Since I still cannot get football out of my brain, here's some weekend fun for you while you're either a) getting snowed in, b) eagerly awaiting tomorrow's Mizzou-McNeese State thriller, or c) both.
After all the major media outlets had their own tourney simulations, I decided to follow up (finally) on last month's "Playoffs?" discussion by have our own simulation.
Sorry. That just came about like a reflex.
Anyway, I'm setting it up using some of the suggestions I got a month ago, along with some general conclusions I've drawn since then.
Here are the rules:
- No Conference Championship Games. We can keep the 12-game schedule (money money money monnnnnnney....MONNNNNNNEY) as long as we lose those.
- No automatic bids.
- I think there should be three alterations to the BCS formula in the absence of automatic bids: 1) a 0.1-point deduction per loss (this will allow undefeated non-BCS teams to make up ground), 2) a 0.1-point addition for conference champs (.05-point addition for division champs with worse records), and 3) we go back to a 50/50 split between human polls and computers. Human polls weren't originally designed to have this much say, and they become infinitely more volatile in late-November and early-December when the votes get more important.
So how would that have shaken down this year? Well, here are the simulated BCS standings minus the conference title games (ahem, that conveniently helps Mizzou, doesn't it?). I say 'simulated' because I'm starting with the post-Thanksgiving BCS standings and adjusting for the fact that West Virginia, USC, and Hawaii all played on 12/1.
- Missouri .8911
- Ohio State .8269
- Kansas .7089
- Georgia .6331
- Virginia Tech .5983
- LSU .5833
- Hawaii .5751
- USC .5145
- West Virginia .4671
- Oklahoma .4547
West Virginia's loss to Pitt totally screws us because without that loss, WVa is the #2 seed, Hawaii is the #8 seed, and USC's on the outside looking in. But instead the matchups are...
Fiesta: 1 Missouri vs 8 USC
Sugar: 4 Georgia vs 5 Virginia Tech
Orange: 3 Kansas vs 6 LSU
Rose: 2 Ohio State vs 7 Hawaii
(OU goes Cotton, Texas goes Holiday, Tech goes Gator, etc. I chose the bowls I did above, I started with the conference of the 1-seed and applied it to the bowl that conference's champion would normally go...so Missouri went Fiesta, Ohio State Rose, etc.)
From ESPN's bracket simulator, here are the odds for each game:
USC 65%, Mizzou 34%
Georgia 58%, Virginia Tech 42%
LSU 63%, Kansas 37%
Ohio State 64%, Hawaii 35%
Now, I can only list one poll per post, so I'm going to start from the bottom.
What say you?