More sports!
Before I delve into a political post (which is coming, I promise!), I thought I'd point out that West Virginia University's football team, the sometimes-venerable Mountaineers, knocked the Virginia Tech Hokies to the mat tonight in a 28-7 shellacking that wasn't really as close as the score indicates.
It seems odd, of course, that 28-7 could actually be worse than it appears, but let me say that it really was. West Virginia's quarterback, a young man by the name of Rasheed Marshall, seems to have Kordell Stewart's disease: he inexplicably prefers running the ball to passing it. I'm not really sure what to make of the trend that over the last decade has seen slow running backs with decent arms play the QB position, but whatever. The Tommy Frazier topic can wait for another day. Back on-topic, imagine what the score would have been had Marshall had a better passing day than 7-14 for 162 yards, 93 of which came on one play. Gadzooks, it could indeed have been worse!
The real point of note here is not the drubbing which my home state's football team delivered upon the Castrated Turkeys of Virginia Tech. The real thing to notice here is that Virginia Tech was ranked number 3 in the nation, according to the Bowl Championship series. Of course there is an "Any Given Sunday" school of thought these days that with good reason carries over to Saturday NCAA games: any team can beat any team, yadda yadda yadda. I was always under the impression, though, that the BCS proclaimed to be above that, that it was nearly foolproof, that the top teams as indicated were, in fact, the top teams in the nation.
THe BCS ranking system is designed to take into account the records of each team's opponents, and of each team's opponents' opponents. So, in theory, the team with the most wins against the strongest schedule would be the number one team in the rankings.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the computer rankings - somebody forgot to mention that VT's opponents were very, very bad. The Hokies this season, in addition to the West Virginia team that until tonight was 2-4, have played or will play Central Florida, James Madison University, Connecticut, Temple, and Rutgers. These are hardly national title contenders.
And that brings me to the downside of the "Strength-of-schedule" argument that the BCS proponets put forth. Let's take James Madison as a hypothetical: JMU might play, say, a lot of D1-AA teams. Those teams, without the recruiting power of a D1A team, would probably lose to JMU. So JMU looks like a strong opponent on paper. "But the opponents' opponents' records matter, too!" BCS-niks will scream. True, they do. But let's presume that JMU's opponents are all very good 1-AA teams - meaning that the opponents's (James Madison's) opponents' (D-1AA teams) look strong, making VT look better as well.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the BCS is a crock of flaming dog poo, something which pretty much everyone outside the NCAA and the American Broadcasting Company know. But today's game merely proves that the BCS overrates teams in weak conferences, and perhaps underrates teams in strong conferences who lost one game to a very good team. Undefeated does not mean best, BCS-niks.
After all, WVU finished undefeated in 1993, and look what happened to them.
Read an excellent recap of the VT-WVU game here
Before I delve into a political post (which is coming, I promise!), I thought I'd point out that West Virginia University's football team, the sometimes-venerable Mountaineers, knocked the Virginia Tech Hokies to the mat tonight in a 28-7 shellacking that wasn't really as close as the score indicates.
It seems odd, of course, that 28-7 could actually be worse than it appears, but let me say that it really was. West Virginia's quarterback, a young man by the name of Rasheed Marshall, seems to have Kordell Stewart's disease: he inexplicably prefers running the ball to passing it. I'm not really sure what to make of the trend that over the last decade has seen slow running backs with decent arms play the QB position, but whatever. The Tommy Frazier topic can wait for another day. Back on-topic, imagine what the score would have been had Marshall had a better passing day than 7-14 for 162 yards, 93 of which came on one play. Gadzooks, it could indeed have been worse!
The real point of note here is not the drubbing which my home state's football team delivered upon the Castrated Turkeys of Virginia Tech. The real thing to notice here is that Virginia Tech was ranked number 3 in the nation, according to the Bowl Championship series. Of course there is an "Any Given Sunday" school of thought these days that with good reason carries over to Saturday NCAA games: any team can beat any team, yadda yadda yadda. I was always under the impression, though, that the BCS proclaimed to be above that, that it was nearly foolproof, that the top teams as indicated were, in fact, the top teams in the nation.
THe BCS ranking system is designed to take into account the records of each team's opponents, and of each team's opponents' opponents. So, in theory, the team with the most wins against the strongest schedule would be the number one team in the rankings.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the computer rankings - somebody forgot to mention that VT's opponents were very, very bad. The Hokies this season, in addition to the West Virginia team that until tonight was 2-4, have played or will play Central Florida, James Madison University, Connecticut, Temple, and Rutgers. These are hardly national title contenders.
And that brings me to the downside of the "Strength-of-schedule" argument that the BCS proponets put forth. Let's take James Madison as a hypothetical: JMU might play, say, a lot of D1-AA teams. Those teams, without the recruiting power of a D1A team, would probably lose to JMU. So JMU looks like a strong opponent on paper. "But the opponents' opponents' records matter, too!" BCS-niks will scream. True, they do. But let's presume that JMU's opponents are all very good 1-AA teams - meaning that the opponents's (James Madison's) opponents' (D-1AA teams) look strong, making VT look better as well.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the BCS is a crock of flaming dog poo, something which pretty much everyone outside the NCAA and the American Broadcasting Company know. But today's game merely proves that the BCS overrates teams in weak conferences, and perhaps underrates teams in strong conferences who lost one game to a very good team. Undefeated does not mean best, BCS-niks.
After all, WVU finished undefeated in 1993, and look what happened to them.
Read an excellent recap of the VT-WVU game here
posted by Brian at 10:15 PM
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