Consider a team A which beats both team B and team C. Let’s say they’re all in the same conference, so B and C play each other as well. Let’s also say that B has a winning record and C has a losing record.
Does it make any difference to team A’s BCS points, either strength of schedule or otherwise, whether B beats C or vice versa? [B is not in the BCS top 10, so quality win points are not a factor.]
For strength of schedule: No difference. From the short BCS rules:
Since both team B and team C will fall into both the “opponents” category and the “opponents’ opponents” category, both a win and a loss will get chalked into each category, regardless of the B vs. C winner.
However, I would guess that the winner of the B vs. C game would factor, in some small way, into the computer rankings.
Thanks for the response zut. You confirmed my expectation.
Now for a followup question which I can’t find the answer to on the net.
Let’s say there’s a team D that plays both B and C, but not A. Does it appear in the opponents’ opponents numbers once or more than once? I would expect only once, otherwise the multiplication factor (it could be the common opponent of many teams in the league) could make its record count more than any of the opponents.
More than once. The only incident where you don’t count a team multiple times is for Quality Win points. Teams don’t often play each other more than once before the post-season, however there have been a few instances where this would come into effect during conference championship games.
In today’s paper, it’s reported that since Miami score was hurt because they had to rally in the fourth quarter against Rutgers. How can the BCS take this into consideration? Or does this just mean that the AP poll dropped them to second and that’s what hurt?
Must be the AP poll. Check out the current BCS standings versus last week’s. Miami currently scores 1.5 (polls), 2.67 (computer), and 1.84 (schedule strength) versus 1.0 (polls), 4.33 (computer), and 1.36 (schedule strength) last week. Schedule strength is simply won/lost records; I imagine Miami’s jump in SS merely reflects the fact that they played 1-7 Rutgers last week. The AP poll factors in half a point, as you noted. It is possible that the fourth-quarter rally hurt Miami in the computer rankings, also; I just don’t know what-all goes into those (margin of victory does NOT factor in, but maybe % time leading opponent does?). However, Miami’s computer ranking got a lot better last week because of losses by Notre Dame and Georgia. Trouble is, so did OSU’s.