I'm still not getting any "scientific" ideas here....
My problem:
The current system is horribly biased. Teams start week 1 ranked- without having played a single game. These ranking are 100% subjective, based on absolutely no record of play. Subsequent rankings are based on the teams of the original list losing and falling off the rankings. For example, if Ohio State is ranked #1 preseason, they almost universally remain #1 until they lose. The only (rare) exception to this would be a horrible performance that results in a win against a horrible team. If the press had thought at the beginning of the year that Utah was going to be a good team and ranked them #1 (or 2,3,4,5...) preseason, then they would have played in the BCS championship game since the heaviest weight on the BCS score is the Coaches' Poll, and they would only have moved up the scale.
Another problem with this "preseason" ranking is that even if you are WAY OFF on the preseason rankings, beating a bad "ranked" team can significantly affect your outcome. An example of this would be #2 Georgia beating #15 Arizona State at the beginning of the year. Arizona State was TERRIBLE this year, finishing 5-7 on the year. However, Georgia is fueld by beating a quality (ranked) opponent, even though in hindsight they were not worthy of that rank. Wether a team is ranked at the end of the season or the beginning, it doesn't really seem to matter.
It was obvious this year that there was no way any team from any conference outside the SEC and Big 12 had any reasonable chance at the title game, making the system inherently flawed and unfair. When the pudits talk about how these were the two best conferences, they have very little if any evidence to base that on other than their own biases. Those two conferences in particular benefited the most from intentionally setting up their schedules in a particular way- the "good" teams in those conferences tended start the season against Div 2A schools, then schedule the poorest teams in their own divisions before playing another "top" team. This gave the appearance of "quality" to the Big 12 with 4 undefeated teams after 5 weeks, and 3 undefeated teams after 7 weeks, ensuring they would all be in the top 10 without defeating a single decent opponent. Texas Tech was the best example- they were 8-0 when they played Texas, their only really good win all year. At the time they were ranked #7, despite beating only two other team who would even play in a Bowl game- 8-5 Kansas and 9-4 Nebraska. Here was their schedule until the texas game:
8/30 Eastern Washington 1-0 (0-0) W 49-24
9/06 @ Nevada 2-0 (0-0) W 35-19
9/13 Southern Methodist 3-0 (0-0) W 43-7
9/20 Massachusetts 4-0 (0-0) W 56-14
10/04 @ Kansas State 5-0 (1-0) W 58-28
10/11 Nebraska 6-0 (2-0) W 37-31 OT
10/18 @ Texas A&M 7-0 (3-0) W 43-25
10/25 @ No. 23 Kansas 8-0 (4-0) W 63-21
11/01 No. 1 Texas 9-0 (5-0) W 39-33
The current system does a good job of ranking teams WITHIN a conference. This is because they almost always play each other, so you get a good sense of how they stack up. However, there is really no way to compare the quality between conferences, since there are very few out-of-conference games to help make that assessment. This is compounded by conferences like the SEC and Big 12 that play NON BCS (actually non division) schools to artificially inflate their record....
