Distractions From Sports

The conventional thinking is that spectator sports act as distractions from our day-to-day lives. But sometimes you have to live in the reality, like this past Saturday when my wife and daughter were in our friend’s wedding. Somehow Becky Li thought a celebration of love was more important than people mashing their heads together with …

CompuDrew Rankings – The Three Classes

I got some good feedback after posting my playoff system proposal last week.  One thing that makes this year really strange in terms of proposing such a system is that there have been three distinct classes of playoff worthy teams this year and I think the case could be made that a cutoff after the …

CompuDrew – Playoff Proposal Part 2

Let’s take a quick look at the current CompuDrew ratings.  Part 2 of my playoff proposal is below (read Part 1). So based on Part 1, the top 7 6 conference champions make the playoffs, as well as the two highest-ranked at-large teams  (I called it a wildcard last week, but I’ll use the popular college …

CompuDrew – Playoff Proposal Part 1

Here are the latest CompuDrew rankings.  The first part of my playoff proposal is below. Before I detail my playoff system, I should let you know that its biggest strength lies in appeasing all of college football constituencies: the teams, the schools, the conferences, the bowls, and most importantly, the fans. CompuDrew Playoff Proposal Part …

CompuDrew Week 4

Okay, this is a little embarrassing.  I was looking at my formula and I realized that when we get to the end of the season, the combined reward-punishment of both teams playing in a conference’s championship will be negative.  Put another way, the ratings would favor teams that don’t even play in those games.  So …

CompuDrew Week 2 – College Football Ratings

One of the biggest controversies of the BCS is that the computers cannot take margin of victory into account.  This means the Texas blowout of Missouri (41-7) would be given the same weight even if the Horns beat them by two points on a last second touchdown, or needed a blocked field goal as time …