10-23-2011, 01:59 PM
A few additional thoughts on the various sources of "rankings" and their inherent shortcomings, IMHO:
The coaches obviously know the game best, but have very little time to play close attention to teams outside of their sphere of relevance, and clearly have their own potential conflicts of interest.
The sportswriters frequently suffer from various combinations of incompetence (e.g., Wilner), bias/agenda (e.g., Wilner) and/or ignorance (which can have many causes, including the fact that many East Coast writers never even watch late West Coast games).
The computers not only suffer from their inability to subjectively adjust for truly fluky plays, the effects of blowout defenses/substitutions (e.g., last minute scores against "prevent" and/or second-string defenses), etc.; but are intentionally handicapped in the BCS system by virtue of ignoring Margin of Victory data... "let's use a system that depends entirely on data, and then take away one of the key pieces of data!"
One could argue that the real pros are the guys who have real money on the line: the Vegas odds-makers (understanding that they are actually paid to try to get even wagers placed on either side of their line, as opposed to predicting the actual final score).
The amazing thing to me about that final (best?) source of judgment, as that Stanford has consistently bested (and frequently CRUSHED) their lines, and yet we still get the "weak schedule" rap (I'll leave the B.S. in that argument for another day). If we're playing "weak competition", presumably that's reflected in the spread, and the outcomes seem to suggest that we're considerably "way more better" than that "weak" competition than the (arguably) best analysts out there have believed. At some point, you have to accept what you're seeing on the field, instead of judging Stanford's wins to be "unimpressive" before they are even played!
The coaches obviously know the game best, but have very little time to play close attention to teams outside of their sphere of relevance, and clearly have their own potential conflicts of interest.
The sportswriters frequently suffer from various combinations of incompetence (e.g., Wilner), bias/agenda (e.g., Wilner) and/or ignorance (which can have many causes, including the fact that many East Coast writers never even watch late West Coast games).
The computers not only suffer from their inability to subjectively adjust for truly fluky plays, the effects of blowout defenses/substitutions (e.g., last minute scores against "prevent" and/or second-string defenses), etc.; but are intentionally handicapped in the BCS system by virtue of ignoring Margin of Victory data... "let's use a system that depends entirely on data, and then take away one of the key pieces of data!"
One could argue that the real pros are the guys who have real money on the line: the Vegas odds-makers (understanding that they are actually paid to try to get even wagers placed on either side of their line, as opposed to predicting the actual final score).
The amazing thing to me about that final (best?) source of judgment, as that Stanford has consistently bested (and frequently CRUSHED) their lines, and yet we still get the "weak schedule" rap (I'll leave the B.S. in that argument for another day). If we're playing "weak competition", presumably that's reflected in the spread, and the outcomes seem to suggest that we're considerably "way more better" than that "weak" competition than the (arguably) best analysts out there have believed. At some point, you have to accept what you're seeing on the field, instead of judging Stanford's wins to be "unimpressive" before they are even played!