NCAA football – Quick Guide to Understanding the Bowl Championship Series Ranking

When it comes to assessing NCAA College Football teams, things do get very interesting and up to some extent extremely confusing. For starters, there are quite a few different rankings out there. We have to start by working our way around a key-issue: understanding and defining the Bowl Championship Series. As you know the NCAA is the sanctioning entity that rules and governs American Collegiate Sports.

The NCAA organizes many distinct events and tournaments that will yearly bring in an elimination process that will give out a National Champion. When it comes to Football, things work a bit different, as there is no single-elimination postseason to determine a National Champion. So contrary to the NCAA Basketball’s March Madness or its winter counterpart for Hockey’s Frozen Four, the NCAA Football has come out with a ranking and poll-based system to promote big postseason games and appoint a national champion.

That’s where the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) kicks in. The BCS is a selection system that annually creates five bowl-matches at the end of the regular season, involving the top 10 ranked teams in the nation, or to be more precise, the top 10 ranked teams in the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision. This is a group of Conferences that contain the elite of college football programs in the nation.

A couple factors ramble in as to what makes a conference fit the Bowl Series or the Championship Series. Altogether, it is a matter of game-day Stadium attendance, the total number of full scholarships offered to the athletic program of an specific school, and the tradition and prominence of the Conference at which a team plays which dictates its status as a Bowl Series.
Now, the best two teams out of that top ten ranking are given a chance to play the BCS National Championship Game that is held once the other four Bowl Games are played. The winner of this game is then virtually considered the National Champion.

The remaining 8 teams then have a chance to play the other prestigious and significantly lucrative BCS Bowl games. The BCS bowl games are the Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena California, The Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, The Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, and the Orange Bowl at Miami Gardens, Florida. For a chance of prominence for other competitive teams not ranked in the top 10 of the nation there are other 27 non-BCS bowls held annually in the postseason.

The 10 teams that play the Bowls include the conference champion from each of the six BCS Conferences and four other teams. Up to a certain extent, the other conferences would then have a chance to bring on their best prospects to fill up those 4 spots, but it is not usually the case.

Understanding the Rankings:

The BCS ranking formula was revised after the somewhat embarrassing season of 2003. It was evident that something went wrong when the next-to-final BCS poll ranked the University of Southern California (USC) at #3 while both the Coaches’ and the AP Poll had ranked USC at #1. As a result of this discrepancy, USC did not play in the BCS’ national championship game. The criticism came up as the BCS rankings had privileged computer based votes over human voters, as many believed the USC should had been given a chance at the BCS National Championship Game.

USC went on to defeat another highly ranked team: Michigan. The AP Poll kept USC at #1 while the Coaches Poll, which is contractually obligated to select the winner of the BCS game as the number 1 team in the nation, went on to vote for Louisiana State University (LSU). The resulting split national title was the very problem that the BCS was created to solve.

The BCS would then again have to face yet another embarrassing moment as the Associated Press decided not to take part of the BCS rankings after what happened in the 2004 season in the final Polls between University of California at Berkeley and the Texas Longhorns. Truth be said, iCal was affected not only by the AP voters but also by the Coaches’ Poll as well. And yet, because the AP poll was made public and the Coaches Poll was kept confidential, most of the criticism over the decision to promote Texas over California was placed on the AP voters.

The AP Poll steps down from BCS rankings

The BCS ranking system is based on a combination of the most prestigious polls in the nation and computer selection methods that determine a weekly ranking of the teams. First thing first: let’s leave the math to the mathematicians as most of the formulas and algorithms involved here, particularly in the computer based votes, certainly surpass the understanding of our writer’s staff.  Anyway, this is what we have come to understand so far.

Up until the 2004 season the BCS ranking system took into account the AP Poll, the Coaches Poll and a computer average which is based on 6 distinct ranking systems. In this computer calculation the lowest and the highest ranking for each team is dropped. The main distinction is that with the computer based calculation there is a schedule strength factor involved in the mathematical formula that helps level things out.

The AP Poll and the Coaches’ Poll, on the other hand, are human based votes. The Coaches Poll is compiled by the USA Today Board of Coaches, which is conformed by 59 head coaches from teams at Football Bowl Subdivision. It has been going on since the 1950’s and it is somewhat of an insider’s look at the NCAA college football rankings.

The Associated Press (AP) is a compilation of the top 25 list elaborated weekly by the polling sportswriters across the nation. Each voter makes his own top-25 list and the results are then combined to give out the official weekly review. As we mentioned before, since 2004 the AP requested their poll would not be taken into account for the BCS rankings. Despite their reluctance to be part of the rankings that decide the National Champion, the AP Poll is one of the most respected rankings out there for both NCAA football and basketball.

The Harris Interactive College Football Poll

After the Associated Press’ decision to withdraw its participation in the BCS ranking, the NCAA formed the Harris Interactive College Football Poll to be used instead. The rankings are compiled by Harris Interactive, a leading company in the Internet market research field.
The Harris Interactive Poll has its own scientific approach to the matter of ranking college football teams. The Poll does not usually come out each year until the last weeks of September. By that time the tournament has already been played for at least three or four weeks. The final Harris Poll comes at the end of the regular season. It is the only poll that doesn’t provide for a preseason or a postseason ranking.

The Harris Interactive Poll is composed of former coaches, former players, athletic program administrators and from sports media specialist both active and retired. Like in the case of the AP and the Coaches’ Poll each voter submits his or her own list of top-25 teams in the nation. The panel of voters of the Harris Interactive Poll has been selected to be a statistically valid representation of all 11 Football Bowl Subdivision Conferences and of the Independent Institutions as well.

The BCS rankings explained

From the moment the first official BCS ranking comes out, each week, the BCS standing is delivered. The BCS ranking consists of the Harris Interactive Poll, the USA Today Coaches Poll and the computer rankings. Each distinct Poll or ranking conforms one-third of the BCS Standings. Each team is assigned an inverse point total. The No.1 team is awarded 25 points; the No. 2 team receives 24 and so on. The two poll percentages are calculated by dividing each team’s total points by the possible points in each poll. That is 2850 possible points for the Harris Interactive and 1475 possible points for the Coaches’ Poll.

The computer ranking percentage is calculated by dropping the highest and lowest ranking for each team and then dividing the remaining total by 100, which is the maximum possible points given by the computer ranking. So basically, the same process is applied to each of the third components. Once these three figures are derived, the BCS Average is calculated by averaging the percentage totals of the Harris Interactive Poll, the Coaches’ Poll and the computer rankings.

This Season, the No.1 and No.2 teams in the BCS rankings as of December 6th, 2010, will be selected to play in the BCS National Championship Game on January 7th 2011. The game will be held in Pasadena California. The winner of the game will be awarded the Coaches Trophy. Since there is no official standing from the NCAA as which team is the National Champion, the Coaches Trophy is emblematic of the National Championship.