Final 2013 Rankings Analysis

In the previous years when I used my system to rank teams during the year to see how closely it related to the final BCS poll, my rankings have been pretty close to getting the same teams in the championship team.  In 2012, I definitely had Alabama in the title game, but Notre Dame did not rise far enough up to get to the game.  The same thing happened in 2013, where Florida St was definitely in the title game, but Auburn only climbed to #17 in both of my polls using the AP preseason rankings to begin the season or have everyone start in the same position with zero points.  For both Notre Dame in 2012 and Auburn in 2013, both started very low in the preseason poll and were not able to make up the gap.  The reason I have the "Equal" poll is to combat the preseason poll bias.  With both teams either going undefeated or only having 1 loss, you would think they would have enough to climb high.  By reviewing the results of all the games Notre Dame played in 2012 and Auburn in 2013, there was a recurring theme.  The reason neither of them were able to climb high enough in my polls at the end of the year is because they both played very close games.  For example, the first game of the year, Auburn struggled to beat Washington State at home and in 2012, it took Notre Dame 3 overtimes to beat a 6-7 Pitt by 3 points.  In my system since margin of victory plays an important part in the scoring, both Notre Dame and Auburn had very low margins of victory and therefore did not get as many points as they could.  Now in Auburn's defense, playing in a really tough SEC West and SEC in whole, of course the games will be closer, but they were not winning more convincing in the other games they should have that cost them.  The same thing for Notre Dame in 2012, they had many close games when some of them shouldn't have been so close.  Overall, I need to come up with some tweaks to solve this issue.  I have an idea about giving bonus points for winning your conference.  That still won't help Notre Dame, but it's their own fault for not committing to be a full fledged  member of a conference.