College Football's $500 Million Question: Who's Going To Pick The Teams?

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/04/college_footballs_500_million.html

As mentioned in previous posts, the best possible circumstances for the Power Points System would involve all FBS teams playing equal maximum game regular season schedules versus FBS competition only while knowingly competing based on the rules in play. That said, comparing the Power Points System in various ways to the AP Poll, Coaches Poll, and BCS Standings has yielded a three for four average on top four matches with most disputed teams on either side being the fourth team and 100% agreement being only one or two changed game outcomes away. And those are the results based on FBS games only but without the benefit of equal maximum game schedules and teams knowingly competing based on the rules in play. Imagine if the best possible circumstances existed and teams know what beats what before competition begins.

Unfortunately, all we can do is imagine because BCS officials are married to the idea that a selection committee is the best way to determine teams for the upcoming four-team playoff. To be clear, the problem with selection committees and polls is not that their outcomes are wrong as there are no right and wrong results contrary to those who ever said the BCS got it right. The problem is that those methods produce arbitrary results based on forever changing reasons why one team is in or out from one year to the next. Teams do not know what beats what even after the selection committee announces its playoff field because there are no guarantees that the popular argument one year will be the same the next. During the BCS era, contradictions occurred in the same year. How many people to this day argue that Miami, not Florida State, should have played Oklahoma for the 2000 title based on head-to-head yet ignore that Washington owned the same argument versus Miami? Subjective methods are the reason why the controversy does not end with an expanded playoff because subjective methods allow everyone to adopt any argument to justify their desired conclusion.

I do not know if BCS officials who insist voting teams in is the only way are that ignorant or because they know voting allows them to manufacture a desired outcome. However, their own words having me leaning towards ignorance. BCS executive director Bill Hancock has said that there are not enough data points to only use math/statistics to determine playoff teams. Really? What is enough data points? The Power Points System only needs a team's wins and losses and its opponents' wins and losses to separate any pair of teams better than 99% of the time. It is that simple. Again, 75% top four agreement, most disputes involve the fourth team, and 100% agreement is 1-2 flipped game results away. How many more data points does the Power Points System need to bridge the gap between those results and the arbitrary results produced by subjective methods? In the article linked above, the same Bill Hancock expects that the committee will consider common sense things like injuries and weather. "Just common-sense things that any sports fan would use." Common sense things? Where else in sports do the rules used to determine the standings place value on such nonsense? Is the committee going to put one team in over another because it won a game in the snow in late November or excuse a loss due to an injury to important player? That is common sense? If so, why don't conferences consider such factors regarding their own standings even if only as a tiebreakers? Obviously, it is because doing lacks common sense. Only in sports that use beauty contest rules to determine winners and losers does anyone come to believe intangible advantages/disadvantages should be considered along with wins and losses. Just recently, Golden State lost a star player for the season in a game one playoff loss to Denver. No one is suggesting the Warriors be credited with a win or be compensated in future games due to their missing player. The injury is unfortunate but no team is immune to such things. That is sports.

Ultimately, the biggest problem I see is that too many people in college football believe competition is about quantifying, identifying, or validating the best team whichever team they imagine that to be. The truth is that competition is about determining a winner. Most competitions use rules that define what is most valuable and leave it up to the teams to beat each other based on those rules. Of course the rules can be designed to challenge teams which favors the best team but being the best team is only a competitive advantage towards winning a competition. If the best team fails to accomplish what is most valuable under the rules in play, it wins nothing for being the best team.