It's a very bad idea, IMHO. Any statistician will tell you that
having more data is preferable to less, and what they've effectively
done is limit the amount of data that they can use. Most systems,
including mine, put caps on the MOV and that works well to counter
against RUTS'ing. To ignore it altogether is basically saying that it
really only matters who you play and if you win. That's far too
little to consider.

For example, if Team A and Team B play the same schedule, but don't
play each other, then if they both beat all the same teams, it
wouldn't matter if Team A won every game by 40 points and Team B won
by one point -- in the eyes of the BCS, they're identical quality
teams. Asinine.

Their other big decision to tweak the BCS formula by only throwing out
the worst score of the computers is a step in the wrong direction too.
At least be consistent with statistics and throw out both the best
and the worst, but now they have a system that can be skewed by a
system that ranks teams too high. Basically, they didn't learn
anything over the past few years -- terribly unfortunate for college
football.

One thing that I really don't appreciate it the strong-arm tactics of
the BCS to make the computers do something the authors never intended
for their systems. You can't enforce that on the writers and the
coaches, so why make the computers do it? Here's the bottom line --
if you don't like the way a computer does things, then don't use it,
but don't make us create intentionally imperfect systems just because
you don't like it. Find some other system to do your bidding -- I'll
keep doing it my way, which I feel is pretty accurate now after years
of work.

[steps off soapbox...]

Later,
Jeff
www.comprank.com


--- In CompRatings@y..., "Patrick E. Fleming" <pfleming@s...> wrote:
>
> As one suggestion for a topic of discussion, what are people's
feelings on
> the BCS descision to drop margin of victory from the computer
ratings
> portion? Good thing? Bad thing? neutral?