A Little Math

Photo Attribution: Icon SMI

My head is spinning.

I was pretty sure OSU was toast, until I did some math. Consider the following:

The BCS formula is made up of three parts: the computer poll average, the Harris Poll average, and the Coaches Poll average.

OSU is 3rd in four of the six computer polls right now (you throw out the lowest and highest rank). Alabama is 2nd in all four of those.

There are 174 voters combined in the Harris and Coaches polls (59 coaches and 115 Harris-ers). A perfect “human vote” is 4,350 “human points” or 174 (all the voters) * 25 (“points” you get for being ranked #1). LSU’s “human score” right now is 4,350 (as it should be).

Alabama’s “human score” is 4,167 (a unanimous #2 score would be 4,176).
Oklahoma State’s “human score is 3,659 (a unanimous #3 score would be 4,002)

Let’s say OSU goes out and strokes OU to the point that every coach and every Harris-er votes them at least #3, they would then have 4,002 “human points.”

And let’s say the computers get giddy for OSU again (as they have been all year) and three of them swap Bama and OSU (not out of the question, given OSU’s top fifteen ranking).

After all that, OSU would then need 40 of those 174 human voters (who already moved OSU up in their minds to at least #3) to say “man, I don’t want to see a rematch, I’m going to go ahead and put OSU at #2 and Bama at #3.” Again, not likely, but not that unfeasible.

Note: this would need to be the right split since there are more Harris voters than coaches. 28 Harris-ers and 12 coaches doing this would get the job done. (thanks to CT for pointing this out)

That would get it done. We’d be counting decimal points, but I’m pretty sure that would do the trick. And we’d have Gundy against Les for the national title.

In a not-so-completely unrelated note: here’s a list of all 115 Harris Poll voters.

I also deplore myself for using the term “human points” in a post about college football.