The problem with polls

You want to know how cool I am?  I'm about to singlehandedly lead the Air Force Falcons to an NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision championship.

On the PS3.  Boo-yah!

Before you drag the mouse up to that little X next to the tab you're reading this on, I ask you to just hang with me for a second.  There's actual substance to this post, and I will get to it fairly quickly.  But in order to get to the meat, you first have to chow down the airy, spun sugar/like substance that is the backdrop of my story.

I'm playing a dynasty on NCAA Football 11 as the Air Force Falcons.  I've always had this mythical interest in the football programs of the service academies.  I think this is because there is nothing quite as manly as the idea of playing football at a military institution combined with that fact that military institutions generally make use of the Option offense (my absolute favorite football offensive system).

Anyways, so I'm playing as Air Force.  Obviously I needed to be on the team- that's the whole reason why dorks like me play sports games.  Right?  So I created myself as a dynamic, dual-threat quarterback (a lot like real life, without the 'dynamic' or the 'dual-threat'.  Or even the 'quarterback') and started plowing through Conference USA (I know Air Force is currently in the Mountain West- but I just had to find a league that played a conference championship game so I could have that extra game's worth of stats) like I was a warm knife and the Tulsas and Houstons were melted butter.

My latest season started off with a 21 point win over a #6 Florida Gators squad- on the road.  I shouldn't brag, but I was impressed.  After all, Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit had both predicted Florida to win.  Boy I showed them.  I played on Varsity level and everything!

The very next week, I skyrocketed up to #19 in the polls.  Where was I the week before- I don't know.  Limbo, oblivion, Dante's inferno- it really doesn't matter.  The fact is that now I'm #19.  Scratch that- #15 after I creamed Army last week by 20 (who is the civy now, huh?).

I'm really close to actual real-life application, so if you've made it this far, you are about to be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams (which probably says more about the state of your dreams than it does about my writing).  I was looking at the rest of my schedule, and I realized that at the rate I'm going, I will probably be playing for a National Championship at season's end.  I'm in the top 15 in week 3- I'm basically already sitting at the cool table!  Most of my games will be conference games (in a weak conference), with a trip to Mississippi State (hardly a Florida-level challenge) and a conference championship game that will give me an extra week to move up in the polls.  BCS, here we come!

And so naturally I then started thinking about the problem with polls- because this is how my mind works.  I don't question it anymore, I just roll with it.  Mostly I was thinking about college football polls (which I've talked about in the past), but it's no stretch to apply that to other polls as well.  Particularly since we're currently in the middle of a GOP Presidential candidate orgy. 

The use of polls to determine the national championship is, I believe, an inherently flawed strategy. I feel like it gives artificial favor to the teams that are ranked in the preseason polls as well as teams from BCS conferences.  This is because, unless you have a colossal faceplant to start the season, or multiple losses throughout the season, the chances are pretty good that you are going to be in a strong position to remain ranked in the top 25 throughout the season.  And if you are in a BCS conference, you have a greater chance of being ranked in the first place (and less of a chance of falling out of the top 25 should you lose a game).

This is no mere academic issue, either.  Being ranked brings prestige with it.  You get nice little write-ups in the beginning of college football preview mags.  Your scores come first on ESPN's homepage.  The byproduct of the increased attention gets you more love and attention from the top recruits, which means you're more likely to continue to have good football teams in the future, which means you'll be ranked in the top 25, which means that....you see where this leads, don't you?  A self-sustaining cycle of artificially enhanced dominance.  And what does that dominance get you?

MONEY.  The better your team, the more money that gets brought into the school.  So obviously there is a great deal of interest in maintaining the status quo, which is that certain programs are granted the advantage of being ranked before actually playing a single game.  This serves usually to keep the money inside the big BCS conference super-circle while leaving the teams like TCU and Boise State on the outside looking in.

Let me show you a little bit how the BCS schools get favored in this system.  First of all, a majority of preseason ranked schools come from the six BCS conferences (Big 10+2, Pac-whateveritisnow, Big not-really-12, used-to-be-Big East, ACC, $EC).  A fairly large proportion of BCS conference teams schedule very winnable games in the early season.  Sure, there's always early-season high-profile showdowns, such as Oregon versus LSU, but most of the time they schedule cream-puffs.  The kind that E. Gordon Gee eats for breakfast. 

So by the time the average conference season starts, a team that started the season ranked highly is already going to have 3-4 wins under their belt, and if they're in a BCS conference, they're going to be playing against other ranked teams whose rankings are most likely reinforced by a series of wins against inferior competition (not always, but more often than not).  So then a ranked team beats another ranked team which enhances its artificially bestowed status (or a non-ranked conference team boosts their status because they beat a ranked team)- even though we don't actually know whether or not the ranked team is actually any good yet.  Does this make sense?  Am I taking crazy pills?

Sure, there are guidelines to help make sure that the voters are remaining as objective as possible.  But come on.  There is a subjective human element here that makes this whole thing stink.  Ask 1994 Penn State about their level of confidence in voter judgment. 
I read an article done by a guy that seems to know more about statistics than I do, and he came to the conclusion that preseason polls do matter (although not as much as we might think).  Using a complex formula, he deteremined the difference typically comes down to around 1 poll spot.  Even though most of the time 1 poll spot is inconsequential, it can also be absolutely devestating.  1 poll spot seperates #3 from #2, and only #2 gets to play against #1 for crystal football. 

Note- this is not the BCS trophy.  It's a warning to those that think SafeSearch is truly safe.  Or search.



T IS FOR TROPHY, THAT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.  NOM NOM NOM NOM

Ask 2004 Auburn about how they feel about 1 poll spot. 
Sometimes teams win and lose ground in the polls, for sure- sometimes you just don't win that impressively or someone else leapfrogs you because they ran up the score notched a huge win.  But these are the exception and not the rule.  Most of the time you move up (or at least hold steady) if you win. 

So how does tie into politics?  Simple- polls influence the headlines, which in turn influences how most people perceive or feel about candidates (or at least the perception of how people perceive or feel about candidates.  Man my head is spinning!).  And the candidates respond accordingly.  Don't believe me?  Look at the action, and how much of it is dictated by polls.  It's like candidates are not even addressing ideas anymore- they're defending their rank.  They're on constant campaign mode, always trying to make their case to be #1.

The obvious problem with this is that our focus as voters can become about things like debate performance instead of policy content.  We start to pay less attention to what Herman Cain's "9-9-9" plan consists of and more time about how he sells/defends his image.  And then we have the audacity to get upset when we find out that the people in office are not as compentant as we thought they were based on the performances that we asked for.

So what's the moral of this story?  Obviously I'm telling you to do everything you can to artificially enhance yourself.  Whether that means that you schedule easy wins for your football team, become a charismatic public speaker, or make your speed rating a '95' (even though in reality it's more like '65')- just do what you have to do.  Because in today's society, it's where you start that determines where you finish.

PICS- Golf trophy- http://www.blackshoediaries.com/2010/4/11/1415660/jumble-in-the-rumble
Chris Leak- http://s3.amazonaws.com/collegeotr/images/blogs/9aa2c206e2ff225abedfaf9f6f414b2f.jpg

News Flash- Ohio State President is Idiot

There are things that I am, and things that I am not. And one of the things that I am not is afraid to sit here at my computer and say mean things about people. After all, isn't that what we bloggers do? Sit behind our fortresses of facelessness and beef up our bravado?

I read an article today on ESPN.com where The Ohio State U president E. Gordon Gee (Is that his real name? Was he born on Sesame Street? Thank you Santa for the early Christmas Present), or EGG as I will dub him, spouted off his opinion about mid-majors Boise State and TCU and their unworthiness of a national championship game appearance despite their undefeatedness. Now, the presidents of Boise State and TCU have already responded (which makes me smile), but I, the nameless and faceless hero, have not. But I can take it no longer- the silence has made my blood boil, and now I must unboil the blood by being unsilent. Besides, surely an NMU graduate calling out a major college president isn't the silliest calling-out to happen today.

First of all- let it be known that Gee is obviously biased in his assessment. After all- if Boise State and/or TCU get at-large bids in the BCS- well, there is a good chance that OSU is on the outside looking in, since they trail Wisconsin in the most recent BCS standings (and the BCS standings would determine the Big 10 champion if it ended in a 3-way tie), and they trail Boise State and TCU as well. There is a lot of money to be made, and right now, EGG is only in a position to window shop that money.

So what else to do, except go out into the media and plead your case to the masses. I remember Nebraska doing the same thing in 1997- Michigan and Nebraska were both undefeated, but Michigan was number 1, and there was no BCS back then, no way for them to actually settle it on the field. Naturally, what else is a Cornhusker to do except make a lot of noise about how they would just destroy Michigan on the football field (well, that and to have legendary Nebraska coach Tom Osborne retire just before their bowl game. Interesting timing Tom).

Now that we've established that EGG is at best unreliable because he is too close to the situation to be a really objective observer, we can begin to rip on the things that he said.

Far be it from me to judge another human being though. So while I allow the very words of EGG to echo throughout all of teh interwebz, I'll let you make the call. Well, I'll let you make the call after I tell you what he said and then provide my own possibly-slanted commentary.

The following are actual EGG quotes

-"Well, I don't know enough about the X's and O's of college football"- No commentary. Slam dunk. Anytime someone admits that they are ignorant about something, you just slide into 'pretend to listen' mode. If you are trying to speak authoritatively on a subject and then admit that you don't really know much about that subject- then you just laid an egg. EGG.

- "I do know, having been both a Southeastern Conference president and a Big Ten president, that it's like murderer's row every week for these schools." First of all, I've seen The Longest Yard. Both of them. So I can definitively say that you do not play murderer's row every week. Maybe armed robbers row? Or white collar criminals row? I don't know- I'm sure Ohio and Eastern Michigan are not perpetrators of any violent crimes.

-"We do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor. We play very fine schools on any given day."-Oh right, how silly of me to forget that the Big 10 is home to such football goliaths as Indiana (4-7), Purdue (4-7, lost to Toledo), and Minnesota (2-9, lost to South Dakota). On second thought, I believe you owe Little Sisters of the Poor an apology.

-"So I think until a university runs through that gantlet that there's some reason to believe that they not be the best teams to [be] in the big ballgame."- Aside from structurally being a confusing statement- you've already admitted that you don't know much about football. There's much more to the game then the name of the school, or the name of the conference.

-"If you put a gun to my head and said, 'What are you going to do about a playoff system (if) the BCS system as it now exists goes away?'"- What kind of sick masochist thinks of this kind of stuff? Why would somebody ask you a question like that with a gun to your head? They aren't making you do something against your will- they're merely asking for information. 'Give me your opinion or I'll shoot you'. Yeah, that's not how it works- trust me, I've seen Taken.

-"It's not about this incessant drive to have a national championship because I think that's a slippery slope to professionalism"- Because there aren't any athletes getting paid in college sports at this time.

-"I'm a fan of the bowl system and I think that by and large it's worked very, very well."- Let's ask 1994 Penn State about that bowl system. I guess the success depends on how you define your goals. If you want a bunch of meaningless games played in warm weather locations in front of sparsely populated stadiums? The bowl system has been amazing. If you want a definitive national champion? The bowl system sucks ass-assin.

-"You know, it's a mystery," Gee said. "We were No. 1 then No. 11 then No. 7 and we ended up playing for the national championship. I think I kind of like that mixed-up mystery."- You know what else would have mystery and intrigue? Putting the names of all the colleges in the country onto a dartboard, and then putting on a blindfold and throwing darts until you hit the name of a school on the dartboard, and then proclaiming that college as the National Champion.

Mr. EGG, I don't know much about you, other than the fact that you have an amazing name and that you are president of one of the most prestigious universities in all the land. As sole owner and contributor to this blog, I have made many posts that ended up making me look like a fool. This is, of course, in addition to the countless accolades of foolishness I have accumulated over a lifetime of being a fool. When it comes to being a fool, I am peerless as an expert.

So believe me when I tell you that your comments about college football- well, they made you look like a fool. Admittedly, there is no love lost between me and your university (well, there was a little love lost when my bestest cousinfriend Chris went to your school)- but please- I am extending the olive branch now. Leave football alone, and concentrate on the academics of your fine institution

If you continue to put your nose where it doesn't belong- you might just end up poached. Oh come on, I was on a roll. You know you love it.