Joe Poz had an interesting post yesterday about the phenomenon of teams with a 1st-round bye losing half their opening playoff games since 2005. This randomness plays into why most of us hate the BCS even though in some ways a BCS-like method is "fairer" to teams based on their regular-season performance. Doug once found that the NFL's best team only won the Super Bowl about a quarter of the time, and Joe wonders what it means when we're basically OK with that.

Note: This post was originally published at CFB at Sports-Reference, S-R's new College Football site, so when you're done reading, go over and check it out!

Whenever a team wins a championship, the temptation is always to compare them to other champions from the past, and the 2010 Auburn Tigers are no exception. Using the Simple Rating System (SRS), let's take a look at where the newest title-holders stand among BCS champs...

On Monday, ESPN asked its users to rank the BCS Champions from #1-13, coming up with this list:

The SRS, though, comes up with a different ranking:

Oregon and TCU stumbled this week, barely hanging on against inferior conference opponents. Boise State and Auburn obliterated hated rivals and left no question about their ability to win. What do the SRS ratings say compared to last week?

As usual, all game results courtesy of Peter R. Wolfe. The top three teams have stayed on top for a few weeks, but the order has now changed. Courtesy of the Win of the Year by the Horned Frogs on Saturday, TCU moves ahead of Boise State in the SRS. Full explanation of the SRS available here.

No change at the top -- Oregon, Boise State and TCU look to be the best three teams in the country. The Horned Frogs might be the only defense in the country that could contain the Ducks. A title game featuring TCU's #1 ranked defense in points allowed (8.67) and yards allowed (217) could at least contain Oregon's explosive offense that tops the country in both points (54.9 per game) and yards (573). The more balanced approach would come from Boise, Idaho, where their football team ranks in the top five in yards, points, yards allowed and points allowed.

Regular PFR readers will recall that we published college football SRS ratings every week last season. With seven weeks in the books, and the BCS opening rankings coming out tonight, it made sense to start up the project for 2010. So how do we come up with SRS grades for college football teams?

PFR has used the Simple Rating System to grade college and NFL teams for years. All ratings or rankings are meaningless without explanation, and the link above explains what the SRS tries to do. The SRS version that I'm implementing below is most useful to predict future results; the SRS is predictive, not retrodictive. That means the SRS will have no trouble at all ranking a team that's undefeated and beat a team with one loss behind the very team it beat. Why? One, because we know that one game is just one game, and never is conclusive proof that one team is better than another; and two, because the SRS weighs each game equally. Of course, sample size issues are always present here; while I've waited for seven weeks before presenting the SRS, we really need to see a couple more weeks of action before we can have full faith in this system. For now, though, maybe they'll make you rethink your perception of a couple of teams.

So how am I calculating these simple ratings?

1) For each game, 3 points are given to the road team (unless it's a neutral site game). After that adjustment, all wins and losses of between 7 and 24 points are scored as however many points the team won by. So a 24-10 road win goes down as +17 for the road team, -17 for the home team.

2) Wins of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7-point wins and losses of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7 point losses, except that road losses of 3 or fewer and home wins of 3 or fewer are graded as 0 point ties. So a 21-20 home victory goes down as a tie for both teams. This is not as drastic as it sounds, because the SRS ultimately is not concerned with win/loss records. There is no distinction between a win and a loss (you don't need to make such distinctions in predictive systems) except for when the game is close. So three 10-point wins scores +30, just as two 20-point wins and a 10-point loss scores as +30. However, three 3 point wins (+9 before the adjustments, +21 after) is worth more than two 10 point wins and a 1 point home loss (+21 before, +13 after).

3) Wins/Losses of more than 24 points are scored as the average between the actual number and 24. This is to avoid giving undue credit to teams that run up the score. Oregon bludgeoned New Mexico on opening day, 72-0, but that "only" goes down as a 46.5 point win. Why? Because the game was in Eugene (dropping it to +69) and the average of 24 and 69 is 46.5. However, in FCS/I-AA games, there is no run-up-the-score modifier. Why? Otherwise, the elite teams could beat the FCS cupcakes by 64 points and go down in this system. Major thanks to Peter R. Wolfe for providing the game scores.

Here's a link that should interest all of our college fans: David Biderman and Darren Everson of the Wall Street Journal have put together a cool search tool for this year's NCAA teams that lets you rank teams by experience, lineman height/weight, average recruiting ranking, returning starters, and a ton of other categories. Much like the tools here at PFR, this WSJ finder looks to be something you can get lost in for huge amounts of time, so have at it!

Note: This post was originally published at the new College Football at Sports-Reference site, so when you're done reading, go over and check it out!

When you want to know what happened in a given college football season, the Years Index is the place to look. We have every CFB season on the site going back to 1869, and from the years portal you can access all of them. Click any year to find:

• Weekly AP Poll results for the season (see also: Expanded Polls)
• Season award winners
• All-America teams
• Individual stat leaders for seasons 2000 or later (see also: Expanded Leaders)
• A combined Schedule/Results page for every major school
• Season standings
• Bowl Game results
• Expanded individual stats: Passing ▪ Rushing ▪ Receiving ▪ Kicking ▪ Punting ▪ Scoring
• All major schools' coaches

Note: This post was originally published at the new College Football at Sports-Reference site, so when you're done reading, go over and check it out!

The Schools Index is your one-stop destination for info about any "major" school in the last 141 years. On the main portal you'll find a table with 289 major schools, and:

• Their range of seasons played
• Their all-time overall W-L-T record and W%
• Their all-time bowl record & W%
• Their all-time Simple Rating System score and its Strength of Schedule component
• Their AP poll appearances
• Their conference championship totals

On the individual school pages, we also have year-by-year records and SRS scores, along with conference affiliations, AP poll rankings, bowl appearances, and (nearly complete) coaching histories.

Click on any of the seasons in the school's yearly results table, and you'll go to their team that year. For seasons from 2000-09, these pages will include complete passing, rushing, receiving, scoring, special teams, and defensive stats; for the team's game scores, click "Schedule and Results".

At the moment, clicking on years prior to 2000 will send you directly to the schedule/results page, but we plan on adding a great deal of historical individual stats to the pages of older teams in the near future. Also, once the 2010 season begins, check back with us because we will be generating current-season school pages, updated weekly with in-season stats and scores.

Thanks for checking out the new College Football @ S-R, and as always, let us know if you have corrections, questions, or comments via our feedback form.

I am pleased to announce the launch of College Football at Sports-Reference.com, the latest addition to the Sports Reference family of web sites. We have had plans to launch a college football site for quite some time, but for one reason or another we always ran into roadblocks, most of them data-related. However, we now have a college football database that we believe to be second-to-none. Let me tell you a little bit about what the site does (and does not) have:

Listen if you like trivia. Although it's NFL related, this one also has a college slant to it.

Which reminds me: get your virtual tailgating supplies ready for a big sports-reference announcement on Wednesday morning.

Listen here, subscribe here if you know how, and read this if you don’t. It’s free, of course.

To whet your appetite for our upcoming S-R College Football site, here's ESPN's countdown of the 50 most painful losses in CFB history, starting with #50 -- last year's controversial Nebraska-Texas Big 12 title game. Where does your school appear in the list of infamy?

Boise State may finally be on the verge of a BCS Championship Game appearance. The Broncos have won 24 consecutive regular season games, and an undefeated season in 2010 will run that number to 36. It will also mean that Boise State will have won on the East Coast against Virginia Tech, held off Oregon State, and run through the rest of their schedule without a loss. Boise State finished the '09 season as the #3 team in the country and returns 21 of 22 starters in 2010 (cornerback Kyle Wilson was drafted in the first round of last month's draft by the Jets). Bringing back nearly the entire roster from an elite team ensures that the Broncos will have a top-five pre-season rank. That may be enough to vault them into the title game, as a 25-0 record in '09 and '10 will be difficult to ignore. These facts prompted Dr. Saturday to compare BSU to the 1984 BYU Cougars, the only mid-major football team to ever be crowned national champion by the Associate Press.

The '84 Cougars have been profiled by many journalists; Stewart Mandel's excellent recap of their season serves as a terrific background for the uninitiated. John Underwood's article from the week BYU was crowned #1 is a great way to teleport to the mid-'80s (including some quotes by Penn State's elderly coach, Joe Paterno). The Cougars went 13-0, but didn't play any of the top teams in college football that season. Winning the WAC, then and now, is not tied to a prestigious Bowl game, and as a result, BYU ended up playing a depleted, 6-5 Michigan team in the Holiday Bowl. So what's the best way to determine how good the Cougars actually were? Was Brigham Young deserving of the national championship? Were they the best team in college football? This post seeks to answer those questions.

I am pleased to announce the launch of College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com, the latest addition to the Sports Reference family of web sites. We have had plans to launch a college basketball site for quite some time, but for one reason or another we always ran into roadblocks, most of them data-related. However, thanks to the efforts of researcher extraordinaire Kevin Johnson, we now have a college basketball database that we believe to be second-to-none. Let me tell you a little bit about what the site does (and doesn't) have:

NOTE: up-to-date standings can be found right here.

All new rules this year, so listen close.

For every game, you pick a team and you name your own point spread. The only catch is that the point spread you name must be worse than the official point spread (listed below). For example, Alabama is a 4.5-point favorite over Texas. If you take Alabama, you have to lay more than 4.5 points. If you take Texas, you have to take less than 4.5. If your team wins against the spread you named, you are credited with the difference between the official spread and the spread you named. For example, if you take Alabama -5.5 (and they cover), you get 1 point. If you take Alabama -10.5 (and they cover that), you get 6 points. If you take Texas +3.5 and they cover, you get 1 point. If you take Texas -3 and they cover that, you get 7.5 points. There is no limit, so you can take Texas -30 if you want, for a potential 34.5 points.

For BCS games, your score (as computed above) is multiplied by 3. For non-BCS games that kick off on January 1 or later, your score is multiplied by 2. Total points wins.

After a very exciting weekend in college football, there are only 35 games left: Army-Navy next weekend, and then the 34 Bowl games. Here are the college football ratings for each of the 120 teams in the FBS after week 14:

Last week's SRS rankings

Peter R. Wolfe's college games scores

While little changed at the top -- only Ndamukong Suh and the Cornhuskers stand in the way of the seemingly inevitable Texas-Floribama BCS Championship Game -- it was a wild rivalry week in college football. The only two one-loss teams both lost to their biggest rivals; Oklahoma State got smashed by SRS-favorite and Bedlam rival Oklahoma; Clemson, Utah, North Carolina and Ole Miss, all in the top 25 in the AP, lost battles to their in-state rivals, as well. Up top, Texas A&M and Auburn both came oh-so-close to pulling off big upsets, to the dismay of most of the population of Fort Worth, Cincinnati and Boise. There are now six undefeated teams in the FBS, zero one-loss teams, and nine two-loss teams (with six of them in BCS conferences, and half of those in the Big 10).

Last week's SRS ratings

Thanks to Peter R. Wolfe, who makes the final score of all college football games publicly available, here are the NCAA SRS ratings through twelve weeks:

And the conference ratings:

• Worst teams in a Big 6 conference? Washington State (26.7 SRS, 1-10), Maryland (35.9, 2-9), Louisville (36.4, 4-7) and Indiana (36.8, 4-8).

• Best teams outside of the Big 6 conferences? TCU (65.6, 11-0), Boise State (60.0, 11-0), BYU (52.1, 9-2), Utah (49.9, 9-2) and Air Force (49.8, 7-5).

• Most dominant win this season? Oklahoma beating Texas A&M 65-10 in Norman (MOV of 38, SOS of 47.7, for an SRS score of 85.7). Runners up: Oregon 42-3 over Cal (30, 54.7, 84.7); Texas Tech over Oklahoma this weekend 41-13 (24.5, 59.9, 84.4) and Stanford over USC 55-21 (30.5, 53.6, 84.1).

• Most embarrassing loss by an FBS team? Toledo losing at home to Western Michigan (SRS of 32.0) 58-26 (MOV of -29.5, SOS of 32.0, SRS score of 2.5).

• Worst loss by a Big 6 conference team? Texas A&M falling 62-14 (and it wasn't even that close) to Kansas State. MOV of -34.5, SOS of just 44.8, for an SRS score of only 10.3.

To the non-college football fans this year, my apologies for making things so college heavy this month. The college game has held more of my interest more lately, for reasons most of you should be able to figure out.

Last Sunday, I posted my weekly NCAA SRS ratings. These simple ratings are designed to measure how good teams actually are, and how likely they are to win in the future. A week ago I posted by Week 10 college football rankings, which was the list I would submit if I was a voter in the AP or any other poll. As I wrote last week, strength of schedule and margin of victory still play a role in these rankings, but for the most part, "a win is a win." If there is one guiding principle behind why each team is slotted where it is, it is this: each team has accomplished slightly more this season than the team behind them, and has accomplished slightly less than the team behind them.

I also value SOS more than MOV now, because we're focused on accomplishments. When doing the SRS, we want to know which teams are the best -- the theory being that (roughly) you can't choose who you play but you can choose how much you beat them by. Great teams blow out inferior opponents, so blowing out teams is a sign that you're a very good team. But for college football rankings, we care more about who you beat than by how much you beat them. Not all wins should be treated equally -- a lucky win is not the same as an impressive win -- but I'm generally dialing down the MOV factor and increasing the weight on the SOS factor in these rankings.

After the list below, I also am listing each team's three best wins and worst losses on the season. The "best" win is the opponent who has the best SRS (after adding/subtracting 3 points to/from the opponent's SRS in road/home games); the "worst" loss is the opponent with the worst SRS (same).

With just one week left in the college football regular season, the college football rankings should be more precise than ever this week. And, as members of the national media are becoming more apt to notice, it appears we've got a Big 4, not a Big 3. With a blowout victory over rival Utah last night, TCU now is within half a point of Florida and Alabama, while the Horned Frogs' in-state rival now have a field-goal lead over all schools.

A quick review of the SRS system. All games are included, even games against FCS opponents. The SRS is simply the sum of a team's margin of victory and its strength of schedule. Strength of schedule is easily calculated; it's the average SRS rating of all of a team's opponents (iterated hundreds of times to ensure that we get "true" strength of schedule ratings). Margin of victory could be easy to calculate, except I've decided to adjust the typical MOV in order to give us more accurate results. In addition to giving each road team three points, there's a cap and a floor for each game. Wins of fewer than 7 points (after including HFA) are counted 7-point wins; wins of greater than 24 points are counted as the average of 24 points and the actual margin of victory (after including HFA). The only exception is FCS games are uncapped.