And Your BCS Title Winner is …

Here at Boys of Old Florida we try to be ahead of the curve. For years (the Saurian Sagacity days) I’ve compiled what statistical characteristics are common among BCS title winners. In sum, you are looking for teams that are ranked near the top in –

Scoring Defense
Total Defense
Passing Efficiency Defense
Passing Efficiency

With 6 games in the books, here are the four teams that look to be on track to achieve – at least statistically – what past BCS title holders have done.

Ohio State

Yes, I’ve maligned their competition so far (86th SOS per the NCAA). But their current rankings in the all-important categories above are –

Scoring Defense – 6th
Total Defense – 3rd
Passing Efficiency Defense – 3rd
Passing Efficiency – 10th

The Buckeyes are well within what we would expect in these statistics for a BCS Champ.

Route to the Title Game – Win out, they’re already number 1 in both polls.

Roadblocks – Toughest part of their schedule lies ahead (which isn’t saying much)

Nebraska

No one is much talking about Nebraska as a title contender, but their stats say they might be –

Scoring Defense – 4th
Total Defense – 12th
Passing Efficiency Defense – 1st
Passing Efficiency – 26th

The Huskers Passing Efficiency is right at the upper limit of what we might expect, but their other categories look strong.

Route to the Title Game – A straight shot. Win the Big 12 North, then win the title game. The Cornhuskers are 4th in the Coaches Poll with 2 first place votes already. Destiny is in their own hands.

Roadblocks – Toughest remaining regular season game next weekend at Oklahoma State, or *perhaps* Texas this weekend. Would face either the same Oklahoma State or Oklahoma in the Big 12 Title game.

Iowa

Don’t sleep on the Hawkeyes. They have a narrow, out-of-conference loss at Arizona, and have an outside shot at the title game.

Scoring Defense – 1st
Total Defense – 4th
Passing Efficiency Defense – 10th
Passing Efficiency – 3rd

Iowa has maybe the strongest statistical case of these 4.

Route to the Title Game – Trickier than the first two, but not impossible. They have games at Michigan, than Wisconsin and Michigan State at home. Win those and they will move up nicely in the rankings for their home game against current number 1 Ohio State. Beat OSU and, with a couple of other breaks, a trip to the BCS title game is within reach.

Roadblocks – See Route above. They have a tough remaining schedule, and are currently 14th in the Coaches Poll

TCU

The Horned Frogs have the statistics that count –

Scoring Defense – 2nd
Total Defense – 1st
Passing Efficiency Defense – 15th
Passing Efficiency – 21st

Route to the Title Game – Presently 5th in the Coaches Poll, TCU still has games against ranked opponents Air Force and Utah. Win the remaining games and they can leapfrog Boise State in the BCS formula, with some breaks their way.

Roadblocks – Their fate isn’t really in their hands – it’s in the hands of the BCS Computers. Plus they remain in the shadow of pre-season BCS buster darling Boise State. I think they would need a Boise loss and some real luck to get to the title game.


And there you have it folks – one of the above will be your BCS Title winner in 2010.

Unless, of course, they’re not.

Who is Number 1?

As I consider my BlogPoll for this week, I’ve rarely found the question more difficult to answer.

The traditional pollsters have Ohio State as their number 1, but this seems (to me at least) more of a default pick borne of typical poll voter laziness. OSU has played a schedule currently ranked 86th (of 120) by the NCAA. Looking ahead at their schedule it seems reasonably likely they may run the table. We may very well be looking at a 2006/2007 scenario again when it comes to the Buckeyes.

The computer polls, not subject to the static inflexibility of the human efforts (not to mention the obvious groupthink), finds Ohio State less than appealing. The Buckeyes range from a high of 4th ranked in the Massey Poll to 15th in Sagarin (though he has them 8th in his “Predictor”.) They would average 8.4 in the computer polls now (Wolfe doesn’t start his until 10/17). Were the BCS released today I’m guessing they would be about 3rd.


So who do the computer polls like? Well, they seem mostly to like the Mad Hatter. LSU is first ranked in A&H, Billingsley, and the Colley Matrix (5th and 8th in the other 2). That’s an average of 3.2, or nearly 6 slots ahead of where the human polls have them at 9th.

Gaudily scoring Oregon, ranked 2nd in both human polls, is all over the map by the computers, ranging from 1st (Sagarin) to 10th (A&H and Colley). I too have trouble with Oregon who, despite the unbelievable offensive numbers (their 43 TD’s are 9 more than the second best team) have played a very soft schedule (110th per the NCAA). I too don’t know what to believe about them.

Like the computers, I also don’t believe in Oklahoma. They are ranked as high as 12th (Sagarin), who actually ranks them 26th in his “Predictor”. According to Sagarin, 25 teams would beat them on a neutral site, including NC State and Texas A&M. In Oklahoma I see a team with the 38th best offense and 56th best defense in the nation. They really aren’t even top 10.

As of this writing I still don’t know who I consider number 1. But I’d bet this much – this season is going to look a lot like 2007 before it is over. Remember 2007? That’s the year 2 loss LSU won it all.

Are Oregon and Ohio State really that good?

As I turn my efforts to my BlogPoll ballot for week 3, one of the things I’ll be looking for is objective information on strength of schedule.

Yes it’s early, but some evidence is beginning to form. The tool I most value for Strength of Schedule is the NCAA’s own Toughest Schedule Grid .

What I like about the NCAA’s Toughest Schedule list is –

1. As a list of the records of team’s a program has played, it’s unbiased and transparent, unlike say Sagarin’s SOS which is neither.

2. It OMITS the records of FCS teams. This is very important to my thinking, as FCS teams essentially “don’t count” by this measure.

The NCAA also only counts the records of opponents without counting the game between them. Take Miami as an example, which has an opponent’s record of 2-0, or 100%. The record of Florida A&M is omitted as an FCS team, and the record of Ohio State (3-0) is reduced to 2-0 so that Miami’s own loss isn’t counted in favor of Miami.In this way it truly only counts your opponent’s record.

Here are the teams with the toughest opponent’s records thus far (all 100%) –

Arizona
Arizona St.
California
Cincinnati
Connecticut
FIU
Georgia
Maryland
Miami (FL)
Missouri
Notre Dame
Pittsburgh
San Jose St.
South Fla.
Southern Miss.
TCU
Tennessee
UCLA
Utah St.
Vanderbilt
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Western Ky.
Wyoming


I would suggest this helps explain the records of teams like Georgia, while making all the more impressive the records of TCU and Arizona.

Here are the teams with the easiest schedules (opponents with winless records, or 0%) –

Army
Ball St.
Boston College
Bowling Green
Buffalo
Fresno St.
Georgia Tech
Indiana
Kent St.
Kentucky
Middle Tenn.
Mississippi
Navy
New Mexico St.
Northern Ill.
Ohio St.
Oregon
Purdue
Rutgers
Syracuse
Texas A&M
Tulane
Utah
UTEP
Wisconsin

So we have Ohio State, Oregon and Wisconsin playing teams that have collectively yet to win another game against all their opponents (In the case of OSU remember – Miami’s win against Florida A&M doesn’t count).

Definite food for thought when it comes to ranking.