Sound and Fury

June 19, 2008 Note: This is a post that originally appeared on Golden's Football Rankings and is reproduced here for posterity.

Just a few random ramblings on this MLK day…

I have been a college football fan for the better part of three decades. I consider myself to be reasonably observant, and am a decent writer. But I find myself humbled when I compare what I write for this site with what is written by those who blog about college football on a regular basis. I urge all college football fans to check out the College Football Blogger Awards. The people who write for these sites continually produce material that is insightful, educational, inspiring, and hilarious. Do your self a favor and spend an hour or so checking out the sites linked above.

I found the article about Jim Delaney quite enlightening. There is not doubt that any plan for a potential playoff will have to go thru him, and indirectly thru the Big Ten Presidents. I think the same could be said of SEC Commissioner, Mike Slive. I think the only reason he doesn’t cut as imposing a figure as Delaney is that he is newer on the job. Clearly Roy Kraemer was the same type of power broker. Those two men hold the key to the BCS, and any future playoff plans. If you convince the 23 presidents in those two conferences, the other conferences will fall in line. The most interesting point made in that article was made by Delaney himself. As long as the bowls keep doing well financially, there will be no extended playoff. If the bowls keep making money for the major schools, what incentive do they have to eliminate them? If you really want a playoff, stop watching and going to bowl games.

I think the NBA age limit has had a positive impact on college basketball this year. There are a number of outstanding college freshmen, like Greg Oden of Ohio State and Kevin Durant of Texas that have really made this season quite interesting.

The Big Ten really only has three sure-fire tournament teams: Wisconsin, which is a Final Four type team (Is this the year Bo Ryan gets over the postseason hurdle), Ohio State, which will be better at the end of the year than they are now, and Indiana. Beyond that there are a number of teams with serious question marks: Purdue, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan State. Minnesota, Penn State and Northwestern will not be making any post season tournaments. If I had to say right now, I would guess that Tom Izzo will find a way to get the Spartans in. The other four will probably be NIT bound.

Interesting that Illinois has a football coach who can recruit, but not coach, and a basketball coach who can coach, but not recruit.

I’ve been toying with the idea of changing the rankings a little bit to better reflect the way the NCAA does their RPI rankings. The NCAA counts each home win as 0.6 points, and each road win as 1.4 points. A home loss is a negative 1.4 points; a road loss is a negative 0.6 points. Our system counts all wins and losses as one and negative one points respectively, but awards road win and home loss bonuses based on the strength or weakness of the opponent. I think I will try to duplicate the database with the NCAA’s version of home vs. road games and see if it makes any difference in the final rankings. I will post the year-end version of the modified rankings.