YSU Post Game Thoughts & Discussion

[scottietohottie]

The Valley is not getting 6 teams into the playoff.

Maybe not this year but it's coming bro.

[bisonaudit]

Maybe not this year but it's coming bro.

Can’t come soon enough.

[scottietohottie]

I mean how could the committee leave out the defending spring runner up champions?

It ain't going to happen. They beat the heard and some fbs stoners!

[scottietohottie]

Can’t come soon enough.

I definitely don't have this problem bro.

[gavin2126]

Can’t come soon enough.

That is NOT what she said

[Professor Chaos]

I was pretty young, but I remember back when BCS was still in effect and people complained that computers shouldn't decide our championship.

Instead now we have non-expert humans bringing in politics and conflicted interests to make decisions behind closed doors with little to no analytical support.

I can understand the concern that politics play a part in it... it absolutely does but there's really no way around it. But if you think they're making decisions with little to no analytical support you're not paying attention to how the selection process works.

[NDSU92]

I can understand the concern that politics play a part in it... it absolutely does but there's really no way around it. But if you think they're making decisions with little to no analytical support you're not paying attention to how the selection process works.

If you think they're using analytics to any meaningful degree you're not paying attention to the mid-season rankings they've put out in years past.

Balancing W/L records, wins against FBS and non-counters, who beat more playoff teams and conference championships. None of these are analytics. They might be using a SOS metric, but I highly doubt it's a good one.

There have been years where FCS teams ranked in the 30's of FCS in Sagarin have gotten an at large bid. To no surprise at least one year it was New Hampshire, while the AD was the chair of the frickin committee. I do believe it's been many times where NH was 7-4 or 6-5 and jumped many deserving teams to get a place in the playoffs.

There absolutely are ways around it, they just require more work than the current system.

[WeAreThePride]

What counts as a serious mistake? Leaving two or more teams home every year that deserve to go but don't because of ineptitude or politics seems major to me.

Screwing up home/away is roughly a 5 or 6 point swing. Screwing up seed vs. non-seed is like a 7-9 point swing. Is starting the game with an extra 7 or 9 points not a major thing?

Even then, just because there's a bloated playoff system doesn't mean we should just make it arbitrary. At the end of the day it may have helped us win a couple more championships so it's tough to complain.

At some point you have to win your damn games. It's okay to have two good losses. Have 4 good losses, well. How good were they really?

[tony]

The Valley is not getting 6 teams into the playoff.

And why would we want 6 MVFC teams in the playoffs? I mean, if folks are big fans of replaying the regular season in the playoffs, I could understand it, but I have a hard time believing those fans exist.

Sure, it could happen if you had more than five 7+ win teams in the the MVFC, but I'd sure rather play new teams in the playoffs. There is a huge misconception that because MVFC teams play NDSU tough that this somehow makes them good. That is not necessarily the case - they are merely better prepared to play the Bison.

[Professor Chaos]

If you think they're using analytics to any meaningful degree you're not paying attention to the mid-season rankings they've put out in years past.

Balancing W/L records, wins against FBS and non-counters, who beat more playoff teams and conference championships. None of these are analytics. They might be using a SOS metric, but I highly doubt it's a good one.

There have been years where FCS teams ranked in the 30's of FCS in Sagarin have gotten an at large bid. To no surprise at least one year it was New Hampshire, while the AD was the chair of the frickin committee. I do believe it's been many times where NH was 7-4 or 6-5 and jumped many deserving teams to get a place in the playoffs.

There absolutely are ways around it, they just require more work than the current system.

The don't use Sagarin but they use a computer rating system called SRS. The details on how that is computed:

The NCAA Division I Football Championship Committee will use the NCAA Simple Rating System (NCAA SRS) as a tool for evaluating teams for selection into the 24-team championship.
The NCAA SRS is a ranking system used to gauge team quality. Within the NCAA SRS, the rating of a team will be calculated largely by two components: a strength-of-schedule measure (SOS) and a win-loss differential (WL).

A team’s SOS measure is simply the average NCAA SRS rating of that team’s opponents for the season.

A team’s WL measure factors whether a game was won or lost; the location of the game (home/away/neutral site); and the NCAA (sub)division of the opponent.

1. In a game between two FCS teams played at a neutral site, the winning team gets one point and the losing team loses one point.

2. In a game between two FCS teams played at a non-neutral site, a home win counts 0.75 for the home team and -0.75 for the losing team. A road team win counts 1.25 for the visiting team and -1.25 for the home team. In other words, there is a bonus/penalty of +/- 0.25 for the home/away teams depending on the outcome.

3. An additional bonus/penalty of +/- 0.1 is added/deducted for games that FCS teams play against FBS/non-Division I opponents. For instance, a home FCS win against a Division II opponent counts only as +0.65 points (0.75 for a home win - 0.1 penalty for playing a Division II opponent). In addition, a road FCS win against an FBS opponent counts +1.35 points for the FCS team (1.25 points for a road win + 0.1 bonus for beating an FBS opponent).

4. The WL measure is then doubled to equalize the contributions of the WL factor and SOS factor toward a team’s NCAA SRS rating.

5. Margin of victory will be factored into a team’s NCAA SRS rating. This component is capped at 21 points.

The teams’ ratings are independent in that one team’s rating depends on its opponents’ ratings, which depend on their opponents’ ratings, etc., based on the “network” of college football games played each week during the football season. The NCAA SRS will also standardize the data in order to equalize the variance in total number of games played (i.e., 11 or 12 regular-season games).

Games against Division III or non-NCAA opponents are not factored into any team’s NCAA SRS rating.

The time of the season in which a game is played (early-season versus late-season games) is also not factored into a team’s NCAA SRS rating.

The NCAA SRS will not “force select” any teams into the championship; rather, it is one of several resources that the Division I Football Championship Committee will have at its disposal when debating the merits of teams under consideration for championship selection.
The NCAA Division I Football Championship Committee will begin reviewing NCAA SRS data during the later portion of the football season as it prepares for championship selections. At that time, NCAA SRS rankings may also be posted on the NCAA website (www.ncaa.com/fcs)

The bolded is important to note since this is only one of the tools they use and does not automatically qualify or disqualify anyone. I've heard committee chairs in the past say they use this mostly for evaluating SOS.

As far as their mid-season rankings go I agree the first one they put out in 2016 was terrible. If you listened to an interview the committee chair that year gave to Fargo media it's easy to figure out why. He said they voted before they had ever met as a group. I believe that first ranking was released in mid-October and was right after NDSU lost to SDSU that year. They typically only meet with their regional sub-committees at that point where they only review teams in their specific region and hadn't met yet as a full committee. If you recall (which most don't), their 2nd set of rankings they released two weeks after that were much improved I'd assume because they had actually met to discuss all the teams nationally before they voted when they got the backlash from their first set of rankings (mainly from the Fargo area). Ever since then I feel like their midseason rankings has been reasonably good and by the time they've had a chance to sit down in a room with each other and review/discuss teams from all regions I think their rankings have always been fairly reasonable once the final bracket is released.

I do wish they would continue releasing those midseason rankings since they announced they weren't doing that this year. However, I can say with a high degree of confidence that those ADs on the selection committee take their responsibility very seriously and put in a ton of work over the last few weeks of the regular season to be as fair and informed as possible. Give a listen to some of the interviews members of the committee give on the entire selection process. It isn't perfect but it's a lot better than some on you on here give it credit for.