I need a little assistance. I’m currently having a discussion with some friends of mine regarding the new BCS rules. I’m arguing against the deletion of the strength of schedule component by using the following analogy:
All of us being Notre Dame grads, one person immediately jumped up in arms, claiming that there’s no way I can support that anyone has ever said that Notre Dame plays an easy schedule. I pointed to the hundreds of hits on Google such a search brings up, as well as a web ring of Notre Dame haters who list an easy schedule in their top reasons to hate us.
What I’m looking for are legitimate news articles that make such a claim, not just some schmoe who hates the Irish. 1995 is probably everyone’s best bet, when we played all 3 service academies and Vanderbilt. It’s nearly impossible to find old news articles on the web, but figure some Trojan or Wolverine out there is hoarding some copy lambasting the Irish’s schedule that helps them get to sleep each night!
While I can’t answer your question about the Irish’s SoS, I think that the reason SoS was removed from the BSC calculation was that it was duplicitive. That is, isn’t the whole point of computer power ratings to put all the teams on an equal footing, taking into account W-L, margin of victory, common opponents and common opponents’ opponents? It seems to me therefore that SoS was already built into most computer power rating analysis and so to factor it in again as a separate component amounts to double counting.
