[stupac2]

Computer rankings are equally pointless because they compare stats from, and margin of victory over other, teams that haven't played each other.

That's not pointless. Done right it's very possible to make meaningful statistics that compare teams that don't overlap much. Any particular method might not be the best, but then how do you explain the confluence of all of them liking Stanford this year?

I don't really get why people are so bothered by this. If it were backward, if it were MSU who the computers loved, I'd just shrug and say "we'll see on the field". MSU fans seem to actually care about this. I don't really get it.

From my perspective, the reason I care about it is that I think fans don't really think about these issues right. I've seen "but Stanford lost to UTAH so OF COURSE they suck!!!" But that's not how it works. Utah's not terrible, they played a murderer's row of a schedule and did fairly admirably against it, especially before their QB got injured. And even if they were terrible, football is a probabilistic game, sometimes upsets happen. It doesn't necessarily mean that a team is bad.

That's why I want people to look at the totality of the schedule and ask "how much luck is required to achieve that record?" ESPN did an analysis that concluded that Stanford going 11-2 was less likely than Alabama going 11-1. I want people to realize this. Next year it might not be Stanford, it might be MSU. You should care that these kinds of things are widely known and understood (a pipe dream, I know).

[stupac2]

Computer rankings are equally pointless because they compare stats from, and margin of victory over other, teams that haven't played each other.

That's not pointless. Done right it's very possible to make meaningful statistics that compare teams that don't overlap much. Any particular method might not be the best, but then how do you explain the confluence of all of them liking Stanford this year?

I don't really get why people are so bothered by this. If it were backward, if it were MSU who the computers loved, I'd just shrug and say "we'll see on the field". MSU fans seem to actually care about this. I don't really get it.

From my perspective, the reason I care about it is that I think fans don't really think about these issues right. I've seen "but Stanford lost to UTAH so OF COURSE they suck!!!" But that's not how it works. Utah's not terrible, they played a murderer's row of a schedule and did fairly admirably against it, especially before their QB got injured. And even if they were terrible, football is a probabilistic game, sometimes upsets happen. It doesn't necessarily mean that a team is bad.

That's why I want people to look at the totality of the schedule and ask "how much luck is required to achieve that record?" ESPN did an analysis that concluded that Stanford going 11-2 was less likely than Alabama going 11-1. I want people to realize this. Next year it might not be Stanford, it might be MSU. You should care that these kinds of things are widely known and understood (a pipe dream, I know).