Projecting the BCS

In a week that saw no absolute movement in the BCS top ten, the media meme seems to be “Boise gains on TCU”.

While the gap between the two narrowed, it would be more accurate to say both fell, just that Boise didn’t fall quite as much. To see what I mean, here were the BCS standings after week 11 (with average) –

1	Oregon	0.9638
2	Auburn	0.9611
3	TCU	0.9259
4	Boise State	0.8662
5	LSU	0.817
6	Stanford	0.7454
7	Wisconsin	0.7349
8	Nebraska	0.7298
9	Ohio State	0.6613
10	Oklahoma State	0.6211

And here’s this week, week 12 -

1	Oregon	0.9753
2	Auburn	0.9687
3	TCU	0.8966
4	Boise State	0.8634
5	LSU	0.8243
6	Stanford	0.7553
7	Wisconsin	0.7258
8	Nebraska	0.7203
9	Ohio State	0.6674
10	Oklahoma State	0.6601

BCS rankings are determined by averaging 3 scores (2 human polls and computers polls). Apparently because of TCU's poor performance against San Diego State, and Utah’s blowout to Notre Dame, both the human polls elevated Boise ahead of TCU (Boise is 3rd in both now, TCU 4th).

In the computer polls TCU also suffered, falling from 2nd by average to 3rd, with their average falling from .950 to .890.

But as I mentioned, Boise also fell by average, despite their rise in the human polls. Their computer ranking went from 5th to 6th, or .790 to .780.

As we’ve discussed before, and as the BCS “experts” often seem to miss, what’s really important in your average and it’s relation to other’s. Here’s where TCU’s move verses Boise gets interesting. TCU’s average of the two human polls after week 11 was .9135, and Boise’s was .9044. After week 12, TCU fell to .9000 while Boise rose very modestly to .9051. Simply put, there wasn’t that much of a move.

In fact with the computers Boise, now in 6th rather than 5th (Stanford jumped them) is in a relatively worse position after week 12. And while TCU’s position at 3rd in the computers is relatively strong (votes of 4th, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 3rd), Boise’s 6th is tenuous (votes of 5th, 4th, 6th, 7th, 12th and 8th)*

The wild card here is Boise’s game against Nevada. Is Nevada a tough enough opponent to the computers to elevate Boise beyond their 6th overall ranking? As of now, I’m not sure. I use the NCAA’s Toughest Schedule grid as a proxy for the computers, and they place the cumulative toughness (includes teams yet to be played) of Boise State at 65th nationally with a .4900, and TCU 74th with a .4747. Presently, TCU is 55th nationally, and Boise State is 87th.

In other words, pretty close, but Boise will gain SOS.

Then again, deciding whether the 65^th or 74^th toughest schedule should play for a “national” title by using Nevada as a tiebreaker is a whole other topic of discussion.

*(When averaging computers, the best and worst is thrown out).