This Season's OWA Rankings

Earlier this month I laid out the logic of the One Win Away approach to the college football post-season. Tournaments are great for giving every deserving team a chance, but tournaments can weaken the regular season by admitting undeserving teams. The One Win Away approach is the perfect balance - only deserving teams are admitted into the season-ending tournament. Deserving teams are those that, if they were to beat the top-ranked team in a head-to-head, would then be ranked higher than that team - e.g. if Oregon beat Auburn, Oregon would then be ranked higher than Auburn. Therefore, by deduction, the team that wins the OWA tournament is also the team that had the strongest overall season. With the OWA approach, the size of the field will vary from year to year depending on the number of deserving teams, but there will typically be between 2 and 6 entrants.

I also suggested that the OWA field be selected using the BPR. Below is an analysis of this year's results and the OWA participants. The left column is the BPR rating, the right column is the OWA rating - the rating if the team were to beat Auburn. To qualify, a team's OWA rating must be higher than Auburn's OWA- rating in parentheses (Auburn's rating if it were to lose an additional game). Four teams would make the field this season - Auburn, Oregon, TCU, and Stanford. We would then have a 4 team tournament, with Auburn getting Stanford and Oregon getting TCU is the semi-finals. The WAC and Big 10 one loss teams might feel a little peeved for getting left out, but even with a win over Auburn they would still have faced a much softer schedule and have the same number of losses - admitting them into the OWA field would erase that.

One Win Away: The Perfect Compromise between Tournament and BCS

Should we BCS or should we Tournament? That is the question.

Beyond the Senator, the Presidents of universities and one large country, the billionaire NBA owner, the anti-trust lawsuit, the books and articles, what we really have are two competing logics. The debate is heated precisely because both sides are (mostly) right.

The BCS Supporters are Right
Tournaments, especially large tournaments, make the regular season less important. Look at it this way: when the selection show ends, the typical team in college basketball's NCAA tournament has a 1.6% chance of winning a national championship; the best team has a 20-25% chance. This means that, over the course of the tournament, the best team (if it wins) improves its chances from 25% to 100% over six games, an average of 15% per game. That best team entered the season with a 15% chance of winning the national championship based on talent alone. Over the course of a 30 game regular season it improves its chances by 10%, or about .33% per game. (With a tournament invite almost guaranteed, its chances improve as it earns a better seed). A typical team improves its chances from, say, .1% to 1.6% over 30 games, or .05% per game. I don’t think many coaches are going to motivate their guys by emphasizing that today they can win 1/300th, or 1/2000th, of a national championship. And the fans don’t get that excited about it either. They wait until March, when the games are 45 times (for the best team) or several thousand times (for a typical team) more important.*

And college basketball is not the worst case of meaningless regular season games. The best pro baseball teams have a 35% chance of taking home a World Series ring when the playoffs start and a 10% chance at the beginning of the season. That means each game, even for the best team, is worth about 1/663rd of a World Series title – and the most important thing they do in each regular season game is avoid season-ending injury. NBA regular season games are worth 1/280th of a world championship for the best team, and the best NFL team looks to earn 1/92nd of a Super Bowl in each regular season game.

In college football, the best team can earn 2.5% or 1/40th of a national championship per regular season game on average. Even if other leagues only played 12 regular season games, college football would still have the most important games. Literally, every game counts.

93-81 does not a champion make

Unimportant regular season games are a problem for a couple reasons. First, fans and players don’t care as much. Second, and more pertinent to this discussion, the championship poorly reflects a team's performance over the course of the season. That, to me, is a serious problem. The '87 Twins were actually outscored in their run to an 85-77 regular season record. They would have finished 5th in the AL East, but they won their pennant and the World Series. The definition of a champion is subjective, but if you are happy putting a ring on the '87 Twins because they won 8 of 12 games after being significantly outplayed by several teams over a 162 game season, you're crazy. I support Cinderellas, but a real Cinderella goes to work from day one, not moments before midnight.

Tournament Supporters are Right
With a 64, or 65, or 68 team tournament, everyone has a shot at winning the national championship. That regular season game may only be worth 1/2000th of a national championship, but for Auburn and Utah in 2004, Boise State in 2006 and 2009, and TCU this year, every regular season game was worthless. I would rather crown the '87 Twins than completely dismiss half of a league from consideration.

This is not a touchdown

I was there when Kellen Moore led Boise State for a last minute score and win against Virginia Tech. Boise fans felt like they were a step closer to a national championship. I was not there when Brotzman missed a couple of field goals against Nevada, but I’m sure Boise fans felt like their national title hopes took a huge step back. In reality, the two games had the same effect on Boise State’s claim on a national championship: no effect whatsoever. As far as the race for the national championship is concerned, it never happened. An undefeated Boise team would have been passed over for a spot in the title game just the same as a two loss Boise team.

So, the solution is not as simple as a single national championship game or a tournament. You can leave out the ’04 Auburns and '08 Utahs, or you can crown the ’87 Twins, ’09 Fresno States, '85 Villanovas and ’95 Rockets.Good news? I have found a way to screen out the '87 Twins while letting in the '04 Auburns.


The One Win Away Approach 
Tournament logic asserts that because team A beat team B in a tournament game, team A is a more deserving champion. But that logic ignores a season of previous results. Georgetown beat Villanova twice during the season. A few days before the NCAA tournament, Georgetown won the Big East tournament and Villanova was eliminated in the semi-finals. Villanova (25-10), Georgetown (35-3); Georgetown won 2 of 3 head-to-head matchups. Villanova wasn't the better team and it didn't have the better season, but Villanova was two points better than Georgetown for 48 minutes (.042 points/minute), so they are your national champs.

In the One Win Away approach, Villanova isn't invited to dance. An invitation is offered, instead, only to those teams that are One Win Away. One Win Away generally means that if team B beat team A, we would then say that team B had the better season. Using the One Win Away Approach, we start by inviting the #1 team in the country. We then invite only those teams that, if they were to beat the #1 team, could then claim to have had a stronger season then the team they just beat**. In a typical college football season, you would have between 3 and 6 teams that meet that criterion. We would also invite any undefeated teams. The invitees would then be organized in an 8 team tournament. If there are fewer than 8 teams with invitations, the top seeds get byes.

By inviting only One Win Away teams to our tournament, it logically follows that the team that wins the tournament is also the team that has had the strongest overall season. It is, therefore, the perfect compromise.

What would a One Win Away tournament look like? In 2004, USC, Oklahoma and Auburn would be the top 3 seeds. California, Utah and Texas would also get an invite. Louisville would probably be left to watch from the comfort of their own homes, already having 1 loss and a significantly weaker schedule than the top teams. USC and Oklahoma would get byes, Auburn would play Texas and California would play Utah. The winners would get Oklahoma and USC, respectively, in the semi-finals.

Why it works: Every team in the country has a shot. We get a tournament, and the winner of the tournament will also be the team that has had the most complete season-when team A beats team B, that really does mean it is the more deserving champion. This would make the regular season slightly less important for those two teams that control their own destiny, but it would be infinitely more important for everyone else - overall, regular season college football games would be more, not less, influential in awarding the national championship.

Why it might not work: We need some way of finding the “One Win Away” teams. This is relatively easy to find using the BPR, but rankings are, inherently, somewhat subjective – especially rankings that must account for hypothetical wins. Also, the “One Win Away” approach requires a flexible postseason which makes planning and marketing much more difficult. A lot of rich and powerful people are deeply invested financially, emotionally, and intellectual in the existing system.

The "One Win Away" approach is, at least logically, the perfect compromise between a single national championship game and a tournament. Unfortunately, I have never known the sports world to be motivated by logic.

* These are, admittedly, back of the envelope calculations, but the logic is sound and the estimates lean towards the conservative.
** This does not mean they would, themselves, become the #1 team in the country, but they would, at least, be One Win Away from the new #1.

Vote No on a Tournament in College Football

Global warming and a tournament in college football--in both cases, a person can expect to get roasted if they oppose the popular consensus. Our understanding of global warming (both its effects and the potential solutions) is built largely on myths. This is, unfortunately, also the case with a tournament in college football. A tournament would not magically identify the best team in college football and it would bring with it serious baggage. I'll here try to explain how I see the issue and convince you that the topic deserves real debate.

I think I can summarize the arguments for a tournament in college football in two categories: 1) the current system does not necessarily identify the best team in the country and 2) the current system is anti-climatic. I'll take these on one at a time.

Does the current system identify the best team in the country? No. It's not supposed to, its supposed to identify the national champion--an ill-defined concept that breeds disagreement and debate. The reason we cannot agree on a national champion in college football is not that the BCS is flawed but that no one knows what it means to be a national champion in college football. In college basketball or college baseball or any other significant sport, the champion is the winner of a tournament. Its a definition, not a theological truth that was spawned during the creation of sport.

Before the BCS, the national champion in college football could be defined literally as the highest ranked team and substantively as the team that was able to accumulate the most quality wins while losing as rarely as possible. Now, the substantive definition is similar but the literal definition under the BCS is a bit more convoluted--it is the team that receives the most points after a summation of various polls. Because the substantive definition uses two variables (quality wins and losses) and because the quality of a win falls on a fuzzy continuum, the application of this definition is subjective--how good are particular wins and how damning are particular losses?

If you remember nothing else, though, remember that never in college football nor at any time in any sport that I can think of is the champion the "best team". One reason is that we don't really care about the best team, but the team that has performed at the highest level. Those are different things.

But then try to define which team performed at the highest level. As the trend-o-matic demonstrates, a team's performance varies across a season. Do we find the team that has had the highest average performance, the team that has had the highest minimum, or the team that achieved the highest level at any particular time in a season? If you want a tournament, you're taking option three since the tournament can only identify the best team at the very end of the season without giving us any perspective on the team's relative performance through the season.

How often were the Giants better than the Patriots during the 2007-2008 season? Only during the Super Bowl; from September until kickoff, the Patriots were significantly better. But because the Giants had three hours during which they outperformed the Patriots, the Giants were crowned as the champions of the NFL. That, to me, is a weak definition of a champion and one that college football can avoid.

Which leads to the next issue--even if we are to place too much weight on a team's performance at the very end of the season for naming a champion, a tournament will often fail to identify which team is performing at the highest level. I discuss this more fully here, but the crux of the matter is that a team's performance, because of natural fluctuations in the players', coaches', and referees' biologies, luck, and other random events, will vary from game to game and moment to moment. Consequently, the more teams we send to the tournament, the more games teams have to win, and the less likely it is that the best team will get spit out at the end.

And any tournament in college football, in time, will expand.

2) The BCS bowl system is anti-climatic. I agree completely with that concern, but the solution is not a tournament. Ohio State had to wait almost 50 days from beating Michigan to playing LSU. I assume OSU fans stayed interested, but I had moved on to other interests (NFL, NBA, NHL, etc., there were plenty of options). Even the two weeks for the Super Bowl is too long in my opinion, but the wait for bowls in college football is ridiculous. And playing at neutral locations far from either team is a second problem (though USC and LSU have had quasi-home national championship games and that shouldn't happen either).

College football should have post-season games that run up against the most exciting regular season in sports--and why is it the most exciting regular season in sports? Because it doesn't end in a massive tournament that invites Oral Roberts and American University (or even Fresno State).

But moving up bowl games is the only change I can propose. I don't want a tournament-defined national champion in college football because that will strip some of the importance of week 1 and will make college football like everyone else. I stand behind a "highest average performance" definition, but without a complete round robin so every team gets a chance to play the rest, such a definition is inherently subjective. I could write my own algorithm to identify the team with the highest average performance, but it will only be my opinion--there is no law in heaven that defines what it means to be a national champion in college football.

Addendum: If we did have a tournament, it can admit only conference champions. One very nice consequence would be that non-conference games would not affect a teams chances at winning a national championship. Consequently, teams would bulk up their non-conference schedule for the experience and cash--but remember, college basketball also started with a tournament that allowed only conference champions and now people are pushing to extend it from a field of 65 to 96. Don't play with fire.

I Think I’m Going to be Sick

I’m not a WVU fan. In fact, as a BYU alum, I hate the fact that the Big East gets an automatic BCS bowl bid while the MWC champion gets PAC-10 4/5. The largest stadium in the Big East holds 65,050 – which they borrow from the Steelers - and the mighty Panthers pack 43,000 in there for home games – not exactly big time football – but that’s not the point.

I’m not a WVU fan, but Saturday night’s loss to Pitt made me sick to my stomach. After a disastrous season of freakish upsets – not parity, but freakish upsets – I thought we just might get two one loss teams, with dynamic offenses, in the national championship game. Instead, we get the Buckeye Pansy Killers against a two loss team.

So, to avoid this kind of outcome in the future, I offer the NCAA and college football teams a few free suggestions (but I will accept donations).

1. Go Two Deep at QB

Longshore goes down - Cal loses. Dixon goes down – Oregon loses. Pat White goes down – WVU loses. Bradford goes down – Oklahoma loses. Booty goes down – USC loses. Defensive ends these days are more athletic and hit harder than ever before, and quarterbacks are more vulnerable running the spread offense. They are going to get hurt – and you need to have someone that can step up and play when that happens.

And you need to have someone that can run your offense. Jarrett Brown has his talents, but they are not the same as Pat White’s. Yet WVU kept trying to run the same offense and amassed 190 total yards. They have two running backs that are either former or future Heisman candidates in Slaton and Devine, but Brown keeps it play after play. Theoretically, Leaf also has talents (well-hidden?), but Oregon would have to run a completely different style of offense to exploit them.

So we need to start talking about depth at quarterback and realize that a team’s success over the course of the season will generally rely on its ability to overcome injuries with its second string qb. LSU won and West Virginia lost Saturday because the former has two quarterbacks while the latter has just one.

2. Give Pac-10 Coaches a Clock Management Workshop

If I’m not a WVU fan, then I’m definitely not a Cal fan, but their first of many losses still made me ill. Throw the ball away, get out of bounds, run faster than my grandmother and get the first down – just don’t get tackled in the middle of the field.

But Oregon’s blunder was even worse, because their blunder was premeditated. The game was tied. They've got first down and a chip shot field goal to win. They squatted on the ball to run off some clock and down the ball in the middle of the field. But then they run out the field goal team instead of spiking the ball to stop the clock, miss the rushed field goal, and lose in overtime (because they can’t convert on 4th and 1).

Cal managed a heroic collapse after their time-management disaster against Oregon State, and Oregon completed a three game losing streak by failing to get off a good field goal attempt against their in-state rival, Oregon State. I guess their coaches are so busy dreaming up creative offensive schemes they can't bother to worry about finishing games.

3. Hit a Field Goal

A reliable field goal kicker misses two close range attempts. The team is down by 6 (=3+3) late in the game until a safety ends any hope of a comeback. And national title hopes are lost. If Kansas’ and West Virginia’s kickers go in together, they might be able to afford the services of Blackwater USA long enough to get a chance at redemption next season.

4. Define the National Championship

The wonderful thing about college football is that every game counts. Even week 1 against Appalachian State. Any definition of a national champion that does not preserve this tradition in college football would ruin the sport.

First, this means that we should not have a tournament. If we did have a tournament this year, USC and OU (maybe Georgia) would end up playing for the national championship. USC lost twice, including at home against Stanford, and only won their conference because Dixon was attacked by a turf monster. Oklahoma lost twice on the road to Colorado and Tech. A tournament would discount those losses – and, therefore, make those games unimportant.

Second, I think it is also important to require a national champion win its conference championship. We made the mistake a few years ago of allowing Oklahoma to play for a title after getting a beat down in its conference championship game. The same goes for Georgia this year - and I don't care how well they've played recently. If we must have a tournament, allow only the 8 conference champions from the SEC, Big East, Big 10, Big XII, PAC-10, MWC, WAC, and ACC. This would have the nice externality of forcing Notre Dame to join a conference like everybody else.

A national championship game should include the two teams that have performed the best over the course of the season and also won their conference championships. This year, the natural selection would be LSU – who only lost twice, both times in 3OT and against tough competition – and Ohio State, the only one loss champion. If you lose to a team that is not bowl eligible, or lose by 25+ points, in my book, your disqualified.

5. Recognize that LSU's coaches are very mortal

First, Crowton. He was run out of Provo, and quickly after BYU becomes a power. Last year, they had one of the top 3 offenses in the country by the end of the season (just ask the Ducks). He goes to Oregon and their offense is a disaster (just ask the BYU defense). LSU picks him up - and I can only assume they did it to have a scapegoat in case they didn't win a championship. Oregon has the best offense in the world outside of Massachusetts after he leaves (until Dixon is injured), and LSU's offense is a little above average.
Bo - He had amazing success with the Blackshirts - 15 guys juiced out of their minds. Fine. At LSU, the defense is good, but their are better defenses in the country with less talent. I'm not impressed. If Nebraska fans think he will be their savior, suicide rates could be climbing over the next few years in that fine state.

and Les - Not impressed. Of course, I'm not at all impressed with Michigan and that program, either. Their football team's loss to App. State has been resoundingly outclassed by the basketball team losing to Harvard. It would be a better fit for Les at Michigan - less money, less recent succes, worse future prospects. But instead LSU offers him a raise? Ridiculous - even if he does give the world's second best press conferences (with Gundy at #1).

P.S. Shame on Pitt players and the program for dancing on the midfield logo. If Pitt actually had fans I would hope that they are embarrased for that performance.

P.P.S. The #2 curse lives on

The Value of a Tournament

In the next few paragraphs, I will present the solution to the most pressing problem (in my opinion) facing college football. (How about that for an intro!)

The primary goal of a college football season is to recognize a national champion. Logically, there has been a lot of discussion about how this is best done. The focus of this discussion has been a lack of benchmarks: too few games and too many teams. But a tournament is not a magic solution.

There are two problems with a tournament. First, it places too much emphasis on a few games at the end of the season. Second, because a team's performance may vary from game to game the team that wins the tournament is often not the best team overall.

In a tournament, performance through the season is recognized by allowing the team to participate in the tournament and matching up better teams against worse teams as much as possible. If we believe that a college football season does not offer the necessary match-ups throughout the season, a short tournament that provides those match-ups may be the best available option.

Theoretically, the superior system would give entrance only to those teams that have a legitimate claim at the national championship after their performance during the season. The superior system should also be more likely to crown the superior team with a minimal number of games. A seven game series would be preferable if it didn't take two months to play out.

Including too many teams, therefore, is a double wammy. First, it increases the number of games to be played. With 8 teams there are seven elimination games and the finalists must play three extra games. Because teams vary in their performance from one week to the next, the more teams and the more games a team must win, the less likely it is that the best team will actually win.

This can be easily demonstrated with the equations developed for week 4.

Assume we have 8 teams, A through H, with ratings: A = 35, B = 34; C = 33, etc., such that A would be favored by 1 over B, by 2 over C, and by 3 over D. These are, in this case, objective ratings, such that A has been the best team over the course of the season and is currently the best team in the country. But the probability that A will win the national championship varies with the type of tournament employed.

In a single elimination tournament with 8 teams:

A	24.71%
D	12.33%
E	9.60%
H	4.39%
B	19.93%
C	15.80%
F	7.48%
G	5.76%

In a single elimination tournament with 4 teams:

A	32.19%
B	26.89%
C	22.37%
D	18.55%

In a double elimination tournament with 4 teams:

A	34.36%
B	27.30%
C	21.51%
D	16.83%

In a single championship game with 2 teams:

A	53.06%
B	46.94%

Therefore, in this scenario, the best predictor is, in fact, the single championship game, and logically so. This format, though, is flawed because we cannot always objectively identify the top two teams.

In recent years, three of the four top conferences (PAC 10, Big 12, SEC and Big 10) have produced a title contender. We have also seen challenges made by representatives of the Big East and WAC, and, before long, the ACC will begin to produce contenders again. Therefore, a four or five team tournament (with a play-in game) should be sufficiently inclusive to identify the nation's top team.

Another advantage of a four team tournament is that placement plays almost no role in deciding the winner.

This narrows our options to two potential formats, single or double elimination. The double elimination format is more likely to crown the superior team, but requires almost as many games and more games per team than the 8 team format.

But the double elimination format is only significantly more likely to produce the correct national champion if the best team is significantly better than the rest of the field. For example, if we reproduce the earlier experiment but with larger differences between teams (which is, admittedly, the less likely scenario), such that A=35, B=31, C=27, D=23, etc., we arrive at the following probabilities:

In a single elimination tournament with 8 teams:

A	54.34%
D	4.28%
E	1.31%
H	0.03%
B	27.76%
C	11.79%
F	0.38%
G	0.11%

In a single elimination tournament with 4 teams:

A	53.72%
B	27.58%
C	12.84%
D	5.86%

In a double elimination tournament with 4 teams:

A	61.22%
B	26.03%
C	9.52%
D	3.23%

In a single championship game with 2 teams:

A	62.01%
B	37.99%

In this case, the three or four extra games would definitely favor the better team at all in the end. But, assuming we would want a single championship game (such that the team emerging from the losers bracket would not need to defeat the winner bracket representative twice), the odds of A winning would fall to 56.24% from 61.22%. And, since the best team is still almost twice as likely to win the tournament as any other team using this format, it can still efficiently identify the champion.

A play-in game should increase the probability that the correct team is identified as the national champion (unless the best team is ranked 4th at the time) and could be played before the rest of the bowl season. As such, a system could be devised that the conference champions of the major conferences could be reserved a play-in spot if they do not otherwise qualify by ranking as long as, I believe, the top three teams are not forced to win more than two games to win the tournament.