[washingtonismoney]

... but the computers are totally depersonalized, and they're voting the same way.

This isn't quite true. The computers are only as depersonalized as the programmers who code them, who value certain things and don't value certain things in ranking teams that's somewhat idiosyncratic. Consequently, you can see a wide spread of opinions for Stanford, for example, here: http://espn.go.com/college-football/bcs

Most feel we're in the 6-9 range; two feel we're 14th and 21st. That's very odd. And of course it's not true their disregard for margin of victory hurts teams equally, otherwise there'd be no difference between margin of victory rankings and rankings without margin of victory. That's why the measurement Sagarin prefers ranks us 6th and the measurement he's forced to used ranks us 21st.

At any rate, I'm not quite sure how this applies to the central point, which is that analytically Wilner is a putz who doesn't consistently apply the metrics he claims to use in ranking teams, if those even are the correct ones. Like I said, he's explained (previously) ranking Wisconsin above Stanford by saying Stanford ranks low on Sagarin's Strength of Schedule. But of course Wisconsin ranked even lower when he said that. And accepting Sagarin's strength of schedule as a valid metric implicitly accepts the rest of his rankings, which consistently ranked Stanford above Wisconsin.

Wilner, like a lot of newspaper reporters, is pretty good about finding out facts that people want him to know, somewhat less good at finding out facts people don't want him to know, and mediocre at actually telling us what these facts mean.

[washingtonismoney]

... but the computers are totally depersonalized, and they're voting the same way.

This isn't quite true. The computers are only as depersonalized as the programmers who code them, who value certain things and don't value certain things in ranking teams that's somewhat idiosyncratic. Consequently, you can see a wide spread of opinions for Stanford, for example, here: http://espn.go.com/college-football/bcs

Most feel we're in the 6-9 range; two feel we're 14th and 21st. That's very odd. And of course it's not true their disregard for margin of victory hurts teams equally, otherwise there'd be no difference between margin of victory rankings and rankings without margin of victory. That's why the measurement Sagarin prefers ranks us 6th and the measurement he's forced to used ranks us 21st.

At any rate, I'm not quite sure how this applies to the central point, which is that analytically Wilner is a putz who doesn't consistently apply the metrics he claims to use in ranking teams, if those even are the correct ones. Like I said, he's explained (previously) ranking Wisconsin above Stanford by saying Stanford ranks low on Sagarin's Strength of Schedule. But of course Wisconsin ranked even lower when he said that. And accepting Sagarin's strength of schedule as a valid metric implicitly accepts the rest of his rankings, which consistently ranked Stanford above Wisconsin.

Wilner, like a lot of newspaper reporters, is pretty good about finding out facts that people want him to know, somewhat less good at finding out facts people don't want him to know, and mediocre at actually telling us what these facts mean.