Ty-D-Bowl Championship Series

I love how the NCAA BCS College Football Rankings are expanded to four decimal places. Everything looks so much more "official" when it's extended to thousandths of a point.

With the Ohio State University losing to Illinois last week, the BCS rankings this year are even more messed up than they usually are. Their standings are based on rankings from two human polls (the USA Today Coaches poll and the Harris Interactive poll of former players, coaches, administrators and current and former media) and an amalgam of six computer rankings.

The six computer rankings are by Anderson & Hester, Richard Billingsley, Wes Colley, Kenneth Massey, Jeff Sagarin, and Peter Wolfe. These rankings are all extended to many decimal places, but none of them mention how they come up with their rankings. These six things somehow bang together to score LSU at .990, Kansas at .940, Oregon at .930, etc.

Here is the current BCS Top Ten along with their conferences.

1. LSU (9-1) - SEC
2. Oregon (8-1) - Pac 10
3. Kansas (10-0) - Big 12
4. Oklahoma (9-1) - Big 12
5. Missouri (9-1) - Big 12
6. West Virginia (8-1) - Big
7. Ohio State (10-1) - Big 10
8. Arizona State (9-1) - Pac 10
9. Georgia (8-2) - SEC
10. Virginia Tech (8-2) - ACC

At the end of the year, the top two teams in the poll play for the national championship. There are two undefeated teams (Kansas and Hawaii) and seven teams with one loss (Oregon, Oklahoma, Missouri, West Virginia, Ohio State, Arizona State, Boise State). Kansas is third below LSU and Oregon, because even though they're undefeated, they haven't really beat anyone yet.

The other undefeated team, Hawaii, is currently 17th in the BCS rankings. In fact, they're ranked outside the top 25 in five of the six computer polls. Why do computers hate surf and sand so much? Probably some sort of silicon envy?

Every other college sport (including lower division football) determines their champion by a championship, where schools play against each other and the last one standing is the national champion. Upper division college football is determined by a poll of humans and computers. It reduces the top sport in the country to the level of figure skating, where you're docked points if the Ukrainian judge doesn't like the sequins on your gown. Extending the rankings to four decimal places just makes them more accurately subjective, but it's still a popularity contest.