The USA Today has a story that one of the six BCS computer models (Colley Matrix) has Notre Dame as the number 1 team after their loss to Alabama. My NCAA FBS Production Model has Notre Dame as the #9 most productive team in the nation at the end of the bowl season.
In the past my model has disagreed with the final ranking - say last season when the model had Wisconsin as the most productive team (with three losses) and not Alabama. This to me is less of a concern for my model since I am interested in ranking teams based on their on-field production as measured by the marginal value of various on field statistics. Hence a "computer model" can incorporate a number of factors that the human cannot or has an implicit bias as I blogged about over at the wagesofwins.
In an of itself, one model ranking Notre Dame as #1 does not mean that computer or statistical models are invalid, just like one human voting that is contrary to conventional wisdom means that humans should not rank NCAA FBS teams. Rather, my argument is that there should be more computer NCAA FBS ranking models which would give a more accurate picture of how computer models rank team in the aggregate - as opposed to only six.