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| The coveted LBCS Trophy |
The Lunch Bowl Championship Series Standings are used for:
1. Determining the two restaurants that qualify to serve the LITG gang in the BCS Gump Championship Cookoff;
2. Determining any other automatic qualifiers; and
3. Establishing the pool of eligible lunch spots for at-large selection.
The LBCS Standings are released for two consecutive weeks each year, including the final Standings on Jan. 1. The Lunch in the Gump Foundation compiles and releases the Standings each week.
This year, the LBCS Standings will once again include three components: LITG US Today Readers Poll, The Montgomery Health Department Ratings Poll and an average of six computer rankings of various lunch reviewing sites such as Urban Spoon. Each component will count one-third of a restaurant's overall LBCS score in the LBCS Standings.
Ineligible For Lunch Consideration
On July 30, 2010, the LBCS announced that lunch disasters which are no longer available for lunch or have been shut down due to health hazards and the like will be removed from computer ratings for the purposes of determining the LBCS Standings. Shadow Pup shall provide a "sniff" test also.
Each of the six computer rankings providers have notified the LBCS group that ineligible lunch dives or health hazards will still be included in the individual computer rankings during the season to ensure the integrity of their data and in fairness to other active lunch spots. But, for the purpose of determining the LBCS Standings, ineligible health hazards will be removed from each computer ranking and all others below it moved up one position.
"Basically, we will take each computer ranking, remove the ineligible dives, and move all the places below the open position up one spot. It's fair, it's consistent, it's simple, and it's transparent," said Bidgood Bob, Executive Director of the LBCS and CEO of the Irritable Bowel Foundation.
The average of the six computer rankings is one-third of the components of the LBCS Standings. The three components are averaged to create the Standings, which include only lunch spots that are still eligible (according to the Health Department) to serve lunch in the Gump.
The US Today Readers Poll and the Urban Spoon Interactive Food Review Poll said earlier this summer that their polls will not include those dives that are prohibited by the Health Department from serving food to humans or their pets.
The first and only LBCS Rankings for 2010 will be released January 1.
A breakdown of the ranking components:
I. Urban Spoon Interactive Reviews (1/3rd)
Replaces the Zagat Poll since no Gump eateries are rated on Zagats. The first poll will be released October 1, then weekly through December 1. A lunch spot's score in the Urban Spoon poll will be divided by 2,825,000 which is the maximum number of points any place can receive if all 51,113 voting members rank the same eatery as Number 1.
II. Reader's a/k/a "Gumpheads" Poll (1/3rd)
A lunch spot's score in the US Today poll will be divided by 1,475,000, which is the maximum number of points any team can receive if all 59,000 voting members rank the same team as Number 1. .
(Better understanding the polls: In both human polls, voting members fill out their own top 10 rankings ballot. Each team receives 1-10 points in reverse order of the way they are ranked. The 10th place team on each ballot receives 1 point, 9th place gets 2 points, 8th receives 3 points... first place receives 10 points. This inverse point order is also applied to the computer rankings.
In the Urban Spoon and Gumpheads Poll, a restaurant will be evaluated on the number of voting points it receives in each poll. The number of actual voters, which can vary, is figured into the computation on a weekly basis in stating each resturant's percentage of a possible perfect score.
III. Health Department rankings (1/3rd)
The health department's rankings percentage is calculated by dropping the highest and lowest ranking for each restaurant and then dividing the remaining total by 100, the maximum possible points.
Simplifying the formula
The percentage totals of the Urban Spoon Interactive Poll, Gumphead Poll, and the Health Department computer rankings are then averaged. The restaurants’ averages are ranked to produce the LBCS Standings.
A = Restaurant No. 1 in Urban Spoon Poll with all voters = 1.000
B = Same Restaurant is No. 1 in Gumphead Poll with all voters = 1.000
C = Same Restaurant is No. 3 in Health Department Rankings = 0.920
Result: (A+B+C)/3 = Total Score of 0.9733
No more than two restaurants operated by the same family may be selected, regardless of whether they are automatic qualifiers or at-large selections, unless two non-champions from the same family are ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the final LBCS Standings.
If fewer than 10 restaurants are eligible for selection, then the LITG gang can select as an at-large restaurant any non-Gump restaurant with a Quizno's machine that is lunch bowl-eligible, has been reviewed at least nine times on a blog and is among the top 18 restaurants teams in the final Urban Spoon standings subject to the two-restaurant limit noted above and also subject to the following:
•1) if the health department rating is below 70, the place must be disinfected and
•(2) from the restaurants ranked 15-18, the LITG gang can select only a team from a location that has fewer than two restaurants within the same city block in the top 14.
Note: in order to participate in a LBCS cookoff, a restaurant
•(a) must be eligible to serve food to humans not confined to hospitals under the rules of the City of Montgomery Health Department and, if it not an independent local eatery, under the rules of its franchiser and
•(b) must not have imposed sanctions upon itself for unhealthy fare or for infractions of the rules of the Health Department or its franchise.
•(c) must not be sniffed out by Shadow Pup for a relative in the freezer.
Clear?
