still in third?

[phillyfiend]

now i understand we didnt play last week.

however, does TT deserve to jump in front of us?

thoughts?

[el_duderino]

Technically speaking, yes - they "deserve" to jump ahead of us. Human polls have us ahead of them; it's the statistical rankings that did us in.

Now, I won't go into the deep details of the statistical rankings because a) there's a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo to work through and b) I don't know 100% how all of the 6 systems work. So, let's do a quick rundown of how the "computers" ranked the top teams:

Alabama: 1, 4, 2, 3, 2, 1
Texas Tech: 2, 1, 5, 1, 1, 4
Penn State: 3, 2, 4, 4, 4, 3
Texas: 4, 3, 1, 2, 3, 2

When you see the usual rankings, they'll start at 25 points and go down a point for each spot - I just put everything into how they are ranked. It's here where Texas Tech takes the jump over us in the BCS rankings. I also want to note here that they're ahead of us by 0.009 points - that's an insanely small margin. So small that, all things remain constant, if Alabama moves up in the statistical rankings, it might actually drop TT below us.

Again, without getting too deep into the details, most of these rankings try to take the losses of a team seem as likely as possible without making their wins seem unlikely. Basically, they try to statistically determine the worst you can be to lose the game(s) you lost, while making your wins seem likely. This does, however, make it hard for the computers to determine this ranking with undefeated teams - in essence, they can't use infinity in the calculations. So they'll give an arbitrary level of probability to these teams. Strength of schedule comes into play as how good your opponents, and how good are the teams they've played. Add in some other statistical factors, and you'll get to each one's individual statistical results.

Ultimately, Texas Tech gets the jump on us thanks to their SoS - even moreso thanks to the win over Texas, who has to this point one of the top SoS's in the nation. That's really the big jumping point for Tech at this point. And let's face it - if they win out, they deserve to be in the MNC over us, since they'll still have to go through OkSt, Oklahoma, and the Big 12 title game (likely Missou). Bama, the same, since they'll have to go through LSU and the SEC title game (likely Florida).

So what do we need? Well, outside of the obvious losses by Bama or TTech, we need our opponents to keep winning, especially against teams we don't face (down with Minnesota and Northwestern!!!). Size of win won't really matter - the statistical polls don't care about margin of victory, and the human polls are fairly strict with poll inertia (Texas Tech is expected to win their games based on their ranking, and it's hard to start jumping undefeateds at this point). The higher MSU is ranked coming into the final game, the better. One of the big teams to keep rooting for is Oregon State - they control their destiny in the Pac10 right now. And if they find a way to win out, they're the Pac-10 champs and will be heading to the Rose Bowl. I'm sure you can guess how nicely that will look on our resume.

So yes - TTech deserves to be the slightest of #2's right now. Undefeated and taking down a/the top team, the statistical polls helped bump them up. But there are still some big games to be played, moreso for the other two teams ahead of us.


And for the record, don't get too excited about our lone #2 ranking in the statistical polls. That's Billingsly's ranking, and the guy is a crack-pot. If you ever get the chance/desire to sit down and read how he ranks everything, you'll find it starts to be less of a "computer" ranking, and more of a 3rd human poll. Except there is no check/balance on his, because he's the only human poll in the 6 statistical polls. If you care to know what little I know about this and the other statistical polls, I'll do my best to share.