... as with all debates here, the issues are far more complex than the combatants freely admit to one another. Example: FSU is EXTREMELY reliant upon a certain QB who [though very unlikely] could get thrown out of college football for his poor choices. On the one hand I'd certainly CONSIDER FSU with Winston [despite their great dependency], and on the other I'd certainly consider them a much weaker team if he was ineligible.
That's just an example. Fiction to set up a point. Which is: I've seen evaluators with the philosophy that who you have available matters to the evaluation [whether it was a past loss or a future vulnerability], and others who say that they will view nothing but the actual "objective" results of the team and take no personnel specifics into account. Both philosophies can be defended.
For me, the first philosophy can be "wise" but more often is used to rationalize why this or that happened when in fact there is no "scientific" reason to support that [as the alternate "experiment" can never be run.] Also, practitioners of the first philosophy often play fast and loose with it, applying it to one team and not another, or applying it to past losses while not applying it to future vulnerability or vice versa --- it seems to me that consistency demands both.
Anyway, this numerical list and sort thing that this committee is doing will likely smudge all these different philosophies and personal choice methodologies out, and the simplest things [W/L] will be left standing as unusually powerful.
