“The process by which College Football awards its outstanding players has up until now been tainted with bias. Reporters and coaches vote for players within their own regions; the media promotes certain favorite candidates at the expense of others; and most importantly, there are no objective criteria on the basis of which players are judged. All that, however, is about to change. Brad Smith’s College Football Performance Awards system is based on a set of objective criteria that reflect the extent to which players at various positions increase the overall effectiveness of their team. The system is devoid of the inherent biases and flaws that infect the current vote-for-your-favorite-player method. And the result is an award system that finally answers the question everyone is really asking: Who are the best performers in college football?”

-Paul Studtmann, Academic Review Chair

ACADEMIC REVIEW #1

“By employing a careful, vetted empirical methodology, CFPA promises to set straight many of the wrongheaded, arbitrary and exclusionary methods currently employed to assess player awards in Division I FBS football.”

-Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College

Andrew Zimbalist is arguably the world’s pre-eminent sports economist. Zimbalist has been in the Economics Department at Smith College since 1974. He has written over a dozen books on sports and has served as a consultant to players’ associations, cities, companies, and leagues in the sports industry.

ACADEMIC REVIEW #2

GORDON MARINO, PROFESSOR OF SPORTS ETHICS, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

CURATOR OF HONG KIERKEGAARD LIBRARY
PROFESSIONAL BOXER
FOOTBALL COACH, YALE UNIVERSITY

“The College Football Performance Awards seems to provide an interesting new way to provide both new, objective measures of excellence in college football, and also an opportunity for fans to think in new ways about precisely what excellent performance in football means. The College Football Performance Awards may help improve the scientific literacy of generations of fans while adding to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the game.”

-Lawrence Krauss, Director – Origins Initiative

According to Scientific American, Lawrence Krauss is one of the few ‘public intellectuals’ in the sciences. Krauss is Director of the Origins Initiative, which annually hosts roughly 6 Nobel Prize Laureates and 6 public intellectuals in the sciences. In addition to authoring several hundred science articles, Krauss is Science Advisor to President Barack Obama, a former CERN associate, and the only physicist to have won the highest honor from each of the major American Physics societies.

“Who receives attention and accolades in society and why they do tells one a great deal about its values. Awards for student athletes are an ideal window onto what matters today, particularly in the world of sport. Recipients of the prestigious awards currently presented each year come from well funded athletic programs with polished media relations departments, appear on television regularly, and attend large schools with evenly large fan bases. While purpoting to recognize the best athletes, these awards have become little more than media spectacles and popularity contests. The College Football Performance Awards promises a hopeful alternative, one which would truly identify the best players through a careful study of their contributions on the playing field. In contrast with current awards, CFPA has a clear methodology that works against bias, avoids the dangers of regional popularity and national celebrity, and demonstrates in a reliable fashion the most talented performers.”

-C. Richard King, Past-President, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport

C. Richard King is Past-President of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. He is currently Chair of the Department for Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University, and he has written dozens of articles in the sociology of sport.

“Most current sports ranking systems are very unscientific. Some even resemble popularity contests whereby the most popular or well-known individuals or teams repeatedly win awards and receive the invitations to prestigious tournaments. This is not only unfair but unfortunate. With the amount of data being collected today for all sports on all levels, sports rankings and award systems are perfectly suited to quantitative analysis. Consequently, a rigorous quantitative scientific method such as Brad Smith’s CFPA system is a welcome addition for fans and players demanding equity in sports awards.”

-Amy Langville, Mathematics Professor, College of Charleston

Amy Langville, a former Division I basketball player, is Professor of Mathematics at the College of Charleston. Langville is the author of Runner-up Science Book of the Year, Google’s PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings. Langville’s distinguished career in science includes professional research and consulting for the NSA (National Security Agency), the Boeing Company, the Center for Research in Scientific Computation, and the SAS (Statistical Analysis System) Institute.