The BCS Mess

Way to totally torpedo your argument.

 

By other morons like you, sure. Those like wossa and Wise One have been repeatedly humiliated and are laughed at by the other members of the board because of their unstoppable stupidity (like in this thread). Surely on some level you realize that you are a complete moron and that your incessant ranting about the supposed greatness of Texas alienates everyone else and makes them wish you would fall off of the nearest cliff. The reality is that this wouldn't be an issue if Texas had beaten Texas Tech, but they didn't. They lost. Meanwhile Oklahoma beat TT by 44.

I can't tell if you're just trolling or genuinely that stupid. I'm going to guess that you're bored and looking for a fight.

 

What that means is that Vegas doesn't know who the best team - or teams - are.

 

Still can't tell if you're serious or just trolling, but I'll proceed as if you're serious. No, it means that regardless of how clearly superior any one team may be, single elimination playoffs are far too subject to luck for any single team to be favored over the field. Vegas has no trouble setting lines for individual games, so the suggestion that they can't tell which team is better is laughable. Vegas had no problem deciding that OU was a significantly better team than Texas Tech when setting their line for that game.

Let's extend this line of thought to a hypothetical playoff. Teams A through H are involved, and before the seeding is announced, the individual lines are listed as follows:

Team A -3 over Team B
Team A -4 over Team C
Team A -6 over Team D
Team A -7 over Team E
Team A -7 over Team F
Team A -7 over Team G
Team A -9 over Team H

So according to Vegas, Team A would be viewed as the clearly superior team in that tournament format, yet the field would still be favored over Team A. Why? Well, that's something anyone with a background in probability theory would be able to tell you. Let's go from lines to odds so that I can illustrate that.

Team A has a 53% chance of beating Team B
Team A has a 55% chance of beating Team C
Team A has a 58% chance of beating Team D
Team A has a 60% chance of beating Team E
Team A has a 60% chance of beating Team F
Team A has a 60% chance of beating Team G
Team A has a 65% chance of beating Team H

So Team A has a greater chance of winning than losing any of those games individually, but what happens when you carry out those odds over the three round tournament? If B & D advanced to the final and semifinal respectively, then Team A would have a 65% chance of beating Team H in its first round matchup, a 58% chance of beating Team D in the second round matchup, and a 53% chance of beating Team B in the final. So what are the cumulative odds of team A winning it all? Just 20.0%

It's simple math, vp, if you understand basic probability. The field will always be favored in a single elimination, multiple round format unless the best team is unbelievably dominant (Tiger Woods, Federer before Nadal, etc). Even if Vegas would favor Team A over Teams B through H individually, the field would have much better odds than them when it came to predicting the eventual winner of the tournament.

 

I understand the whole syste quite well, thanks. I also understand that it totally torpedos your entire argument that the current system works.

 

I do love these little nuggets though.

 

I thought Vegas set lines to generate equal action on each side of the ledger not as an objective rating system. Who the fuck knew?

 

Collin, as usual

 

that's kinda how I feel right now: I don't give a shit. Here's a question you need to ask yourself: If the schedule for the UT-OU, UT-TT and OU-TT games had been flipped the fuck around — so that OU-TT played in, say, Week 6; OU-UT played the following week and TT-TU played the following week — with the same scores. How would they rank in the BCS standings right now? I'll tell you: Texas Tech would rank highest of the three, followed by Texas, followed by Oklahoma. Same scores, different rankings, all because of the dates the games were played. that's bullshit right there.

 

here, here...........