ranked higher after it dispenses with its best win by far? Sure, dropping the Kentucky loss should help Kent State's ranking in any reasonable system. But dumping the win over Rutgers should hurt Kent State's ranking in any reasonable system. Who is to say what the balance of those two is?
"If Kent State loses to Rutgers (25th in Colley's rankings) but beats Kentucky (98th), common sense indicates its rank should improve."Oh, common sense. I see.
He confirms that, in the game-switching scenario, Kent State drops a spot in Colley's method. Or rather, Rutgers moves ahead of them, thereby pushing Kent State down a spot.
"the Flashes actually drop one place. In this scenario, Rutgers has a 10-1 record instead of a 9-2 mark and therefore moves ahead of Kent State."
So basically, trading the loss of their best win for dropping their worst loss results in a wash. But Rutgers is now ahead of Kent State which changes things drastically—Kent State is no longer up for a BCS bowl as things stand.
Talk about missing the forest for the trees. The problem of Rutgers being behind Kent State—which may cause Kent State to go to a BCS bowl—could have been rectified easily if Rutgers hadn't lost to Kent State. The Flashes would be 10-2, with no potential to be in the top 16.
Bottom line is, if you don't want Kent State in a BCS bowl because they're ahead of Rutgers, either a) don't make a rule that Kent State will be in a BCS bowl if it's ahead of Rutgers, or b) make sure Rutgers beats Kent State in their head-to-head matchup.
Don't blame one computer program, ignoring the other five computer programs. Colley ranks Kent State 15th, just like Billingsley and Peter Wolfe. For each team, the top (and bottom) computer ranking are discarded. So it wouldn't matter if Colley ranked Kent State 50th, the composite score would be the same.
And attacking the computer programs as a whole? Still not valid. Kent State's computer composite (18th) is very close to their poll rankings (18th and 19th). The computers would have to downgrade Kent State well below where the pollsters are putting them to make a real difference in their BCS bowl aspirations come Sunday. In other words, he's blaming the computers for not acting as gatekeepers for what the human pollsters want to do—which is, rank Kent State near the top 16.
Instead, it looks as thought the computers are going to rubber stamp a "bad" decision by the humans, which he says would "cost" the Big 12 millions of dollars by pushing Oklahoma out of the BCS.
And that gets to the real issue. Both the pollsters and computers rank Oklahoma higher than Kent State. So it's not even the pollsters' fault, let alone computers' fault, that Kent State could get to a BCS bowl.
Blame the BCS rules, or blame the Big East for sucking so bad, or more specifically blame Rutgers for not taking care of the "problem" when they could have.
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