How Does the NCAA Playoff Ranking System Work?
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Controversy
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In two major sports the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, employs a ranking system that plays a vital role in determining which school emerges as champion. Men's and women's basketball has a 64-team tournament at the tail end of the season to resolves which team will be champion. But, to get into the tournament in many cases the ranking system comes into play. Despite the high number of teams that do a get a chance to play in this format there are always schools left out that feel they are deserving. This is even more so in football, as there is no playoff in Division I. The teams that play in the championship game are chosen solely by the NCAA ranking system. This has caused more than its share of controversy since this plan was instituted in 1998, with fans, coaches, players, and the media calling for some sort of playoff at the end of the football campaign to eliminate any doubt about which is the superior squad.
RPI
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What is known as the Ratings Percentage Index is used as an aid in a committee choosing teams to play in the NCAA basketball tournaments which begin in March and have been dubbed "March Madness." The RPI is a complex formula that takes into account a school's winning percentage, the winning percentage of the schools that they play, and the winning percentage of their opponent's opponents. In place since 1981 the RPI has evolved over the years to give consideration to wins at home and on the road, in essence making adding more weight to a road win and a home loss. While the RPI is not the sole determining factor whether a school gets a berth in the NCAA basketball tournament it is an important tool that those responsible for making the decisions use to gauge how well a team has played during the course of the year. The schools in the various conferences throughout the country can receive an automatic berth in the tourney by either winning the conference tournament or the regular season title. The rest of the teams that comprise the other spots hope that their RPI ranking is high enough to persuade committee members that they are worthy as well.
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BCS
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Football has a playoff system in place for Divisions II and III but Division I has depended on the Bowl Championship Series to dictate which pair of teams will match up in the title game in early January. This system came into being in the late 1990s and depends on a combination of polls involving writers, coaches, and other prominent football minds and a series of computer rankings to pick the top 2 teams. One third of BCS as it is known is made up of the Harris Interactive Poll with another third composed of the USA Today Coaches Poll. The other portion uses a half dozen computer ranking services that factor in a plethora of statistics that are not even made public to come up with the top teams ranked in order. Midway through the campaign the BCS announces its rankings so the public and schools can see where they stand. By the end of the season schools have a reasonable idea of what they need to accomplish to be one of the 2 teams in the title game but often their fate is out of their control as other teams wins and losses influence the final rankings. For this reason there has been a steady groundswell of support for some sort of football playoff system rather than using the BCS rankings to come with the championship tilt participants.
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mjblake
Sep 06, 2009
Lots of complaining about the BCS anyway. The plus-1 system is often talked about. Of course, the surest way of getting to the championship is to win all of your games. No need to wait until the end of the season to decide that.
