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Mr NCAA wrote:

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I disagree that the team with more playoff points has earned that right. It isn't an infallible system, and I don't even think it very accurately identifies the better team. It's a way of deciding who gets home field advantage. That's about it. If home field advantage isn't at stake (either because of the 200-mile rule in the Regionals, or the locations used for the State Semifinals), then the POP really is deservedly irrelevant.

The lower seeded team doesn't even have a 40% chance of winning. Counting the first round the lower seeded teams win at a 30% rate roughly under the current playoff system. Political landslides start at 55%. This means that the opponents got 45% of the vote or split up among different political parties. So does beating the pointspread to make a decent profit with proper money management (win 55% of your bets). Super selective pointspread systems win more in the long run since you win at at a higher percentage, but some pros eked out good profit at 55% or so.

If your are saying that the higher CPA team hasn't earned that right to host a third round game, then why not play all the playoff games on a neutral field by your logic?

My argument was that POP/CPA is a way of assigning home-field advantage, but methodologically it has many weaknesses. I'd be very interested to see what the numbers are in games where the teams have the same record, or are within a half-game or full game of each other. It's no big surprise that 9-0 teams regularly beat 6-3 teams (which will inflate POP/CPA's success rate), but like I say, I think POP/CPA has methodological flaws.

That said, I have absolutely no problem with using it to assign home field in rounds 1-3. I was arguing against upfootball's contention that the team with higher POP/CPA should get consideration as to game location in the State Semifinals. I said that, due to the formula's flaws, once it is the case under the MHSAA's playoff format that nobody is going to enjoy home field advantage (Semifinals, 200-mile rule in Regionals), at that point it is entirely proper to throw out the POP/CPA statistic, because all it reflects is who has "earned" the right to have home field advantage when home field advantage is a possibility. When it isn't a possibility, I'm quite content to simply ignore it.

In the Big Ten, they have a series of tiebreakers to determine which team will get the automatic Rose Bowl/BCS berth in the event of a tie for the championship. I have no problem with using those tiebreakers for that purpose. Those tiebreakers are not used to break ties for other positions in the league standings, to determine which teams go to which bowls after; each bowl simply gets to pick (in a particular order) from Big Ten bowl-eligible teams. This makes sense; the tiebreakers don't necessarily make much of an effort at identifying the "best" team, so there's no reason to extend their use past what they were intended to accomplish. I see POP/CPA in much the same way. It's an effort at sorting out who will have home-field advantage in rounds 1-3 when home-field advantage is going to be awarded to one of the two teams. When it isn't going to be awarded, it's deservedly meaningless.