Hi everyone -
 
  While declining to enter the annual pre-season fray re: sleights and/or
unreasonable expectations occasioned each year by the release of this or
that pre-season poll, I'd like to follow-up on an oft-voiced (by many)
opinion shared here on HOCKEY-L:
 
On Sun, 30 Aug 1998, Adam Wodon wrote:
> The TSN "poll" is perenially worthless (as are most polls for that matter) -
> regardless of whether it mistakenly makes an occasional good pick or not.
 
  What's interesting to me is how these self-same "polls" have now been
officially embraced by the NC$$ to seed post-season DivIA football pairings.
Several weeks ago the Washington "Post" carried a rather lengthy article
describing the calculation of the "Bowl Championship Series Rating" that
will be used starting this season to seed post-season bowl games.  BCSR
(not nearly as sexy as CHODR or TCHCR :-) will be calculated for EACH team
as the sum of:
 
  ([AP (Media) Poll Rank + USA-Today (Coaches) Poll Rank] / 2 ) +
  ([Sagarin/USA Today + Seattle Times + NY Times Computer Rankings] / 3 ) +
  ([(0.67 * opp win %) + (0.33 * opp opp win %)] / 25 ) +
  (team's number of losses) = Team X BCSR
 
  The lower your rank, the better ....
 
  - or -
 
  Mean Poll Status + Mean Computer Rank + Schedule Strength Adjustment +
  Team's own W/L record = BCSR
 
  Note also that "to prevent drastic differences in computer rankings from
having a major impact on BCSR calculation, a maximum adjusted deviation of no
greater than 50% of the average of the two 'best' computer rankings will be
used."  As an example, consider Team X with computer rankings of 3, 5, and 12
in the three component rankings; its Computer Ranking Term would be calculated
as:
    3 + 5 = 8
    8 / 2 = 4     (mean of two best rankings)
    4 * 0.50 = 2  (50% of the mean of two best rankings)
    2 + 4 = 6     ('adjusted' ranking used in place of actual "12" rank)
    3 + 5 + 6 = 14 / 3 = 4.67
 
   Now, I've felt all along that the current system in place in college
hockey to select/seed teams for NC$$ Tournament play is a good one, especially
now that it's totally out in the open so that industrious fans like John
Whelan can make the whole process available for infinite "what-if" scenarios
on his www site (thanks John :-)  I don't expect this process to change any
time soon (other than invoking minor tweaking such as reducing the "what
have you done lately" component from 20 games to 16) but this *IS* the NC$$
after all - who knows :-)
 
  So, in the spirit of pre-season discussion generation, I'd be interested
to hear what others think of such a scheme being put in place for college
hockey.  All the components are already in place:
 
  Polls: Use the USCHO + USA Today Polls ....
  Computer Rankings: Use CHODR, HEAL, and PWR ranking ....
  Strength of Schedule: Already computed using RPICH, which would have to
     be adjusted to split out OWP and OOWP from each team's individual WP
     (i.e, the leading term in the current 0.35, 0.50, 0.15 formulation).
 
  Is there anyone (Charlie ??  John ??  Robin ??) out there with time on their
hands who's looking for another nifty project ??  Here you go: programmers -
man your keyboards !!
 
  Can you tell it's a slow day here in Maryland ?? <grin> ....
 
  Cheers from the Chesapeake - Jim
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.