THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS–The Colley Matrix, where illusion is reality and nothing is as it seems, released its Week 6 college football rankings, in which Wake Forest checked in at number 9, Rutgers number 10, and Washington number 12.
The Matrix was designed by obvious football fanatic Wes Colley (pictured below).
Wes Colley: Tie from the Tucker Carlson Collection. Eyebrows from the Chip Caray Collection.
Colley earned his Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton. We went upstairs from Colley’s basement room and asked his mother how her son had become a football expert. His mother said:
“I always asked him, ‘Wes? What are you going to do with a Ph.D. in whose-a-whatsical science?’ and he would say, ‘I’m going to make a college football ranking system, Mom, and I specifically asked you to cut off the crusts!'”
In describing his ranking system, Colley’s football genius can be seen. From Colley’s website,
“[T]here is no ad hoc weighting of opponenents’ winning percentage and opponents’ oppponents’ winning percentage, etc., ad nauseam (no random choices of 1/3 of this + 2/3 of that, for example). In this method, very simple statistical principals, with absolutely no fine tuning are used to construct a system of 117 equations with 117 variables, representing each team according only to its wins and losses, (see Ranking Method). The computer simply solves those equations to arrive at a rating (and ranking) for each team.”
In just that one paragraph, Colley manages to use three Latin phrases, including back-to-back phrases, “etc.” and “ad nauseam.” As Dave Barry has pointed out, using Latin phrases is one way to win an argument by telling people, “I speak Latin and you do not.” Other examples of Colley’s superior football intelligence are his clear mastery of addition of fractions, as 1/3 of “this” + 2/3 of “that” clearly add up to one whole “this ‘n’ that.” Also notice that Colley successfully hyperlinked the phrase “Ranking Method” to an actual page which describes the Ranking Method.
We at HLS, skeptical of Colley’s “purely mathematical” poll, decided to test the poll’s ability to rank other items of interest. We received the following results:
Best Coke:
- New Coke
- Coca-Cola Classic
Hottest American Idol
- Ruben Studdard
- Clay Aiken
- Kelly Clarkson
Best Team in Football, 1993
- Florida State
- Notre Dame
Best Star Wars Movie
- The Phantom Menace
- Attack of the Clones
- Revenge of the Sith
- Return of the Jedi
- A New Hope
- The Empire Strikes Back
Hottest Lindsay Lohan
- Anorexic coke whore Lindsay Lohan
- Healthy not-yet-on-coke Lindsay Lohan
Best Celebrity Sex Tape
- Screech
- Tonya Harding
- Paris Hilton
- Pamela Anderson
Colley’s Matrix is used by the BCS to help determine which teams earn BCS bowl births, potentially costing schools millions of dollars in bowl money. Colley’s Matrix. Whoa.
- The 2009 Notre Dame Season Recap: An Exospective - January 5, 2010
- BREAKING:Biscuit Okay, Not Thrilled with Weis’ Return - December 4, 2008
- Dillon Panthers Coverage: Episode 2 “Bad Ideas” - October 22, 2007
Excellent job Bradt, somebody had to expose this guy to the world. I am currently hard at work developing the BCS’s newest computer poll, now if only I could find my magic 8 ball…
Sed, let’s work on a ranking system together. Your magic eightball, my Furbie.
It’s a bitch getting a Furbie to say Notre Dame without sounding like Lee Corso.
Someone double check my math on my new formula: [(coin tosses won vs IAA opponents on neutral field) x (average points scored in sold out, regionally televised games in leap years over last decade) + (3 x 65+ yard field goals attempted in snowing night games) – (fumbles returned all the way on 2 point conversions allowed)] / [(combined weight of all kickers) + (# of states current players live in) x (red zone illegal forward pass penalties forced) – (handicapped-equipped toilets in home stadium)] x [(gross income of last year’s seniors not playing in the NFL) – (1000 x sum of all player arrests over last 4 years)]
According to Colley, Sed, your system is too emotional. What Would Spock Do?
Ah. He forgot the Vulcan Death Grip variable. I think it gets subtracted from the “side of field – shady or sunny” variable, which, he also clearly forgot.
Sed, if you’re gonna do this, at least get serious about it. Where the hell is your “hotter coeds multiplier?”
On a more serious note, I’d be itnerested in knowing what his ranking would be of Notre Dame and Miami in 1989. It’s possible he doesn’t factor in head-to-head, as it would be sort of hard to manage 119 teams once you include the specifics of twot eachs regarding each other. But ND definitely played a tougher schedule tahn Miami in 1989, and when you lost shouldn’t matter, so ND should come out on top. I happen to think head-to-ghead should matter, but they at least should have won ONE title.