It’s Official

It’s No. 1 Oklahoma versus No. 2 Florida for it all.

It’s Close, but Looking Good

The Coaches’ Poll has come out, and Florida is just a single point behind Oklahoma for No. 1. That doesn’t matter as much as the fact that Texas is just 73 points behind Florida.

What is notable is that four coaches switched their first-place votes from Alabama to Texas, keeping both the Gators and Sooners out of the top spot. This poll will become public so it’ll be interesting to see where those four have UF and OU and if they were trying to game the system.

Anyway, the Coaches’ Poll component of the BCS looks like this:

Oklahoma – .9718
Florida – .9711
Texas – .9232

We know that UF is #4 in Sagarin’s computer poll. I project the others this way, just eyeballing it off of last week and not in any way using the formulas:

Anderson/Hester: OU 1, UT 2, UF 3
Billingsley: OU 1, UF 2, Bama 3, UT 4
Colley: UT 1, OU 2, UF 3
Massey: OU 1, TTU 2, UT 3, UF 4
Wolfe: OU 1, UT 2, TTU 3, UF 4

If that is the case, the computer element looks like this:

Oklahoma: 1.000
Texas: 0.95
Florida 0.90

Now comes the Harris Poll. As we all know, Florida was No. 2 in it last week and should move to No. 1. If everyone in the Harris Poll voted UF #1, OU #2, and UT #3, then the Harris component could look like this:

Florida: 1.000
Oklahoma: 0.9600
Texas: 0.9200

If you take all those numbers I ran for each component, this is the final BCS standings:

Oklahoma: 0.9773
Florida: 0.9570
Texas: 0.9310

So we should be good.

UPDATE 4:45 PM

A poster on the GatorSports.com message board who seems to have high credibility as well as high Gator Boosters standing says the UAA has already called him about ordering tickets to the BCS title game in Miami. Usual grains of salt are required for any “inside info” coming from message boards, but this seems about a legit as they come.

The official announcement comes a little after 8:00 on Fox, though ESPN has a much longer bowl show at the same time and will be mirroring the information with much better analysts. Say what you want about ESPN’s guys, but the network does college football better than anyone else. For Fox, it’s nothing more than a hobby.

A Follow Up on Predictions

Last Thursday I threw out some numerical predictions for the SEC title game based on the teams’ stats and those of their opponents. I was looking to see what kind of effect each team had on their foes, such as (for instance) Florida holds its opponents to almost 13 points a game under their season averages. The whole thing is here.

Anyway, looking at real yardage and point differences (as opposed to percentage differences) produced a fairly accurate picture of the game. It said Alabama was likely to gain between 317 and 333 yards, and the Crimson Tide had 323 yards against the Gators. It also predicted a scoring window of 19 to 22 points, and Alabama scored 20.

For Florida, it predicted a range of 370 to 374 total yards. The Gators ended up gaining just 358 yards. For points, it predicted a range of 34 to 36 points, a little more than the 31 Florida ended up getting. It is worth noting that Percy Harvin could easily have made up that shortfall, and also if Jonathan Phillips made his second field goal attempt, they’d have hit the lower boundary of the range.

Whether Florida’s bowl game will hold to this pattern or not I do not know, but I’ll run the numbers again before it happens.

Other predictions I made:

• It’s going to come down to execution in every phase of the game. (Check)
• I don’t think one team will lead the whole game… (Check)
• Nor do I think either will win by more than 14 points because they are so close (Check)
• I believe Tebow will find a way to win. (Double Check)

All that’s missing at this point is a berth in the national title game to make it complete. Overall, I think I did quite well with this game. It makes me feel good, at least until I pull out my preseason predictions to revisit those for a later post. Clemson the easy choice in the ACC? Ohio State in the national title game again? Beanie Wells winning the Heisman? Ouch.