Jeff Sagarin's ranking of the all-time greatest college basketball programs is pretty bad

Today, the ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia will hit book stores. Safe to say, if you are a reader of this blog, then those 1,232 pages of college hoops history is required reading, a must on your Christmas wish list.

What is sure to be the most contentious part of this encyclopedia, however, is Jeff Sagarin's rankings of the all-time greatest college basketball programs. If you don't recognize the name, Sagarin is the guy that crunches numbers for USA Today, running a season's worth of stats through his computer to determine rankings in just about every sport that matters.

Now, I have a lot of respect for what Sagarin does. It takes a great deal of time, effort, and smarts to put together these rankings.

But this list exemplifies heo problem of computer rankings of any kind.

Namely, it doesn't come near passing the eye test.

You see, the formula that Sagarin used only factored in wins, losses, and margin of victory/defeat. NCAA Tournament wins, regardless of when they occurred, counted double. In other words, UNC's win over Michigan State in last year's title game was worth just twice as much (according to Sagarin's formula) than their season opening win against Penn.

Does that make any sense to you?

As a result, some of the rankings seem a bit off:

• First and foremost, Illinois was ranked sixth overall, one spot ahead of Duke. I realize that prior to Coach K's arrival in Durham, the Blue Devils were not the powerhouse they have been under his tutelage. Yes, Illinois has always been good, but they've never been good enough to win a title in their five trips to the Final Four. Duke has, three times. They've also lost in the Finals six more times, and made the trek to the Final Four another five times. Which is the better program again?
• The Big Ten has eight schools in the top 15. Eight! And who comes in 15th? Michigan State. Ranked ahead of the Spartans (who have reached seven Final Fours, winning twice) are teams like No. 10 Iowa (three Final Fours, none since 1980 and no regional finals since 1987) and No. 14 Minnesota (their only Final Four was stripped from the record books).
• Staying in the Big Ten, can you explain to me how Northwestern, who has never (I repear, never) made the NCAA tournament gets ranked ahead of Providence and their two Final Fours? Or how Wisconsin, who went from 45 years between tournament appearances from 1948 to 1993, somehow came in No. 28, ahead of teams like No. 32 Arkansas (29 tournaments, six Final Fours, one title) or No. 42 Georgetown (five Final Fours, one title)?
• Now, take a look down at the bottom. The College of Charleston is the second to last team in the rankings, behind, well, a whole bunch of teams that have never made the tourament, let alone reached it four times.
  

There is much (much, much, much) more wrong with the way these rankings shook out, but I'm not going to get into it.

Why?

Because this is a flawed system. Too much stock is put into basketball played during the years of an eight team NCAA tournament, when segregation was still in effect. College basketball became a national pasttime in 1979 when Bird-Magic had there first of many epic duels. Not enough stock is put into success in the NCAA Tournament, which is where coaches, players, and programs cement their legacy.

But more than anything, this list just solidifies the notion that computer rankings are always going to be flawed. While it succeeds in the goal of taking away the "human factor", it also takes any common sense out of the equation.

Ask anyone that knows anything about college basketball history to name their top six college basketball programs, and they are going to rattle off to you (in some order) Duke, UNC, Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA, and Indiana. I could sit here and argue all day about the merits of Kentucky versus UCLA, or whether Duke and UNC should get a reprieve for being in the same conference, or how much the recent coaching problems at Indiana should have an effect on their ranking.

There is one thing, however, that no one can provide a justified argument for.

And that's leaving one of these schools out of the top six.