College System Order

Good question Alex, I was thinking the same thing!!!

Just follow the ArmchairGM Poll and you'll know the truth... the others are all bogus anyway.

The Coaches' poll: 63 coaches participate each week of the season. 25 points are given for each 1st place vote, 24 for each 2nd place, all the way down to 1 point for each 25th place vote. The teams with the top 25 points are in the top 25.

Harris poll: Done by Harris Interactive. Follows the same formula as the coaches' poll. The voters aren't coaches though, but can be former players, athletic directors, etc.

BCS: A combination of the coaches' poll, Harris poll and computer rankings. Each are one third of the BCS ranking. This is the only one that matters: the BCS #1 and BCS #2 play for the national title in January.

To clarify what the BCS does: it takes the a group of percentages and averages them together. For the polls, it takes the percentage of possible points each team has acculumlated in that poll. Ohio St., for instance, has a 1.000 (100% in decimal form) from the coaches poll since it has the maximum amount of points by having all the first place votes from the coaches. The computer rankings are based on a team's average position in all four. USC has the highest score here, a 1.000 for having the highest rating, with each decending team having a lower ranking. Then all three percentages are averaged together.

This is too complicated!!!