Rankings and Polls
The Football Bowl
Subdivision of Division I college football
is the largest and perhaps most popular of all NCAA-sanctioned
athletic competition, and yet it remains as the only such form of
organized sport which does not decide a national champion by way
of an inclusive tournament. The Football Championship Subdivision
(formerly referred to as I-AA), Divisions 2 and 3, and even the NAIA
all have a month of playoff games at the end of the regular season,
concluding with a game to decide that year's champion, as is the
case in almost every other major NCAA-sanctioned sport.
Ranking Systems
Combination
Poll
Based
on AP and Coaches Polls
seemed to be failing, with teams being rewarded based on their
reputation or popularity, with other teams not receiving due credit.
This was during the infamous fifth-down-for-Colorado era, which
somehow helped give Notre Dame another title, and there was also
a year when some pollster split one of his votes in half in order
to make Georgia Tech share its title with another team.
Thus, I began keeping
track of games and trying to devise
a ranking system based purely on past performance.
Power Rankings are based on point differentials in games
which have been played, and so may be used to predict
future game outcomes, with the error analysis being used
to test and adjust the ranking model. A few years ago
I also began calculating Merit Rankings, which use win/loss
records and S.O.S. to perform RPI-type of calculations.
My poll contributions rely heavier on Power Rankings at
the beginning of the season and more on Merit at the end.
Rankings Comparison
Rankings Page
Power Rankings