Given the current regular season scheduling method, it’s impossible for pollsters to compare top FBS
football teams with the precision needed to select the best two (or four). Why? There are 124 schools
with teams competing in the FBS during the 2012 season. Those teams are divided up into 11
conferences, along with a few teams that are independent. Nearly all the teams play just 11 or 12 games against
other FBS teams, and the vast majority of those games (8 or more) are played against teams
within their own conference. Therefore,
while the system is set up nicely to judge the best teams within a conference, there
is very little head-to-head evidence established to compare the top teams in each conference
to each other. The math is fairly
straightforward. Teams in each
conference play just 2 or 3 FBS games outside of their conference. Since there are about 110 non-conference
schools available for each team, it is likely that only one of the
non-conference games will be against a top-35 (or better) team. It’s inevitable that any system designed to
select just 2 teams out of 124, or even 4 teams out of 11 conferences, is going to
appear unfair to fans or coaches most of the time, if there are few
head-to-head battles as a basis for comparison.
Compare
this to NCAA Division I men’s basketball.
There are currently 345 teams, also organized into conferences (32 this year). A typical NCAA basketball team plays
approximately 30 regular season games, with about half of them against
non-conference foes. In fact, many top
teams schedule at least a half-dozen non-conference games against other
top-50 teams. With such a large number of
non-conference games available as evidence, and a post-season tournament that includes 68 teams, it is not difficult at all for a national consensus polling system to precisely select all of the top 25 teams for the tournament. In other words, even if two experts disagree on nearly every pick for the top 25, it’s virtually
certain that all of their picks will have a chance to earn the national
championship on the court. I am not saying the NCAA Division I basketball tournament selection process is flawless, nor am I saying that the FBS needs to have a 32- or 64-team playoff - I am merely pointing out that the expert polling system is a viable option for identifying top basketball teams, but not a good system for football because of the significant differences in how the regular seasons are set up.
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