Rivalry Week Top 25 & Look Ahead

I started writing this at a reasonable time, but I had some distractions and decided to add an extra section. I settled on just one picture to get it published faster. Even my cat is wondering what’s taking so long.

CFP Reaction and Playoff Considerations

The committee has had last-second changes of heart before, but I think they’re still telegraphing pretty clearly that the Pac-12 championship game is for a playoff spot. They don’t care if Oregon only has the 52nd toughest schedule, compared to Alabama having the #5 schedule (vs. FBS), Ohio St. having the #25 schedule, and Texas having the #31 schedule. (Texas did not play an FCS opponent, so I’d argue for the Longhorns ahead of the Buckeyes assuming a win this weekend.) They just love Bo Nix and his passes that travel all of five yards in the air regardless of the competition. I’m usually for undefeated teams that keep getting lucky (like Washington) to lose but not in this case. I don’t dislike Oregon or Bo Nix, I’ve talked about him and his family positively on this blog. I just hate these hype campaigns and biased “eye tests” that ignore facts.

Anyway, a secondary issue is that Ohio St. is too high as the #2 one-loss team according to the committee, but I highly doubt Alabama stays behind the idle Buckeyes if the Tide beat Georgia. I’d be more worried if I were Texas. I’ve talked about how if it came down to Texas and Alabama, Texas would go ahead due to head-to-head; but there is no such issue if the last spot were to come down to Ohio St. and Alabama. Just keep that in mind if you’re counting on Saban not being in the Playoff.

I did notice something that I believe helps a potential argument for an SEC team to either be in the playoff with one loss or be #1 even if there are multiple undefeated teams. It’s that the top 5 teams in the SEC (Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss, Missouri, and LSU) have only lost to each other or to a team in the CFP top 7 (or in my top 7).

The only two home losses by the top 5 of the SEC were Alabama to Texas and Missouri to LSU. I mention that because it generally took a hostile environment combined with a very good team to bring these teams down. I think given that Ole Miss had to play both championship contenders (both on the road) and beat LSU, they belong ahead of Missouri, but that’s another mystery of the committee. Maybe they just don’t like Lane Kiffin’s tweets.

So if Alabama wins, they will have beaten three of the four other teams in the top 5 (all but Missouri). If Georgia wins, they will also have beaten three of the four other teams (all but LSU).

Anyway, you obviously don’t get that kind of quality anywhere else. I have been an advocate for Oregon St., but they have four losses now and even this committee who loves the Pac-12 only has them 20th. That’s a big drop off. They lost to a Washington St. team who finished with a losing record. Arizona, who’s become the darling Pac-12 team lately, lost to a mediocre USC team and lost to Mississippi St., who like Wazzu finishes with a losing record.

You can go three teams deep in the Big Ten, but Big Ten #4 Iowa has that ugly loss to Minnesota, who also finished with a losing record. It wasn’t necessarily a fair loss, but maybe if the Golden Gophers had needed another score to win, it would have changed the way the game ended. The point is the top of the SEC isn’t nearly as threatened with mediocrity as the top of these other conferences has been.

I shouldn’t even have to mention the Big XII. The team that made the title game (they don’t have divisions, so they’re not #4 and lucked into the title game like Iowa did, they actually finished second overall in the conference {winning a tie-breaker over Oklahoma}) lost to South Alabama by 26, to Iowa St. by 7, and to Central Florida by 42! Those three teams each barely qualified for a bowl, and South Alabama is 6-6 despite playing in the Sun Belt. Losing to Oklahoma, a team who lost to Oklahoma St., should count against Texas even if the Longhorns will have beaten the Cowboys. And it shouldn’t be brushed off as, “Texas only lost a team who tied for second in their conference, no big deal.”

I took some criticism this week in one of the discussion groups I’m in for not thinking head-to-head tie-breakers are always fair. The Big XII is a perfect example. Texas was the #1 team. I think if two teams are tied for second, the first question should be “did you play the #1 team?” If the answer for one is yes and the other is no, the team who answered yes should win the tie-breaker. You don’t reward the team who answered no and lost to worst teams (Oklahoma St. and Kansas went a combined 12-6 in the Big XII; Iowa St. and Central Florida went a combined 9-9).

So let’s say undefeated Florida St., undefeated Michigan, 1-loss Oregon, 1-loss Georgia, 1-loss Washington, 1-loss Ohio St., 1-loss Texas, and 1-loss Alabama. We can put the undefeated teams aside, but I think when you rank the one-loss teams by resume, the first thing you should ask is “was the one loss to one of the teams in this pool of playoff candidates”. If it was, those teams should get a leg up. In this case, that would be all the 1-loss teams except Texas. Then we’d talk about wins. Texas and Alabama will have had the two best wins in my opinion, but then who’s #2 and #3? Texas’s would be borderline top-25 teams Kansas St. and Oklahoma St. Alabama’s would be solid top-15 teams Ole Miss and LSU. I don’t think you ignore that because Texas was the better team on a given Saturday in September.

I’m not saying how you sort out the rest of that mess if it happens, but I am saying I think in that scenario I’d like to see Alabama with a higher ranking than Texas. I like a fair national championship system more than I like to see Nick Saban upset, but it’s a close call, so I won’t be all that angry if Texas goes ahead. This isn’t SEC homerism either. I mentioned Georgia. I’d have to see how the numbers shake out, but right now I have Georgia 81st in schedule strength vs. FBS and Texas 31st. They’ll get closer this weekend but not that much closer; and as mentioned, I’d give Texas an edge for not having played an FCS opponent also. In addition, I’m also in favor of resolving doubts in favor of conference champions, at least while we still have a 4-team playoff. So I’d want a 1-loss Texas ahead of a 1-loss Georgia.

LSU’s Defense Going Forward

The drumbeats about LSU needing a new defensive coordinator continue despite the results over the weekend seemingly casting down on that necessity.

Texas A&M recently scored 51 points against Mississippi St., a team against which Ole Miss only managed 17 points on Thanksgiving. The Aggies managed less than 60% of that total against LSU on Saturday.

Are they really sure LSU’s defense hasn’t improved from giving up 55 to Ole Miss?

Also, they keep repeating the idea that the LSU coaching staff was not able to make defensive adjustments. That’s interesting given that Texas A&M scored 24 points in the first 39 minutes (0.62 points per minute) and only 6 in the remaining 21 minutes (0.29 points per minute).

Jayden Daniels breaks free of the Texas A&M front seven in the first half in Baton Rouge on Saturday. Although two of the touchdowns were 1-yard runs by running backs, Daniels led the Tigers to six touchdown drives versus just three punts against the best defense the Tigers have faced all season. Daniels accounted for 235 yards passing and 120 yards rushing. LSU runs its record to 9-3 against the Aggies since the latter joined the SEC in 2012. Texas A&M has not won in Baton Rouge since 1994.

Texas A&M is the second-beat team LSU beat. Against the best team, the Tigers were also improved in the second half. Missouri had scored 25 in the first half against LSU and only 14 in the second half. Then the anti-House activists say weird things like, “if LSU doesn’t get a pick-6, they might have lost that game.” Is that not a good defensive play? It’s just bizarre. They also say that about Greg Penn’s interception against Texas A&M, by the way, even though if you add 7 points to A&M’s total, LSU still wins comfortably. Remember, LSU went into victory formation on first and goal.

Alabama did score 21 in each half; but in the second half, the Tide was aided by an interception of their own deep in LSU territory. Alabama was scoreless over the last 13 minutes. Obviously, they had no urgency to score with Jayden Daniels sidelined and a 14-point lead, but Alabama does not fail to score points at the end of games just to be nice. And that’s a close enough margin not to put all the bench warmers in to see what happens.

Speaking of Alabama, they gave up 6 more points to Auburn last weekend than LSU did. Maybe Saban doesn’t know what he’s doing, right? I know he’s not the coordinator, but I think every knows the buck stops with him on defense at least.

The game before Texas A&M was against Georgia St., a Sun Belt team roughly equivalent to the South Alabama team I mentioned in the previous section (so not the type of team completely incapable of an upset of a top 25 opponent). They scored 14 points in the first 17:15 of the game, but they didn’t score again after that. Are we sure no adjustment was made to ensure that?

I’m not saying Matt House is the best defensive coordinator LSU can get or that he’s worth the salary he’s being paid. But like I was saying about the playoff committee, I really don’t like when facts and a fair evaluation of those facts is pushed aside to push a narrative. It’s the worst defense ever. There were never any improvements at any point during a given game or during the season. Every time they held someone below 20, it’s because the opposing offense was trash and really should have been shut out. This is what the LSU radio shows and podcasts say almost every day.

Before the Alabama game, some of these same commentators admitted that since halftime of the Missouri game, the LSU defense had gotten better. This is when they were pushing the narrative that LSU had a good chance in that game.

Now that they’re pushing the narrative that Jayden Daniels was perfect even in the losses (to be fair, he was pretty close to perfect in the loss to Ole Miss), it’s back to pretending there was functionally no defense at all at any point in any SEC game. I’d like to see Jayden Daniels win the Heisman as much as anyone, but you can just say (accurately) there were a lot of defensive struggles without which he would have had more possessions and a better record. You don’t have to ignore every modicum of success the defense had.

It seems that LSU is not doing all that great in getting defense recruits even though they need them. The media hosts I’m talking about think that’s proof of what they’re saying. I think it’s more proof that the things they’re saying are being believed, not that they’re all true. So the lies and exaggerations that might be made with the idea of helping Jayden Daniels (and that’s my attempt to be charitable about the motivations) might be doing some harm in other areas.

Comments About My Top 25

Michigan had 99.92% as many points (if we set #133 Kent St. at 0 points) as Washington, so it was an extremely close call for #1. I think this is the first time I’ve ever personally ranked Washington #1. I did think they were better than U. Miami in 1991 though. Georgia, who was only playing Georgia Tech, was not surprisingly passed up by Michigan. That does not mean the Bulldogs won’t be in the running for #1 with a win over Alabama though.

I think most of the other teams moved up in a logical and predictable way. You still get a fair amount of credit for beating teams that aren’t in the top 25, and there are a few that are that don’t cause too much damage. That’s why you see a big jump by North Carolina St. Similarly, Louisville only fell a few spots for losing to Kentucky. Oregon St. has lost three out of five games, but they were all to teams ranked higher, so I don’t mind them being #25. The alternative was Kansas St., who just lost to #39 Iowa St.

The Wildcats lead my honorable mentions list though, trading places with Oklahoma St. North Carolina and UNLV lost and were replaced by Kansas and Utah, who were still hanging around after recently falling out of the top 25. Clemson and Memphis remained on the list from last week.

My Top 25

Rank	Team	Last
1	Washington	2
2	Michigan	4
3	Georgia	3
4	Texas	5
5	Alabama	6
6	Florida St.	7
7	Ohio St.	1
8	Oregon	9
9	Penn St.	8
10	Ole Miss	10
11	Oklahoma	11
12	Iowa	15
13	Missouri	12
14	James Madison	18
15	LSU	17
16	Louisville	13
17	Liberty	14
18	N Carolina St.	24
19	Tulane	22
20	Toledo	20
21	Notre Dame	19
22	Troy	21
23	Oklahoma St.	—
24	Arizona	25
25	Oregon St.	23

Out of Top 25: (16) Kansas St.

Honorable mention: Kansas St., Clemson, Memphis, Kansas, Utah

Week 12 Top 25 and CFP Reaction

First, I want to note that I’ve updated the LSU-Arkansas series blog. I didn’t mention that if you didn’t watch the game, the final score is misleading. The LSU defense was extremely dominant, and the 13-3 late edge seemed almost insurmountable, although of course one more late play could have made the difference in the game. This was the third consecutive game in the series that was decided by three points and the third consecutive win by the road team, both firsts in series history.

Assuming I have time, I’ll write more about potential playoff scenarios later, but I’ll just make general comments about the ratings. I did wait to publish this until after the College Football Playoff (CFP) rankings.

The Race for #5

Since someone will lose between Ohio St. and Michigan, both currently ranked highly enough to make the four-team playoff, there is a lot of interest in who #5 is or will be.

Although in my rankings (and in the CFP’s), LSU stayed ahead of USC, I don’t necessarily fault the rankings that allowed the Trojans to go ahead. Obviously, UCLA is significantly better than UAB and the combination of UCLA and Notre Dame is significantly better than the combination of UAB and Texas A&M; but I just hope that LSU and USC can switch places just as easily if LSU beats a much better team on December 3. Even in my ratings, I expect the Trojans will go ahead with a win (over Notre Dame) after the games this weekend.

The CFP committee doesn’t let us know how close USC is to overtaking LSU, so we will just have to guess there, but I do think if they didn’t move USC ahead now, it would indicate that either (1) they aren’t going to move the Trojans ahead next week either or (2) if they do, it would be a very close call and can be just as easily switched back by LSU beating a better team in the conference championship game.  Despite what Bo Nix says, I think Oregon (assuming they make the title game… more about the “civil war” opponent below) is still a good bit behind Georgia.  If Oregon loses, that makes it worse for USC regardless of whether the Ducks still make the championship game (I think they would need Washington to lose in that scenario.)

I do have Clemson ahead of LSU right now, but I also think a win over Georgia would overcome the deficit.  It may be closer than I would have thought previously given South Carolina’s win over Tennessee.  The Gamecocks have a reasonable chance of winning the in-state rivalry though.  That win by an SEC team would also give LSU a higher rating in comparison to other competitors for #4. 

I think I value many of the same things the committee does, but I think they have a dim view of Clemson for a few reasons. For one, they just don’t seem that capable of scoring the points to keep up with a good offense; and it’s just very rare that your defense can be dominant enough against a good team (and they were anything but against Notre Dame) to compensate. In my ratings, you can win every game 7-3 and you get the same number of points as if you win 77-3 or 77-73. (I do take off a little if you win close games by three or fewer at home though.). For another, although they have played a long list of above-average teams, they’ve only played two teams in the top 20, and they’re only 1-1 against those teams. Also, those two teams each have three losses apiece. When I add in the “weighted” ratings, that’s meant to give extra credit for playing some of the best teams; but the overall ratings do not have the extreme focus on best opponents that the committee has.

Shifting ratings of prior opponents has some impact upon teams moving up and down in my ratings, but I think they’re still pretty stable being that there were only two teams that fell out of the top 25 (and they both obviously deserved to).

Although I think every reasonable ratings system has Georgia #1, there are some shortcomings being that the Bulldogs didn’t play any of the top three teams of the SEC West. If they’d played Alabama or Ole Miss, it would help LSU more to win that game. At least before the Texas A&M game, Auburn (whom Georgia plays every year) looked like the worst team in the SEC West. Mississippi St. isn’t the best either, although maybe those Bulldogs will win the Egg Bowl. I think a two-loss LSU would be a deserving #4 regardless, but I’m just talking about the numbers right now.

Other Developments in the Rankings

Tennessee’s falling four spots was reasonable.  I think they should remain ahead of Alabama.  I don’t think head-to-head is a good reason alone (given that it means the worse loss is worse for Tennessee), but the fact that Tennessee has played Georgia and Alabama hasn’t is a good reason.  Both Tennessee and Alabama have played LSU in the same stadium, and we know how those games went.

It’s also helping LSU that Florida St. has been increasing its standing.  Although I generally like Florida St. better, I’m used to having more mixed feelings in their games against Florida because I usually want to make LSU look better.  But in this year, it’s the opposite since (although LSU has played both) I think it’s better if a team LSU lost to increases its rating instead of the fourth or fifth team the Tigers will have beaten doing so.

You might have expected some of the teams to fall more due to losses, but a loss to a good team this late in the year doesn’t hurt too much given that each successive game is a lower percentage of the total.  Even a loss to a team that is destined for a less-than-impressive bowl game isn’t catastrophic.  I have a couple of SEC results in mind.  If you’re Central Florida, you can’t lose to Navy though.

Oregon St.’s rise may seem unusual, but all of their best prior opponents have been improving. Fresno St. lost its first four games against FBS opponents but has won all six since then. Boise St. started 1-2 against FBS opponents and is now 7-3 in such games. Washington St. has won three games in a row to improve to 7-4 overall. You’re probably already familiar with the gradual improvements of USC, Utah, and Washington. Although USC was high in the polls all year, they didn’t justify it much until later in the season.

Without commenting on the Playoff, USC appears to be the team to beat west of the DFW Metroplex. After struggling to score at times in the first half, the Trojans scored touchdowns, including the one above by WR Kyle Ford on the first play of the fourth quarter, on their first four possessions in the second half to take a 10-point lead in the Rose Bowl on Saturday. After UCLA threw a late interception, USC held on for a 48-45 win.

Finally, Texas has improved in recent weeks as the Oklahoma win has gotten stronger and the Alabama and TCU losses have been hurting the Longhorns less.  Some may wonder how they could possibly be ahead of Kansas St., but you can’t just look at records and conference membership.

Even within the same conference, a better strength of schedule can compensate for a loss. Obviously, Alabama is a much better team than Tulane, and even Texas’s second-best out-of-conference opponent (UTSA) is comparable to Tulane (and they actually rate better as an opponent although not overall). It also helps that Texas did not play an FCS team. Kansas St. not only played an FCS team, but that team is only 3-7 within the FCS (3-8 overall). I think TCU playing Texas again would make for a better game, but I guess we’ll see how it goes.

The Horned Frogs finish with Iowa St. and most likely Kansas St., two of the old Big XII North opponents (only three of which remain in the Big XII after the departures of Nebraska, Colorado, and Missouri). The Wildcats play Kansas, the only other former Big XII North team still in the conference. If Kansas St. wins, they’re in the championship game. If not, they’d need Texas to lose to Baylor. Even though I already think Texas is the better team, I suspect the committee would like TCU better if they beat two-loss Kansas St. rather than three-loss Texas.

Top 25

Rank	Team	Last
1	Georgia	1
2	Ohio St.	2
3	Texas Christian	3
4	Michigan	4
5	Clemson	6
6	LSU	8
7	USC	9
8	Tennessee	4
9	Alabama	7
10	Penn St.	11
11	Oregon	14
12	Utah	12
13	Florida St.	18
14	Troy	20
15	Notre Dame	15
16	Oregon St.	—
17	N Carolina	10
18	Texas	—
19	Ole Miss	16
20	Tulane	23
21	Kansas St.	21
22	TX-San Antonio	23
23	UCLA	13
24	Washington	22
25	Coastal Carolina	19
—	Central Florida	17
—	Oklahoma St.	25

Week 11 Top 25

This is kind of a rushed post. I always add the new rankings Saturday night or Sunday morning even if it takes until it’s sunrise for some of you; but for those who subscribe by email, it will not notify you when that is posted. Feel free to check whenever you get up on Sunday. I don’t always manage to post the conference ratings until Sunday afternoon though. By that time, I’ve also usually checked to see if any teams are out of place to make any needed corrections.

Until now, the top 25 in the blog was different from the computer top 25; but now that I’ve added the “weighted” component of the ratings, that will no longer be the case.

I apologize for this being so late, but normally I don’t even have to respond to anything work-related after 4:30 Pacific, but I was given a bunch of work right before 4:30 since one of my colleagues is on vacation. I didn’t want to have to scramble around at the last minute on Sunday, and of course I don’t want to be at all distracted on Saturday.

I also didn’t have time to update the Arkansas rivalry blog, but I should be able to update both that and the Texas A&M series this weekend. Obviously the A&M one will need to be updated again in about 8 days, so it’s possible I might wait until then.

LSU players gather around the LSU/Arkansas rivalry trophy in Fayetteville on Saturday. I can’t tell who the players in the back are, but the ones in front are (l to r) WR Jaray Jenkins, P Jay Bramblett, and S Sage Ryan.

I’ll only comment briefly about the top 25 given time constraints of it being late and there being games in less than 14 hours.

Commentary about Rankings Changes

Tennessee has passed up Michigan, but this is rather academic being that the Ohio St./Michigan winner is expected to pass up the Vols and remain ahead until the bowl season. The loser is expected to be behind the Vols and stay there until the bowl season.

With the win over Ole Miss, Alabama has passed up the Tigers, but this also likely doesn’t mean much as to the final pre-bowl ratings. If LSU loses a third game and Alabama doesn’t (unlikely against FCS Austin Peay or Auburn), Alabama will be ahead. If LSU beats UAB, Texas A&M, and Georgia, LSU will be ahead regardless of what the Tide does. I’m not making promises aout the top 4, but LSU may also pass up multiple other teams, especially those who don’t play a championship game, with wins in the remaining contests.

I doubt it has a bearing on the national championship picture, but the Pac-12 is very interesting. I was correct in suggesting people pay attention to the Washington-Oregon game last week. Putting the Huskies’ new rating aside, the Pac-12 now has four teams between #9 and #13. That’s interesting enough, but all four of those teams play another one of those teams this weekend. There will be two one-loss teams and possibly three two-loss teams in the conference heading into the final weekend. The championship now involves the best two teams, so every two-loss team after this week may still have a realistic chance if one of the winners were to lose next week.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about Texas-San Antonio (who mostly has moved up by virtue of not losing in not-very-good conference, or Oklahoma St., who has been in and out of the top 25 due to inconsistent performance.

But there is another interesting new team, which is Central Florida. You may have heard of them. The Knights will potentially unseat Tulane from a New Years Six spot by virtue of beating the Green Wave; however, there is also some potential drama in the closing weeks regarding crowning a champion of the American conference. The Knights, who have beaten both teams already, will most likely play the winner of Cincinnati (which made the Playoff last year) and Tulane (set for November 26) in championship week.

I completely disagree with championship games that simply match the two best teams, particularly when they involve a rematch (which, if the winner has a better record, is completely unfair to whomever won the first time), but it does help make for some excitement.

Top 25

Rank	Team	Last
1	Georgia	1
2	Ohio St.	2
3	Texas Christian	3
4	Tennessee	5
5	Michigan	4
6	Clemson	6
7	Alabama	11
8	LSU	8
9	USC	9
10	N Carolina	15
11	Penn St.	17
12	Utah	13
13	UCLA	7
14	Oregon	10
15	Notre Dame	18
16	Ole Miss	12
17	Central Florida	—
18	Florida St.	18
19	Coastal Carolina	21
20	Troy	24
21	Kansas St.	20
22	Washington	—
23	Tulane	16
24	TX San Antonio	—
25	Oklahoma St.	—
—	N Carolina St.	14
—	Texas	19
—	Syracuse	22
—	Liberty	25

Week 10 Top 25 & Week 11 Preview

I got more views this week than I’ve gotten since the pandemic, so welcome to anyone who might be new here. Happy Veterans Day as well.

I thought about making this week the week where I removed the subjective input into the top 25 below (see here for the completely objective unweighted ratings as of right now), but the weighted rankings aren’t quite where I want them yet.  This coming week may clear up a few things.  I think the big game to watch will be in the SEC again, Alabama against Ole Miss.  I’m not one to be sympathetic to Alabama; but win or lose it was going to be hard for them to physically and mentally recover from Saturday and play another road game that could help decide the SEC West (somehow LSU is in the driver’s seat now though).

Oregon-Washington is an interesting upset opportunity.  The Huskies just beat a ranked Oregon St. team for their third straight win, and UO-UW is a rivalry game for both teams.  They’re often the two best Pacific Northwest teams, especially now that Boise St. has reverted to mediocrity, and both teams are a little more high-profile than their respective in-state counterparts.

Washington RB Sean McGrew is tripped up for a loss last year in Seattle. The Huskies were held to an average of 2.3 yards per carry and did not score a touchdown until the fourth quarter as Oregon won 26-16, the Ducks’ third straight win in the series. The previous two games in the series (2018 and 2019) were decided by a total of only seven points though.

It will also be interesting to see if Clemson bounces back against Louisville.  The Cardinals have won four in a row after a 2-3 start.

There are two other matchups of ranked teams according to the polls.  TCU travels down the I-35 to Austin, and Central Florida visits New Orleans to play Tulane.  I want to make sure not to over-rate TCU or Tulane for having good records but not playing great competition.  Either they’ll earn their ranking a little bit better or they’ll prove the skeptics right.

Also, I thought there was enough overhaul going on this week as is with the two big SEC games and the instability of the ACC and the Big XII.  It’s hard to balance record versus big games.  I want to make sure teams like Alabama aren’t penalized too much for losses to very competitive teams; but if I lessen the effect of “good” losses, Tennessee could be as high as #2.  I’m not sure that’s appropriate either. 

With Arkansas’s loss to Liberty, the Big XII is starting to creep up on the SEC.  We will know a lot more the last two weeks of the season though.  Almost half of the SEC plays out of conference in two weeks, and then there are the annual rivalry games the following week.  I at least expect Georgia to beat Georgia Tech, but anything can happen in the others: Kentucky-Louisville, Florida-Florida St., and South Carolina-Clemson.

Speaking of the Big XII and Rivalry Week, I like that KU and K-State are now playing one another at the end of the season unlike in prior years; and they’re both pretty good now.  TCU will likely finish in first place in the Big XII regular season being that the Horned Frogs are two games ahead, but K-State is part of a 3-way tie for second with Baylor and Texas (who play one another during Rivalry Week).  Kansas is tied for fourth with Oklahoma St.  Every team has three games left. There are no late bye weeks or late out-of-conference games like there are in the SEC.

Among the conferences (these are listed after the team ratings), the Pac-12 and Big Ten were almost tied for a distant third, but they’re both rather top-heavy.  The ACC is more split along divisional lines, and obviously the top ACC team took a big hit out of conference.  At least the ACC is still one of the top five conferences.  There is a big separation among the non-Power-5 conferences though.  The American, the Sun Belt, and the independents are leaning toward respectability, while the CUSA, Mountain West, and MAC lag way behind.

Top 25

Rank	Team	Last
1	Georgia	5
2	Ohio St.	2
3	Texas Christian	4
4	Michigan	6
5	Tennessee	3
6	Clemson	1
7	UCLA	10
8	LSU	13
9	USC	11
10	Oregon	9
11	Alabama	7
12	Ole Miss	8
13	Utah	14
14	N Carolina St.	23
15	N Carolina	20
16	Tulane	15
17	Penn St.	17
18	Notre Dame	—
19	Texas	—
20	Kansas St.	16
21	Coastal Carolina	—
22	Syracuse	18
23	Florida St.	—
24	Troy	—
25	Liberty	24
—	Illinois	12
—	Oklahoma St.	19
—	Oregon St.	21
—	Wake Forest	22
—	Maryland	25

2021 Week 4 Top 25

rank team last
1 Alabama 1
2 Georgia 2
3 Oregon 5
4 Penn St. 4
5 Florida 7
6 Ohio St. 8
7 Cincinnati 6
8 Iowa 3
9 B. Young 9
10 Coastal Car. 13
11 Arkansas 17
12 Oklahoma 11
13 Notre Dame 15
14 Oklahoma St. 16
15 Texas 19
16 Ole Miss 20
17 Michigan 22
18 Michigan St. 23
19 Texas A&M 14
20 Baylor —
21 Fresno St. 21
22 Louisville —
23 C. Florida —
24 UCLA 25
25 San Diego St. —

Out of rankings: (10) Clemson, (12) Liberty, (18) Iowa St., (24) Wyoming

Sorry this is so late.  Normally I would push a blog back at this hour, but it had to be posted given that it’s now Saturday on the east coast.

I don’t usually drop a team as far as I did Clemson, but that’s the danger with leaving a 1-loss team in the top 25 at this time of the season.  Two losses is too high a percentage of the season to stay ranked, but at the same time losing to what looks like one of the best teams so far shouldn’t necessarily knock you out of the top 10.

Liberty also fell all the way out, but I don’t think I’ll get much push-back there.

I can’t get on board with some of the other ACC teams I’ve seen getting votes right now.  North Carolina looks bad.  North Carolina St. lost to Mississippi St.  In its only games of note, Wake Forest beat Virginia, who has another loss and it’s to North Carolina, and Florida St.  No need to elaborate about the ’Noles. 

Some lazy pollsters ranked Auburn, but the Tigers should at least go win in Baton Rouge if they want to show there is something special about this year’s team as compared to others from the Plains in recent years.  Maybe Penn St. was a moral victory in the eyes of some, but if there are undefeated teams with actual victories over opponents of some quality, I’ll take them instead.

Iowa struggled against an opponent Vanderbilt beat, so I had to knock them down a bit.  Plus Iowa St. lost again.  I did give Baylor credit for the win over the Cyclones, but again I don’t think it’s appropriate to rank a two-loss team at this point in the season.

Louisville LB Jaylin Alderman made his only snap of the game count when he returned an interception for a touchdown to break the tie in the final 30 seconds against Central Florida.

I’m giving some delayed credit to Louisville, who beat Central Florida two weeks ago.  I took the Knights out but didn’t put the Cardinals in.  Some other teams fell below Central Florida and Louisville last week more than either adding anything significant to their respective resumes.  Reminder that the Knights beat Boise St., who had a strong win over Utah St. last week.  The Broncos did suffer one other loss, but it was to Oklahoma St., so they may be ranked in the coming weeks if they continue to do well in the Mountain West.

Speaking of which, I decided to take Wyoming out (Ball St. isn’t as good as i thought they were previously; also, the Cowboys barely beat Connecticut) and replace them with another Mountain West team, San Diego St.  The Aztecs are 2-0 against the Pac-12, although Arizona barely counts.  Utah is a respectable win though, at least based on information available so far.

A 12-team Playoff Is a Horrible Idea

As you might have noticed, I didn’t blog much last year.  My main interest in writing about college football is to discuss methods of evaluating and ranking teams, especially my own system.  I don’t think there is any good way to do that when some teams play 5 games and others play 12 games.  I don’t think there is any good way to do that when several major conferences don’t play any (or at least not any meaningful) interconference games.

I was going to wait until after the College World Series for my next blog.  In past years, I’ve done sort of a summary of the major sports for the academic year.  I guess this year I’ll include the 2019 football season since that was the only major championship in the previous academic year.

Anyway, those plans changed when I saw the proposal to triple the size of the College Football Playoff.  It so happens that at least LSU baseball is over for the season today, but I started writing this Friday.

The best argument for expanding the Playoff AT ALL (putting aside adding 8 teams) is that the current format doesn’t give access to teams from outside of the Power 5 (P5; SEC, Big XII, ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12) conferences. 

I’ve criticized the committee for going out of its way to denigrate Group of 5 (G5; the other football conferences) teams, but nothing about even an undefeated G5 team like Central Florida made me question the legitimacy of the 2017 Playoff, for instance.  The last two games the Knights played that year, they needed two overtimes to beat then-#20 Memphis in Orlando and won another close game over 3-loss Auburn, who was then ranked 7^th. 

Shaquem Griffin sacks Auburn Quarterback Jared Stidham during the Peach Bowl on New Year’s Day 2018.

The Knights had a great season, don’t get me wrong, but playing exciting games against teams like that doesn’t mean people need to you see playing for a national championship.  Even if we assume the same result would have taken place had the game been at Auburn in early December, I don’t think being blown out by Alabama or Clemson in the quarterfinals would have made any team feel better or been enjoyable for the fans.

Regardless, if we went back to a more statistical model like the BCS (which was originally half objective and later reduced to 1/3), there would likely be G5 teams who finished in the top 4. 

In 2010, for instance, TCU (which was then in the Mountain West) actually finished third in the BCS.  All of the people who happily responded to the abolition of the BCS because they didn’t have to do math anymore should re-evaluate that decision rather than giving the committee control over the postseasons of 12 teams rather than 4.  Let’s also remember that it wasn’t the objective criteria that put two teams from the same division in the championship in 2011: it was the voters.

Based on what we’ve seen from the committee, any G5 team will have to play on the road against a team the committee ranked #5-8.  Then if they win that, they can then be one of 8 teams to play for the championship.  Since it would require 4 wins, one on the road, that’s not an extremely realistic path to a national championship.  It would be a much better path to have a neutral-site game between the #4 P5 team and the best G5 team every year for the last spot in a 4-team Playoff (meaning 3 total wins, all at neutral sites).  In short, adding 8 teams to the equation rather than one isn’t the best way for a G5 team to have a chance, so let’s drop that pretext.    

The quality of the arguments for this arrangement goes down from there.

One is the conference championship games (CCGs) should be for a spot in the Playoff.  Unless all 10 conferences are sending teams, that just deepens the separation between the P5 and the G5. 

Do people remember how bad some teams in major conference championships have been?  In 2011, UCLA had to get a special exemption just to be bowl-eligible when the Bruins fell to 6-7 after losing to Oregon.  Obviously, the Bruins didn’t win the game, but upsets between teams that shouldn’t be close on paper have happened in these games.  One of the big CCG upsets was back in 2001 when LSU (with 3 conference losses) beat Tennessee.  It was very exciting that the Tigers got back to the Sugar Bowl (or any major bowl) for the first time in 15 years, but it would have been silly (and potentially embarrassing) for them to play for a national championship.  They also played another conference champion, Illinois.  The Big Ten has been good lately, but that wasn’t always the case.  Wisconsin won the Big Ten despite 5 losses in 2012.  Having a shot at winning the Rose Bowl wasn’t reward enough?

LSU quarterback Matt Mauck, not to be confused with former Missouri quarterback Maty Mauk, evades pressure in the 2001 SEC Championship Game. Mauck ran for 50 yards and threw for 67 in relief of Rohan Davey before being named MVP of the game.

Those were entertaining bowl games, but Numbers 1 to 4 shouldn’t risk injury by having to beat such a team just to get into the semifinals.  I think it’s actually one of the good things about college football that you can win a major post-season game and end your season on a high note without winning the whole thing.    Winning the Rose Bowl or the Sugar Bowl in a non-championship year will be little more than a participation trophy for a top program if in order to even be in the game, you have to be outside of the top 12.  I think both bowls have been cheapened enough by mediocre teams who finished second or worse in their conference but who made the game because the better conference teams were in the Playoff.

The last thing I want to mention isn’t really a rebuttal, but it’s an important argument against the expanded Playoff.  It’s the fact that you take the importance out of the regular season. 

If you do give the automatic bids to winners of conferences, non-conference games become even more like preseason games.  If you want your team to last through a 9-game conference schedule (in most major conferences), a CCG, and 3 or 4 more post-season games, why take your chances with another major-conference opponent?  As I mentioned earlier, this also takes away an important tool in comparing teams.  I don’t actually want conferences like the SEC to get by on their reputation.  We should try to figure out who the best teams are every year and not just guess that the SEC champion is automatically one of the top 4 teams. 

I’ll give an even older example from my many years of following LSU.  In 1988, the Tigers won the SEC despite 2 non-conference losses.  This is completely unthinkable now, but the SEC evolved into the best conference from being rather mediocre back then.  Even 16 years later, Auburn went undefeated and couldn’t play for the championship.  Important context is when LSU shared the national title with USC the prior year, it was only the SEC’s fifth national title since 1980 (it would have only been 4 had the BCS been adopted in 1996).  Another important aspect was that there were only three non-conference games in 2004.  The Plainsmen played The Citadel, Louisiana-Monroe, and Louisiana Tech.  But I think adding additional games to the end of the season will make such a selection of opponents commonplace, especially as compared to LSU intentionally playing teams like Ohio St. and U. Miami (which finished #2 in both polls) in 1988.  So without something to show changes in conferences, evaluations will be more about prior years than the current year.

I’ve been told people will still insist on maintaining big rivals and will still prioritize them, but I don’t believe that.  Think how many annual rivalries have been lost as conference schedules have grown and realignment has taken place.  Texas doesn’t play Texas A&M, Pitt doesn’t play West Virginia (or Penn St., for that matter), Auburn doesn’t play Georgia Tech, Notre Dame doesn’t play Michigan, and Oklahoma doesn’t play Nebraska (although they will this year).  I don’t have a dog in any of those fights really, but they were still games I would often look forward to and enjoy.

Even rivalry games that will continue won’t mean as much.  I can assure you from my vivid memory of 10 years ago that it’s more important for LSU to finish ahead of Alabama during the post-season than during the regular season.  That game would have been much less exciting if it were known that the loser was overwhelmingly likely to play for the national championship anyway.  Michigan-Ohio St. in 2006 was another game that would have been much less exciting.  People discussed the possibility that there could be a rematch (and that the loser could still win the national title), but it was far from a guarantee and didn’t happen. 

#1 Ohio St.’s Beanie Wells breaks a tackle to get into the secondary in the second quarter against #2 Michigan in 2006. Wells would score on what would be a 52-yard run. The Buckeyes ultimately won, 42-39, to get into the BCS title game, which they would lose to Florida.

It might be difficult, but let’s imagine for a moment that Michigan isn’t as good as they were in 2006 and played Ohio St. after already being eliminated from conference and national contention.  How exciting might it be to potentially keep Ohio St. out of the Playoff?  The Buckeyes might still win the conference and a major bowl, but Michigan would still have that accomplishment if nothing else.  If Ohio St. is guaranteed a spot in the Playoff by winning the Big Ten the next week anyway, it won’t mean much.  There would even be an argument that Ohio St. should rest some of their key players.  It wouldn’t even be very good bragging rights.

In some cases, it could be better to lose a regular-season game and not make the CCG.   Alabama was in the top 2 in 2011 after not making the CCG, and then they were in the top 4 in 2017.  So if the top 4 teams get a bye into the quarterfinal anyway, an Alabama would essentially get two byes. 

If it’s a situation where a non-champion doesn’t get a bye, they could still have an advantage over whatever team they play in the first round if that other team had to play a CCG.  I don’t think it would be four rounds of playoffs starting in late December.  The first round would probably be at campus sites the week after CCGs.  So let’s say Penn St. loses to Ohio St. and they don’t have a great strength of schedule since they don’t have to play the best two teams from the Big Ten West.  Would it be really fair if they had a week off and then played Georgia, who just lost to Alabama the week before or Oklahoma, who just won the Big XII CCG? 

The only reason I was for a top-2 or top-4 national championship was so we didn’t leave teams who may very well win national titles out of the process. In 1994, there was an undefeated Penn St. team who didn’t get a shot at Nebraska because they had to go to the Rose Bowl.  That kind of thing happened many times.  I mentioned the 2004 Auburn team who couldn’t get into the top 2.  Maybe there is some team that will be a big sob story and cast a shadow over a winner of the 4-team playoff, but I haven’t seen anything like that yet.  If such a scenario is at risk of happening, which I doubt, why is the solution to add 8 more teams instead of one or two?

The college football big-wigs should just admit this is just a cynical ploy for more money.  Not likely, I know, but fans could at least not do their bidding by concocting weak arguments in favor of this proposal even if it means their team has a better shot to make the 12-team playoff than it does to make the 4-team playoff.

Week 1 Review and Rankings

There have been a couple of major developments since my last blog.  Apparently the Big Ten and Pac-12 have decided to play very shortened intra-conference seasons.  It might slightly legitimize whichever team ends up as the national champion (provided it’s not from one of those conferences… no matter how dominant it may be, winning 7 or 8 games is no comparison to winning 15), but it really doesn’t help much in ranking teams.  There is no objective means to evaluate two teams with a similar record in different conferences without inter-conference play, and many similar teams won’t have similar records anyway if they start the season six weeks apart.

Until those two conferences start play, I will still rank everyone but the SEC on one list and the SEC on another.  I’m just going to do a top 10 for the other teams.  There are only 12 teams in the AP poll that aren’t in the SEC or in a conference that hasn’t played, so everyone in my top 10 list deserves to be considered a ranked team. There may be one or two left out who’d normally be ranked, but so be it. It can be a challenge filling out the last couple of teams anyway.

SEC

Anyway, you probably noticed I’m an LSU fan, and the Tigers lost for the first time since that unholy abomination of a football game in College Station on November 24, 2018.  So that was a pretty good 22 months.  If you don’t count that as an LSU loss, I guess you can say it was more like 22 3/5 months, since there was no question about the rightful winner of the LSU-Alabama game on November 3, 2018 (the final was 29-0).  For updated records of the LSU-Mississippi St. series (the most-played series in LSU’s history), see here.

Stanford transfer K.J. Costello threw for 623 yards against the depleted LSU defense in his and head coach Mike Leach’s SEC debut.

In other SEC news, Florida was EXPOSED by Ole Miss when the Rebels scored 35 points and gained 613 yards. 

If you couldn’t tell, I’m making fun of everyone (paging Colin Cowherd) who said something similar about the LSU-Ole Miss game last year.  Actually, I’m making Florida #2 after the first week.  The Fighting Kiffins aren’t pushovers on offense.  They weren’t under Rich Rod, so I don’t think that has changed.

The land plankton Ole Miss defense isn’t good, but no one else in the SEC scored 50.  Mississippi St. was the only other one who even got to 40, and that was against an LSU team with like negative returning starters if you consider that the Tigers didn’t even have five of the players they expected to have on an already-depleted team a couple of months ago.  I’m sure others will do better—there are a lot of smart defensive coaches with a lot more veteran players—but the Pirate (Mike Leach) can be hard to contain even when you have a good veteran defense.

Number 1 may be a surprise.  I’m going with Auburn, who beat a ranked (albeit not by me) Kentucky team by 16 and probably would have won by over 20 without a pick-six being called back.    Alabama may well beat Auburn easily, but a 19-point win over Missouri (although it was a 32-point lead in the third quarter) isn’t anything to get excited about.

Rankings—SEC only

1. Auburn
2. Florida
3. Alabama
4. Mississippi St.
5. Tennessee
6. Georgia
7. Texas A&M
8. Vanderbilt
9. LSU
10. Kentucky
11. Ole Miss
12. South Carolina
13. Missouri
14. Arkansas

Until I’m shown otherwise over the course of a full game, I’m going to assume Arkansas is terrible again and that it’s Georgia’s fault the game was close for a while. 

I feel similarly about Tennessee-South Carolina.  The Gamecocks kept it close until the end at least.  I initially had Missouri ahead of South Carolina, but I changed my mind when I saw that 13 of the Tigers’ 19 points came after Alabama already had 35 on the board.

I’m also going to lean toward Florida having a good offense, so I’m not beating up on Ole Miss too much for the points the Rebels gave up.

LSU needed an ugly pick-six just to look like they were close to as good as Mississippi St. and still lost by twice as much as Vanderbilt lost to Texas A&M.  I’ll be surprised if Vandy beats the Fighting Tigers, but I think they should be more encouraged by Week 1 than LSU should be.

I still think Kentucky will be a good team even though they looked out of their element against Auburn.  Wildcats fans still should not be as pleasantly surprised as Commodore fans.  LSU fans are on a completely different level as far as being spoiled, but they honestly shouldn’t be that upset with a team this inexperienced who had no kind of warm-up for the conference schedule.

Others

Top 10 Interconference-Schedule Teams, AP poll equivalent (meaning if the AP disqualified the same teams I’m disqualifying) in parentheses

1. Clemson (1)
2. U. Miami (3)
3. Pittsburgh (11)
4. Cincinnati (7)
5. Central Florida (5)
6. Notre Dame (2)
7. North Carolina (6)
8. Oklahoma St. (8)
9. Memphis (12)
10. BYU (10)

Trevor Lawrence (16) was at least partly responsible for three touchdowns in Clemson’s opener against Wake Forest.

Clemson has been competing for national championships every year, and I don’t see why they won’t this year.

U. Miami has beaten two credible opponents in conference, as does Pittsburgh, so I don’t see why I ‘d put Notre Dame ahead.  The Irish struggled against Duke, and I don’t know why they played South Florida or why they should get much consideration for that game.  I also thought Cincinnati’s win over Army by two touchdowns and Central Florida’s two easy wins merited more consideration.

Oklahoma St. and North Carolina haven’t done anything spectacular, but they each won a conference game against a team that might be OK.

Memphis beat Arkansas St., who beat Kansas St., who beat Oklahoma.  That’s how desperate I am just to fill out a top 10, but it makes more sense than putting anyone else in that sentence in the top 10.

BYU blew out Navy and Troy.  I couldn’t see a better argument for anyone else.

Unlike the major polls, I have no interest in 0-0 teams.  It’s really a shame that teams like Cincinnati lost spots in the rankings due to the inclusion of such teams.  ULL, which for some reason calls itself Louisiana, went from 19^th to unranked after winning.  How does that make sense? 

Anyway, the only qualifying teams the AP poll has that I don’t have in my list are Oklahoma, which clearly doesn’t deserve a ranking unless it’s for something they did before Christmas, and Texas, which did only slightly better against Texas Tech than Houston Baptist did.

More on CFP Championship; Pelini back at LSU

Mike VII became the third Mike in a row to celebrate a national championship. If LSU manages another in the next few years, he would be the first tiger to preside over a second.

Although I haven’t written since the night of the championship, I have been reading, listening, and thinking about the season that has just ended. 

I wanted to start with some stats I found interesting and didn’t know until after that night. 

Clemson had won 50 games in a row when scoring first and 89 in a row after leading by at least 10 points. 

This isn’t to be disrespectful, I just thought it was funny. Clemson’s loss was also Lawrence’s first as a starting quarterback.

Of course they had also won 29 games in a row overall, meaning that for the second season in a row LSU ended a winning streak of 25 or more (Central Florida had won exactly 25).  This was the first time a program ended such streaks two years in a row.  Only one program has ended such streaks more than twice in its history.  That was Notre Dame in 1946 (Army, which was a winning streak ended by a tie), 1957 (Oklahoma), and 1970 (Texas), so none were even within a decade of the other.  Princeton is the only other program to end such a streak twice, in 1889 and 1893 (both over Yale).  (The Ivy League was considered top-division college football at the time.)

Something else I noticed when re-watching the game was that on average this season Clemson had given up 264 yards per game. LSU eclipsed 500 yards in the first minute of the fourth quarter.

It was not surprising that Joe Brady was hired away.  What was slightly surprising was that after the LSU defense was underestimated through most of the year, the defensive coordinator (DC) Dave Aranda got one of the best available coaching vacancies, at least in terms of how good the team was last season.  Baylor was a close second to Oklahoma twice and lost no other games until the Sugar Bowl.  Like Oklahoma, the Bears also ran into an SEC team who finished in the same place in the Big XII (LSU and Oklahoma were both champions; Baylor and Georgia were both runners-up).  It was also an odd coincidence that the person who hired Brady for the Carolina Panthers is the one who left the vacancy in Waco.

Bo Pelini (left in gray) celebrates an interception during LSU’s 2007 BCS Championship.

It’s also interesting that after the DC for this year’s championship team was hired away, we decided to bring back Bo Pelini, the DC who was hired away directly after our last championship in 2007.  Pelini had also left to coach a Big XII team, although Nebraska is now in the Big Ten.  Also worth noting that LSU had top-three overall defenses all three years under Pelini, which corresponded with Les Miles first three years, during which the Tigers had an overall record of 34-6.  Pelini was the first DC hired by Miles, and Aranda was the last.  Pelini will make over 10 times more per year as the LSU DC than he had been making as the Youngstown St. head coach; but he did coach there while still being paid by Nebraska.

I’ll be interested to see if there is any trouble readjusting to major college football for Pelini, but Coach Orgeron has had a good record in hiring assistants so far.  So I’m not overly worried.

I don’t think LSU has a tremendously good chance to repeat as champions even if all the coaches had stayed, but I’m not greedy. I’m OK with someone else winning next year.  I just hope it’s not Alabama and preferably not Clemson or Ohio St. either.  By the way, I enjoyed a segment with former LSU coach/current Alabama coach Nick Saban and his former offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher (Fisher and Pelini overlapped as coordinators at LSU in 2005 and 2006, by the way).  That segment has been taken down from YouTube, but you can find Fisher (who was the only head coach to go against both LSU and Clemson this season) and Saban (who coached against Clemson a few months before Fisher did) comment separately.

Jimbo Fisher discusses LSU’s BCS championship on Jan. 4, 2004.

Saban and Fisher are two of only six active head coaches who have won national championships.  Orgeron and Miles are two others, so it’s interesting that four of the six have worked at LSU during one of our national championships.  The other two are Dabo Swinney and Mack Brown.  Mack Brown does have Louisiana ties though.  He was LSU’s QB coach in 1982 (shortly after Steve Ensminger graduated) and was the head coach (and athletic director) at Tulane from 1985 to 1987.

Week 6 Rankings and Comments

I didn’t get around to posting a mid-week blog last week, but I may have a couple of them this week. I forgot to link them last week, but I’ve published my computer ratings for the second time this season. Maybe it’s good that I didn’t link them, because I had made a couple of mistakes that I’ve since caught.

It wasn’t the most eventful week.  Thirty-four teams had the week off.  There were a couple of losses by mid-range top-25 teams, but they were conference road games.  None were particularly shocking.  There was also the Auburn-Florida game.  Most people I saw picked Auburn, but I don’t think anyone was too shocked Florida won. 

In the late game, Stanford beat Washington.  I found out that Stanford’s kicker is named Jet Toner, which sounds like printer ink.  Anyone can beat anyone in the Pac-12 it seems, but Oregon is still probably the best bet to compete for a playoff spot since the Ducks have no conference losses.  The Rose Bowl is not a semifinal this year, so the Pac-12 champion is guaranteed at least that.

Anyway, the main tricky team I got in the computer was Auburn, and that was largely because the Florida loss barely damages the Tigers right now.  As an opponent, Florida is overrated in my system at the moment because their two games against FCS opponents don’t damage the strength of schedule.  As a team, they don’t get much credit for those two games though.  That’s why the computer doesn’t put the Gators ahead of Auburn even though they’re one of the “best losses” possible.  It will be fairer if Florida loses because then the Gators will be harmed in winning percentage (4-1 is a lower percentage than 6-1, but 5-0 isn’t a lower percentage than 7-0).

LB Jonathan Greenard and the Gators defense had an easier time than expected keeping Auburn quarterback Bo Nix from doing a lot of damage (in Gainesville, Fla., Saturday). We will see how they do against LSU QB Joe Burrow in Baton Rouge next Saturday night.

I tinkered with a few different ideas of addressing this before deciding that I would just move Auburn down the normal variation I allowed myself for this week, which is four spots.  There were more undefeated teams I wanted to put ahead of Auburn, but I don’t think numbers 7 to 10 would beat Auburn anyway. 

Clemson is still in the top 3 in the computer formula with three wins against the top 60, so I still don’t think it makes sense to make a change.  Ohio St. has more impressive wins so far, but there isn’t the kind of signature win that justifies becoming #1 in my mind. Maybe Wisconsin in a couple of weeks will do it, depending on how the SEC sorts itself out by then.

Although I tried to stay within the four spots, I did make a few exceptions based on losses (or lack thereof).  

I liked that there was a group of undefeated teams followed by a group of one-loss teams (with Oklahoma thrown in… see below), so I didn’t think it made sense to put Oregon ahead of more undefeated teams, especially now that the team they lost to has a loss itself. So I moved the Ducks one extra spot down.

I moved Oklahoma one extra spot up because I think the Sooners should be ahead of Texas since they’re undefeated.  If the Longhorns are better, they don’t have to wait long to prove it on the field.  Switching them before the game doesn’t accomplish anything. 

Third, I excluded Washington from the top 25 despite a computer rank of 20^th.  If you’ve lost 40% of the FBS games you’ve played (to teams with 3 losses combined), that’s not top-25-worthy even with a good schedule.  Again, it’s a problem that can be easily rectified on Saturday. If they beat Arizona (#27 in the computer formula), they’ll be in.  If not, they won’t be.

Stanford K Jet Toner was responsible for 11 of the Cardinal’s 23 points against Washington Saturday night. Stanford dominated in both time of possession total yards largely due to the success of RB Cameron Scarlett (not pictured).

Michigan St. did take the last spot despite two losses, but I think 4-2 vs. FBS (which is what Washington would be with a win on Saturday) is easier to justify than 3-2 with an FCS win.  Also, one of the Spartans’ losses is to the computer #1.  The Huskies’ better loss is to #31.

As for undefeated teams, Memphis, Baylor, and Minnesota all joined the top 25 by virtue of being undefeated.  All the teams who fell out of the top 25 lost on Saturday.  Colorado fell the most spots, but that was partly due to Air Force’s loss to Navy. Michigan and Cincinnati moved back into the top 25 despite earlier losses.  Ohio St. and Wisconsin are two of the top four teams in the computer formula though, so I didn’t see those respective losses as a reason to keep the Wolverines or Bearcats out.  Both had decent wins over the weekend.  Michigan beat Iowa; and Cincinnati beat Central Florida.

A few teams have been seesawing, such as LSU (from 4^th to 14^th and back up to 3^rd) and Notre Dame (from 25^th to 7^th and back down to 16^th), but that’s part of the volatility that takes place in the first weeks of the transition to the computer system.  It’s also partly mistakes on my part in anticipating what the computer formula will do.

LSU gained from beating Utah St., which isn’t a bad team; but Georgia Southern finally won a game, so that gives the Tigers more credit for that win (so it was like two wins in one week).  The Tigers also benefited from the rule changes I made to my top 25.  Georgia and Alabama were too far back in the computer formula, and Auburn lost, so that accounts for all three spots that I moved the Tigers from the computer formula.  This had minimal affect on the ranking, but I also feel like LSU addressed some of its issues in the way it played against Utah St.  I’m less impressed by some of the other undefeateds.  I’ll write more about LSU later in the week.

We will know more about a lot of teams this weekend, not just LSU.  Hopefully that will clarify things and help limit the erratic movements from week to week. 

rank	team	last
1	Clemson	1
2	Ohio St.	5
3	LSU	14
4	Alabama	2
5	Florida	15
6	Auburn	4
7	Wisconsin	9
8	SMU	11
9	Georgia	3
10	Boise St.	6
11	Penn St.	17
12	Wake Forest	8
13	Memphis	—
14	Oregon	18
15	Arizona St.	10
16	Notre Dame	7
17	Oklahoma	21
18	Texas	25
19	Baylor	—
20	Michigan	—
21	Hawaii	24
22	Appalachian	19
23	Minnesota	—
24	Cincinnati	—
25	Michigan St.	13

Out of top 25: (12) Colorado, (16) Washington, (20) UC-Berkeley, (22) Oklahoma St., (23) Iowa

LSU More Qualified for #3 Seed Than Kansas

For more background about LSU, see my blog before last week’s games.

I started seeing LSU projected as a three-seed when they beat Tennessee, but I’ve been waiting on probably the most famous prognosticator Joe Lunardi to put the Tigers there.  As of Friday, he still had not done so (I’m using archived links because these pages are updated frequently).  A ton of fans say their team should be higher and are vague about what team should move down in their stead, but I’m not.  It’s Kansas. 

LSU’s substitute point guard Javonte Smart (with ball) was fouled with about 1 second left before hitting the winning free throws against Tennessee.

Some people may say it’s Houston now that it lost to Central Florida (and that would be a convenient excuse to move LSU up without having to deal with Kansas fans), but I’m not making that argument.  Although it was in December, the Cougars beat LSU.  I know the first reaction to Central Florida is “This isn’t football,” but they are a top-30 team according to the NET (Warren Nolan’s version anyway), which I guess is the new and improved RPI (which I was never a huge fan of because it gives teams a ton of credit for the games they lose).  I’ll grant that it’s late in the year to record a loss like that, but I don’t think Houston was exposed all of a sudden.  There is no reason to believe that’s a game Kansas or LSU couldn’t have lost in past couple of weeks.

Losses by Marquette and Nevada may also help LSU going forward, but like I talked about in the last blog, new things happen in basketball all the time, and my blog process isn’t that fast. I’d also note that Jerry Palm (whom I’ll mention later) now has LSU as a #2 with KU still a 4-seed.

I don’t think Lunardi is doing this intentionally and it may well be the same subconscious bias the committee holds, but I can’t help but think Kansas is getting some “blue blood” special treatment. 

Worst Loss

Normally I wouldn’t quibble too much about the worst lost, I’d just say both lost to a bad team and leave it at that.  But in this case, Oklahoma St. is 24 spots higher than West Virginia in the NET, and we have the benefit of them being in the same conference, so it’s not like the two have had vastly different opportunities. 

I think a good example of these teams is their respective February trips to Lubbock.  Texas Tech is a similar team to LSU, so I think that makes it a particularly good point of comparison (what the teams can do when they get up for a game).  Oklahoma St. took the Red Raiders to overtime while West Virginia lost by 31.  In Kansas’s defense, they did play the Mountaineers much closer than LSU played the Cowboys; but a bad loss in November means a lot less to me than one in mid-January. 

Oklahoma St.’s Lindy Waters’ hit four threes in the final minute, including the tying shot as time expired against Texas Tech; but the Cowboys fell in overtime.

When LSU lost to Oklahoma St., they were playing their third night in a row and just off a disappointing overtime loss to Florida St.  We may see in the SEC tournament if that third night in a row is the problem, but for sure the Tigers won’t be playing the day after a loss.  Also, the most you play in the NCAA tournament is twice in a week.

I started writing this on Friday, but it so happened the Cowboys also played Kansas close, so that furthers my argument, while on Saturday LSU got a slightly more impressive road win over Alabama.  I think beating teams in the NCAA field on the road is impressive even if they end up being 11 or 12 seeds. 

Let’s talk about the second-worst loss.  LSU’s was against Arkansas.  Absent winning the SEC tournament or at least winning 4 or 5 more games, Arkansas will not be an at-large team.  However, the Razorbacks just got a pretty decent win over Ole Miss for their 6^th win in conference play.  Also, if you throw Kansas a bone for only losing to West Virginia by 1, certainly it’s more understandable to lose to Arkansas by 1.

Other Losses

Kansas’s second-worst loss is slightly better, but Arizona St. just lost by 28 points to Oregon.  The Kansas-Arizona St. game was over two months ago, and Arizona St. is a higher-ranked team than Arkansas; but the disparity between Arizona St. and Arkansas is much less than that between Oklahoma St. and West Virginia. 

LSU’s other 3 losses are all against the NET top 30: (4) Houston, (23) Florida St., and (29) Florida.  Only one game in this group of losses (Florida, if you couldn’t guess) happened after December 12.

Kansas’s other losses: (5) Kentucky, (10) Texas Tech, (14) Iowa St., (28) Kansas St., and (36) Texas.  All the losses in this group have come since January 5.

Key Wins and Conclusion

According to Palm at CBS Sports, Kansas had two more “Quad 1” wins as of Friday morning.  Quad 1 wins consist of home games against the top 30, neutral games against the top 50, and road games against the top 75.  Since it was a road game, Alabama qualifies as a Quad 1 win, reducing the margin to 1.  Oklahoma St. is not in the top 75.

Although Alabama hit two late 3s, Tremont Waters (no relation to Lindy) led the Tigers to a 5-point victory in his first game back.

Kansas has the best non-conference strength of schedule in the nation, so a lot of these key wins took place before the new year, and as mentioned a lot of losses took place after.  I think analysis of the losses and when the games took place more than compensates for Kansas’s single additional Quad 1 win, and I hope Lunardi’s new projections give LSU the #3 ahead of Kansas.

Of course if LSU loses two (or more) of the next three games and Kansas wins out in the Big XII, Kansas will belong ahead; but I think it’s getting close enough to Selection Sunday that it’s a concern if you’re not giving teams proper credit for what they’ve done as of right now.