THE POWER RANK

College Football Rankings, Week 9

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Suppose you’re looking to buy a book online. You heard about this new site binaryshop.com that lets you comparison shop. After submitting a book name and choosing any two online retailers, binaryshop.com tells you which has the lower price. However, it doesn’t tell you the actual price.

Clearly, this isn’t a very good e-commerce idea. The price of the book and the relative price between different sites makes a big difference in deciding where to buy. It’s kind of like ranking college football teams without using margin of victory. While winning is the ultimate goal whenever a team steps on the field, common sense says a 48 point win in which the starters only in the first half is vastly different from squeaking out a 1 point win on a last second 58 yard field goal. But the Bowl Championship Series cartel says no to common sense. All six computer rankings are restricted from using margin of victory in its calculations.

To see how this impacts college football, consider Oregon and Auburn, the top two teams in the cartel rankings. Oregon has blazed through the season with a string of impressive double digit wins. Their fast paced offense runs so many plays that a Stanford defender faked an injury so the defense could rest. The closest game this season for Oregon was an 11 point win at Arizona State, and the Ducks have 21 point wins over highly regarded Stanford and USC teams.

On the other hand, Auburn has taken quite a different route an undefeated 9-0 record. While they have big wins over Arkansas and Mississippi, the rest of their wins have been by a touchdown or less. That puts them within one bad bounce or one tipped Cam Newton pass returned for a touchdown from losing these games. The Power Rank has Oregon first and Auburn 11th. Peter Billingsly, the creator of one of the cartel computer polls and a staunch defender of not using margin of victory, has Auburn first and Oregon third.

The cartel banned margin of victory in the name of sportsmanship. A big boy from the Big Ten shouldn’t run up the score on its little neighbor in the Mid-American Conference (MAC). But sportsmanship is a funny thing. Should the smartest kid in the class purposely do worse on a final to make his or her classmates feel better? Should Intel purposely sells less computer chips to raise the self-esteem of rival AMD’s CEO?

Use of the term cartel to describe the people who run the Bowl Championship Series comes from the new book Death to the BCS. Still making my way through this fine read.

1. Oregon, 8-0, 43.90
2. TCU, 9-0, 37.03
3. Boise State, 7-0, 32.93
4. Stanford, 7-1, 28.20
5. Utah, 8-0, 26.70
6. Nebraska, 7-1, 26.61
7. Ohio State, 8-1, 26.16
8. Oregon State, 4-3, 26.06
9. Virginia Tech, 6-2, 25.99
10. Iowa, 6-2, 25.63
11. Auburn, 9-0, 25.36
12. Alabama, 7-1, 25.15
13. USC, 5-3, 24.67
14. Arizona, 7-1, 24.62
15. Oklahoma, 7-1, 24.58
16. Missouri, 7-1, 24.47
17. Arizona State, 4-4, 24.44
18. Nevada, 7-1, 24.34
19. Wisconsin, 7-1, 24.03
20. South Carolina, 6-2, 23.37
21. Florida State, 6-2, 22.74
22. Miami (FL), 5-3, 22.03
23. Pittsburgh, 5-3, 21.19
24. LSU, 7-1, 20.81
25. California, 4-4, 20.78

College Football Rankings, Week 7

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Jim Delany is the commissioner of the Big Ten conference. It seems like he should be a good guy. He played college basketball for Dean Smith at North Carolina, earning the captaincy in his senior year. After staying at UNC for law degree, he worked his way through college athletics until he became the Big Ten commissioner in 1989. Even ex-jocks lose their hair, tarnishing that “I was once a stud on the basketball court” look. But, according to the authors of the new book Death to the BCS, Jim Delany is the biggest reason college football lacks a playoff system. To Delany and the 5 other commissioners of the BCS conferences, a playoff system means losing power, and power means more than any increase in revenue.

It’s fortunate for the Big Ten that Delany looks after its interests in the back rooms since its teams are having all kinds of difficulty on the field. Here are the latest results from the Power Rank:

16. Ohio St., 6-1, 14.06
19. Michigan St., 6-0, 13.93
22. Wisconsin, 5-1, 12.60
23. Iowa, 4-1, 12.43

47. Illinois, 2-3, 3.22
48. Michigan, 4-2, 3.21

70. Northwestern, 4-1, -3.13
74. Purdue, 3-2, -3.79
78. Penn St., 2-3, -4.87
82. Minnesota, 1-5, -5.18
89. Indiana, 3-2, -8.88

The top four teams are in the bottom of the top 25, the next two teams are treading water above average, and the bottom five teams are in the bottom half of the 120 Division I football teams. In terms of out of conference wins, the Big Ten has two of note: an Ohio State win over Miami (+12) and a Wisconsin win over Arizona State (+1). Sorry, wins over Notre Dame don’t count this year. One could argue that Boise State, with wins over Virginia Tech (+3) and Oregon State (+13), has a better resume of out of conference wins. But the Power Rank accounts for margin of victory as well as wins and losses. To understand why this algorithm thinks so poorly of the Big Ten, let’s look at two games. Michigan State beat Florida Atlantic, the 90th team in the Power Rank, by 13 points. This result does not instill much confidence in the second best team in the league. Also, Wisconsin beat San Jose State, the 92nd team in the Power Rank, by 13 points at home. To put this in perspective, Boise State went to San Jose and blugeoned the Spartans 48-0.

It’s still early in the season, but the out of conference results look really poor for the Big Ten.

5. Stanford (4-1) 18.41. Nifty trick to zoom up 10 spots to #5 during a bye week. A two point win over USC looks much better after the Trojans pummel California by 34 points this past week.

10. USC (5-2) 16.01. Two weeks ago, USC, coached by not Pete Carroll, was 69th in the Power Rank. With a last minute two point loss to Stanford and a huge 34 point win over California, USC moves up to 10th.

18. San Diego State (3-2) 13.94. The Aztecs finally got a marque win over Air Force. We’ll find out later this season if they’re truly this good as San Diego State still has games with Utah and TCU.