Making Sense (Sort of) Out Of The BCS

Heading into this week’s SEC championship game, Florida and Alabama find themselves in a familiar position — ranked first and second in the BCS standings.

The BCS Championship Trophy—and like every other trophy, its winner is decided by a complex system of polls and algorithms.

This year, Florida is the top dog, checking in with an average of .9868, while Alabama is second at .9513. Both SEC teams have a comfortable lead over the Texas teams; Texas comes in at .9282, while fourth-place TCU comes in at a distant .8689.

If all you took away from that was “Florida, Alabama, Texas, and TCU are ranked 1-4″, don’t fear. You aren’t alone. Most college football fans (and pundits, for that matter) understand the significance of the BCS rankings, but little about what the actual scores mean or how they’re generated.

The BCS average is compiled using three components: the Harris poll, the USA Today poll, and an average of six computer rankings. Each has an equal weighting in the final average. Essentially, you take a team’s showing in each of the three components, add them together, divide by three, and presto! Instant national champion.

The Harris Poll is compiled by (surprise!) Harris Interactive, a market research company specializing in Internet research. Harris interviews potential panelists from a pool of former players, coaches, college administrators, and media members, finally selecting 113 of them randomly to participate in the survey.

The first Harris poll is not released until the middle of September, unlike the USA Today poll, so the initial BCS standings are not released until the Harris poll has been published. Similar to other polls, however, each panelist chooses his or her top 25 teams, giving 25 points for a first-place vote and 1 point for a twenty-fifth-place vote.

A team’s score from the Harris poll is determined by dividing the amount of points they received by the maximum amount of points they could have received. For instance, as of November 29, Florida has 2783 points in the Harris poll out of a possible 2825 (134 x 25). Dividing that out tells us that Florida has 98.51% of the maximum, giving them a score of .9851.

The USA Today poll is calculated in much the same way. However, instead of using former players and coaches as panelists, USA Today uses current coaches. 61 coaches are chosen from members of the American Football Coaches Association and asked to vote along the same standards as Harris panelists. Scores are determined the same as in the Harris poll.

Using current coaches leads to some bias, whether intentional or not. Coaches generally have little time to watch teams other than their own, so it is common to see coaches favor their own teams in the voting or even forgo voting at all, relegating the task to an assistant.

The final component is an average of six computer rankings. Each computer ranking uses its own system, though many components of the six systems are similar. Most of the rankings are based on win-loss record and strength of schedule. Outside factors such as name-recognition and margin of victory are discounted, theoretically leading to an unbiased ranking. Teams receive 25 points for a first place ranking and 1 for a twenty-fifth-place ranking. The scores are then calculated the same as the Harris and USA Today polls.

The standings create a near-constant debate over who should be ranked there, but it’s important to remember that they were created primarily to determine the top two teams in the country. The other 23 are interesting, certainly, but only the rankings of the top two matter in the end. There’s no guarantee that nos. 3 and 4 will play each other in a game.

Now, if you disagree with the way the rankings are put together, that’s another matter entirely. Feel free to join one side or the other and shout yourself hoarse. After all, that’s what college football is all about, isn’t it?