(04-21-2021 10:16 AM)Atlanta Wrote: [ -> ] (04-20-2021 04:25 PM)robertfoshizzle Wrote: [ -> ]ESPN is biased, but this seems fair to me. We were a 2-bid league this year, and aside from the 3 mentioned above, none of our teams are exactly popping off the page as likely at-large teams right now.
It only seems fair if you buy into the bias. There was absolutely no rationale to justify 9 B1G tourney invites aside from in-conference games - none. And Lunardi, ESPN etc, now perpetuate the same BS that was proven wrong thru the tourney play (same for the ACC) with no rational basis. The AAC gets no benefit for in-conference wins & that will perpetuate a 2-bid AAC unless one of our school's has a spectacular OOC record against B1G, ACC, B12 &/or SEC schools.
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Correct. The sports writers who prepare their rankings and bracketologies keep on making the same mistake, year after year, whether it's for football or basketball.
As they seem to see it, their job during the preseason is to predict what the team's rankings will be in the early weeks of the the next season, rather than predicting which teams will actually be best during the next season. They're able to get away with it because there is such a high degree of "groupthink" and pro-P5 bias that it's not difficult to predict which teams will be highly ranked.
An example from college football:
.............Number of non-P5 teams listed in Top 25
.............Preseason AP Top 25.......Final AP Top 25.........Error Margin
2016..........0 non-P5 teams..........3 non-P5 teams.......
3 non-P5 teams
2017..........1 non-P5 team............4 non-P5 teams.......
3 non-P5 teams
2018..........2 non-P5 teams...........6 non-P5 teams.......4 non-P5 teams
2019..........1 non-P5 teams...........7 non-P5 teams.......
6 non-P5 teams
2020..........2 non-P5 teams...........8 non-P5 teams.......
6 non-P5 teams
Notice anything? The forecasters haven't gotten any better at predicting how many non-P5 teams will end up in the Final AP Top 25.
To the contrary, they have gotten much worse!
Specifically, their estimates of the number of non-P5 teams that would end up in the Final AP Top 25 have become 100% less accurate since 2016.
In other words, they underestimated the number of non-P5 teams in the Final AP Top 25 by 3 in 2016 and 2017, but by 6 in 2019 and 2020, a 100% increase in their inaccuracy rate.
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In other words, they're not only biased - - they're so biased that they have stubbornly refused to accept the fact that more and more non-P5 teams are ending up in the Final AP Top 25 lists in recent years!
What we've been seeing with the basketball rankings, seedings, and bracketologies is part of the same phenomenon. The bias is pervasive and comprehensive - - not sport-specific.
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