What Do the BCS Computer Rankings Stand for?

The Bowl Championship Series, or BCS, is the organization that ranks college football teams to determine which two teams play for the national championship at the end of each season. The BCS uses a combination of two human-generated polls and computer rankings to determine its Top 25 list, which is released on a weekly basis beginning about midway through each season. As of the date of publication, the BCS is also associated with five major bowl games, known as BCS Bowls.

  1. The System

    • Currently, the three components of the BCS college football system are the Harris Interactive Poll, the USA Toda /Coaches Poll and the collective data produced by six computers. The computer ranking providers are, in alphabetical order, Anderson & Hester, Richard Billingsley, Colley Matrix, Kenneth Massey, Jeff Sagarin and Peter Wolfe. BCS rankings and membership in particular conferences ultimately determine the national championship contenders and the teams that play in the five BCS bowl games. For the upcoming 2012 season, these bowls include the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl and the BCS National Championship Game.

    Computers

    • From early October until the end of the regular season, the BCS computer rankings generate team rankings based on various computer formulas that have one thing in common: strength of schedule. The BCS computer ranking system awards ranked teams points on an inverse order. For instance, the top-ranked team receives 25 points, the second-ranked team 24 points, etc. The highest and lowest point totals are dropped for each ranked team and the remaining four are added and divided by 100, producing each team's computer ranking percentage. The computer rankings are then combined with the two human-based polls to determine that week's team rankings.

    Humans

    • The Harris Interactive Poll is comprised of randomly selected former players, coaches, administrators and current and past media members. Similar to the computer rankings, each Harris Poll voter awards 25 points to the top-ranked team and so on for a maximum possible of 2,890 points. The USA Today Coaches Poll is comprised of 59 current head coaches who coach in the Bowl Subdivision, formerly known as Division IA. USA Today pollsters award points to teams in the same fashion as the Harris Poll. The final BCS rankings are determined by averaging the totals from the Harris, USA Today and computer rankings.

    Conferences

    • Presently, teams in six Bowl Subdivision conferences and two independent schools are eligible to compete in the BCS National Championship Game and the other BCS bowls. These "automatic qualifier" conferences include the Pac-12 Conference, the Big-12 Conference, the Southeastern Conference, the Big 10 Conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big East Conference. Beginning in the 2011 season, the two independent schools that are BCS eligible are Notre Dame and Brigham Young. AQ conferences are guaranteed of at least one team earning a spot in one of the BCS non-championship bowls.