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Reweighting the Bowl Championship Series

Author

Listed:
  • Buchman Susan

    (Carnegie Mellon University)

  • Kadane Joseph B.

    (Carnegie Mellon University)

Abstract

The majority of statistical work on college football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has involved proposing or categorizing computer ratings of teams. Computer algorithms, a coaches' poll, and a media poll make up the three ratings systems that are currently equally weighted to produce an overall BCS rating, which ultimately determines which schools will compete in lucrative post-season BCS bowls. We focus on investigating the performance of the BCS as implemented for the 2004, 2005, and 2006 seasons to determine whether equal weights are appropriate. Our Bayesian analysis shows that while the posterior mode places more than half the weight on the media poll, the 95% HPD credible interval contains the equally-weighted scheme. We relate our work to the ongoing controversies over the BCS.

Suggested Citation

  • Buchman Susan & Kadane Joseph B., 2008. "Reweighting the Bowl Championship Series," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 4(3), pages 1-13, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:4:y:2008:i:3:n:2
    DOI: 10.2202/1559-0410.1123
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Mease D., 2003. "A Penalized Maximum Likelihood Approach for the Ranking of College Football Teams Independent of Victory Margins," The American Statistician, American Statistical Association, vol. 57, pages 241-248, November.
    2. Stern, Hal S., 2004. "Statistics and the College Football Championship," The American Statistician, American Statistical Association, vol. 58, pages 179-185, August.
    3. Joseph Martinich, 2002. "College Football Rankings: Do the Computers Know Best?," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 32(5), pages 85-94, October.
    4. B. Jay Coleman, 2005. "Minimizing Game Score Violations in College Football Rankings," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 35(6), pages 483-496, December.
    5. Stern H S, 2006. "In Favor of A Quantitative Boycott of the Bowl Championship Series," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-6, January.
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    Cited by:

    1. B. Jay Coleman, 2014. "Minimum violations and predictive meta‐rankings for college football," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 61(1), pages 17-33, February.

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