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Texas, Florida & OU Season Comparison, SOS Results and Lousy Human Voters

As we all know, the BCS rankings are decided by 1/3 computers verdicts, 1/3 journalists opinions and 1/3 coaches opinions.

Here are the college football classes of human voters(The RPG of the BCS), or in other words the reason Texas was left out of the NC game.

First of all, lets look at our two classes of human voters, and their possible faults.

The Journalist - Probably does not do well with numbers, as he became a journalist. Probably not a mathematician or a statistician.  Impressed by shiny things and big numbers. Has very short-term memory - votes on power ranking terms, not strength of schedule. Probably does not watch all Top 25 college football teams and yet still votes on how good they are relative to others. The journalist syndicate's(or whatever its called) final survey corresponds to 1/3 of the final BCS vote.

The Coach - Gets paid millions of dollars to prepare, build, recruit, organize, motivate and lead his football team very well. His job also consists of scouting and dissecting his regular and post-season opponents teams' tactics and getting to know them just like the palm of his hand. The coach, however, does not get paid millions of dollars to waste time watching and evaluating games and statistics of teams that do not pertain to the sea of action that his team will see throughout the course of a season. Yet he votes on the Top 25 rankings, influenced by journalists, media and sometimes his own sentiments of a particular team, coach or player. The coaches tally of votes corresponds to another 1/3 of the final BCS vote.

Now that I've shown it is possible that some of the human voters do not really know what the *&!@$ are doing, I will attempt to compare UT's, OU's and UF's regular season schedule.


Look at some simple numbers after the jump.

Star-divide

UT, OU, UF Rudimentary Strength of Schedule Comparison

 

The first set of comparisons take into account only the regular season (as Texas would have 1 less game if OU's and UF's  conference championship game was included). Alabama and Red Raiders ignored here. Head to head games also ignored here (45-35. Remember!)

Losses

Texas - #7 (#7 - Current) Tech, @ Tech, 39-33

OU -#5 (#3) Texas, @Neutral, 45-35

Florida - NR (#25)  Miss, @ Home, 31-30

Avoiding the Big 12 triangle of confusion, pirates and death, Florida clearly has the worst loss here.

UF<UT, UF<OU

WIns vs. Top 25 Ranked Teams. Ranks at time of play:

Texas - #1 OU, #11 Missouri , #6 Ok. State.

OU - #24 TCU, #16 Kansas, #2 Tech.

Florida - #4 LSU, #6 Georgia, #25 SC, #20 FSU

Verdict - This verdict depends on many numbers and angles of view so I will not attempt to decide this.

 

Wins vs. Top 40 ranked teams. Ranks using Dec. 7 final standings

Texas - #1 OU, #13 Ok. St., #21 Missouri, #34 Kansas, #37 Rice (5)

OU - #7 Tech, #11 TCU, #12 Cinci, #13 Ok. St., #30 Nebraska,#34 Kansas(6)

UF -  #15 Georgia, #26 FSU, #40 LSU (3)

Verdict - Let us assume  advantage OU and point out that UT's schedule is clearly more difficult than UF's.

OU>UT>>>UF

 

I-AA Opponents played

Texas -0

OU - 1

UF - 1

Verdict - Advantage Texas.

UT>UF, UT>OU

Regular Season Summary

On a regular season basis, IGNORING HEAD-TO-HEAD (Fix your @#$* Big XII..), let's say we give OU the #1 spot due to the fact that they played the toughest ranked opponent schedule out of the three teams.

OU =(assume)= #1

UT <?> UF

Now we have UT and UF left to compare for the #2 spot. Let's include UF's conference championship game vs. at the time #1 Alabama in this comparison.

Texas vs Florida Rudimentary SOS comparison

 

Win vs #1 Team at time of play.

Texas - OU @ Neutral 45-35

UF - Alabama @ Neutral 31-20

Verdict: Tie.

All Top 40 team wins

Texas - #1 OU, #13 Ok. St., #21 Missouri, #34 Kansas, #37 Rice (5 games total, with 1 conference game less)

Florida - #4 Alabama,  #15 Georgia, #26 FSU, #40 LSU (4 games total)

Verdict: Advantage Texas - Texas played and beat more quality opponents, even with Florida having an extra conference championship game.

UT>UF

Games lost

Texas - #7 (#7 - Current) Tech, @ Tech, 39-33

Florida - NR (#25 - CUrrent)  Miss, @ Home, 31-30

Verdict: Advantage Texas. Texas lost at an away game to a Top 10 opponent, while Florida was upset by a team not ranked at the time, and now ranked #25 Ole Miss at the Swamp.

UT>UF

I-AA Opponents played

Texas - 0

Florida - 1

Advantage: Texas. Why does this matter? Because Florida lost to an unranked D-IA school and the chances of UF losing to a D-IA team are definitely higher vs. the chances of losing to an inferior D-IIA team (Citadel, no disrespect here Citadelians, just trying to make a point).

UT>UF

UT vs UF Summary and Questions

Based on the UF vs UT head to head schedule comparison I can say that I am very disappointed with UF being placed in front of UT by human voters. UF had a worse loss than UT and UT had a much stronger schedule. Looking at these two teams and their final ranking I wonder what the $(*@ human voters were thinking.

This implicates that the BCS computer algorithms did their job by giving Texas a .05 advantage over Florida, and ranking OU the highest. This also implicates that coaches and journalists should not account for 1/3 of the BCS vote, respectively as they rank on a most-recent game basis (Power-rankings) vs. a resume and strength of schedule basis. It is also possible that human voters influence each other, which sometimes results in a reinforcement of a bad/uninformed judgements.

Once again, ignoring head-to-head games(yet Remember the Cotton Bowl, 45-35 etc.), OU should be ranked #1 because they have  the superior ranked team resume and schedule, Texas #2 and Florida - #3 because they have a better resume than Florida does.

And yes, if you want to go to the NC win all your games and play strong opponents. However, based on what's happened this year I am not sure how UF was ranked in front of UT.

All comments, FanPosts, and FanShots are the views of the reader-authors who create them.

2 recs  |  Comment 4 comments

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hm... I agree on everything,

but can we stop it now. We play Ohio State, and it is time to focus on them

By digging how unjust the current system is we are just putting more salt in our wounds (dunno if there is such analogy in English).

by justfr1day on Dec 7, 2008 10:05 PM CST reply actions   0 recs

Yeah we got hosed,

Now we know how Auburn felt! But I don’t think there Was a fair way to decide without a playoff. I mean Florida could throw Margin of Victory stats or Production vs Defensive ranking stats up there and say how obvious it is that THEY should be number 1. And what about USC and Alabama?

So lets move on and win big to set up a pre-season #1 Ranking for 2009.

"A lot of people look for the easy way to do anything, in swimming there is no easy way." - Eddie Reese

P.S. 45-35

by SwimTexas on Dec 7, 2008 10:51 PM CST up reply actions   0 recs

UHHHHHHHHHHH NO!!!!

We must move on……………..but never forget!!!! As far as “what about, USC and BAMA?” – What about them? Their strength of schedule doesn’t even begin to compare to OU or TX. They aren’t even in the same ballpark.

Bottom line our kids and coaches busted their tails for years to get here and were robbed!

This time the computers have it right. Though it was a 2 edged sword. It kept us out of the Big 12 CG but if they had their way; would have us play in the NCG.

War PLAYOFFS!!!!!! Now, let’s go crush OSU!!!!!

by Ericg320 on Dec 7, 2008 11:11 PM CST reply actions   0 recs

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