Another flaw in the BCS mess
So, let me get this straight — a team routing a bottom-of-the-barrel opponent at home is more impressive than a team beating down a top-15 team on the road.
Doesn’t make sense, right? Neither do a couple of the latest human polls in college football.
Voters in both the Harris Interactive and the Associated Press polls moved Texas ahead of Oklahoma this week. The Harris is used in the BCS formula, and even though the AP poll no longer is used in determining who plays for the national championship, it often influences what happens in the other polls.
Last week, both the Harris and the AP had OU ahead of Texas but swapped them around this week.
The reason? It can’t have anything to do with what happened this weekend. Texas scored a dominating home victory against Texas A&M while OU went to Oklahoma State and scored a dominating road victory.
The only major difference between what OU and Texas did this weekend is the quality of opponent they beat. Texas A&M stinks. OSU is a potential 10-win team. If anything, what happened this weekend should’ve strengthened the pollsters’ convictions about ranking OU ahead of Texas.
Now, for voters who had Texas ahead of OU in last week’s poll, I would’ve had no problem with them leaving that as is. But clearly, the majority of Harris and AP voters liked the Sooners more than the Longhorns a week ago.
They changed their minds over what?
I suppose the easy answer would be that Mack Brown did enough politicking to make Barack Obama proud. The Longhorns went on an all-out assault for more than a week. It started with text messages to several national pundits before the OU-Texas Tech game was even finished, and it didn’t stop until the final tallies were in Sunday.
But the answer to the question is much more disturbing than Texas’ political machine having sway. The truth is, the voters who switched aren’t really paying attention. They moved OU ahead of Texas a week ago without really thinking about what they were doing. They didn’t sit back and ponder the question of who they really thought was better. They let the emotion of OU’s beat down of Tech sway them.
I wish I was wrong about this. I wish voters were showing themselves as rational, well-thought-out representatives. Instead, they have showed again just how ridiculous they can be. OU above Texas. Texas above OU. There are arguments for both. But what is indisputable is how ridiculous the pollsters can be.
Just one more flaw in an already broken system.
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