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BCS sites offer a bit of explanation

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 12, 2001

It's 10 days until college football unveils its initial Bowl Championship Series rankings, which will be used to decide which teams play in Pasadena for the national title.

Eight computer rankings will factor in the BCS, and all have homes online with varying degrees of fan-friendly explanations as to just why a team is ranked where it is.

"I think it's very important for the public to have access to the individual computer polls," said Richard Billingsley of Hugo, Okla., whose ranking (cfrc.com) is one of four to remove the margin of victory from its formula this season. "With college football, we're dealing with human beings, with emotions, fumbles and so many intangibles, you cannot be 100 percent correct."

Don't read too much into him living in the same state as the team he has ranked No. 1. In 50 years, he has lived in the same state as eight national titles: five in Oklahoma, two in Texas in the '60s and one in Tennessee in '98. If you don't like his math, there are plenty of other ways to crunch the same numbers:

usatoday.com/sports: Jeff Sagarin, perhaps the best known of the eight, is an MIT graduate who has supplied college basketball rankings to the NCAA Tournament selection committee since 1984. He doesn't disclose his formula but has an index for everything from NASCAR to MLS, where he ranks the Mutiny last.

andersonsports.com: Here you can find info on the Seattle Times rankings, which have been called into question because Washington, the alma mater for the index's two creators, seems to always show up highest. expertpicks.com: This is home to the Matthews Grid Ratings, which has UCLA ranked No. 1 in its latest offering. It's perhaps the closest to handicapping, offering winners with projected margins each week, at a cost of $30 for the season.

www.bol.ucla.edu: Prof. Peter Wolfe doesn't sing his own praises, opting instead for a thinking man's explanation of his rationale, which includes a cap of 21 points when considering the margin of victory. He considers no information from a game other than its teams and score, referencing Occam's Razor, a 14th-century philosophy that the simplest theory that meets a problem's needs is best.

mratings.com: The Massey Ratings are far-reaching enough that every game impacts every team's ratings, with "an infinite chain of opponents, opponents' opponents, opponents' opponents' opponents, etc." with rankings representing a "state of equilibrium in which the team's rating is exactly balanced by its good and bad performances." The Zen master has Florida No. 1, with No. 703 Blackburn rounding out his rankings.

www.cae.wisc.edu: David Rothman, a retired aerospace statistician, also has a system that allows the smallest change to impact everything ... slightly. He was given an incorrect score for last week's Evangel/Culver-Stockton NAIA game (how do you miss that?) and sent out updated standings Thursday after the adjustments. "It's really very tiny, perhaps 0.01 football points by the time you get to schools like Florida," Rothman said. "But there are some ripples."

colleyrankings.com: Wes Colley has a doctorate in astrophysics from Princeton, so before you go saying this stuff isn't rocket science, try downloading his 20-page explanation of his Matrix Method, which is not only thorough but surprisingly easy to follow.

collegebcs.com: A great overview to compare all eight rankings in one comprehensive grid. Observations are often cynical ("Rothman's rankings have Division II Grand Valley State ahead of Michigan State") but also poke fun at the site's own ratings system.

TID-BYTES: NBCsports.com ranks Florida's Ben Hill Griffin Stadium third in its College Football Cathedrals rankings of the game's top stadiums, behind fields at Tennessee and Notre Dame. ... Tampa-based Bigpros.com has dropped the ball with the official sites for Warren Sapp (big99.com), Derrick Brooks (hit55.com) and Jacquez Green (81deep.com). None has been updated since the Bucs' season opener. ... ESPN.com has added a weekly column from former 49ers quarterback Steve Young to its already outstanding NFL coverage.

-- If you have a question or comment about the Internet or a site to suggest, e-mail staff writer Greg Auman at auman@sptimes.com.

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