Another Year Fighting College Football Corruption

Another fall is upon us, and that means another three or four months up on my soapbox decrying the rampant elitism and corruption in college football. But that doesn't mean that the football itself isn't enjoyable.

That's why I'm here, every year, taking a look at the goings on. Growing up, I didn't care about college football, largely because my dad didn't. I've gotten into it a little bit more just because it's so woven into the fabric of American culture, but I have no rooting interest, other than sheer anarchy, and occasional support for a local team if they've doing well.

My main issue with college football is not the issue of whether or not players should be paid (short answer: they probably should, but maybe not in the way most other people would argue they should be), but with the terrible playoff system they have set up. It's a definite improvement over the garbage that was the BCS, but they can do better. You can read more about my views on this here and in prior season preview posts.


So now we look ahead to 2017. Clemson comes into the season as the defending College Football Playoff Champion, while Alabama is a three time defending Death to the BCS Playoff Champion, and that's where these posts come into play. I don't think four teams is enough for the playoff; I've taken the idea posited by Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter, and Jeff Passan and made it a yearly project of analysis into the college football season, where at the end, I build a field of 16 teams (10 conference champions and six at large) and play three rounds on campuses before playing the title game in Pasadena.

You may say to yourself, "16 teams is way too many!" I disagree. The corrupt commissioners of the Power Five conferences have set up a nice little racket where they get most of the money and all of the championships, and they're too greedy to share much with the other five conferences. This system is set up to ensure that every team, at least in theory, has a shot at the championship; the odds that a Sun Belt champion could knock off Alabama in Tuscaloosa are probably laughable, but the opportunity is there. That's the important thing, and one day, that upset could quite possibly happen. I want to give it the arena to take off.

The ultimate question though is how to create and seed that 16 team field. I try to keep an eye on some of the major games to some degree, but I can't decide that field alone, not without help. That's where the following metrics all come into play. The descriptions of some of these are copy-pasted from last year, because they work.

1. Non-Conference Schedule Strength (NCSS)
   This was my first metric, and even though it's not perfect, I still like to use it as a point against the elitism perpetuated by the powers that be. Every team gets a score from week to week that sums up at the end of the season to judge the general toughness of a non-conference schedule without looking at records. To a degree, I continue the elitism by giving higher scores to playing teams from a Power conference (but these schools are generally better), but I also blast the schools who play an FCS team. It's a necessary evil to the schedule, and one that I'm more willing to forgive at the beginning of the season than I am for the handful of SEC and ACC schools that unconscionably do this in the second to last week of the regular season. Here's the breakdown of scoring by week.
   - -1 point for playing an FCS team at home (since God forbid someone like Michigan or Florida actually travel to one of these schools)
   - 0 points for a bye week or playing an in-conference game (this will be the most common score for most teams on a weekly basis)
   - 1 point for playing an FBS team from a non-"Power conference" at home or at a neutral site
   - 2 points for playing an FBS team from a non- "Power conference" on the road or an FBS team for a "Power conference" at home or at a neutral site
   - 3 points for playing an FBS team from a "Power conference" on the road
   *NOTE: "Power conferences" are the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, and Pac 12.
2. First Degree Playoff Points (PP1)
   This is a metric I basically stole from the IHSA. If you have two 10-2 teams, but one of them beat a bunch of 6-6, 7-5, and 8-4 teams, that's a better resume than the other who beat a bunch of 3-9 and 4-8 teams. PP1 measures the IHSA's "Combined Wins of Defeated Opponents" measurement and uses that to help determine how good a team was. It can be flawed in that losses don't impact this metric in any capacity, which means a loss to a 2-10 team is measured the same as a loss to a 12-0 team. It's something I'm considering tweaking. We'll see. One other important note with this metric is that wins against FCS opponents are worth no points.
3. Second Degree Playoff Points (PP2)
   This builds off the prior metric, and is a piece I added a couple years ago. PP2 averages the Playoff Points of defeated teams (so a three win team gets the average of the three teams they beat, while a nine win team gets the average of their nine vanquished foes factored in). This is to help balance out the previous metric and see how good the defeated teams really are. Most years, this will mean the national leaders in this metric will be teams that aren't that good but beat a really good opponent to boost their number. Like PP1, a score of zero is given for defeating an FCS opponent, which will bring down the average.
4. Adjusted Playoff Points (aPP)
   This is a new metric I added in early last season, after the intro post went up. I decided that First Degree Playoff Points were good, but flawed to some degree in that it doesn't take losses into account. The adjusted ranking does. I still add up the "Combined Wins of Defeated Opponents," but to adjust it, I then subtract the combined losses of every opponent that defeated the team in question. Taking the example above, a loss to a 12-0 team will result in a subtraction of zero from the overall score, which doesn't hurt. A loss to a 2-10 team, however, will subtract 10 points from the total. This cumulative score can (and will) go into the negatives, with last year's Fresno State team finishing 1-11 with an aPP of -59 points.
5. Rothman Computer Rankings (ROTH)
   The late David Rothman created a formula to rank college football teams, similar to the methods used to help calculate the old BCS standings. The difference is that Rothman wanted to include margin of victory, figuring it was important to help differentiate between teams. The powers that were in the BCS thought it was "unsportsmanlike" to reward running up the score, never mind that a cap could be placed on margin of victory to minimize this. Rothman's ranking was rejected by the BCS, but he continued to rank teams on his own and made his formula public domain before his death. A UCLA faculty member uses this formula and compiles the rankings. This is to help balance out any bias I may have.
6. Sagarin Computer Rankings (SAG)
   A similar tale to above, Sagarin did actually have a computer ranking used by the BCS that took margin of victory out of the equation, but he did still calculate rankings with that factor included. Using his "Final" rating, we come up with that metric, and I use that again to help factor out any bias I may have.
7. All My Sports Teams Suck Computer Rankings (AMSTS)
   Last year when I did my first mock bracket, the UCLA faculty member who had been doing the Rothman rankings hadn't run the numbers yet, and I needed a second computer ranking to help filter out any bias I may have. I discovered that the team over at All My Sports Teams Suck not only compile computer rankings every week, but do so while keeping margin of victory a factor. When the Rothman rankings started coming in again, I just kept this ranking as a balance.

I use these rankings on a weekly basis, updating the first four every week (except Playoff Points; those I wait on until Week 2 because after Week 1 every team will have zero points). The computer rankings, meanwhile, won't make their debut until I start doing mock brackets. Those don't get done until the number of undefeated teams across FBS football is low enough that I can build a playoff field based on the Wetzel/Peter/Passan model without leaving any of them out.

Because I want to be transparent about all of this, I do make my NCSS and Playoff Points numbers publicly available. For the first two seasons I did the Death to the BCS Playoffs, I didn't, and ultimately decided I couldn't do that in good conscience. I update these on a weekly basis, and the numbers will be up before the weekly posts are if you're really that curious.

Finally, I want to conclude with an annual reminder of situations where teams will be ineligible for the Death to the BCS Playoffs. Most of the time, this will be the result of cowardly scheduling. I mentioned in the NCSS section above that teams lose points for hosting FCS squads, though the NCSS ranking is the least important when bracket time comes. However, any team that plays two home games against FCS opponents in a season, unless something cancelled a game and the second FCS team was an emergency fill in opponent, will be ineligible for the Death to the BCS Playoffs. That's a fairly new rule, since I think Florida State got in once despite playing two FCS programs that year. Two years ago, it nearly came into play when North Carolina played in the ACC title game, but lost to Clemson. Had UNC won, Clemson would have gotten the automatic bid over them.

I got lucky that year, but no much last year as I had to disregard the result of one conference championship game for entirely different reasons. If you're a regular reader of Confessions of a Sportscaster, you already know this, but for those of you new to this, Penn State is permanently banned from the Death to the BCS Playoffs for being a cult that prioritized football over the safety of children. They should have gotten the death penalty, but because the NCAA is spineless and pays too much heed to brainwashed cultists and corrupt now-trustees of the university (looking at you, Jay Paterno, you jackass) they're inexplicably still allowed to field a team.

They aren't the only one in this situation. Baylor, due to major sexual assault scandals that always seem to keep getting worse the more we hear about what happened under Art Briles, is also permanently banned from the Death to the BCS Playoffs. Things like this are what the death penalty should be for, but again, the NCAA is spineless. Both Baylor and Penn State will have their numbers compiled on a weekly basis, but they will not make the playoffs, ever. This rule finally came into play last year when Penn State won the Big Ten championship game, as I gave their opponent in that game, Wisconsin, the automatic bid. In the event of a banned team being up for an automatic bid, this is how I will handle it, and if they don't win a conference championship, it's fine because I just skip them when I go to consider the numbers.

This season will be a little bizarre when it starts, because there are a handful of games being played in what is essentially a Week Zero this Saturday, before college football starts en masse. Those games will be compiled with the Week One games, and I'll make notes about the appropriate teams and games in the 2017 spreadsheet.

Check back next week, and every week, for updates on what the Death to the BCS Playoff field might look like, and good luck to your teams this season!