No Season Left Behind: 2013

Well, we are now into truly interesting territory. No playoffs from here on out, just BCS with AP/Harris and the ridiculous Coaches' Poll.

So, what was going on just 7 years ago?

• Average Cost of New House $289,500.00
• Cost of a Gallon of Gas $3.80
• Move Ticket $10.25
• Dozen Eggs $1.88
• Loaf of Bread $1.98
• Lance Armstrong admitted to doping.
• Boston Marathon bombing
• PS4 and XBox One
• Edward Snowden

And of course we need to know the top grossing movies of the year!

1. Iron Man 3 - felt phoned in and didn't move the MCU forward at all
2. Despicable Me 2 - I'm not a minions guy
3. Hunger Games: Catching Fire - the movie did the book justice IMO
4. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - I hate Peter Jackson
5. Fast and Furious 6 - I am pretty sure that they could have stopped at 1
6. Frozen - I enjoyed it half as much as my kids did
7. Monsters University - snooze-fest
8. Gravity - so awful in almost every respect
9. Man of Steel - never been a Superman guy but Michael Shannon was an awesome Gen Zod
10. Thor: The Dark World - my son loved it, I didn't

How about we talk football! We have arrived at the final BCS year where a supposed #1 plays a supposed #2 based on computer rankings (that were not given enough weight) and human polls (that were given entirely too much weight). I've only looked ahead a little and I think this part is going to be fun! Let's jump right in!

There were a lot of good games this season, as usual, but a few stood out:

• Nebraska 27, Northwestern 24 - a mostly pedestrian game until the end when Northwestern blew a 21-7 lead, then took the lead back with a field goal with less than 90 seconds to play. Then:

• OSU 42, UM 41 - great game, and you have to wonder what Brady Hoke was thinking. UM had responded to everything a pretty stacked OSU could throw at it, why not take it to OT?
• UCF 38, Louisville 35 - more last minute ridiculousness! UL is up 28-7 when UCF and Blake Bortles decide to wake up. They scored 21pts in 7 minutes to tie it. Then UCF gets a FG followed by a UL TD to make it 35-31 with 3 minutes left. I continually wonder why teams don't run the 2 minute O all the time?

• Alabama 49, A&M 42 - Johnny Football almost pulled it off, but AJ McCarron was just enough better with 4 TDs.
• Auburn 43, UGA 38 - crazy finish. Auburn up 20 in the 2nd half and they let Georgia right back in it (well, the Dawg D had something to do with that, forcing FGs and 3-and-outs). With 1:56 left it's 37-31 Tigers and Georgia has the ball 4th and goal from the 5:

Should have been game over, but on 4th and 18 from their own 27 Auburn did this:

• And that wasn't even the craziest finish of the year! You know what's coming, right?

Pretty exciting stuff. My son still talks about the Kick Six, and he was 11.

Here's a quick reminder of the rules:

• I stop all data at the conference championships. No bowl games are included, as the idea is to provide us with a top 25 that we would have selected playoff teams from.
• All calculations are exactly the same as the current Ray's Rankings calculations.
• I will introduce the top 25 in reverse order
• I will compare RR/CFP/AP rankings
• I will provide 3 different playoff scenarios 
• 4 team seeded
• 8 team with conference champions and 2 at large, seeded
• 16 team seeded
• We can all have a good laugh at how different things would have been. Or we can all stare slack-jawed in amazement at how closely Ray's Rankings matches human polls.

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25	Duke	10-3
24	Texas	8-4
23	Miami (FL)	9-3
22	Washington	8-4
21	Georgia	8-4

UGA had a better year than their record shows, but they just couldn't break through against the big boys. Duke did well in a better ACC

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20	Louisville	11-1
19	Central Florida	11-1
18	Louisiana State	9-3
17	Southern Cal	9-4
16	Wisconsin	9-3

UL might have had a shot at the BCS championship game if they hadn't lost to UCF. Not in my system, of course: no way one loss moves you from #1 or #2 down to #20. But voters are fickle.

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15	UCLA	9-3
14	Clemson	10-2
13	Oklahoma	10-2
12	Missouri	11-2
11	South Carolina	10-2

We start to see that it wasn't that long ago that UCLA, Mizzou, and So Carolina were relevant. The ebb and flow of college football team strength is always interesting to me.

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10

Arizona State

10-3

The Sun Devils lost to Stanford twice and to ND but beat ranked Wisky, UW, and UCLA squads to secure #10

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9

Oklahoma State

10-2

The Cowboys lost to WVa early and then beat Texas and Baylor late before losing to OU

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8

Oregon

10-2

Mariota's pre-Heisman season when he "only" threw for 3665/31/4 and a 167.7 rating. A tough loss to Stanford and then a blowout loss to Zona (what is with AZ schools ruining the Ducks' parties?) kept them out of the championship picture.

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7

Michigan State

12-1

#3 defense in the country and they used it to beat opponents over the head. A lone loss to Notre Dame early is all that holds them back. I honestly thought they'd score higher.

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6

Alabama

11-1

Not being in the SECCG cost them along with playing Chattanooga the week before the Iron Bowl hurts the Tide. I don't really know how far back we'll have to go for that to stop hurting teams.

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5

Auburn

12-1

Surprise! Western Carolina is the cause of the pain here along with the loss to LSU. No doubt they had a magical season, but eye test stops mattering as soon as we enter Ray's World.

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4

Ohio State

12-1

Another surprise. Body of work is what matters here, and while the Buckeyes also played an FCS powerhouse in Florida A&M, their consistently better margin of victory has them just a smidge ahead of Auburn.

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3

Baylor

11-1

No real surprise here, right? The Bears got blasted by OkSt but still had the #1 offense in the land and beat good teams by lots. I mean, they beat OU 41-12. Remember Bryce Petty? 4200/32/3 and a 174.3 passer rating.

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2

Stanford

11-2

Strength of schedule matters! Losses to USC and Utah were more than offset by wins over ASU (2x), UCLA, Oregon, and Notre Dame (#27 if you're wondering). And no FCS schools.

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1

Florida State

13-0

Honestly, this year it wasn't even close. Winston, Freeman, Greene, Benjamin, and Shaw on offense were enough to beat pretty much any team even without a defense, and they had the #1 D in the land. Their only close game was the natty, which doesn't come into play here.

Without a playoff, I will be using the AP poll prior to bowl games and the final BCS rankings.  Let's check it out:

Ray vs the AP

	AP		RR	Diff
1	Florida State	ACC	1	0
2	Auburn	SEC	5	3
3	Alabama	SEC	6	3
4	Michigan State	Big Ten	7	3
5	Stanford	Pac-12	2	-3
6	Baylor	Big 12	3	-3
7	Ohio State	Big Ten	4	-3
8	South Carolina	SEC	11	3
9	Missouri	SEC	12	3
10	Oregon	Pac-12	8	-2
11	Oklahoma	Big 12	13	2
12	Clemson	ACC	14	2
13	Oklahoma State	Big 12	9	-4
14	LSU	SEC	18	4
15	UCF	American	19	4
16	Arizona State	Pac-12	10	-6
17	UCLA	Pac-12	15	-2
18	Louisville	ACC	20	2
19	Wisconsin	Big Ten	16	-3
20	Texas A&M	SEC	26	6
21	Fresno State	Mountain West	31	10
22	Duke	ACC	24	2
23	Georgia	SEC	21	-2
24	Northern Illinois	MAC	34	10
25	Notre Dame	Independent	27	2

It's an interesting look. Not a lot of huge variances. Is there a clear direction?

SEC	2.86
Big Ten	-1.00
Pac-12	-3.25
Big 12	-1.67
ACC	1.50

SEC voted 2.86 spots higher, Pac12 gets the hate this year at 3.25 spots lower than the almighty algorithm. To be honest, I expected a larger gap. The thing is, the voter bias is even more important because there's no 4 team wiggle room. If they vote an SEC team 3 places higher and a Pac12 team 3 places lower, well...just look at the top 5!

Ray vs the BCS

	BCS		RR	Diff
1	Florida State	ACC	1	0
2	Auburn	SEC	5	3
3	Alabama	SEC	6	3
4	Michigan State	Big Ten	7	3
5	Stanford	Pac-12	2	-3
6	Baylor	Big 12	3	-3
7	Ohio State	Big Ten	4	-3
8	Missouri	SEC	12	4
9	South Carolina	SEC	11	2
10	Oregon	Pac-12	8	-2
11	Oklahoma	Big 12	13	2
12	Clemson	ACC	14	2
13	Oklahoma State	Big 12	9	-4
14	Arizona State	Pac-12	10	-4
15	Central Florida	American	19	4
16	Louisiana State	SEC	18	2
17	UCLA	Pac-12	15	-2
18	Louisville	ACC	20	2
19	Wisconsin	Big Ten	16	-3
20	Fresno State	Mountain West	31	11
21	Texas A&M	SEC	26	5
22	Georgia	SEC	21	-1
23	Northern Illinois	MAC	34	11
24	Duke	ACC	24	0
25	Southern California	Pac-12	17	-8

I expected very little difference between the BCS and the AP, and I got it. 

SEC	2.57
Big Ten	-1.00
Pac-12	-3.80
Big 12	-1.67
ACC	1.00

Essentially the same result. 

So what happens if we apply a bias correction? Let's take the AP top 25 and move each team up or down the rounded number of places calculated by the average difference between my rankings and theirs:

1	Stanford
2	Florida State
3	Michigan State
4	Baylor
5	Auburn
6	Alabama
7	Ohio State
8	Oregon
9	Oklahoma
10	South Carolina
11	Oklahoma State
12	Missouri
13	Arizona State
14	Clemson
15	UCLA
16	LSU
17	Wisconsin
18	UCF
19	Louisville
20	Texas A&M
21	Duke
22	Georgia
23	Notre Dame
24	Fresno State
25	Northern Illinois

I'm not saying this is what the top 25 should look like. I'm saying that this is what it would look like if we corrected for voter bias based on the average difference. What do you think? Should I add this to all NSLB posts from here on out?

I'll admit that during the BCS era my favorite teams were the BCS Busters like TCU and Boise. So much fun watching the old guard get upended. I honestly didn't pay attention to how the system worked because, well, I'm old and this was just a variation on how it was always done. Yes, I heard all the complaints about how the computers were awful and how could they possibly think Team A was worse than Team B?!?!!

I am preparing a post all about how the BCS let down everyone truly interested in a fair system.

And, since we're out of the Playoff era, I do not feel constrained to include 4 or 8 team brackets, so here's my 16 team bracket from 2013:

This was another of those years that I don't think anyone could have touched the top team. FSU was so far ahead of everyone it was silly. In 6 short years they're 6-7 and ranked 53rd.

Here's my final top 25 before bowl games:

And my top 25 after the bowls.

What do you think?