2011-12 NCAA Simulated Football Playoffs–Bracket Reveal

The Dandy Dozen For 2011-12

Welcome to the 2011-12 college football simulated playoffs.  If you despise the ridiculous bowl system where a 6-7 UCLA team gets to play a 14^th game, while a 7-5 Western Kentucky team does not get a bowl bid, because some greedy corporation can squeeze a little more money out of naïve fans, and if you despise the fact that Virginia Tech can lose to Clemson by four touchdowns and still earn a Sugar Bowl bid over TCU, Southern Mississippi, Kansas State, or Boise State, then this is the place for you.

 

This is our fifth year to provide this service.  We call the computer-simulated National Championship, “The Simper Bowl.”  It has annually been our most widely read features.

 

For those of you new to this experiment, here is how the PiRates conduct this simulated National Championship playoff:

 

The champions of the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC receive automatic bids.

 

Any other conference champion that finishes in the top 12 of the BCS rankings also receives an automatic bid.

 

After these two rules have been applied, at-large invitations are extended to the number of teams needed to complete a 12-team tournament, based on BCS ranking.

 

Our 12-team tournament gives the top four BCS-ranked teams a bye, while teams 5-12 play in the opening round. 

 

We have made a couple of changes this year.  We wish to honor the excellent book written by Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter, and Jeff Passan “Death to the BCS.”   In this book, the authors believe a playoff should give home-field advantage to the higher-seeded team.  So, beginning this year, the first three rounds will be played on the home fields of the higher-seeded team.  Only the Simper Bowl will be played on a neutral field.  So as not to give any credence to the fake National Championship Game in New Orleans (the one in which Stanford and Oklahoma State get no chance to state their cases), we have chosen to play this year’s Simper Bowl at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, out of respect for the NFL-AFL’s first Super Bowl.  Thus, home field advantage will be factored into our computer simulator.

 

We are also going back to our old format, where we simulate each game just one time.  Last year, we simulated each game 100 times, but we realized our mistake.  Real games are played just once, and upsets occur when that happens.  When teams play 100 times, the better team is going to win more than 50 of those games.  So, this year’s simulation should be much more exciting with a higher standard deviation from the expected norm—at least we hope.

 

We have access to a university simulator in which a sports fanatic has implemented college and pro football data going back to 1960.  He originally attempted to predict the outcome of games against the spread, but he found out his simulator only works in predicting outright winners.  When simulated 1,000 times, his simulator predicts the winners with about 87% accuracy (but only 53% against the spread).

 

We will simulate each game only one time and then reveal the score and statistics.  We have not decided yet whether we will transcribe the play-by-play data for the Championship Game like we did last year when there were six contributors to this blog (there are just two this year, and one will be away from home for most of the holiday season).

 

The Dandy Dozen

Here are our 12 playoff teams for 2011-12:

Automatic Bids

ACC Champion: Clemson 10-3  BCS #15

Big East Champion: West Virginia 9-3   BCS #23

Big Ten Champion: Wisconsin 11-2   BCS # 10

Big 12 Champion: Oklahoma State 11-1   BCS #3

Pac-12 Champion: Oregon 11-2   BCS #5

SEC Champion: L S U 13-0   BCS #1

 

Other Qualifying Conference Champions

No other conference champions finished in the BCS top 12.

 

At-large Bids (6)

BCS #2: Alabama 11-1

BCS #4: Stanford 11-1

BCS #6: Arkansas 10-2

BCS #7: Boise State 11-1

BCS #8: Kansas State 10-2

BCS #9: South Carolina 10-2

 

The Bracket

Opening Round  12/10/11	Quarterfinals  12/24/11	Semifinals 12/31/11	Championship 1/7/12	Legitimate Champion
#9 South Carolina 10-2
	|
	|_____________________
	|	|
@ #8 Kansas St. 10-2	|	|_________________
		|	|
	@ #1 L S U 13-0	|	|
			|
			|
			|___________________
#12 West Virginia 9-3			|	|
	|		|	|
	|_____________________		|	|
	|	|	|	|
@ #5 Oregon 11-2	|	|_________________	|	|
		|		|
	@ #4 Stanford 11-1	|		|
				|
				|
			@ L.A. Coliseum	|_____________
#10 Wisconsin 11-2				|
	|			|
	|_____________________			|
	|	|		|
@ #7 Boise St. 11-1	|	|_________________		|
		|	|	|
	@ #2 Alabama 11-1	|	|	|
			|	|
			|	|
			|___________________	|
# 11 Clemson 10-3			|
	|		|
	|_____________________		|
	|	|	|
@ #6 Arkansas 10-2	|	|_________________	|
		|
	@ #3 Oklahoma St. 11-1	|

 

 

The opening round games will be simulated Friday morning, December 9, and we will post the results on Saturday evening, December 10, as if the games had been played Saturday afternoon.

 

One other tidbit:  All injured players on December 3 will be considered injured for the opening round games as well, unless we see evidence that they were only out for one week.  All players charged with game suspensions will be suspended for the playoffs for the appropriate number of games.  The simulator reduces each teams’ power ratings if key players are not playing.

 

Happy reading everybody.  Please post your comments during this tournament if you like or dislike.  We are interested in seeing opinions.

 

If you want to be proactive in your desire to see this ridiculous post-season bowl system end and be replaced by a legitimate national championship playoff (like every other NCAA/NAIA sport that is not prostituted to greedy corporations), then let the sponsors of the bowl games know of your opinion.  It is simple to find all the sponsors of every bowl game on each bowls’ official website.  Note the sponsoring companies that you currently patronize and find their customer service e-mail addresses.  Send them an e-mail notifying them of your choice to stop using their products as long as they host a bowl game.  Clarify that if they stop sponsoring bowls, you will begin to use their products once again.  To make your point more forceful, include a CC to their competitor, as long as the competitor does not sponsor bowls.

 

For example, let us look at the Fiesta Bowl.  The main sponsor is Frito-Lay, maker of Tostito’s.  They can be e-mailed at: www.fritolay.com/about-us/contact-us.html.  This “bowlcott” will benefit you because you will stop consuming their products made with unhealthy genetically modified corn and oils.  Send a CC to Kettle Chips at: www.kettlebrand.com/.  Kettle Chips are free of trans fats, GMO ingredients or oils, and artificial ingredients.  They make an organic chip as well.

 

These same corporations could just as easily sponsor 35 opening-week “classic” games.  Instead of 35 FBS vs. FCS matchups in week one, there could be 35 games like Oregon vs. LSU and Boise State vs. Georgia.  With a playoff, teams would need to schedule for the highest possible strength of schedule.  Instead of rewarding Virginia Tech with a Sugar Bowl invitation following a stellar non-conference slate of Appalachian State, East Carolina, Arkansas State, and Marshall, the Hokies would be forced to start their season against Boise State or Alabama, like they did in 2009 and 2010m when they participated in “classics.” 

 

This would work great all the way through the lower-tier conferences.  MAC teams could face Sunbelt or WAC teams in the opening week.  Mountain West teams could line up against Conference USA teams. 

 

Just like early season basketball matchups like North Carolina vs. Kentucky and Michigan State vs. Duke, imagine an opening week of the 2012 season with these 12 games from among a great list of 35 “classics:”

LSU vs. Stanford

Alabama vs. Oregon

Oklahoma State vs. Notre Dame

Arkansas vs. Texas

Michigan vs. Kansas State

South Carolina vs. Wisconsin

Clemson vs. West Virginia

Oklahoma vs. Nebraska

T C U vs. Texas A&M

Boise State vs. Florida State

Penn State vs. Pittsburgh

Southern Cal vs. Ohio State