I liked the way it was before the BCS. Just play the traditional bowl matchups and it typically worked out. In a rare year, you just had a split champion.
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Ha, I had the exact thought while making my post. Some big similarities between the bcs and our federal gov growth loving politicians. Both try to convince people that garbage tastes great and is healthy. But I shouldn't open that can of worms thus I'll say no more on this.
Based on Sagarin's numbers (3.81 home field) and a 2.61 pt kicker for coming off a bye week, here's the outlook for the remainder of the regular season:
Ill St 98.9% (-0.1 percentage points from last week)
YSU 79.3% (+2.8)
USD 99.0% (+0.6)
11-0 77.6% 72.3% (+5.3)
10-1 22.0% 26.3% (-4.3)
9-2 0.4% 1.3% (-0.9)
8-3 0.002%
Assumes a normal distribution of outcomes w/ Sagarin's projected spread as the mean and a standard deviation of 13.86. In round numbers this means that if the spread is 14 the model predicts that roughly 2/3 of the outcomes will be between a tie and a 28 point victory. Half of the remaining outcomes or about 1/6 of all the outcomes would be a victory by more than 28 and there would be roughly a 1 in 6 chance that the team favored by 14 would lose.
Playoffs:
Sagarin gives NDSU a 58% chance of winning the SportsNetwork bracket.
Most likely opponents by round (assuming NDSU advances):
Montana State 90.5% (San Diego 9.5%)
#8 Maine 62.4% (Villanova 19.7%)
#4 McNeese State 61.9% (#5 Sam Houston St. 32.5%)
#2 Eastern Illinois 53.1% (#3 Towson 28.2%)