Computers Decide Who’s No. 1 Again

Thank heaven for video games. Without them, most of us average citizens could never do such things as survive D-Day, drive a supped-up sports car 120 mph through downtown Miami, or win a slam dunk contest. Oh, yeah, and we could never really make an assertive prediction on how the upcoming college football season will end up.

I recently got my hands on the latest version of EA Sports' NCAA Football for Playstation2. My teenage son rented it a couple of weeks ago to give it a test drive before either of us decided to cough up the $50 bucks required for outright ownership and we both agree it's a pretty cool game. But what I had the most fun doing, which is the premise of this column, is simulating seasons to see who the programmers thought would be the best teams year-in and year-out.

So, I spent part of four days simulating 10 independent seasons -- starting each season from scratch instead of continuing into a successive season -- and documenting the most important stats from each. I tracked the conference champions, final top-25 coaches poll, and bowl results. From there, I did a little numbers crunching to provide the following predictions for the 2004 college football season.

First, the conference champs. Starting with the two so-called mid-major conferences, both were toss-ups. In the Sun Belt, both North Texas and Middle 10nessee State won four championships in the 10 seasons, but the Mean Green qualified for a bowl game in every season compared to MTSU's seven. Therefore, North Texas will win the Sun Belt.

Meanwhile, in the Mid-American Conference, the division winners were pretty cut and dry with Marshall winning six East titles and Toledo taking four West titles. But, in the conference championship game, four teams won it twice apiece. However, since Toledo won half of their title games and Marshall only a third, the Rockets are my pick for the MAC.

Moving up a notch to Conference USA, the clear-cut winner was Southern Mississippi with four conference titles in 10 seasons. The Golden Eagles also qualified for a bowl game nine times, so their success was quite consistent. In the Mountain West, Utah took four titles while UNLV won three, but the Rebels went to a bowl game all 10 years while the Utes bowled in eight seasons. But, Utah should win the conference by a game over UNLV who will still be bowl bound in December.

In the Western Athletic Conference there's no dispute -- Boise State won half the titles and finished an average of 23rd in the final poll (more on that later).

Now to the big boys. In the Atlantic Coast Conference, both Florida State and Virginia Tech won three crowns, forcing me to go to my tiebreaker formula to decide who will win it this season. Since the Seminoles played in a bowl game all 10 years, went to five BCS bowls, and won one national title in two appearances, they are my pick to win the ACC. V-Tech also went to a bowl in each of the 10 seasons, but only made it to three BCS games and no Orange Bowls. North Carolina State is another contender after winning two league titles.

The Southeastern Conference was a little easier to determine. Auburn won five West Division titles while Tennessee took four East Division crowns and four conference championships. LSU should compete in the West, winning four West titles and two conference championships, while Georgia and South Carolina will be close in the East. But in the end, Tennessee will win the SEC championship.

The Big East was pretty much a no-brainer. West Virginia, thanks to the defection of Miami and Virginia Tech to the ACC, won eight of 10 titles with Pittsburgh taking the other two. The Big 10, however, was another toughie. Four teams won championships in 10 years: Iowa and Michigan three each, Ohio State and Minnesota two apiece.

When using the bowl games as a tiebreaker, Ohio State qualified for the most bowl games (10) and BCS games (5), but still had only two conference titles. Minnesota was out of the running with only seven bowl appearances. The two teams that had three titles each both qualified for nine bowls, but one had one more BCS bowl than the other -- Iowa. The Hawkeyes are my pick for the Big 10.

The Big 12 produced essentially two powerhouses, consistent with the past few seasons. The Kansas State Wildcats won seven North Division championships while the Oklahoma Sooners won the same amount in the South. But Oklahoma dominated the conference title game, winning six to K-State's three. The Sooners will be the champions of the Big 12 again.

According to the simulations, the Pac-10 produced the most dominant team. This school won nine conference championships, qualified for a bowl game all 10 seasons, went to nine BCS games, and played for the national championship seven times. If the guys at EA Sports are trying to assert what a lot of people thought after last season (including myself), then they didn't try to do it very discreetly. That team that dominated the video game is the USC Trojans.

In determining the preseason top-25, I took the average final ranking for each of the 10 simulated seasons and placed the teams accordingly. For those teams who did not finish in the top-25 every season, an assumption that they could have finished No. 26 was factored in to their average. For example, a team that finished in the top-25 eight times would have 52 points added to their accumulative ranking before calculating the average.

The top-10 had Miami, Florida State, Kansas State, Georgia, and LSU as the bottom five from No. 10 to No. 6, then Ohio State, Texas, West Virginia, USC, and Oklahoma rounded out the rest of the rankings. So the Sooners were the most consistent team during the 10 simulations, placing in the top-25 all 10 years with an average rank of No. 5.

But, again, the most dominant team was USC. The Trojans played in the Orange Bowl seven times, winning six national championships. West Virginia, Oklahoma, Florida State, and Tennessee were the other winners, but the Volunteers made it to the title game three times. So, even though Oklahoma ranks number one in the poll average, USC and Tennessee will play in this year's Orange Bowl for the national championship with the Trojans winning it all.

Before I go, I have a couple of other items to touch on regarding bowls. It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that there are a number of teams who will make it to a bowl game every year, unless disaster strikes. But what about those schools who haven't had much success recently? Like Temple, for instance. The game suggests the Owls will benefit from the defection of Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College from the Big East as they qualified for a bowl game three times in the 10 seasons.

Other relative newcomers to Division-1 football also enjoyed some success with Troy State, Buffalo, Connecticut, South Florida, and UAB all making bowl appearances at least once. In fact, over the course of the simulations, 91 of the 117 teams played in at least one bowl. Heck, even Arizona played in two bowl games.

Of course, though, all this is from a handful of football fans who happen to know how to program computers determining how they think each team will perform over the course of a season. Whether it all plays out on the field as the simulations predict it will depends on a number of "real" factors during the year. And as real as the video game may seem, it's still not real people playing football, although it is nearly as fun.

It will be fun to watch every week to see if the season even closely mirrors one of the simulations. If it turns out that way, then maybe it really is "in the game."