The latest CFP rankings are a disgrace. The CFP is an insult to sport.
How is sport supposed to be measured? The answer is in the question. True sport gets measured. Is figure skating a sport? No. It is subjectively judged, not measured. How about the NFL? Yes, that's a sport. It is measured. No one looks at the AFC east and says "The Dolphins are 2-7 but I rank them higher than the Pats." There are records and tie-breakers all the way down to a coin flip, but at no point is there a group saying "Oh, the Steelers pass my eye test, but the Ravens don't."
But here we are, stuck with a group of humans with their own personal biases voting on how they feel about things.
Yes, I know that the NFL has head to head games where CFB doesn't really have that across conferences. That's the whole point of computerized or statistical rankings in college football. And those systems must be beholden to no one. FPI? Can we really trust ESEC/ACCPN to be unbiased? How about another fav, Sagarin? Without question, Jeff Sagarin is smarter than I am. But can we trust his computer models? I don't know. I don't know anything about him. He has a pretty good reputation, but I can't find his actual algorithm. If you find it, please let me know!
Beyond the concerns over who is paying for the rankings, there is the actual goal of the computer models themselves. Many of these models are not designed to objectively evaluate teams. Instead, they are designed to give results that most closely mimics the human polls!
From FiveThirtyEight:
"As a consequence of this, our system also gives teams from power conferences more advantages, because that’s how human voters tend to see them."
I love FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver is a bit of a hero of mine. He does a great job of explaining statistics and probability. But in this case, they're trying to make their rankings match biased human rankings. Instead of removing bias, they're deliberately introducing it.
So where do we go? We are going to need a Joel Klatt with a much larger audience. Why Joel? Well, he appears to be the only guy talking about the issues with the committee selections. Last year was a great example of human bias in the selections.
For the sake of argument, we have to assume that FPI and Sagarin are legit:
Last year at this time, there were 4 teams in the lower CFP rankings from the ACC that were ranked, on average, 16 places higher than in either Sagarin or FPI. Let that sink in. What purpose could that serve other than to bolster the claim of Clemson? No, I don't think that Clemson was overrated last year. Well, possibly a little. But if Clemson doesn't beat these falsely high-rated teams, what do we think of their schedule before the playoff? Conversely, the B1G teams ranked by the committee last year were ranked 3 spots lower than the computer rankings, on average. If you recall, the first CFP ranking had the Wolverines at #5.
Biased? Yeah, I think that's pretty evident. This is why we need an independent, unbiased ranking system. Mine or someone else's, I don't care. Well, maybe I care a little. I'd like to be involved, but I have no delusions of grandeur!
Even people who don't like or don't care about basketball (me) get excited by March Madness. Why? I would guess that it's the possibility of 1) picking a perfect bracket (or at least a better one than your buddies) and 2) catching that magical #15 over #2 upset. And literally no one freaks out over seedings. They don't freak out because the selection committee gets it very right, year after year. How do they do that? RPI, or ratings percentage index. RPI = (WP * 0.25) + (OWP * 0.50) + (OOWP * 0.25), so a weighted system that is used to rank NCAA basketball (until this year, now they have their own system - and that makes me very skeptical), baseball, softball, hockey, soccer, lacrosse, and volleyball. Notice any sport missing? Here's your top 10 based on RPI alone:
Wouldn't this make for an interesting playoff? Are Memphis and Boise on the same level as OSU and LSU? Probably not. But I think we all remember seeing or hearing about UMBC over UVA in 2018. Or if you completely ignore basketball, the 2007 Fiesta Bowl and Boise State beating Adrian Peterson and the Sooners (sorry to bring up the painful memories, Boomers).
I guess my point is that the CFP committee is a ridiculously biased group. The goal of that group is not to select the 4 best teams measured objectively. The goal is to select 4 good teams that will draw the highest ratings for ESPN. Keep that in mind as you listen to Desmond Howard tell us how OSU and Clemson have played equally weak schedules this year (hint: they haven't).
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