College Football Season 2017 Summary

After cow-towing to the masses, the Internet did a lot of self assertion at the end of the season.  For instance, the Internet was not contractually oblibated to vote a particular team #1, so it decided on a three way tie.  I can't disagree with that too much.    Alabama had the best Elo, so it deserves a #1 ranking.  But with Wisconsin and UCF also with very high Elos, and many of the rankings which feature anything subjective liking Wisconsin and UCF, it makes sense that the argument for them deserving a #1 ranking is strong to me. And heck, UCF at least is claiming it themselves.  I can't blame them.

Speaking of subjective rankings, The Internet vastly downplayed the importance of those after the bowl games.  While it paid respect to thoughts and feelings of the world for most of the season, in the end it just liked cold hard Elo more than various formulas or direct rank points.  "It just stopped feeling right that late in the season when the sample size was so high on the objective metric."  That is how Army and Troy ultimately broke into the top 25 despite being barely noticed by most humans the whole season.  The Internet was watching, and in the end, it rewarded them.

Which begs the question, "how will the Internet use these rankings next year?"  Well, The Internet is bringing up some crazy things and has some plans that frankly, as the person who has to compile all this and then comment on it, seems rather harrowing.  However, The Internet also hasn't given up on what it established this year either.  It's going to be a tough call as to how rankings will proceed next year.

The thing that The Internet and I are having the most discussions on, is Elo.  I like the idea of Elo keeping a running rank of teams and to see if such a thing is possible.  But also it reduces the utility of it as deciding who should be the champion this season.  But then again maybe that actually isn't important in the long run.