The Beaker Poll, Finally

Several years ago I worked out a program to automatically figure this poll. It's simple enough that it could be done by hand... with a LOT of work. But I forgot how much time it took to get this done.

I really expected Ohio State to come out on top. With impressive wins over everyone, i figured they were a shoo in.

What i didn't expect was them to be 3rd.

So the premise of it is pretty simple. If you beat a team you get rewarded. You get rewarded further for beating a bad team. If you lose you get penalized. If you lose to a bad team you get penalized further. There is no reward for losing, no matter how good the team you lose to is. You just don't get penalized as bad for losing to a good team as you do for losing to a bad team.

For an idea of how the points work: A team gets a point for a win over a division 1A team. It gets a bonus point for a win over a bowl eligible team. Bonus points are pro-rated, so essentially it's a point for every 6 D1 wins that opponents have. There's a little extra bonus based on the quality of wins by your opponents. There are no points for wins over non-1A teams. Converslye, you lose a point for losses, and more points for losses by teams that beat you. The final score is the average number of points made per game.

So with that in mind, the first Beaker Poll comes out as:

1 USC 1.805
2. Michigan 1.777
3. Ohio State 1.742
4. Boise State 1.483
5. Rutgers 1.430
6. Louisville 1.412
7. Auburn 1.375
8. West Virginia 1.372
9. Florida 1.345
10. Arkansas 1.294
11. California 1.208
12. Boston College 1.205
13. Notre Dame 1.152
14. Tennessee 1.120
15. Missouri 1.092
16. Texas 1.069
17. Oregon 1.051
18. Wisconsin 1.046
19. Wake Forest 0.972
19. Tulsa 0.972
19. Clemson 0.972
22. Iowa 0.965
23. Texas A&M 0.953
24. Nebraska 0.930
25. Georgia Tech 0.916

For what it's worth... Memphis came in last with a -2.088.

Now the arguments can begin... Boise State #4?????? At least i can't say it's biased....