The BCS vote -- an explanation
Larry Keech, who retired in 2004 after 36 years covering and editing sports for us, is back in the news. As a member of the Harris Interactive College Football Poll, Keech had a piece -- albeit a tiny, tiny piece -- in determining who went to the Bowl Championship Series. (Jim Caserta wisely suggests a better poll link here, which shows how individual members voted.)
Keech ranked Ohio State No. 1, like just about everyone else in the country. Then he went and put Boise State at No. 2. Keech ranked Florida, which is going to meet Ohio State in the BCS in January, at No. 5.
I know all this because I've started getting Keech hate mail at the blog post in which I announced that he was retiring. That was back on Sept. 15, 2004.
A 1957 Florida grad from Tampa wrote this to me personally: so long and good riddance to Larry Keech, who voted FLORIDA 5th in the Harris poll. enjoy the soaps or whatever.
The others you can read for yourselves here, but they pretty much say the same thing.
So, I called Keech. He's doing fine in retirement. I asked him about his vote.
"I try to minimize the subjectivity as much as possible therefore I went with teams that lost zero games at the top and then those that lost one game. And then I rank those that lost one higher if they lost to a team that was ranked higher at the time."
That puts the two undefeated teams at #1 and #2. I didn't check his math on the others. Michigan came in at #3 and Wisconsin at #4.
I was the first call Larry got about some people disputing his rankings. He was surprised that he got grief from a Florida fan, given that Florida is going to the BCS. But after so many thousands of sports stories, he knows how loyal sports fans can be.
Sometimes I think disrespecting your favorite sports team is worse to some people than disrespecting their mama.
Comments (5)
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There were a number of questionable ballots - full list http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/newsletters/bcsnews/HICFP_Individual_Rankings_Dec_3_2006.pdf:
Jim Walden had 1. UF 2. OSU 3. Mich
Tim Neverett had USC #3 and Mich #4
Robert Lawless had 1. OSU, 2. Mich, 3. Wisc, 4. Louisville, 5. UF.
As a Gator, I'm not complaining. The Big-10 can help themselves with a conference championship game, which could have given Michigan another chance, or given Wisconsin a shot at OSU.
Posted on December 4, 2006 5:01 PM
Better link to the Harris Poll.
Posted on December 4, 2006 5:02 PM
Thanks, Jim. I'll fix.
As an aside, three of the voters in the poll worked here. In addition to Larry Keech, former sports editor Irwin Smallwood and former columnist Wilt Browning are voters.
Posted on December 4, 2006 5:04 PM
*cough* playoff *cough*
Posted on December 4, 2006 7:26 PM
Subjectivity is what voters are for. If you want to eliminate it, then just set a formula and use a computer. Voters are in the BCS system precisely as a corrective to the idiocy of computers--e.g., Boise State being the second best team in the nation. Please.
Besides his self-negation, Keech also disturbingly evinces the common neurosis of Big Ten fetishization. Luckily, in basketball we can have something like the ACC/Big Ten Smackdown--I mean Showdown--where the fraudulent character of our friends in the midwest can be ritualistically exposed on an annual basis.
Posted on December 5, 2006 1:35 AM