[CardSharpCook]

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There is no case. At all. The computer polls are a complete joke.

[/ QUOTE ]uh what, you serious???? If anything, the coaches and AP polls, which are based of opinions, are a complete joke. Surely you can see this.

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I obviously agree with this...I'm actually in the middle of presenting on this for a class, and people who don't know anything about football have already figured out that the entire system, from top to bottom, is horrible. Does anybody honestly believe that USC, Oregon, Oklahoma, LSU, etc. are worse than USF and Virginia?

Arizona State is fourth in the nation, and their toughest game has been...Oregon State? Ohio State is probably going to the NC even though their schedule is incredibly weak. Teams who lose typically fall to the bottom of the one-loss "bracket." It's supposed to be a ranking of the best teams, not a line where you go to the back when you lose. Teams in weak, "big" conferences (like Ohio State) can simply schedule terrible OOC games, making it easy to go undefeated. Since losses are the only thing the system cares about, the entire thing is a mess. Stick Ohio State in the SEC or the Pac-10, and they lose at least two games.

Bottom line: USF, Virginia, and other similar teams would get crushed by a lot of the teams ranked lower than them in the computer polls.

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I'm sorry, are you agreeing with yourself or with the guy who disagrees completely with you?

I'd like to talk about the bolded part of your last response. Are you saying that "people who know nothing about football" are looking at data with which they have assigned no real life value (ie, to them, there is no difference btwn saying "team B" or "USC") and can determine that USC is empiracally better than USF? Or perhaps, simply explaining the differences btwn computer polling and human polling to these unaware-of-football people allows them to come to the obvious conclusion that human polling is better? Or, are we talking about people who passively follow football who instinctually know that USC is better than USF?

The third is precisely why computer polls were created.

View this:
(1-7) W 38-10
at (4-4) W 49-31
(2-5) W 47-14
at (2-5) W 27-24
(3-4) L 24-23
(2-6) W 20-13
at (1-7) W 38-0

compared to:

(5-2) W 28-13
at (5-3) W 26-23
(2-5) W 37-10
(6-1) W 21-13
at (4-3) W 35-23
(4-3) W 64-12
at (5-2) L 30-27

If you look at those schedules w/o team names attached it is obvious who is better. It isn't even close. The question is a) Is it right to discount USF's win vs. a 5-2 Elon b) should we give more credit for a USC road victory over 4-4 Nebraska simply because it is nebraska? The public has a hard time divorcing itself from what the media has hammered into them. USC was supposed to be the unchallenged #1 in the country. They have played an unimpressive schedule and preformed unimpressively. USF is supposed to be a dumpy Big east school. They have impressive wins vs. accepted good schools, and won impressively against unaccepted "good" schools (like 5-2 elon).

USC might well be the worst 6-1 team in the country while USF might be the best. I have no way of explaining why. By all right USC SHOULD be better by far. Their recruiting pool, facilities, coaching, EVERYTHING is better than USFs. Their talent level is certainly better as well. But so far this year, all that talent has combined for a weak showing vs. nearly every sub-par opponent they've face. How do you beat Arizona by only a TD at home? How does ANY "good" team lose to Stanford at home? It is ludicrous to rank them ahead of USF.