This Iowa team could have been in top 15 in this former BCS formula

[Mr. Smee]

A subroutine that was commented out and never utilized could have taken into account "situational mistakes", under the BCS formula. In losses that occurred when such mistakes happened, the losing team wouldn't have been penalized as severely by losing. Taken into account some of the offense's mistakes thus far, a former BCS computer programmer speculates that this year's 2017 Iowa team could have been in the top 15.

http://www.footballfoundation.org/Programs/Rankings/BCS/BCSCalculation.asp?v=11

 

[Mr. Smee]

"The revised proprietary code of the BCS formula, made available to the public for the first time Thursday, shows a subroutine that was block-commented out in case the committee ever decided to implement it. It revealed that situational mistakes made against teams that were ranked much higher than the losing team on which said mistakes were committed, should be taken into account when subtracting the final points from the week's rankings."

Programmer Ben Sable, a self-proclaimed Iowa fan, worked on the BCS computer cluster during the last five years of its existence. Said Ben of the 2017 Iowa Hawkeyes, "it's my best best guess that because Iowa has played a lot of young guys this year, the subroutine would have taken that into account and they could have been ranked between 20 and 15, despite their record."

 

[BetterLuckNextTime]

I would have been in favor of using that piece of code. I've been arguing for years that certain mistakes made by inexperience are different than mistakes being made by seniors who've been there before.

Also, the BCS, and the CFP now, should be flexible in arriving at their determination. Also, it could have helped recruiting.