Week 1 Reaction and Top 25 2023

Since the last blog…

Sometimes long weekends are the worst scenario.  It was basically Wednesday by the time I was able to review some of the things that went wrong during the LSU game. If I had waited to review all of them, I might have never written another blog.  Obviously I’m not a beat reporter in Baton Rouge, so I rely on public statements and coverage from the people who are based around the program.  That process was delayed by a day or more given that the game took place on Sunday night.  I did have Friday the 1st off, but nothing had happened yet.  I had decided to go out of town to a baseball game on Saturday, so I couldn’t write live reactions about the teams who played on Saturday. 

On Sunday, I barely made it back in time for the game, and then Mondays are workdays for me whether I go into work or not.  My bosses check to make sure I’ve made enough progress on Tuesday mornings, and I have the type of job where I always have to spend time preparing for the next day the night before anyway.  Unfortunately, I don’t just clock in and clock out without having to think about it until I clock in again.

LSU-Florida St. Reaction and Historical Comparisons

Anyway, I do feel a little good right now that at least I didn’t pick LSU to win the SEC West or make the playoff.  I’m not throwing in the towel though.  There have been teams with rough starts who ended up doing well in the SEC, but it’s pretty rare to be one of the top teams nationally.  Ohio St. got run out of their own stadium against Virginia Tech in the first week of September 2014 before winning the first College Football Playoff, but that’s kind of the exception that proves the rule.  

Also, the Buckeyes had two months before they had to play a major-conference opponent who would finish with 9 wins or more.  That was a long time to fix the issues in the Virginia Tech game, and there was even a close call against a Penn St. team (which would finish 7-6) in the interim.  I think LSU has a lot less time.  Mississippi St., LSU’s opponent a week from today, will win 9 games or more.

In Columbia on October 6, 2012, Marcus Lattimore gained as many yards on the ground (109) as Georgia QB Aaron Murray gained in the air. LSU handed South Carolina its first loss the following week. The Bulldogs would win the SEC East over the Gamecocks and the Gators.

A couple of years before that, Georgia got blown out by South Carolina, 35-7. in early October but came just a couple of yards short of beating Alabama to win the SEC and make the BCS championship game (which they most likely would have won given how easily the Tide handled Notre Dame).  I think that’s a more realistic example for LSU to hope to follow (possibly making the SEC title game and playing better than last year).  Georgia of course had to overcome that game to win the East whereas LSU’s loss to Florida St. does not count in the SEC standings.  Unlike the Ohio St. example, the Bulldogs’ next big game (in hindsight and at the time) was just a couple of games later against Florida, who would finish 11-2.  The only bad thing about following that Georgia example would be having to wait another 10 years to actually win a national championship. 

I’ll update the Florida St. rivalry blog another time, but it’s just crazy how cursed LSU seems to be in the series.  Of course, I still think LSU would have done quite well if they had played the Seminoles annually from about 2001 to 2019 (minus a couple of losses to Jameis, I suppose).

Thoughts on Brian Kelly

I said I’m not throwing in the towel on this season.  I’m also not throwing in the towel on Brian Kelly.  This was Kelly’s 15^th game.  Ed Orgeron lost to Troy in his 13^th game in charge (two weeks after a 30-point loss at Mississippi St. that I still argue was worse).  Les Miles lost his 12^th game by 20 to a Georgia team that finished 10-3.  Say what you will about Miles and Orgeron after the respective national championships, but no one was whining about it taking too long to get there at the end of 2007 (Miles’ third year) or 2019 (Orgeron’s third full year) seasons.  By the way, 2014 was Urban Meyer’s third year at Ohio St., and Nick Saban didn’t win his first at Alabama until his third year (he had taken four years to win one at LSU).  So even if it’s safe to assume a national championship is off the table already, I never thought it was a highly realistic goal for this year anyway.

LSU Head Coach Brian Kelly went on a bit of a rant at the end of his press conference on Tuesday.

Kelly can be a smooth talker, so I don’t always hold too much stock in his press conferences and whatnot, but I liked his rant at the end of his week-opening press conference.  I disagree somewhat with faulting the enthusiasm gap, but I think it was a good message to put out there, and it showed he took onboard many of the issues fans and media pointed out.

“I could go through a number of different situations.  We don’t get to the chains on third and 5… We’ve got a drop on third and 6 trying to get upfield… We’re 4^th and 1 and we’re trying to make a play instead of reading what the defender is giving you.  I could elaborate on defense.  We’re spinning down a safety[, and] he’s watching the quarterback.  We could have been more creative with play-calling.  We could have been better defensively and [made fewer] spy calls and [brought] more pressure.  I could attack the whole thing.  The bottom line is I’ve got to get our football team thinking the right way and play[ing] with a competitive edge.” 

I tried to clean up some of the grammar.  He usually speaks better than that, but I’ll forgive it.  I’ll accept some grammatical hiccups in exchange for his not sounding like a politician sometimes.

Other Results and Reactions

At least Kelly has been overshadowed somewhat by the hysterics about Dabo after Clemson’s loss to Duke.  My prediction of those Tigers being the team to beat in the ACC isn’t looking too good right now.  But that 2014 Virginia Tech team was in the ACC and ended up losing 6 games, 5 of them in conference, so we shouldn’t rush to any conclusions about that conference either.  Even if Clemson continues to disappoint, I might still be right that the ACC champion will have a good shot at the Playoff though.

If I were a betting man (sports betting is still illegal where I live anyway), I would have taken Colorado +20.5.  Although I did leave TCU ranked, I wasn’t very convinced they were going to be a competitive team this year.  Deion performed better than many more experienced coaches in getting a bunch of transfers and other new players to support each other and have the needed enthusiasm.  Whatever happens this season, he definitely did something right in preparing for Week 1.

Colorado head coach Deion Sanders confers with his son, S Shiloh Sanders, on Saturday in Ft. Worth. Sanders’ other son, Shadeur, threw for 510 yards in the upset win.

I don’t believe in making drastic changes after one week unless necessary, so I’m not dropping LSU and Clemson from the top 25.  TCU was low enough that they will drop out though.  I don’t really have the time and energy to re-work the whole thing even if I wanted to.  I don’t really have a long list of teams that were just outside of the top 25 either. 

I also wanted to put some of the conference talk into perspective.  South Carolina has a much lower status in the SEC than North Carolina has in the ACC.  The Tar Heels were the ACC runners-up in 2015 and 2022 and represented the conference in the post-2020 Orange Bowl.  They would have been #2 in the conference had Notre Dame not temporarily joined.  The Gamecocks have only made one SEC championship game, and that was back in 2010.  They have only won 8 games or more twice since the 2013 season.

Florida is obviously a more successful program in the big picture than Utah is, but the Gators lost 5 SEC games (and two other games) last season and 6 the season before, going 6-7 overall both seasons.  Utah went 10-4 in each of the last two seasons, winning the Pac-12 both years.  I know Florida beat Utah anyway last year, but you can’t expect the SEC to win every game like that.

LSU-Florida St. was the only game of the three that was an apples-to-apples comparison. 

It is interesting that the Pac-12 is disintegrating at the same the conference had the most successful Week 1; but other than Colorado, nothing is too impressive based on recent seasons.

I considered ranking Purdue in preseason, and Fresno St. beat the Boilermakers on the road. I thought it was good to make sure one team from outside of the major conferences (and Notre Dame) was included. I also considered Wyoming, which beat Texas Tech; but the Cowboys rarely sustain their early-season successes whereas Fresno St. is often one of the top teams in the Mountain West. I also take overtime wins with more of a grain of salt.

Top 25

Rank	Team	Last
1	Ohio St.	1
2	Georgia	2
3	Michigan	3
4	Alabama	4
5	Florida St.	11
6	Southern CA	7
7	Penn St.	8
8	Utah	9
9	Texas	10
10	Tennessee	12
11	Notre Dame	13
12	Ole Miss	14
13	Oregon	15
14	Duke	—
15	LSU	5
16	Clemson	6
17	Kansas St.	18
18	Washington	21
19	UCLA	16
20	N Carolina	—
21	Oregon St.	20
22	Mississippi St.	23
23	Pittsburgh	24
24	Fresno St.	—
25	Colorado	—

Out of Top 25: (17) TCU, (19) S. Carolina, (22) Boise St., (25) Texas Tech

Final Pre-Bowl Ratings and Reaction to Major Bowl Selections

I don’t have that much to say about the LSU game itself.  I thought they would lose by single digits if they had a good day, and they basically would have lost by three if you take out two disastrous plays (and leave everything else the same): a blocked field goal from fairly close range that was returned for a touchdown, at least partly because all but a couple of players on the field forgot the rules (a 10-point swing), and an interception deep in LSU territory that resulted from a ball that was falling to the ground that hit an LSU helmet instead (this set up a fairly easy touchdown drive).

I’m not surprised that Alabama and Tennessee went ahead of LSU in bowl consideration given that they each only have two losses. I would argue if LSU had beaten Texas A&M, but my guess is that didn’t matter either. Rightly or wrongly (obviously wrongly in my view), Alabama was seen as the best SEC team after Georgia; and Tennessee’s win over LSU would have been a tie-breaker for a New Year’s Six bowl even if one didn’t punish LSU for the extra loss.

LSU is a superior team to Purdue, but sometimes it can be hard to be enthusiastic about playing such a game. I think the Boilermakers will be relatively excited to play in the game and probably would be to play in any bowl.

I do think Tennessee should have gone to the Sugar Bowl, but I guess we didn’t need another game between Alabama and Clemson to take place in the Orange Bowl. All the other New Year’s Six Bowls were fairly obvious match-ups according to the guidelines. USC vs. Tulane in the Cotton especially made sense as the two westernmost teams not bound to the Rose Bowl. They will play one another in a bowl for the first time since the Trojans won the Rose Bowl after the 1931 season. That game might have helped inspire the creation of the Sugar Bowl a few years later. USC and Tulane also split a home-and-home in the 1940s.

I had said Friday that Ohio St. should move up if another team fell out of the top four.  I didn’t realize that TCU and USC were far enough ahead of Tennessee and Alabama that they could afford a loss and stay in the top five.  Actually, my first draft of the ratings had USC ahead of Ohio St.; but then I realized that somehow Utah was being counted as a better opponent than they were. Not to bore the reader with the details, but I try not to penalize teams as much for losing a close game on the road, but that wasn’t meant to treat the winner as one of the top teams in the country as the weighted ratings do if not corrected.

The Trojans did beat one more top-25 team than Tennessee did.  It hurt the Vols that LSU lost in a way because now the Tigers are not in the highest classification of the weighted ratings.  Had LSU won, Georgia would not have fallen out of that classification (which right now is the top 8 teams).  In the bigger picture, USC beat 8 Pac-12 teams and Notre Dame whereas Tennessee only beat 6 SEC teams and Pitt. You can think the former is more impressive while still having the SEC as the best conference.

I’ve written about Clemson playing a deceptive number of quality opponents, so that’s why they’re ahead of Alabama.  The Tigers only beat one top 25 team (the same number Alabama has beaten), but they’ve beaten five other teams in the top 42 to Alabama’s one.  Illinois is #39 and was a missed field goal from beating Michigan, and #37 Pitt took Tennessee to overtime, so I’m not talking about opponents that anyone can take for granted.  (For an even better example, Florida is #51 and beat Utah.).  Alabama does have better losses, but that doesn’t make up for that volume of decent wins.

Florida LB Amari Burney intercepts a pass to win the game against Utah in Gainesville on September 3. In hindsight, it’s another reminder that there are a lot of teams (including those who fall well outside of the top 25) who are threats to some of the best teams, even eventual Power-5 conference champions. On Friday, the Utes beat USC to claim the Pac-12 title and eliminate the Trojans from Playoff consideration.

I think it’s appropriate that the respective Big XII and Pac-12 champions round out the top 10.  I don’t think Tulane, Troy, and UTSA would beat many of the 5 to 10 teams immediately below them, but I don’t mind that in my system teams like that are in the top 20 as long as they’re not in position for the Playoff.  I’m glad not to be in New Orleans to hear from the Tulane fans who don’t know anything about national college football listing all the SEC teams they’d beat with their one good team in a generation though. I have mixed feelings about Troy playing UTSA in the Cure Bowl. On the one hand, it’s good that they’re both playing a ranked team; but on the other hand, I wonder how they would do against one of the lower Power-5 bowl teams.

I know the Playoff is going to expand to 12 teams, but one or two of those teams being non-Power-5 champions is fine with me.  I will want most Power 5 teams to be eliminated with three or four losses.  This isn’t the NFL; I’m not willing to take a team seriously as the potential national champion if they lost 1/3 or more of their regular-season games.

I don’t like Oregon being ahead of Oregon St. even though I do think the Ducks have been the better team overall this year.  USC didn’t beat Oregon (both “civil war” teams played Utah), so it doesn’t hurt Oregon for the Trojans to lose.  USC did beat Oregon St.  It also helps that Oregon’s best non-conference opponent solidified its claim as the best team in the country.  Oregon St. played Boise and Fresno, and neither is as good as LSU anyway, so there wasn’t as much of a gain there (there was a slight improvement to strength of schedule though).

My formula did put the Egg Bowl rivalry in the “correct” order (according to head-to-head results) though, with Mississippi St. at #25 and Ole Miss at #26.  Of course, it helps that Mississippi St. played Georgia instead of Vanderbilt (all the other conference opponents were the same, and the two teams have the same record).

Some teams moved up or down more than they normally would given how many teams didn’t play.  I hadn’t worked on the weighted formula in a few years and it was still new before COVID, so there were still some kinks to iron out.  Given that most of the changes still made sense given the results and there was no turnover in the top 25, I don’t think I changed anything too abruptly.

I’ve updated the ratings after the Army-Navy game before, but this year I’ll just treat is as a bowl game since neither will play an actual bowl game.

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

For the ratings of all 131 teams and all FBS conferences (and independents), see here or click “Knights’ Ratings” above at any time while browsing this site.

Rivalry Week Top 25 and CFP Reaction

CFP Reaction

I ended up agreeing with the committee regarding the top 5.  I’ll be really surprised if two of the current top 4 lose this weekend.  I had said before last week that I thought Ohio St. would be one of the stronger non-champions were they to lose to Michigan.

Neither Tennessee nor Alabama, who each have two losses, had a non-conference game that was worth very much to compensate for the extra loss.  The SEC is better, but it’s not so much better that you don’t need either a very good non-conference game or a ninth conference game. 

I did think that LSU would have deserved consideration if they had finished with 2 losses, but the Tigers did get the ninth conference game when they qualified for the SEC Championship Game.  This would have given LSU a second win over a team who finished with a winning record in conference.

Anyway, as to who #6 should be, I disagree with those who have Tennessee behind Alabama.  Tennessee not only played the #1 team in the country by virtue of playing in the SEC East, but they also beat both of the top teams in the SEC West.  Alabama didn’t beat anyone in the top 6 (there are 7 teams per division) of the SEC East, and they also didn’t beat the only team with a winning conference record (LSU) in the SEC West.  The Tide did lose two games in the last second, but I think beating more good teams should count for more than how close the losses were.  Alabama didn’t have to beat a team like either team who beat Tennessee.  Texas was a better non-conference opponent than Pitt, but that doesn’t make up for Alabama playing Vanderbilt as the extra cross-divisional opponent while Tennessee drew LSU, not to mention Georgia and South Carolina.

Ratings and Other Thoughts

I don’t think this technicality matters as far as Playoff arguments but something else that annoys me is if you lose a tiebreaker for the conference championship game, you’re still considered a divisional co-champion.  Even though LSU lost after clinching the spot in the championship game, Alabama can now claim they’ve won the SEC West 10 of 11 years (the exception being 2019).  I prefer the NFL approach.  If you lose the tiebreaker to the team that advances as the winner of the division, you’re not called a champion or co-champion.  The previous time the Tide lost it outright was also to LSU, in 2011.  Since divisions will cease to exist in about two years, I hope we can get at least one more outright win in the next two years.

Back to my rankings/ratings, you may have noticed the “weighted rank” doesn’t penalize as much for losses anymore.  I’ve compensated for that by making it a smaller component of the overall total, but it still does take record into consideration to some extent.  For instance, Vanderbilt had to play four of the five best teams by conference record in the SEC and is only #39 in the weighted rankings because the Commodores also have 7 losses.  Alabama only played two of those teams and is #15 in the weighted rankings largely because there were no other losses.

So, although when I first introduced the weighted rankings they were meant to stand alone, in no universe did I think LSU was #1 last week or that Oregon St. is #2 this week (after Georgia); but those are the teams (other than Georgia) most deserving of bonus points if you will given a combination of a good record and quality opponents.  I also think it’s right that Clemson lost an extra spot (from what they are in the original unweighted formula) because their weighted rank fell to #24.  Clemson just barely edged out LSU and Oregon St. 

Sometimes you have to hold onto your hat in the last 20 minutes of a Rivalry Week game.

One might come to the conclusion that I don’t give conferences other than the SEC enough of a chance with the weighted component, but there are five Pac-12 teams in the weighted top 10 and only three SEC teams.  All things being equal, LSU and Tennessee having such tough conference slates would have caused them to finish lower than Alabama in the standings, but they both beat the Tide and ended up with the same number of conference losses as the Tide. 

USC was the only one of those five Pac-12 teams to have a better weighted rank than unweighted rank.  This was because the other four all finished with three overall losses.  It also helped that the Trojans played Notre Dame.  This compensated somewhat for USC not having played Washington and Oregon.

The other teams in the top 10 of the weighted rankings are Texas and Michigan.  Michigan is doing well being that they only played two teams in the top 40 in my overall ratings, but of course being undefeated helps.    Texas has the opposite situation: a number of top-40 opponents (4) but also a number of losses (4).  Texas has also played 5 teams that finished between numbers 41 and 65 with only one opponent (ULM) below #85.

There are only a couple of the lower teams I thought needed a little bit of explanation beyond the results of last week.

It really hurt Florida St. that Clemson and LSU lost because those games were largely responsible for the Seminoles’ having an unweighted ranking of 14 and a weighted ranking of 16 last week.  Notre Dame’s loss to USC also had some collateral effect upon the ACC as a whole as well given that the Irish beat both of the ACC title contestants and another team (Syracuse) who went .500 in conference and finished 7-5 going into the bowl game.

The only other team who seems somewhat out of place is Boise St.  The win over Utah St. wasn’t the most impressive (although to be fair, the Aggies had won 5 of 6 going into the game), but the three teams who had beaten the Broncos all had “good” weeks.  The Broncos’ worst loss, UTEP, is still not a good team; but the Miners improved their strength of schedule considerably by playing UTSA.  You probably know what happened with Oregon St. (who beat Boise St. in Week 1) and why their stock improved.  Also, BYU improved its strength of schedule with the win over Stanford (who played in a good conference and somehow beat Notre Dame…. Best wishes to departing head coach David Shaw, by the way. How he made it so long is beyond me).

Boise St. LB Ezekiel Noa sacks Fresno St. QB Logan Fife in the third quarter of what was at the time a close game in Boise on October 8. The Broncos outscored the Bulldogs 20-0 in the last 20 minutes of the game to win 40-20. A rematch will be played for the Mountain West title tomorrow, also in Boise.

I also noticed there were some games that weren’t included the last time or two I had updated the weighted rankings, so that may have played some role in why Florida St. fell after a loss and why Boise St. rose so far after a win over a now-6-loss opponent.  I think that’s also the main reason UCLA fell so much last week and rose so much this week. Without correctly factoring in how good USC was, it made the loss to the Trojans look worse than it should have; and this is now corrected.

Regardless, I like the process I’ve followed this year because it’s been a lot more stable.  I don’t like to say a given team is top 10 one week and not in the top 25 the next or that six or seven teams are in this week’s top 25 but weren’t in last week’s.  We don’t really find out that much about a team in one game, especially not when it’s 1 of 12 games, so I don’t like to see much volatility later in the year even if there are some adjustments in the methodology.

Top 25

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

For the detailed ratings of all 131 teams, see here or follow the link in the heading for “Knights Ratings” at any time while browsing the site.

Week 2 Top 25 and LSU (P)review

LSU Recap and Preview

I will not be giving any details about the Bulldogs, just about what is going on with LSU. I have updated my Rivalry Series blog in light of the upcoming game though.

LSU has either lost to or barely beat the Bulldogs in every game recently except for the two years in which Joe Burrow was the starting quarterback.  If we win at all, I’ll be satisfied.  If we win somewhat comfortably, I’ll be very encouraged.  A loss won’t necessarily be devastating, but LSU should beat unranked SEC opponents at home (even though I think the Bulldogs should be ranked) even in a mediocre year.  I know it’s easier said than done, but it should be an expectation.  

Malik Nabers carries the ball in the fourth quarter last year in Starkville. Nabers was the leading wide receiver in the game against Southern on Saturday.

One of the LSU shows found the biggest LSU naysayer they could.  Even he picked LSU to win this game (and lose all the other SEC games).  So while I do think the Bulldogs are underrated, I won’t be resting easy if LSU loses. 

Usually I’d barely mention an FCS opponent, but I hope it gave the coaches more data to make better decisions in the future.  What was done in the Southern game may also be a bit of a preview of what they’ll try to do against Mississippi St.  I’m not going to preview the Bulldogs though.

LSU did shore up some concerns in the game against Southern even though obviously what works against Southern may not work in ANY future games.  I think we can compare it to an NFL preseason game.  Cuts to an NFL roster and to some extent decisions about plays and the depth chart are made based on performances against opposition players who themselves often aren’t going to be playing a whole lot in the NFL.  Similarly, most Southern players could not get meaningful playing time at an SEC school (though a couple of former FCS players play for Florida St. and at least one plays for LSU).  But I think going through the motions of a game against at least some competitive athletic talent can tell you a little bit. 

It certainly gives you a basis for comparison of one player to another.  It provides some data points by which to determine who plays where in future games.  Coaches have a better idea of whom they can trust during the game.  You can’t always know that from practices and scrimmages alone.

I don’t know if the new center Charles Turner will be better than Garrett Dellinger, the center in the Florida St. game; but I didn’t notice any problems with snaps, and the coaches seem to like how he communicated.  Dellinger will still get a lot of playing time, but it will just be at guard instead.  I don’t think anyone is pretending we know how well Turner will block an SEC defensive lineman at center because he did an adequate job against Southern, but they could see how he handled the game environment and worked with his teammates.

Jayden Daniels did leave the game early enough that I think we were able to get some information about where he is compared to the backup Nussmeier.  Kelly said before the Florida St. game that they were 1-A and 1-B rather than 1 and 2 on the depth chart.  I’m pretty sure that was a lie.  We didn’t see Nussmeier at all in the Florida St. game even after the Tigers.

LSU only came up with 3 points in the first half; and although Nussmeier ended up throwing for more yards against Southern, he completed only 59% of his passes compared to Daniels’s 91%.  Daniels did not commit a turnover in either game, and Nussmeier threw two interceptions. Daniels threw three touchdowns, and Nussmeier threw none.  I don’t always think QBR is that great of a stat, but when one guy is near 100 and the other is under 20, I think that sums it up pretty well.

Again, I’m not banking on this counting for anything; but the starters did absolutely all they could.  It has been 129 years since LSU first played intercollegiate football, and the Tigers had never scored 37 points in a quarter before.  It only took 40 seconds of the second quarter to get to 44 points.  As for the defense, Southern didn’t score until one of those Nussmeier interceptions was returned late in the third quarter.  The LSU defense didn’t give up points until about 8 minutes remained in the game.  That was probably the third or fourth team by then. 

Micah Baskerville (23) blocks a punt late in the first quarter against Southern in Baton Rouge on Saturday.

Some players who weren’t even starters in the first game played great.  For instance, the game ball went to Micah Baskerville, who blocked a punt (which resulted in a safety) and returned an interception for a touchdown.  I’m told he was only in about a dozen plays against Florida St.  I don’t care if it was against easy competition, doing both of those things in the same season is hard to do, not to mention the same quarter.  Freshman 5-star recruit Harold Perkins, Jr., whom LSU just barely kept from going to Texas A&M, had a good game too with 7 tackles.

Malik Nabors was relieved of punt-return duties after two turnovers in that role against Florida St., but it was nice to see him score a touchdown on one pass and go for 60 yards on another.  Even if the latter were his only catch, Nabors would have led both teams in receiving yards.  It’s good that the ball was spread around by both quarterbacks too.  Hopefully it will keep the receivers more engaged and facilitate better communication and trust than we saw against Florida St.

Also, importantly, LSU had no major injuries and a couple of key players are actually available against Mississippi St. when they were not against Southern.  This includes RB Jon Emery, Jr., and DE BJ Ojulari.  DE Ali Gaye was suspended for a half for targeting, so he will be back as well.

Top 3

This first section ties into last week about certain SEC opponents looking more like winnable games than they did at first blush, but it’s also relevant as to why I’ve made a change at #1.  I did think it was a little unfair that Alabama had to play Georgia in a rematch, but maybe it was the SEC championship game that was the aberration last year.

Alabama has rebounded from looking vulnerable and even losing in September before; but even if by some miracle LSU had been able to convince Saban to come back (there is a contingent of LSU fans who had been trying to orchestrate that for 15 years… I think they finally gave up now that Kelly has a 9-figure contract and Saban is 70 years old), we probably would have had to start thinking about the future by now anyway.  Alabama may still win the national title, but the close win over Texas can be added to the following somewhat concerning close games last season (with final record of opponent and margin of victory):

7-6 Florida, 2 points

8-4 Texas A&M, LOST by 3 points

6-7 LSU, 6 points

9-4 Arkansas, 7 points

6-7 Auburn, 2 points

I haven’t changed my mind about Oregon (Georgia’s big win) being overrated in preseason.  I would have liked to have seen more Georgia Bulldog offense against Samford, but the defense can’t do anything better than a shutout. 

The reason I made the change is that Alabama won by a single point (and as I mentioned probably deserved to lose), and obviously the shine is taken off of Ohio St.’s win over Notre Dame given the Marshall game.  A team can win by one possession in a fluke, but the Irish had to score in the final moments of the game just to make it close.  So that’s really a similar type of game to what the Irish did in Columbus.

Remainder of Top 25

The rest of the top 10 remained intact.  Kentucky had a decisive road win against Florida, so that’s why the Wildcats moved up so much.  BYU’s win over Baylor was at home in overtime, and Baylor was one of the teams I was doubtful about (along with Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma St.).  The Cougars still got credit for beating a ranked team but not as much as what Kentucky did.

Apart from Baylor (whom I didn’t want to drop double digits for an understandable close loss), the rest of the top 20 is made up of teams who moved up by default.

Marshall is obvious.  Oregon St. may not be, but I had Boise St. as one of the top unranked teams going into the season, and the Beavers beat the Broncos handily in Week 1.  Last week, Oregon St. went on the road to Fresno St. (who won 10 games last year) and won, albeit in a close contest.

Oregon St. WR Silas Bolden escapes a Fresno St. defender during a touchdown play in the first half in Fresno on Saturday.

Tennessee wasn’t great against Pittsburgh, but it’s still a Power 5 road win, so I gave the Vols the Panthers’ former spot.

Houston was also on my waiting list in preseason, so I went ahead and gave Texas Tech a spot for beating the Cougars.

Iowa St. didn’t look a whole lot better than South Dakota St. had against Iowa (both games in Iowa City); but the Jackrabbits were one of the best FCS teams last year.  As for the Cyclones, while they had needed the Hawkeyes to miss a field goal to escape with the win, I was still impressed by the defense.  Iowa’s one score was on a very short field.

I give Texas A&M some credit for their defense against Appalachian St. (who put up 40 points in one quarter against North Carolina after all) as well and considered leaving the Aggies in the Top 25 instead.  Although I do think the Aggies would likely beat the Cylones, 2-0 beats 1-1.  Texas A&M will go ahead of the Cyclones with a win this weekend anyway, so I also don’t mind giving Iowa St. the benefit of the doubt for now.

Speaking of the Aggies, I learned a couple of facts I wanted to share. (1) Jimbo Fisher makes more than 20 times as much per year as Appalachian St. head coach Shawn Clark. (2) Texas A&M has 56 players who were either 4- or 5-star recruits out of high school, but Appalachian St. has just 1.

Rank	Team	Last
1	Georgia	3
2	Alabama	1
3	Ohio St.	2
4	Clemson	4
5	Michigan St.	5
6	Michigan	6
7	Ole Miss	7
8	Arkansas	8
9	Oklahoma St.	9
10	Oklahoma	10
11	Kentucky	20
12	B. Young	17
13	Cincinnati	13
14	Miss. St.	16
15	TX Christian	18
16	N. Carolina St.	19
17	U. Miami	21
18	Wake Forest	22
19	Baylor	11
20	Maryland	25
21	Marshall	—
22	Oregon St.	—
23	Tennessee	—
24	Texas Tech	—
25	Iowa St.	—
—	Texas A&M	12
—	Notre Dame	14
—	Iowa	15
—	Pittsburgh	23
—	Florida	24

Week 3 Top 25 and Conference Report

Week 3 Conference Report

The only decent interconference records are held by the Big XII (23-4 including 11 FCS wins), Big Ten (23-7, including 6 FCS wins), and SEC (30-6, including 8 FCS wins).  You can only tell a limited amount from the games between those conferences, but I think Arkansas’ win over Texas is significant.  Arkansas is usually one of the worst teams in the West, and Texas is usually one of the best teams in the Big XII.  To my shame as an LSU fan, I think the Tigers have the SEC’s worst loss, but the good thing is the Pac-12 barely has a winning overall record, so they’re not close to being considered.  UCLA is an improving program, but they shouldn’t beat a team with LSU’s recent success in the SEC.

It is bad that Vanderbilt lost to East Tennessee St., but it’s not that unexpected for the worst of any conference to lose to an FCS opponent.  This year, FCS teams have won 10% of the time against FBS opponents.  Also, the Commodores redeemed themselves somewhat against Colorado St.  On the other hand, the Big Ten and Big XII have not suffered such losses yet.

The best win by the Big XII was West Virginia over Virginia Tech, but the Mountaineers also suffered a loss to Maryland.  I don’t really fault the Big XII for the other two losses: Iowa St. usually loses to Iowa, which looks to be a very good team this year; and Kansas staying with Coastal Carolina as long as the Jayhawks did was a positive in my view.

WVU RB Leddie Brown runs for a touchdown on Saturday in Morgantown. He rushed for 161 yards on the day.

The Big Ten has the most losses in this group, although most are excusable.  Nebraska did well to keep Oklahoma close.  Illinois (losses to Virginia and Texas-San Antonio) is just having a bad year.  Northwestern has had recent success though, so their loss to Duke isn’t as well-taken.  I also didn’t expect Indiana to beat Cincinnati.  I do fault Ohio St. a bit for losing to Oregon.

So, for the Big Ten, I just think there is too much blame to go around.  There also isn’t a really great win.  Michigan St. had a good win against U. Miami, but I think the Hurricanes were just overrated.  Penn St. was a good win over Auburn, but Auburn has a new head coach after losing at least 4 games every season since the national-championship loss to Florida St. in the 2013 season.  Auburn is just not what they used to be.  I know Penn St. did poorly in last year’s abbreviated season, but after going 11-2 and winning the Cotton Bowl in the last full season, I still think they’re a program more on the right track.  It just wasn’t a huge deal that they beat Auburn at home.

The SEC’s other losses weren’t anything to write home about.  Pittsburgh was somewhat of an upset against Tennessee, but the Vols are usually in the bottom half of the SEC if not the bottom quarter.  Mississippi St. has an accomplished head coach with an entertaining personality and therefore some potential, but we haven’t seen much from the Bulldogs since Dan Mullen left after the 2017 season.  I’d frown upon losing to most American Conference opponents, but Memphis is a much better program than most in that conference. 

I’m giving to the edge to the SEC at this point based on Georgia’s win over Clemson.  Neither the Big Ten nor the Big XII has that giant-killer sort of game on its resume.  Georgia is one of the top 5 to 10 programs right now, don’t get me wrong; but Clemson is one of the top 2 programs right now.  West Virginia beating Virginia Tech (who was only ranked because they beat a likely overrated UNC team) is no comparison.

Since this is a combined blog when originally I meant it to be two separate blogs, I’m just going to give a list of the other conferences with their records and my ranking.

The American Conference (AAC) might raise some eyebrows based on record alone, but trust me that they have better wins and a stronger schedule as a whole.  I mentioned a couple of them above: Memphis over Mississippi St. and Cincinnati over Indiana.

4. ACC (22-12, including 10 wins over FCS)
5. Pac-12 (16-15, including 7 wins over FCS)
6. MWC (20-13, including 8 wins over FCS)
7. AAC (17-18, including 8 wins over FCS)
8. Sun Belt (17-10, including 8 wins over FCS)
9. Independents (13-6, including 2 wins over FCS)
10. CUSA (16-17, including 12 wins over FCS)
11. MAC (13-22, including 10 wins over FCS)

As for the rankings, the first thing I wanted to note was that I left USC in last week’s rankings by accident.  I should have ranked Central Florida #24, although last week’s performance has taken the Golden Knights back out of the rankings.  I also should have taken UL-Lafayette, which lost to Texas in Week 1, out and left Texas in at #25.

So this should have been the final three teams and the “out of rankings” list last week:

23 Ball St. 23
24 C. Florida —
25 Texas 15
Out of rankngs: (20) UL-Lafayette, (21) S. California, (24) Buffalo

Week 3 Top 25

Moving on to this week, I decided to move Oregon up another chunk of spots.  I know at the end of the season “win chains” (Team A beat Team B who beat Team C and so on) get ridiculous, but it’s one of the few things to go on as we transition from a general sense of a team in preseason to a situation where we can exclusively rely on observations from this season alone.  We also don’t have enough games played where we can disregard a win chain where maybe a 3-win team upset an 8-win team. 

Anyway, the Ducks beat Fresno St. in Week 1.  The closeness of that game was actually part of the reason I didn’t rank the Ducks after Week 1, but now that the Bulldogs beat UCLA, who beat LSU by a couple of possessions, the Ducks have two good wins.  This increase in rank doesn’t have anything to do with Oregon’s win over Stony Brook last week.

Oregon RB CJ Verdell outruns the Buckeye secondary for a 77-yard touchdown in Week 1 in Columbus. This is still a very significant game for both parts of this blog.

Also, Ohio St. (the other meaningful victim of the Ducks) has improved in status in my view.  The Buckeyes are the only team to beat Minnesota, who just beat Colorado by 30.  The Buffs played a close game against Texas A&M the week before.  Anyway, this not only bolstered my decision to move up Oregon, it also led me to move Ohio St. up and Texas A&M down.  I also moved Oklahoma down after another close game against a seemingly mediocre opponent.

Although I didn’t want to punish Liberty or Coastal Carolina for any particular reason, I don’t mind them being the victims of the Buckeyes’ and Ducks’ improvements given Coastal’s close game against Buffalo and Liberty’s close game (in week 2) against Troy.  Those were both road games against respectable Group of 5 programs though.  I also didn’t want to move Oklahoma down that far, so someone had to get the short end of the stick.

Partly because Georgia Tech lost to Northern Illinois, I also moved Clemson down considerably for its struggles against the Ramblin’ Wreck.  In the Tigers’ defense, they did score nearly twice as many points as did the Yellow Jackets; but when that margin is one possession, that’s still a cause for concern.  I don’t see this as a contradiction to giving Georgia credit for beating Clemson, but this is another instance of the natural process of changing the focus to this season.  Clemson needs good wins to compensate for the loss now, and that wasn’t one.  They can’t just point to success over past seasons.

Also, Georgia and Clemson seem to be moving in opposite directions.  I’m encouraged by the Bulldogs’ 96 points in the last two games.  UAB isn’t great, but the Blazers have won 8 of 12 including last season.  Asking Georgia to score any more points than they did would have been wrong, and UAB was held off the scoreboard until the fourth quarter.  South Carolina was not a good team last year, but don’t forget that the last time the Gamecocks went to Athens they won.  So a solid 27-point win was also about as much as you could ask of the Bulldogs.  No need to give South Carolina bulletin-board material for next year.

Again, I hope you’ll forgive my lack of elaboration for the other new and moved teams since I’m trying to keep the size of this combined blog under control.  Apart from Wyoming, all of the new teams are also being recognized by the major pollsters. 

Wyoming beat both Northern Illinois and Ball St.  I mentioned that Northern Illinois beat Georgia Tech, whom Clemson barely beat.  I ranked Ball St. in the preseason, and the Cowboys beat the Cardinals by a larger margin than Penn St. did.  For all I know, Ball St. may not win another game; but I don’t think they changed much between playing Penn St. and playing Wyoming at the very least.  Northern Illinois’s other loss is to Michigan, which I’m also giving credit for starting the season well.  It’s only consistent to also include Wyoming at this point.  I did rank the Cowboys a couple of spots below the Wolverines, but they had a much closer game against the Huskies than Michigan did.  I know they don’t attract the attention of many voters (although someone in the AP put them 25^th); but if Wyoming were named Notre Dame with the same resume they do now, they’d probably be in the top 10.  I definitely don’t think they’ve done anything as bad as losing to Fresno St.  They haven’t beaten LSU either, but we don’t really know what that means yet.  Doubt should be resolved in favor of the undefeated team, at least in September.

Wyoming QB Sean Chambers led the offense to over 200 passing yards Saturday in Laramie. He also added 21 net yards on the ground.

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

Out of rankings: (17) U. Miami, (18) Indiana, (20) Virginia Tech, (23) Ball St., (24) Central Florida

Last Week

Final Top 25 of 2018 Season

This week is always tough for me to get back on schedule, so having a game on a week night and then trying to write all of this with work the next day caused me to keep pushing this back. I don’t plan to wait until next season for the next blog, but I can’t be sure when I’ll write again.

As demonstrated by the chart I posted along with the last blog, college football is Alabama, Clemson, and everyone else.  I’m happy someone other than Alabama comes out number one about half the time. 

The only thing I ever had against Clemson (other than a fight song that sounds similar to LSU’s) was that when South Carolina lost to them years ago it made the SEC look bad.  But now I don’t think it hurts that Clemson caused 1/4 of the SEC’s inter-conference losses during the season.

I also want to let the Alabama fans who freaked out when I put Clemson #1 earlier in the year to know I’m laughing at them even though I won’t rub it in.

There is no significance to using a Cotton Bowl picture instead of a national championship picture, but this was the best picture I saw of Trevor Lawrence. He snuck by a lot of people who couldn’t stop talking about Tua and Kyler, so I thought he deserved a good picture.

Final SEC Comments

The Alabama loss drops the top six teams of the SEC to 5-2 in postseason.  All three of my computer rankings (weighted, unweighted, and statistical average) have Clemson #1 and Alabama #2 as is appropriate. 

As I talked about in the last blog, the middle of the conference narrowly lost a few games because they were slightly overmatched. I thought I would explain that a little bit more.

Normally the #7 team and 4th in their division doesn’t end up in the Outback Bowl, for instance (last year South Carolina made it with a winning record at fifth place overall and second in the SEC East). If Mississippi St. had played in the Music City Bowl instead (or an even lesser bowl like the St. Petersburg Bowl they played in two years ago), they probably would have won.

Vanderbilt probably would have won had they not been playing a team that tied for fifth in their conference while the Commodores finished sixth of the seven teams in their division. In other years, the last SEC bowl team ended up in the Birmingham Bowl against a non-major opponent (and not a conference champion like LSU played this year and Auburn played last season).

I would honestly say Missouri was ninth in SEC play although they had the same record as a couple of other teams. Mississippi St. only finished 4-4 because they lost to the two best SEC West teams and to two of the three best SEC East teams. Unlike Missouri, they didn’t play the worst team of the other division. South Carolina was in the SEC East along with Missouri, and the Gamecocks beat the Tigers. The Gamecocks lost to Clemson out of conference, but I don’t think anyone would seriously tell me Missouri would have had a meaningful hope of beating Clemson at the end of the year.

Maybe there wouldn’t have been a blowout (and there would have been another SEC win) had Auburn played Oklahoma St. and Missouri played Purdue, but one reason that didn’t happen was Missouri already beat Purdue. Similarly to Auburn, Oklahoma St. seemed to show up best for their major out-of-conference games while being inconsistent in conference. The Cowboys made Boise St. look like Kansas, even though the Cowboys lost six conference games (including an embarrassing home loss to Texas Tech) between that game and the bowl.

I didn’t see the South Carolina game, just the highlights (if you can call them that); but it seemed like they just didn’t show up. I guess when you qualify 11 teams for bowls, chances are that will happen with one of them. Maybe South Carolina vs. Purdue was the pillow fight the bowl season needed.

In sum, I don’t think the top six of any other conference would have won five games (or even four games) against Oklahoma, Texas, Central Florida, Michigan, Penn St., and North Carolina St. I don’t think anyone else’s #11 plays a close game with Baylor like Vandy did or anyone else’s #10 blows out Purdue like Auburn did. Maybe you can quibble with a couple of others; but mid- and low-ranked teams of other conferences aren’t expected to play close games against the same caliber of teams, and with one exception those SEC teams did play close games.

Also, the average SEC team still blows every other conference out of the water. In my conference ratings, 0.07 points separates the #2 conference (the ACC) and the #5 conference (the Pac-12), but 0.19 separates the ACC and the SEC.

Top 10 (Including LSU)

I also think it’s right to have Notre Dame #3.  The Irish’s loss to Clemson doesn’t look as bad now, and–although Michigan lost–two of the better teams the Irish beat, Northwestern and Syracuse, had good bowl results.  Stanford also won; but I don’t know if that really helps Notre Dame’s argument since they beat Pittsburgh, another opponent of theirs.  I don’t factor this in, but there was also some bad luck in their scheduling.  You would have thought at least one team among Navy, USC, and Florida St. would have qualified for a bowl game, but no such luck.

Oklahoma did beat Texas, which added to its value by winning the Sugar Bowl, but there isn’t much else to be excited about in the Big XII results.  Both of the teams who tied for #3 in the regular season, West Virginia and Iowa St., lost.  There were a couple of wins by lower teams over two middling SEC East teams and Cal, but it also hurt Oklahoma that the team who beat them lost in the national championship.  Also, since Alabama played Georgia and Missouri (the second-best team the Big XII beat in bowls), it didn’t help the Sooners as much to have Big XII teams beat them.

Urban Meyer went out a winner in the Rose Bowl. His team was pretty good too, although that Purdue game still defies explanation.

I think it’s right that Ohio St. finishes ahead of the Sooners.  The top of the Big Ten had some losses too, but I don’t think basically a .500 team of any other conference would have beaten Mississippi St. in the Outback Bowl.  I don’t know if (other than the SEC) another conference’s effective #4 team (Northwestern had as good a conference record as Ohio St. but played in a much weaker division and lost three games out of conference) would have beaten Utah.  Maybe Oklahoma would have beaten Washington, but maybe they would have come out flat like Georgia did against what I consider a worse team. More on Texas later.

I have LSU 7^th, but with the objective way my ratings work I can’t give credit to my belief that LSU was the better team when they played Texas A&M.  I think most of the voters probably treated that like a tie at worst.  The polls also frown upon losing your last two games regardless of the opponents, so that also contributed to the Tigers passing up the Bulldogs… not to mention that LSU beat Georgia by 20 points.

Speaking of head-to-head, there is of course an argument Florida should be ahead of Michigan, but the Gators were hurt by being in the SEC East (which went only 2-4 in bowl games) and losing to Missouri.  Florida was the only team outside of my top four who beat Michigan though.

So Michigan finished ninth behind Central Florida, and Washington St. rounds out the top 10. Iowa St. wasn’t a spectacular opponent (although again the bowl selectors did their job in making it entertaining), but 11 wins is a job well-done anyway.

The Rest of the Top 25

Appalachian St. finished higher than I would have liked (simply because I think at least 25 teams would beat them at a neutral site), but I think keeping an 11-2 team outside of the top 15 based on strength of schedule is about the best to be expected, especially when one of the two losses was to a team in the top 20.  Cincinnati also finished 11-2 and barely made the top 25.

Texas finished fairly low considering the two big wins (Oklahoma earlier in the season and Georgia), but let’s not forget they lost to Maryland (who didn’t qualify for a bowl game).  Only one other Longhorn win (over 8-5 Iowa St.) came against a team who finished with fewer than 6 losses, so that hurts them in the weighted ratings.  Texas A&M, which had no bad losses, also had exactly three wins over teams who finished with fewer than 6 losses. 

I’d like to give the Aggies less credit, but I believe in being consistent.  The Aggies’ worst loss was to Auburn; but given that Auburn beat a 5-4 Big Ten team by about 50 points (and didn’t really even try to score in the second half), they probably could have done the same or worse to Maryland, who finished 3-6 in the Big Ten after beating Texas.  So I don’t consider Auburn a bad loss to the same extent.

I finished with three Mountain West teams in the top 25; but I think they were pretty similar, and despite the early losses to major-conference opponents it’s hard to say there were 20+ teams who were more deserving than all of them.  Fresno St. finished higher than I would have liked, but the Bulldogs did beat a fairly decent team in Arizona St. in the bowl game to finish 12-2.  Other than losing to Boise St., for which they redeemed themselves in the conference championship game, Fresno St. won the rest of the conference games.  Utah St. (which finished 11-2) may have been just as good, but they didn’t get the rematch against Boise St. and unfortunately didn’t have a chance at a better team than North Texas in the bowl.  They’ll get a crack at LSU next year though.

Fresno St.’s Ronnie Rivers ran for 212 yards (almost 9 yards per rush) against Arizona St. in the Las Vegas Bowl on December 15. The Bulldogs trailed, 20-17, before Rivers scored the last two touchdowns of the game.

Top 25 List

I did want to note that I’m using the statistical average of the weighted and unweighted ratings (I guess you could call it semi-weighted). I thought including Stanford and Iowa made more sense than the other versions. The top 10 was pretty consistent, so I didn’t worry about that as much as including the right lower teams. Here is the full 130-team list, but the top 25 list below has the recent changes.

Rank	Team	Prev.
1	Clemson	2
2	Alabama	1
3	Notre Dame	3
4	Ohio St.	5
5	Oklahoma	4
6	Georgia	6
7	LSU	9
8	C. Florida	7
9	Michigan	8
10	Wash St.	13
11	Florida	11
12	Kentucky	12
13	Fresno St.	15
14	Army	17
15	Syracuse	19
16	App. St.	16
17	Texas A&M	18
18	Washington	10
19	Texas	—
20	Penn St.	14
21	Boise St.	22
22	Utah St.	21
23	Cincinnati	23
24	Stanford	—
25	Iowa	—

Out of Top 25: (20) Missouri, (24) Miss. St., (25) Utah

CFP got top 4 right; Pre-Bowl Top 25

As far as #1, I had mixed results between the weighted system and the unweighted system. The top 4 is the same in both, but Clemson is ahead of Alabama in the unweighted system.  I’ve mentioned how Alabama didn’t have a particularly good schedule despite playing in the SEC.  Their best non-conference opponent finished with a losing record, as did one of their two regular-season SEC East opponents.  However, Georgia by itself deserves more consideration than just one game out of 13 (as does LSU), so that’s why I didn’t use the unweighted system by itself below. 

Even though I generally support the SEC, I want to make clear I don’t like Alabama; and I feel like they’re given unfair treatment by the officials in just about every game (though they rarely need it). Nonetheless, it’s important for me to figure out who on paper has accomplished more while taking into account losses (which only applies to one of the top 4 teams). 

A questionable review on this alleged touchdown by Josh Jacobs kept the Tide in the game. As usual, they took full advantage to eliminate the Bulldogs.

I think I would do teams like Alabama a disservice by failing to acknowledge their strength of resume; and both ratings had their strengths and weaknesses, so what I did was combine the two ratings.Since the two systems create very different numbers, I multiplied the unweighted ratings by 15 and then averaged the two. The top 50 teams on average got a number about 15 times higher in the weighted system than in the unweighted system, so I thought this was fair.

These averaged ratings were directly incorporated into my top 25 below without any subjective input.  This isn’t covering new ground, but it’s worth reiterating that this is purely about how good the numbers made the teams look in that formula.  It doesn’t matter how anyone was projected in preseason or how good the public perception of an opponent was at the time they were played.  It doesn’t matter which teams, coaches, and players I like, or which ones I thought got a raw deal in officiating or could beat better teams if only they’d played them, or anything like that. 

Margin of victory only has a slight impact where a home team won by 3 or less in regulation (meaning if they won by 8 in overtime it’s still considered a win with the home advantage) since that’s the average advantage by playing at home, and it also happens to be the smallest number of points typically scored in one play (I don’t know of any two-minute drills to get that key safety to win the game if you’re down by 1 late).

I let the numbers guide me the same way in my rankings below, but another thing I hesitated to do was to put Ohio St. (even though I have strongly disliked the Buckeyes for some time) below Oklahoma.  It’s no question whose best wins came against the better two teams.  Michigan has lost to two teams, and those two teams have a total of one loss between them, and Penn St. isn’t far behind.  The key problem for the Buckeyes is their loss to Purdue. The Boilermakers had to win their final game just to finish 6-6.  I know Texas isn’t spectacular; but if they played Purdue in a bowl game, the Longhorns would probably be favored by double digits.  Texas also lost to a mediocre Big Ten team to be fair; but had Maryland been their only loss, I’d be explaining why Ohio St. deserved to go ahead of them right now.  But I’m not comparing a team with a loss to Maryland to a team with a loss to Purdue: I’m comparing a team with a loss to Texas to a team with a loss to Purdue. 

To give credit where it’s due again and to explain how close it is, the second win for the Buckeyes is also strong.  To get to the next best win for Ohio St.though (Northwestern), I have to go outside of the top 25 and even outside of the top 35.  To get there, I pass up four teams that Oklahoma has beaten: Army, West Virginia, Texas, and Iowa St.  I really don’t know if it’s harder to beat four teams who are better than Northwestern but in the top 15 or to beat two teams who are in the top 15 and none others who are better.  I suspect the former is more difficult; but that loss breaks the tie if it’s just as difficult, so I will defend the outcome here.

As an LSU fan, I know a lot about playing top-15 teams and playing teams somewhere between #16 and #40.  I’d rather have two tough games to focus on against teams in the top 15 than the week-after-week onslaught of #16 to #40 teams.  LSU beat 3 top-10 teams, although I acknowledge two of them didn’t belong anywhere near the top 10 in hindsight.  Although Alabama beats us every year, we had a mediocre team take them to overtime a few years ago.  Georgia definitely belongs in the top 10;they were a play or two away from making the playoff.  We lost to Florida, but I think that’s a better team than Penn St.  If that were the only other game we had needed to get up for and we didn’t play Alabama, I think we would have won. Ohio St. beat Penn St. by 1, and we trailed Florida by 1 before a late “pick six” made the final score a loss by 8. 

The loss to Texas A&M (questionable though it was) and similar losses over the years (such as losing to Kentucky and Arkansas in our 2007 championship year and losing to a mediocre Florida team in our 2003 championship year) would result in increased nerves over Oklahoma’s schedule than Ohio St.’s.  If we had a 45%chance to beat Michigan and a 55% chance to beat Penn St., for instance, that gives us a 25% chance to win both.  (These numbers are just off the top of my head.) If we had a 70% chance to beat Army, a 60% chance to beat West Virginia,a 60% chance to beat Texas, and an 80% chance to beat Iowa St., we’d only have a 20% chance to win all four (assuming independence of the numbers).  Again, it’s very close, but if I have to pick one to be better, I pick Oklahoma.

I’m not persuaded by the arguments for Georgia.  I disagreed with the decision in 2011 (by voters and some computers) to pick Alabama ahead of Oklahoma St.  The Tide had their chance to beat LSU (at home) and shouldn’t have gotten another.  The fact that they got it and took advantage of it didn’t make it the right decision. But I can respect a difference of opinion on that more than I respect the opinion of Georgia being in the top 4 this season.  At least that was a choice between two one-loss teams.  Georgia supporters want them to advance as a two-loss team despite two decent one-loss options. 

Obviously I’m an advocate for LSU and what they’ve done this season—and their record does not fairly represent that in my opinion—but losing to LSU by 20 is not like losing to a title-contender by 3 in overtime,which is what Alabama did in 2011.  I do have the Bulldogs extremely close to Ohio St., mostly because losing to LSU hurts a lot less than losing to Purdue. If Oklahoma had lost to Texas a second time, it would be harder to make the case for the Buckeyes (but I’d still probably do so).  As it stands, I think the Sooners redeemed themselves against Texas (although I don’t think the Big XII championship should be allowed in the first place), their three-point loss in the first game against the Longhorns was probably a fluke, and it’s best that someone else gets a shot at Alabama. I have a feeling the Tide would do better in a rematch with Georgia than they did yesterday. Oklahoma-Alabama is an unknown. For all we know, it could be like the Ohio St.-Alabama game a few years ago.  Let’s find out.

I already made the argument about how LSU should be picked for a major bowl above Florida (which I don’t think will happen) and Washington St. (which I think probably will happen), so I think other than #1 and #4 there isn’t much more to discuss.  ***UPDATE*** LSU has been confirmed for the Fiesta Bowl against Central Florida.  Apparently it was decided not to send the Knights to Atlanta two years in a row.

I would like to say that I would have liked to have seen that North Carolina St./West Virginia game that was canceled. I would have preferred the winner to be in the top 25 over Utah, but that’s the breaks.  The Mountaineers and Wolfpack are #26 and #27, respectively, followed by Stanford and then Texas.

I plan to make the average used here a regular feature on my “weighted average” page on my ratings site.  I may continue to wait until after the first CFP rankings are released to publish that list though.

Rank	Team	Prev.
1	Alabama	1
2	Clemson	3
3	Notre Dame	2
4	Oklahoma	6
5	Ohio St.	5
6	Georgia	4
7	C. Florida	9
8	Michigan	7
9	LSU	8
10	Washington	14
11	Florida	11
12	Kentucky	10
13	Wash St.	13
14	Penn St.	12
15	Fresno St.	—
16	App. St.	23
17	Army	18
18	Texas A&M	15
19	Syracuse	19
20	Missouri	16
21	Utah St.	22
22	Boise St.	17
23	Cincinnati	—
24	Miss. St.	20
25	Utah	21

Out of Top 25: (24) N Carolina St., (25) West Virginia

Top 25 after Week 12

After relying on my original computer formula for 100% of the list below last week, I just couldn’t do it this week.  I am switching #1 and#2.  Notre Dame has the better schedule for the moment by just a whisker (mostly because the Irish played Michigan),but Southern California (Notre Dame’s next opponent) will have a worse rating than South Carolina (Clemson’s next opponent) next week.  In addition, the Gamecocks (who are already bowl-eligible) will be able to pad their record with a win over Akron on December 1.  The Trojans, assuming they lose, will be done for the season (and ineligible for a bowl).

The Irish looked good, both in uniforms and in playing ability, against Syracuse and became my computer #1. Irish safety Alohi Gilman is pictured intercepting a pass
in Yankee Stadium on Saturday .

One other difference is the last four teams in the list below are the four teams(in order) that appear in the top 20 of my weighted ratings (which better mimic the CFP committee considerations by giving priority to how many of the best teams you play over your average opponent… to the extent the CFP committee is based on wins and losses and an objective evaluation of strength of schedule anyway), but did not appear in the top 20 of my older formulation.  Utah St. was #21 in both, so I thought it made sense to put those teams after the Aggies. If you were curious, the teams omitted as a result of this decision are Cincinnati, Buffalo, and Troy.  It’s three omitted teams instead of four because Missouri would be ranked either way.  The Tigers are just two spots higher this way. 

Syracuse, Auburn, and Northwestern are the three teams in the top 25 of the weighted ratings but not listed below.  Had I followed the weighted ratings exclusively, they would have replaced Texas, Fresno St., and Washington.

A perfectly average SEC team would be ranked #30, so that makes it much easier for the SEC teams to get the extra points awarded in the weighted ratings.  The Big Ten has the second-best average rating, but a perfectly average Big Ten team would only be ranked #48.

Auburn (Alabama’s next opponent) has a very similar rating to South Carolina, so I don’t think the Tide will be able to narrow the gap much if at all.  Alabama may pass up Notre Dame though, another reason not to make the Irish #1 right now.

I normally only use this top 25 blog entry to talk about why the ratings are what they are, but I wanted to make a couple of comments about Alabama.  It’s a coincidence that this demotion comes after their worst first half of the season, but I guess it’s fitting.  I thought LSU should have used the option against Alabama, and I think the Citadel’s performance in the first half supported that idea.  LSU won the 2011 “Game of the Century” by using more option than Alabama expected as well.  Nick Saban said probably none of the Citadel players could play for Alabama (maybe one or two could be decent walk-ons), and it still made them competitive for a while.  That’s not the case with LSU obviously.  Maybe it’s something we can work on in the offseason.  I don’t mean become one of those all-option all-the-time teams that almost never throw the ball (like Georgia Tech and the service academies), but we need ways to spread out defenses like Alabama’s horizontally in order to sustain drives and limit opponents’ possessions.

LSU fell two spots after playing possibly the worst team at the FBS level (they lost to the other candidate, UTEP, but the Owls have faced a stronger schedule).  If Michigan and LSU win next week, the Tigers should move back ahead of the Buckeyes. Washington St. may be ahead for good, although of course the Cougars could lose to Washington or Utah (which clinched the Pac-12 South).  Oklahoma and Georgia could also suffer losses in the next two weeks.  In my weighted ratings, LSU is still #6 behind Michigan. 

Rank	Team	Prev.
1	Clemson	2
2	Notre Dame	3
3	Alabama	1
4	Georgia	4
5	Michigan	5
6	Oklahoma	6
7	Ohio St.	8
8	Wash St.	9
9	LSU	7
10	C. Florida	12
11	Kentucky	18
12	Boise St.	13
13	Texas	16
14	Penn St.	11
15	Florida	14
16	Utah	21
17	W. Virginia	10
18	Fresno St.	—
19	Washington	20
20	Army	17
21	Utah St.	22
22	Texas A&M	—
23	Missouri	—
24	S Carolina	—
25	Miss. St.	—

Out of Top 25: (15) Cincinnati, (19) Buffalo, (23) Duke, (24) UAB, (25) Iowa St.

Alabama Offense vs. LSU Defense

For more on what to expect from the LSU offense and general comments, please see Part I published on Wednesday.  This page links the major previous discussions of the LSU-Alabama Series.  LSU seems to have better kickers, but I’m not going to spend any time on that point.

Proposition: Alabama runs away with the game to score 40+ again (Intro)

What made me decide to split this into two blogs was how annoyed I was with how many people were picking Alabama to score 40+ while picking LSU to score <22. I listened to a couple of somewhat credible prognosticators on YouTube who did that based on Alabama’s stats.

One of them (SECfans, which I mentioned before) actually replied to my comment and asked if I thought Alabama’s offense was severely overrated due to the schedule.  I said that I didn’t think they were severely so, but in all the years I’ve been watching college football (I would say I had something like an adult appreciation of it starting in the mid-90s), there hasn’t been a top team who scored over 40 every game.

Historical Precedent in General

In the video, they had mentioned the 2005 Texas team that scored 41 points in the title game against USC.  A neutral-site bowl game isn’t really analogous to Tiger Stadium.  What might be analogous was when the Longhorns went to Ohio St. that year and were held to 25 points.  Also, late in the season the USC team in question had allowed 42 points at home to a Fresno St. team that would finish with 5 losses.

Vince Young runs for a touchdown in the 2006 Rose Bowl.

The best offense I’ve seen through 8 games was probably 2010 Oregon.  They had an even higher average (by less than a point, but still) than Alabama does now at 54.8 points per game.  That was despite having played a top 10 team at home and a top-25 team on the road, neither of which the Tide has done.

The 9th game was consistent with that, but in their 10th game, the Ducks went on the road to play the unranked Cal Bears and only won 15-13.  That was a Cal defense that would allow three different teams to score 48 or more against them.  Cal finished with a losing record that year.  I’d say it’s pretty likely LSU has a better defense this year than that team did then.

The Cal (Berkeley) defense held Oregon to about 40 fewer points than the Ducks’ average in their 2010 matchup.

One of the best SEC offenses was the 1996 Florida. Early on the Gators beat #2 Tennessee on the road, but apart from that game the Gators averaged 54 points per game through the first 8 games.  Then in early November, the Gators escaped Nashville (hardly an intimidating road environment by SEC standards) with only a 28-21 win.  A few weeks later, Florida St. held Florida to 21 for the Gators’ only loss of the season.  Of course Florida would then run away with the national championship against the Seminoles, 52-20.

Florida’s Danny Wuerffel led the Gator offense to over 50 points per game before being brought back down to earth in Nashville and Tallahassee (pictured).

I don’t mind if people are picking Alabama to score 35, for instance.  Maybe this Alabama offense is able to produce points just as well as and just as consistently as 1995 Nebraska, who was only held under 40 twice and never below 35.  That was the only team since World War II that won each game by at least 14, but the team who got within 14 was unranked and playing in Lincoln.  I just need to see this year’s Alabama play a better defense than Texas A&M or Missouri to believe they’re better than that Nebraska team.  Despite the Cornhuskers’ having won the national championship in 1994, the voters in 1995 were skeptical of Nebraska and did not move them up to #1 until the Huskers had beaten top-10 teams in consecutive weeks.

Historical Precedent in LSU-Alabama Series

I can also refer to past games in the LSU-Alabama rivalry. I mentioned the 2013 game in the last blog. LSU didn’t keep Alabama very far below their average, although they were on pace to do so for most of the game. More relevantly to this blog, the Tigers had averaged 40 points per game going in, and Alabama held LSU to less than half of that average.  The Tigers have a lot of work to do if that’s the best their defense can do this year, one reason I think the Tide wins, but 27 points wouldn’t make it an impossible task.

Alabama teams of the last few years probably don’t compare to this one in terms of how strong the respective offenses and defenses are, but I think we may also be able to learn a little from 2011 and 2009.

People act like in retrospect the 2011 regular season game was destined to be in the single digits, but it really wasn’t.  I don’t remember the over/under, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t 16. Alabama was averaging 39 points per game and had only been held below 37 twice (27 @ Penn St. and 34 against Vanderbilt).  LSU had almost the exact same average despite having played Oregon and West Virginia, two eventual winners of BCS bowls. Only Mississippi St. had held the Tigers below 35 (like this year, LSU scored only 19 against the Bulldogs).

Granted the points given up were lower in both cases in 2011 but not ridiculously so. LSU has only allowed one team to score over 21 this year (but two right at 21).  They’d allowed two to score over 11 in 2011.  Alabama has only allowed two teams to score more than 14 points this year.  In 2011, they’d allowed double digits 3 times. So maybe not 9-6, but 20-17 wouldn’t be a shockingly low score.

I want to mention one other Alabama team, and that’s 2009.  That was Saban’s third year and his first team there that really tipped the SEC off about what was to come.  The Tide opened against #7 Virginia Tech and then played four unranked opponents, two in SEC play and one on the road. That’s not a body of work similar to what they have now, but in those five games the Tide scored at least 34 points in each one and averaged 40 points.

Patrick Peterson grabs an apparent interception in Tuscaloosa in 2009. The pass was ruled incomplete. LSU may not have won the game in Tuscaloosa, but a different call here could have changed the score.

The Tide went to #20 Ole Miss and point production fell by 45% as they only scored 22. A similar reduction in this case would result in the Tide only scoring 30. Ole Miss had a good defense in 2009, but maybe LSU’s is better this year. The Rebels did allow 33 to Auburn and 41 to Mississippi St. that year. I don’t envision LSU giving up that many to an unranked team this year.

Comparison to Other Games This Season

It’s odd for two teams in the same division to have only one common opponent at this point, but in this case it doesn’t tell us very much.  It was Ole Miss, who really didn’t have much of a chance in either game.  I think the games worth considering are ones where either LSU or Alabama had to get out of their comfort zone in some way.  The Rebels did not force either team to do that.

Again, the best team Alabama has played is Texas A&M, who I believe is justifiably outside of the top 25 in the coaches poll.  The Texas A&M defense, which made Mississippi St.’s Nick Fitzgerald look like a Heisman contender doesn’t compare favorably to LSU’s defense at all.  Mississippi St. scored a combined 16 points against LSU, Florida, and Kentucky, 12 less than A&M gave up.  The point being that we really don’t have a model when it comes to how Alabama does against a defense that can really affect an offense the way LSU’s affected Fromm of Georgia and Fitzgerald.

If it’s a similar game with Alabama holding the opposing offense in the low 20s, LSU will likely take at least one touchdown opportunity away that A&M couldn’t, especially given that A&M was playing in Tuscaloosa.

I haven’t seen anyone suggest this, but I did want to add a caveat. I wouldn’t be upset if someone thinks Alabama wins 41-34. That wouldn’t show LSU’s defense is almost as bad as A&M’s; it would show Alabama’s offense had to keep going in high gear the whole game when it could pretty much relax in the second half against A&M. I’d be surprised to see that much offense from LSU, but they did score 36 against Georgia despite settling for field goals 5 times and despite a quarterback who could only complete half of his throws.

A better measuring stick for Alabama offense (though the Tide defense did extremely well) is the Missouri game. That was the best comparison I could find to a tough game Georgia had to play (partly because it was on the road) before coming to Baton Rouge. Missouri had been the only team to score more than 17 against the Bulldogs (they scored 29) and the only team to come within 14 points (and that was despite a defensive touchdown by Georgia).

Tua Tagovailoa is sacked by Missouri’s 
Kobie Whiteside in Tuscaloosa on October 13.

For Alabama vs. Missouri, I’m more going to look to see what we can gather about things LSU might be able to do on defense.  Missouri did have the second-closest game with the Tide so far (after A&M), but more impressively (and more relevantly to this blog) the Tigers are the only team to hold Alabama below 40, and they did this in Tuscaloosa.

Giving up 39 isn’t that impressive on its own (unless LSU really does give up 41 without producing much on offense); but as I’ve said before, you can score into the 40s against almost anyone if you’re given easy points. Twice while the game was still competitive, Missouri committed a turnover deep in their own territory. So where it was 27-10 with 10 minutes left in the half, it probably would have been Missouri ball down only 17-10. I’m not that Alabama didn’t deserve to beat them like they did, but what I am saying is the Missouri defensive unit did even better than Alabama’s point total indicates.

It’s also somewhat impressive that Mizzou limited Tua to only 2 of 5 on third downs and 12 of 22 overall (though it was still an average of over 10 yards per attempt) with only one positive run. Missouri has neither a good pass rush nor a good secondary. I couldn’t get the stats on how many sacks and hurries they had against Bama, but I know they had one sack and no hurries against Georgia. That’s one reason LSU was able to limit Georgia to fewer scoring drives than Mizzou had.

LSU was able to improve significantly on what Missouri did with Georgia. Even if we cut out the defensive score, LSU roughly cut Georgia’s point-scoring in half. So I think the low end of Alabama’s point total (barring a disaster or freakishly low-scoring game) is a lot lower than some people have it. I would put it in the low 20s. So I think the route for LSU to win would most likely be LSU scoring between 24 and 31 and Alabama scoring 1-7 points fewer.

Prediction

My prediction is that LSU holds Alabama to 31, which is two touchdowns fewer than Texas A&M allowed, and that the Tigers score 24. I think chances are the Tigers score closer to their point total against Auburn and Florida than the point total against Georgia. Most other people seem to be picking either a narrow LSU upset or a complete blowout by the Tide, either of which could happen of course, but I think these are two really good teams and LSU is just slightly outmatched.

Top 25 after Week 9

Clemson moved into the computer #1  as I thought they might this week.  Louisville is really bad, so Clemson won’t gain much next week.  To give myself an educated guess as to how much Alabama could add to their score, I looked at how much Georgia moved up this week.  They moved up 6 spots and about 0.18 in points.  LSU with an extra loss right now would count for about 10% more than Florida, which roughly matches how far Alabama is behind Clemson.  It may depend on prior opponents (and opponents’ opponents, but those stats are less volatile) of both Alabama and Clemson.  It’s a virtual certainly that LSU would have enough points to be #1 with the win regardless of any combination of outcomes in other games.

Clemson struggled in some earlier games (such as at home against Syracuse), but the Tigers seemed right at home in the record-setting win in Tallahassee.

LSU actually gained slightly in points in the off week, which kept the Tigers ahead of Notre Dame.  Mississippi St.’s win over Texas A&M helped LSU, and that also hurt Alabama’s score slightly to make it more difficult for the Tide to overtake Clemson.  Anyway, just a reminder that the computer is going to dictate everything starting next week.

Texas A&M was one of 10 top-25 teams on my list to lose this week, so there are definitely some changes.  I feel slightly vindicated by some of the results, not that I had teams predicted to win, but more that I wasn’t overrating them as much as the major polls.  I didn’t have Texas A&M very high, only 21^st, and even lower the week before.  I didn’t have Oregon close to being ranked.  Appalachian St. was in my top 40 but not all that far ahead of the Georgia Southern team that beat them. South Florida was also in my top 40 but not top 25.  Most people had Texas ranked ahead of Oklahoma, but I didn’t.  I had Wisconsin a few spots lower than most.

A few of the major-poll top-25 teams who lost were in the Pac-12.  It seems like almost anyone in the Pac-12 can beat almost anyone else.  The only one-loss possibility left is Washington St., and the Cougars can’t usually keep the point production going consistently enough to maintain that.  Even if they pull it off and there is a series of upsets, it’s going to be very difficult given that Wazzu’s nonconference schedule consisted of Wyoming (well below average this year), San Jose St. (a terrible team), and Eastern Washington (a good FCS team).

It’s close to certain that the SEC champion will be in the top 4.  The ACC and Big Ten both seem likely to contribute a team.  Notre Dame is going to be in the mix as long as they’re undefeated, but I think if the Irish lose they may fall behind Oklahoma and perhaps a second SEC team.

Speaking of the SEC, there is a divisional championship game between Georgia and Kentucky next week along with the LSU-Alabama game.  Alabama would clinch at least a share of the SEC West title with a win whereas LSU would only clinch a winning SEC record and would still need to win two more games (against Arkansas and Texas A&M).

I wanted to mention that Buffalo (which was ranked for the first time last week) and Georgia Southern are the 91st and 92nd teams to appear in my rankings list since I started it over 20 years ago (although for about the first 10 years it was mostly just for myself).  Last year I had said Florida Atlantic was #89, but I’d left out a team (Appalachian St.) when counting, so they were really #90.  So there are still 38 more teams that need to find their way on there one of these years.

Rank	Team	Prev.
1	Alabama	1
2	Clemson	3
3	Notre Dame	2
4	LSU	4
5	Michigan	5
6	Georgia	12
7	Kentucky	10
8	Oklahoma	6
9	Florida	8
10	Ohio St.	13
11	Wash St.	—
12	Iowa	9
13	Penn St.	—
14	Army	23
15	Utah	16
16	Texas	7
17	Fresno St.	—
18	W. Virginia	25
19	Buffalo	18
20	NC State	15
21	Washington	11
22	Ga. Southern	—
23	Stanford	14
24	Iowa St.	—
25	C. Florida	19

Out of Top 25: (17) Duke, (20) San Diego St., (21) Texas A&M, (22) Virginia, (24) Wisconsin