Simulated BCS Standings Week Two: Alabama Jumps LSU to Top Spot

in Weekly Update by Asher Feldman — September 12, 2011 at 12:21 pm | 0 comments

Two weekends in the bag, and we already have a surprise at the top of the (simulated) BCS standings.

Alabama, on the strength of its road victory over Penn State, saw enough gain in support in the computers to jump LSU and Oklahoma to the top spot of this week’s simulated rankings.

LSU slides back a spot to No. 2, although they are not far behind the Crimson Tide. Oklahoma, No. 1 in both human elements, sees a relative lack of support in the computers, and bows at No. 3.

Boise State and Stanford round out the top five as they did last week. Oklahoma State makes a large jump up to No. 6 from No. 8 last week.

As a point of reference, the methodology of the BCS Know How simulated rankings is slightly different than normal BCS procedure — mainly because of a lack of full-scale components.

For starters, there is no Harris Interactive Poll quite yet, and three of the six computer ranking systems, the Anderson and Hester system and the Peter Wolfe rankings and Colley’s Matrix are either non-operational or have incongruities to the point where their ranking system is not reflective of the season thus far. For the time being, we’ve substituted the AP poll for the Harris, and will include three available computers — Sagarin, Massey and Billingsley — in the simulation. This early in the season, there’s little need to zero out a computer, it would only cloud the picture of this process.

Simulated BCS Rankings — September 12th

Rank	Team	BCS Score
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	.9502
2	LSU Tigers	.9492
3	Oklahoma Sooners	.9330
4	Boise State Broncos	.8452
5	Stanford Cardinal	.7257
6	Oklahoma State Cowboys	.7120
7	Florida State Seminoles	.6146
8	Oregon Ducks	.6032
9	Wisconsin Badgers	.5914
10	Virginia Tech Hokies	.5569
11	South Carolina Gamecocks	.5568
12	Texas A&M Aggies	.5380
13	Nebraska Cornhuskers	.5199
14	Arkansas Razorbacks	.4949
15	Ohio State Buckeyes	.4703
16	Auburn Tigers	.4177

–

Some thoughts:

• Alabama’s climb is nearly all attributable to the computer rankings. LSU did not see a fall in support, only Alabama claiming some of the vacated space by teams like Stanford and Boise State, who lost ground in both components.
• Oklahoma State is already strong in the computers, but a victory over Texas A&M in two weekends would only improve those rankings.
• The bottom half of the top 16 is pretty stagnant, but a more smooth distribution of the computer rankings gives almost all of the teams a bump in BCS Score, even if their rankings did not improve.

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