Manipulation

By now, it's become clear to me that the most glaring weakness of the BCS system is the reliance on the polls as the major part of the criteria for determining the teams in the BCS championship game.

More specifically, the problem with the voter element comes is that of poll manipulation. Rather than picking teams based on who they really think are the best, you have campaigning and blatant manipulation of votes, and instead it becomes a popularity contest that goes to whoever does the best job of making their case.

First off, I respect Jim Tressell for declining to vote due to conflict of interest. Especially with the way some of the other votes went, that was one instance that I admired and appreciated.

It started with the shameless campaigning by Kirk Herbstreit during the Missouri - Oklahoma game for LSU to be voted in. You already know how I feel about the Punditry in college football media, but this was a new low. The "worldwide leader' has been plugging LSU the whole season and to openly campaign for one team in particular was out of line for a news organization.

It's very clear there was some vote manipulation going on. The problem wasn't so much people voting for LSU or Ohio State, but in voting other teams lower than they normally would have been voted in order to allow LSU in particular to get in. All you have to do is look at Georgia and Virginia Tech. How does Georgia end up dropping one spot without playing a game while two teams ranked above them both lose?

But the other area has to do with Virginia Tech. Here they are rated ahead of LSU, they then go on the road (compared to LSU at a neutral site), they beat a higher ranked team than LSU beat, and they beat them much more convincingly. And yet, LSU still gets moved past Virginia Tech.

I won't go so far to say LSU doesn't deserve to be in the championship game. It seems like this year everyone did their best to stay out of the game. LSU is right up there with a number of otehr teams. My problem isn't so much LSU but how they got there.

So many times I've heard 'the Punditry' rant and rave about the problem with computer polls being that computers can't see the intangibles. But the real problem with the BCS is not the computers as much as it leaves open too much possibility of people manipulating the polls to make sure the 'right team' gets in. Even if it's done from a genuine belief that a team like LSU is the most deserving team, it's still wrong.