I won't spend a lot of energy going over the Tech game because I want to spend (waste) some time looking at the BCS and breaking that down a bit. I've never really studied it that closely and I'm guessing you haven't either. Has anyone?
Sure, I'd like to go on and on ranting to all the national media writers who were predicting this was the week the house of cards would fall, or how Oregon will eventually overtake KSU @ #2, or why KSU should be left out of the national title game, etc. ... But we here at the Koolaid are bigger than that (no we're not -- Joseph Goodman's email is jgoodman@miamiherald.com if you want to write him and I know you do. Oh, and his twitter handle is @miamiheraldheat).
It's time to focus on what we CAN control, and that's crushing our opponents will to live, somewhere around 50-20, the rest of the way out. (Should they do that, a friend of mine will have won a bet, and a full blog post all to himself come the end of the season. THAT should be entertaining.)
Texas Tech brought what we all expected, which was a very difficult to stop, precision timed, high-octane aerial attack with a little bit of rushing sprinkled about. They came out firing on all cylinders, scored first, and within a few minutes seemingly had the Cats on the ropes 10-3.
Of course by then, Snyder and Klein had already swept their defense for weaknesses several times over, shared notes, and proceeded to drop the hammer on the hapless (conference leading) Red Raiders defense in the 3rd and 4th quarters. The Lynch Mob continued their stellar play and eventually drove the sputtering (conference leading) Texas Tech offense into the proverbial ground.
Don't remember how it went down? Here's a great little running update stream of consciousness from the Bleacher Report with photos of the game one highlight at a time (and tweets worked in for good measure):
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| This photo blurs out the Tech cheerleaders to the left of us that (somebody told me) literally never stopped dancing to whatever music was in their head the entire game. Seriously, never stopped. So I'm told. |
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ESPN with the announcement of KSU #2 in the BCS. |
| Rece, Jesse and David discuss the BCS and KSU @ #2 through perfectly bleached clinched teeth. |
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You're probably asking yourself ... why does Alabama just automatically get to be #1? Don't they need to be under the same scrutiny KState, Oregon, and ND are? I've thought about this a lot, and in a word, no. No they don't. Until someone proves otherwise, the returning champion returning that much NFL talent, playmakers, and defense gets to stay at #1 until someone beats them. There is no reason not to have them there.
If they run the table in the SEC, even with missing some of the key teams in the conference, they still deserve it. If the returning champion was say, Boise State, then yes, I think you'd look at this a lot differently. But the fact that Alabama won the national title by crushing LSU last year in the title game and has so far moved fairly easily through their schedule would tell me they are still a legitimate #1. And they are still #1 in the voters eyes (even if they are #3 in the computer polls ... see below).
Here's how their resume stacks up to ours. Yes, I know. Ours is slightly more impressive to date. But Alabama is the least of our worries.
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With the overwhelming success of Stats Overload from last week, it would makes sense to make this a weekly ongoing feature. And with the BCS being what it is, perhaps there's never been a better time to dive into the numbers. Now, you may not care about this stuff and prefer to just play the games and "see what happens", but I get paid to break this stuff down* and I'd hate to be accused of slacking on the job.
For starters, note the obvious below: KSU is dominating the computer polls right now. Unfortunately, the computers make up just 1/3 of the BCS ... the remaining 1/3 is the Harris Poll, and 1/3 USA Today Poll, both dominated by Oregon.
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| If your eyes have glazed over looking at this it's because you don't like KSU Football enough. |
Let's start with the Harris Poll.
It's pretty easy to understand -- it's simply 115 "experts" (113 of whom have no idea where Manhattan is or know who the Kansas State Jayhawks are) who probably didn't watch our game that week. So yes, it's flawed based on human error, regional and conference bias, emotion, and media (ESPN) influence.
That is of course unless they move KSU to #2 instead of #3. It would then serve as one of the most accurate polls available.
Poll Methodology and Process
The 2012 Harris Interactive College Football Poll is comprised of 115 panelists and includes former coaches, players, administrators and current and former media.
Panelists are randomly drawn by Harris Interactive from among more than 300 nominations supplied by the 11 Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) conferences and independent institutions. The panel meets Harris Interactive criteria for sample design and is a statistically reliable representation of all 11 conferences and independent institutions.
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Next up, the Anderson + Hestor Poll.What's not to like about this poll? It currently has KSU at #1 based on a very strong Schedule Rank of #16 and a 3-0 record vs. Top 25 teams. They also list the Big XII as the toughest conference. And, after reading what makes them unique ... isn't this exactly how we should be ranking teams in the first place?
The Anderson & Hester Rankings are distinct in four ways:
1. Unlike the polls, these rankings do not reward teams for running up scores. Teams are rewarded for beating quality opponents, which is the object of the game. Posting large margins of victory, which is not the object of the game, is not considered.
2. Unlike the polls, these rankings do not prejudge teams. These rankings first appear after the season's fifth week, and each team's ranking reflects its actual accomplishments — on the field, to date — not its perceived potential.
3. These rankings compute the most accurate strength of schedule ratings. Each team's opponents and opponents' opponents are judged not only by their won-lost records but also, uniquely, by their conferences' strength (see #4).
4. These rankings provide the most accurate conference ratings. Each conference is rated according to its non-conference won-lost record and the difficulty of its non-conference schedule.
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| Florida's schedule rank is ridiculous. Thankfully they lost and it doesn't matter. |
Next up, our favorite mathematician around, Jeff Sagarin. Jeff's been doing this for a long time (almost 30 years), and he historically loves Kansas State. Why? Because his formulas cut through all the bs and ranks teams based purely on something called ELO-CHESS. It's fascinatingly complicated, but this metric, for whatever reason, is the only component in his formula the BCS looks at. As you can see, this measuring stick has the Cats at #1 as well.
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| If you can explain this I'll give you a Homecoming button I got at the tailgate Saturday. |
Wolfe Ratings Top 50 are maddingly difficult to figure out. I'm not going to waste any more time trying to understand it (I've already written about them once this year anyway), but suffice to say he loves KSU and hates Oregon. All the proof I need the man is a genius.
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- Originally designed to comply with the Bowl Championship Series request that margin of victory not be considered by the rating model.
- "Binary Censored Score" - the observed outcome is win or lose, and the score is irrelevant.
- The ratings are based on win-loss outcomes relative to schedule difficulty.
- Margin of victory is not used, and ratings don't reflect point differentials.
- There is no preseason bias; all teams begin at zero.
- Early season ratings will fluctuate significantly until a sufficient number of games have been played.
- Teams that are not connected via the schedule graph are rated as isolated groups.
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Mr. Billingsley is very very proud of his system. So much so, he wrote an entire essay on it here. I won't attempt to break it down completely because I don't get paid THAT much, but if you're really that interested you can read all you want about his philosophy on college football.
We are 12 points ahead of Oregon (genius), only two points behind ND and Alabama.
The first thing I want to say is that my ranking system is not “better” than any other computer system in the BCS. It is certainly unique in its design, and I’m proud to say that it is very widely accepted and praised. ESPN used my computer rankings in their “College Football Encyclopedia” listing the results right next to the AP and Coaches Polls as “official” National Champions, but that doesn’t make the system itself any better than many you will find.
I have tons of respect for my BCS counterparts; Jeff Sagarin, Jeff Anderson, Chris Hester, Wes Colley, Kenneth Massey, and Peter Wolfe who are all light years ahead of my mathematical skills. But my system is not about mathematical algorithms. It’s about rules created to compliment a common sense human response to a football game. The BCS computer pollsters come from different perspectives, and we all believe strongly in our positions, but we all have a healthy respect for one another. I would argue their right to stand up for their position as much as I would my own. I’m proud to call them my friends. We all have stories to tell, this just happens to be mine.
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The Colley Matrix. I also covered this a bit last week, but it's probably the one poll that I think approaches this the most holistically. Look at the matrix below and how they track Quality Wins. The wins are ranked 1-40, and they use a Matrix to determine who those wins belong to. For example, ND currently owns the best Quality Win with a win over #10 Stanford, while KSU owns Quality Wins #3, #7, #9, and #10. Oregon owns one QW in the Top 10 coming in at #5 with their win over Arizona (currently sitting at #16).
All that being said, we're still on track to make a National Title appearance, despite all the media uproar. It's their job to create the chaos and make a story, and of course no one wants to proclaim the race over ALREADY. Without the "controversy" and debates, there's nothing left to write about so that's why you're going to see a lot of media outlets proclaiming Oregon will catch KSU eventually and why ND stands to get the invite because of style points. That's what sells papers and #premiumcontent, not handing the Heisman, National Title, and Coach of the Year over to KSU with 40% of the season remaining.
Either way, The Bleacher Report has seen enough.
I will try and do the OSU vs. KSU schedule breakdowns in greater detail tomorrow night and get into some pregame hype and current statistical updates on Wednesday.
I'll leave you with this photo of the "KStater" donut I had prior to our tailgate Saturday. If you haven't been to Varsity Donuts yet in Aggieville, I highly encourage it. Fantastic donuts, atmosphere, coffee, and a line out the door on Game Day. You can buy a $5 Footall + Donuts T-shirt and give it to loved ones for Christmas and look like a KSU gift-giving hero.
* - I don't get paid anything but compliments for this site. And maybe donuts someday.
