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College Football Rankings: How Would the Top 25 Look if the BCS Were Still Here?

By Michael Collins

Jan 1, 2014; Glendale, AZ, USA; A detailed view of a BCS logo on the scoreboard before the game between the Baylor Bears and the Central Florida Knights during the Fiesta Bowl at University of Phoenix Stadium. Central Florida defeated Baylor 52-42. Mandatory Credit: Casey Sapio-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 1, 2014; Glendale, AZ, USA; A detailed view of a BCS logo on the scoreboard before the game between the Baylor Bears and the Central Florida Knights during the Fiesta Bowl at University of Phoenix Stadium. Central Florida defeated Baylor 52-42. Mandatory Credit: Casey Sapio-USA TODAY Sports /
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College football rankings are once again plagued by fan and media arguments, even without the BCS to blame. 

Back in the dark days of college football, the championship rankings were run by Skynet

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    • Ok, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it sure seemed that way. Why else would we have the President of the United States and Congress becoming involved in bringing about change to the process?

    But the BCS was a system that took a dabbling of human input, and a preponderance of computer input and mixed it all together in a witch’s brew of rankings that undoubtedly caused more than one water cooler brawl and divorce filings over its 16-year run.

    Now we have our long-awaited playoff system…sort of.

    Four teams chosen by a Playoff Selection Committee using numeric as well as eye test criteria to determine their own Top 25, the top four heading to the playoff semifinal games. The problem is that there are still cries of collusion and conference bias, even bias against certain teams.

    So what if…what if the BCS were still around? What if we had those computer generated rankings? How would they compare to what the College Football Playoff Committee has handed us to this point?

    I decided to take the Associated Press and Coaches polls, along with the available computer polls that are still producing rankings, through week 12 and average things out to give a probable prediction of what the BCS would be giving us to this point. The Harris Interactive Poll, which is no longer producing rankings, has been replaced by the AP Poll in my calculations.

    The results, well…were interesting to say the least.

    Again, this doesn’t take into account this past weekend’s games.

    [table id=80 /]

    So the biggest observations that can be seen are that the computers give a little more love to FSU and their work than the committee, but still the top four remain constant. Most of the Top 10 remains constant, with minor flipping of teams of no more than a spot.

    Moving forward, numbers 12 through 17 are identical, which is interesting considering that those are some of the teams it would seem to be the hardest to place.

    The head-to-head argument regarding Baylor and TCU has also been rendered helpless by the computers, as they still have TCU ranked as the higher team despite losing to Baylor.

    So, perhaps the committee isn’t so crazy?

    But here is the biggest takeaway I have from this graphic – missing from the committee’s rankings? Non-Power-5 teams such as Marshall and Colorado State. It would seem that those who argue about those teams not having a resume good enough to crack the Top 25 are in disagreement with Skynet central.

    The committee also seems to give a lot more love to USC than the computers do — ranking them five spots higher — which is interesting considering the committee has dismissed the work of Marshall, but wants to reward the pedestrian work of a Power-5 conference team.

    But other than those minor differences, it seems that the BCS formula differs very little from what the Playoff Committee is handing down…at least, so far.

    Even if we were already in a position of having an 8-team playoff rather than just four, the same eight teams would be involved, with slightly different seedings in the bracket.

    So was the BCS that bad? Did we all get our panties in a wad about nothing? Unless you are Marshall or Colorado State, to this point it would seem that’s the case.

    This will be interesting to re-examine at the end of the season when we know precisely who our four playoff teams are, and who has been completely left out of the rankings.

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