Ratings and College Football Playoff Response/Prediction
The first four teams are all undefeated now, just in time to lose at least one undefeated team this weekend. It happens to be the same top four as the CFP top 25. I can argue until I’m blue in the face about Oregon, but I guess people like flashy offenses and uniforms (not to mention years of a hype and a nationwide ad campaign for the quarterback) more than they like a good strength of schedule. It seems like they’re setting up the possibility of Oregon going to the Playoff in the event of revenge wins over Oregon St. (for last year) and Washington (for both last year and earlier this season).
Putting aside the CFP ramifications, I think Oregon might have some motivation to win this next game.
I don’t think Washington, Georgia, or Florida St. (another undefeated not in the top four) have much chance of a loss this coming weekend, but losses by none of them (except maybe Georgia) would be much stranger than the time 4-7 Pitt beat 10-1 West Virginia in 2007 to help LSU make the championship game.
Florida and Washington St. have five wins apiece and are playing for bowl eligibility as well as in-state bragging rights, while Georgia Tech is already bowl-eligible. A late pick-six is likely the only reason Washington beat Arizona St., who is only 3-8. Despite one fewer win, Florida is a better team than Boston College, whom Florida St. only beat by 2. Georgia hasn’t really come close to a loss though.
Alabama and Florida St. both lost ground compared to higher teams as a result of playing FCS opponents. Alabama probably lost a bit less since the SEC gained strength with out-of-conference wins and because Chattanooga is an FCS playoff team.
I suspect that unless Washington and Georgia remain undefeated, removing Oregon and Alabama from the running in the process, the plan is that Florida St. will be excluded from the Playoff. I don’t know if this was the plan before their QB Jordan Travis was hurt or not.
I don’t think the CFP standings after Alabama matter too much for the national championship, but LSU fans (ironically) should cheer for Missouri and Ole Miss to lose for a better chance at a selection committee (or NY6) bowl or at the CapitalOne Bowl. It’s ironic because normally it would be a good thing if no one outside of the top 12 beat you and you had a top-10 win, but that’s not how the logic of bowl placement works.
It would be more logical for LSU fans to cheer for Alabama to beat Georgia (whom LSU did not play, if you haven’t noticed) in the SEC Championship game because that would retain the possibility of there being two SEC playoff teams. This might not be the year for that to happen though given the possibility of four undefeated teams going into championship weekend. There are also a couple of other teams (I mentioned Oregon; there is also Texas) who could be good one-loss candidates as conference champions. I think one-loss Texas will go ahead of one-loss Alabama even if they shouldn’t.
Anyway, the rest of this is just about my ratings, not the CFP rankings or what I think they will do.
The Big Ten is now much closer to the Pac-12, which is now #3, as they can look forward to taking the Pac-12’s two best teams (as well as UCLA and USC, which are more in the middle). They would still be behind the SEC, which will add the Big XII’s two best teams.
I mentioned Arizona St. earlier. Oregon’s win over the Sun Devils allowed them to get past Ole Miss, who beat an inferior UL-Monroe squad. Other relatively small differences in quality of opponents accounted for the movement in the rest of the top 20, apart from James Madison, who lost to Appalachian St. Oregon St. fell a smaller number of spots for losing to Washington, which was a close game as expected.
I had a little bit of trouble figuring out the last two. I strongly considered Oklahoma St. and Clemson, but they each had three losses that were all big negatives. Arizona had only one bad loss and one that was mediocre. Oregon St. and North Carolina St. only had one mediocre-to-bad loss apiece. Oklahoma St. had the best list of wins, but the others had comparable good wins. I didn’t hold the fourth loss (to Florida St.) against Clemson, but there weren’t really strong wins to counterbalance the other losses.
It might seem a little weird that North Carolina still has honorable mention status, but the four teams directly below them (Kansas, Utah, Tennessee, and USC) all lost also. Another interesting one is UNLV, whom I have never ranked in the top 25.
I apologize for the long period of time between posts. I haven’t stopped working on and thinking about the blog.
I was on vacation for about 10 days. My return was somewhat well-timed because this is when I like to begin transitioning into my computer ratings anyway. I meant to post a new top 25 while I was away. I made the new list but never got around to posting it. I prefer to look at an objective rating at the end of September, but I tried something a little different. I looked at the very early version of a computer rating that I did before that week; but I had no way to update it with the results from two Saturdays ago, so it was just my best estimation of what the rankings would have been if I’d had that ability.
Since the ratings are the most overdue and urgent part, I’ll start with those. Two weeks ago first and then the one from earlier this week.
My new rankings are about 50/50 between objective and subjective. What I did was take the computer top 40 and then rank them 1 to 40 myself. So they each got a value between 1 point and 40 points. I divided that number by about 40 and also got a percentage of the best computer rating, which belongs to Ohio St. The final rating is a percentage of those two smaller amounts added together. I only made a few small changes if teams where within 1%. It so happened that LSU’s next opponent and two best prior opponents were nearly tied. So I decided to put the undefeated team the Tigers haven’t played first, followed by the one who beat them by a point, followed by the one LSU beat by 15.
I just combined them into one chart. People get confused or distracted otherwise.
Kansas safety O.J. Burroughs (5) breaks up a pass to Iowa State wide receiver Xavier Hutchinson (8) during the first half In Lawrence on Saturday.
Kansas was the biggest jump, but I don’t consider just inside the top 25 to just inside the top 10 unreasonable for a transition week such as this one. I prefer to give undefeated teams who have faced major-conference opposition the benefit of the doubt at this point anyway. In the Jayhawks’ case, that’s three of five games against Power 5 opponents and a fifth against Houston of the AAC. This is not unrelated to why they are rated so highly at this point. All three Power 5 games were within one possession, so I don’t expect them to continue this. They may not even win another game. My ratings aren’t meant to be predictive though: they’re meant to give credit to accomplishments to this point.
I don’t have an “others receiving votes section,” but this is the remainder of the Top 40 in order: Kansas St., James Madison, Illinois, Texas Tech, Washington St., Liberty, Arkansas, Coastal Carolina, Tulane, Memphis, North Carolina, Utah, Duke, Appalachian St., and UNLV.
There may be some other teams I would subjectively put in the top 40, but I didn’t even apply a subjective rank to teams that weren’t in the computer top 40. Air Force, Minnesota, Purdue, and Notre Dame come to mind as additional possibilities in the coming weeks. Although a couple of them are on the list above, it’s difficult for two-loss teams to have much of a shot at this point in the season.
I wasn’t sure where to mention this, but this isn’t penalizing Georgia for a close win. Although Oregon has looked good, Georgia’s average opponent isn’t as good as Alabama’s average opponent. Even if Georgia-Missouri and Alabama-Arkansas were identical final scores, I think Arkansas is a much better team both on paper and in reality. Notre Dame is slowly rehabilitating itself to make Ohio St.’s schedule thus far look stronger than Georgia’s as well. It helps the Buckeyes that they have not faced an FCS opponent or had a bye week yet.
It’s unusual that my top 10 is this consistent during a transition week. The top 6 remained in tact with just a few minor changes to the order, and numbers 8 and 9 stayed exactly the same.
LSU, Tennessee, Auburn, and Objectivity
Back to LSU, with the win over Mississippi St. a couple of weeks ago, Brian Kelly became the first LSU head coach since 1995 to win his first conference game in his first full season. Now he’s won his first two. 1987 was the last time a new head coach started 3-0 or better in SEC play. Three different head coaches (Stovall, Arnsparger, and Archer) started their inaugural seasons with 4-game SEC winning streaks in the 1980s.
Given the inconsistencies of both sides, I’m not making a prediction regarding the game tomorrow; but I do think Tennessee is appropriately placed outside the top 10. Unlike the major polls, I constantly revisit earlier games. The major polls continue to give the Vols credit for a shaky win (prevailing in overtime against a backup quarterback) over a Pitt team that did not lose to Georgia Tech, for instance, while I think the fact that the Yellowjackets beat the Panthers without overtime is a big negative against Tennessee. The Vols also beat the team (Florida) who beat Utah, but I still don’t see why Utah was as highly rated as they were going into the season. As it stands, the Utes don’t even make my top 35.
As badly as LSU played in the win over Auburn (and at times against the other two Power 5 opponents) though, Tennessee could win easily. I would note that the Vols are favored by about as much as Mississippi St. was when the Bulldogs visited Baton Rouge though. Regardless of LSU’s shortcomings, I think Las Vegas is well aware of Tennessee’s. So while as I said, I don’t have a predictive model, I think I do have some commonalities with bettors in that I try to be objective and take into account the big picture and all aspects of a team. In addition to amnesia about why they moved teams up (or down) in the first place, I think the polls are more impressed by how historical a program is and flashy highlights. Good team defense on third down or good blocking on special teams or a long hang time aren’t likely to make SportsCenter countdowns.
I guess if LSU’s wins I’ll be happy for any undeserved credit for beating a top-10 opponent.
One of the most bizarre football games I’ve ever witnessed (even though I turned it off before it was over) took place the last time Tennessee went to Baton Rouge, in 2010. That also featured a top-10 team, but in that case it was the home team. For the overall series against Tennessee, see here. If you follow the second link, you’ll see the same discussion regarding 2010 but not the videos. I still can’t believe that 10 turned into a 16.
LSU RB Stevan Ridley (you can only see the side of his pants and the bottom of his leg) scores the winning touchdown against Tennessee at Tiger Stadium on October 2, 2010.
Another thing I did while you didn’t hear from me was update the Auburn series. I added a detailed summary of the game that took place while I was gone.
I wanted to start by saying that I know I’m behind as far as things I’ve been planning on.
I saw a joke online recently that said. “Hobbies? I am thirty-xx years old. I do not have hobbies. When I have any free time at all, I will go lie down.”
Sadly, that has been my pattern at times lately; although I do still have some hobbies. I still haven’t gotten my normal pattern back since the lockdowns and whatnot. I have gotten to travel a few times over the last couple of years, so I guess that counts as a hobby; but the way my work schedule works is I just have more to do before I leave and after I get back. So if I’m gone for a week, I can’t even think about blogging for two weeks, sometimes longer.
I still need to update the rivalry blogs. Since we are almost at the end of the academic sports calendar (schools are done, but baseball is still going), I’m going to wait until then to give an update as to what conference has been doing what in the major sports as far as top-four finishes.
I’ll wait until the football preseason to recap the last football year. I didn’t really wrap that up after the championship game. I was glad that four teams were able to vie for the championship rather than two; but due to the whole holiday situation I mentioned earlier (also, even if I wanted to, it’s hard to schedule a lot of things in December), I rarely have time to say much after the actual champion is crowned. I’m more interested in who goes to what bowl and who makes the Playoff now anyway since championship controversies are basically over with, but it was still nice to bring things to a nice conclusion when the season ended with the big bowls right around New Years before work was full-speed again.
Anyway, about a month ago, the SEC meetings in Destin, Florida, took place. Thankfully no final decision was made or there would have been no point to blogging about it at this point.
Two options were presented regarding scheduling once Texas and Oklahoma enter the SEC.
There are so many considerations and things to be aware of, so I’m just going to write one big long article. Maybe I’m not enough of a marketer, but I don’t have the time and the energy to split it up into small segments to tease where I’m going with this. I’d rather spent time catching up on the other things, so everything I think is worth noting on the topic will be here.
Option 1: Eight Games with One Permanent Opponent
The first is easy to dispense with, so I’ll start there. That would be an 8-game schedule with one permanent opponent. Among the established SEC teams, there are three two-team states [Alabama-Auburn, Ole Miss-Mississippi St., and Tennessee-Vandy], so that knocks out 6 of the 16 teams. Going forward there will be two annual neutral-site games. I’m not calling them the PC names—The Cocktail Party between Georgia and Florida and the Red River Shootout between Texas and Oklahoma. I know Texas A&M-Texas would be in-state, but I think both Oklahoma and Texas would insist on playing each other annually instead. Anyway, that takes out 4 more, leaving 6 teams to match up. I think they’re fairly common-sense:
I don’t think this is very controversial
LSU-Texas A&M (long-term occasional rivals before the Aggies joined the SEC, they’re in neighboring states and battle over many of the same recruiting prospects)
Arkansas-Missouri (existing annual rivals; and apart from Oklahoma, who’s obviously taken, they’re in a geographic area all to themselves while being close to one another)
Kentucky-South Carolina (annual rivals since the Gamecocks joined the SEC for the 1992 season, and frankly they’re the only leftovers on the eastern side of the map.)
I will acknowledge a few small arguments that might come up. I’ve seen some suggest Arkansas-Kentucky and Missouri-South Carolina, but that’s silly, especially if you’re only picking one matchup per team. Missouri and South Carolina were illogically forced into the SEC East together and made the best of it by creating a trophy; but that doesn’t mean the series must continue annually. Other than in years where Arkansas has a good basketball team, I don’t think anyone would be excited about Arkansas-Kentucky.
I think both Arkansas and LSU fans would acknowledge that they’re not that geographically close to each other [despite the two states sharing a border, Baton Rouge is in the Southeastern part of Louisiana, and Fayetteville is in the Northwestern corner of Arkansas; Little Rock and Shreveport are no longer suitable venues for major SEC games as they were in the 1930s and 1990s, respectively], and the trophy they pass back and forth was also kind of forced.
Texas A&M played Missouri a few times when both were in the Big XII, but they were never annual opponents except briefly in the couple of years after the Aggies joined the SEC, and that didn’t evolve into any kind of meaningful rivalry. Geographically, there is a lot of Texas to the North and East of College Station; and Texas and Missouri aren’t neighboring states.
Intro to Option 2: Nine Games with Three Permanent Opponents
It’s the other option that’s liable to cause a bar fight somewhere in SEC country. That would be 9 games with three permanent opponents.
First of all, why a 7/1 and 6/3 format? Why isn’t 7/2 or 6/2 an option? It’s simple. This would allow you to play the OTHER teams exactly twice every four years, one home and one away. So if there are 16 teams with an 8-game schedule, you subtract the team in question and the annual opponent (16-1-1=14). That leaves 7 spots for 14 teams. You play half of them the first year and the other half the second year. In the third year, you repeat the same schedule as the first year except it’s in the opposite respective stadiums. In the fourth year, you swap stadiums but otherwise with the same schedule as the second year.
With the 6/3 format, you subtract the team in question and three annual opponents (16-1-3=12). That way you have an even number and can play exactly half of the teams one year and the other half the next along the same lines as the 7/1 format I explained.
This is the option favored by the big wigs who have gone undefeated and/or have won national championships despite a loss.
I can definitely see a capable program like Ole Miss (with no national-championship team in 60 years and no consensus national championship ever) or Tennessee (with one in the last 70 years) worried they might get just one shot and blow it by losing the extra SEC game or that they might finish second in the SEC rather than first as a result of the extra game and not get the same forgiveness that Alabama might get when they finish second.
Even more marginal programs like Vanderbilt would probably prefer 8 games. If they can only manage to win three or four, they still have a shot at a bowl game. If they went 3-6, they would have to be perfect in the other games to make a bowl. If they went 2-7, they wouldn’t be allowed to play in a bowl. At 2-6, they might still have a shot if they can run the table out of conference. At 3-5, they can afford to lose one out of conference.
Also, an extra home game in Nashville every other year isn’t going to yield a program-changing amount of money regardless of the opponent. An extra Alabama-Florida or LSU-Georgia game by contrast is a huge sum of money and probably gets a prime TV spot. You can bet it’s not going to be at 11 a.m. on the SEC Network.
The other issue is with one more conference game, that’s one less spot for a meaningful non-conference game. Some argue that all 16 teams will just play one more easy opponent, but that hasn’t historically been the case. There have been many instances of an SEC team scheduling two quality opponents out of conference. I think if there are 9 SEC games, any team would be crazy to have more than one ever, at least not without a major expansion of the Playoff.
Rivalry Week
I didn’t think of this until I almost completed writing this blog, but the 9-game series would also make Rivalry Week weird for LSU.
If there is only one permanent opponent (as above), Texas A&M stays available for LSU in Rivalry Week since the Aggies won’t be playing Texas that week every year, assuming Texas-Oklahoma is the annual game instead. There isn’t an obvious team for Texas to play that week, but I imagine they could keep at least sporadic series going with former Big XII and Southwest Conference foes. Texas-Oklahoma is earlier in the year, and I hope Oklahoma would keep playing Oklahoma St. An alternative arrangement would be for LSU to play A&M earlier in the schedule in years where the Aggies are playing Texas and during Rivalry Week in other years, but then both LSU and Texas would have to find alternatives every other year. I would prefer if LSU/A&M kept the same date.
It gets trickier for LSU if A&M is playing Texas during Rivalry Week every year, which would most likely be the case in the 9-game schedule. These are the obvious Rivalry Week games in that scenario, assuming Oklahoma keeps playing Oklahoma St.:
Non-SEC teams are added as abbreviations with a transparent background. I’ll explain below why Louisville isn’t included.
If the annual series between Texas and Texas A&M is once again played during Rivalry Week (as was the tradition before the Aggies left the Big XII for the SEC), for the third time in 30 years the Tigers would be losing an annual “Rivalry Week” opponent. I’ll elaborate in the next two paragraphs for anyone who wants that explained.
With only a handful of exceptions from the 1930s through 1991 (a couple of rescheduled games and a couple of series against non-major Western teams), LSU completed its regular season against Tulane. Starting in 1992, LSU began to complete the season against Arkansas, which had just joined the SEC and needed to start (or re-start if you take a long enough view) a semblance of a rivalry with someone. Starting a few years after that, LSU decided it wasn’t worth it to play annual home and home series against Texas A&M (which usually started the year) or Tulane (which was second-to-last for a few seasons) in addition to the various SEC series.
A couple of years after Missouri and Texas A&M joined the SEC in 2012, it made sense that rather than playing each other they would play Arkansas and LSU, respectively. So since 2014, LSU has played Texas A&M (in part to replace Texas and in part because that was a “historical” series still in most fans’ memory) during Rivalry Week.
There would be no obvious SEC team to fill the gap for LSU. Traditionally (before 2014), Tennessee ended its season with Vanderbilt and Kentucky (for a long time Vanderbilt was last, but then they switched), but obviously the Volunteers can’t play both on the same weekend. Maybe if Tennessee ends with Vandy one year and ends with Kentucky the next, whoever isn’t playing Tennessee during Rivalry Week can play LSU. Kentucky has been playing Louisville that week of late, but traditionally the Kentucky-Louisville game was earlier in the season anyway. Surely the Cardinals could go back to playing someone else that weekend. I don’t want to get into ACC scheduling politics, but there are teams in the ACC without obvious traditional opponents for that week.
Suggested Permanent Opponents under Option 2
My Preferred Permanent Opponents
Alabama: Auburn, Ole Miss, Tennessee
Arkansas: Missouri, Texas, Vanderbilt
Auburn: Alabama, Florida, Georgia
Florida: Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina
Georgia: Auburn, Florida, South Carolina
Kentucky: Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee
LSU: Arkansas, Mississippi St., Texas A&M
Mississippi St.: LSU, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt
Missouri: Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma
Oklahoma: Missouri, Texas, Texas A&M
Ole Miss: Auburn, Mississippi St., Vanderbilt
South Carolina: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky
Tennessee: Alabama, Kentucky, Vanderbilt
Texas: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M
Texas A&M: LSU, Oklahoma, Texas
Vanderbilt: Arkansas, Ole Miss, Tennessee
If the competitive balance isn’t right or one of your favorites is missing, keep reading.
Hopefully, you can understand the basics of how the map works and I don’t have to provide the information in list format for every map I saw fit to mention in this blog.
Most of these should be obvious why I chose them on the map or based on a passing familiarity with the historical rivalries, but I’ll explain a few that I chose over others I could have chosen.
Oklahoma and Texas A&M were both in the Big XII South, and Oklahoma was in both the Big XII (albeit in another division) and Big 8 with Missouri. There isn’t a similar tie between Oklahoma and Arkansas even though they’re both in the Northwestern part of the map. Also, Arkansas and Texas were annual rivals in the Southwest Conference before the Razorbacks joined the SEC and have renewed the rivalry several times since. I mentioned that when that happened, the LSU-Arkansas rivalry was kind of forced and therefore not one that had to take place every year. However, being the #3 rivalry for both schools is reasonable.
Vanderbilt could have been matched with Arkansas or Missouri, but the only logical opponent to drop would have been Mississippi St., which has a really forced annual series with Kentucky that doesn’t make a lot of geographic sense. Why make longer trips for both if there isn’t a compelling reason to do so? Mississippi St. could have also been replaced with Kentucky, which would be slightly better for Vanderbilt but would make even less sense for Mississippi St.
Since I ruled out Missouri playing Vanderbilt annually, the only real option to Missouri’s east was Kentucky. Kentucky and Missouri are the two northernmost teams in the SEC, and neither had another strong competitor for the #3 slot.
While not quite as unnatural, hence Florida joining the SEC many decades before, the Gators have a similar issue to Missouri being that they’re in an extreme position on the map somewhat alone. In the last 10 years or so, they were probably happy to play Tennessee rather than Auburn most of the time; but I’m not sure Auburn is going to be a better program going forward.
Younger fans may not understand why other than geography Florida should play Auburn at all. Unlike some of the others I discussed there is nothing artificial about this rivalry. I know they’ve only played once since 2011, but bear with me. Until 2002, each team had two cross-divisional opponents. Florida-Auburn was important enough to be annual until then. It wasn’t quite as prominent as Auburn-Georgia though (and Florida was a more interesting and logical opponent for LSU than Kentucky was), so it had to go. In the 58 seasons between the end of World War II and the revamping of SEC schedules in 2003, Auburn played Florida 59 times. (They played in a rematch in the SEC Championship in 2000.)
So by now, you’ve probably figured out why Auburn might be perturbed with this map. They’re paired with three opponents who are among the most successful programs in the conference over the past several years in terms of championships and championship game appearances. No one else has three opponents all of whom have at least one national championship in the last 15 years. But a lot has changed with Florida since that Gators national championship in 2008. Other than 2020, when there were two extra SEC games (and the winning percentage in a typical year probably would have resulted in six wins), the Gators have only won 7 or 8 conference games three times since that championship season. One of those was the year after. By contrast, the Gators won four SEC games or fewer (that’s .500 or below) six times. Since 2008, Georgia and Florida have only combined for 13 wins twice. They combined for 10 or fewer wins seven times. Georgia has been a rock-solid program the past five years, don’t get me wrong; but the point is Georgia and Florida are rarely top teams at the same time.
As for Alabama, it’s possible Saban has peaked or at least will have in two or three years (or longer… they could start with 8 and go to 9 later) before this would go into effect. I don’t know if 2011 to 2017 Alabama would have lost to LSU in 2019 or to Georgia last year. I’m not saying he’s on his way out or that he might not have a more national championships in him, but I am saying we shouldn’t assume Alabama is going to be dominant for the foreseeable future. I know it was a long time ago, but in 7 of the 10 years before Saban was hired, the Tide won four games or fewer in the SEC.
If Saban retired tomorrow, Alabama could still win a national championship in January, but ask Auburn what happened after the last time they won one in 2010 or even LSU what happened in the last two years. Things can go downhill in a hurry. Malzahn nearly won one at Auburn in his first year in 2013, and it was pretty much downhill from there. Even that 10-year period at Alabama before Saban I mentioned… the first of those was only five years after Gene Stallings’ national championship season. As I mentioned, Florida has had just a few really good seasons since winning two national championships in three years under Urban Meyer. It’s not going to be three national-championship-caliber opponents every year.
It could be that Texas A&M would have more of a gripe with their schedule, but that depends how well Oklahoma is able to withstand its latest coaching change, how quickly Brian Kelly can get acclimated in Baton Rouge, and how soon Texas returns to national prominence. For Texas, it’s been “any season now” since 2009. Oklahoma has been a reliable standard-bearer in the Big XII and a regular participant in Playoffs and championships. Texas played for two national championships in the first decade of this century. I don’t like to brag about LSU this way, but obviously the Tigers have won three national titles and played for another in the last 20 years.
Speaking of Texas A&M, as I touched on at the end of the last section, it occurred to me that if they do start playing Texas every year once again (and almost everyone thinks they should if there are three permanent opponents), there would be some turmoil regarding who plays whom on Rivalry Week. Even if Bedlam stops being an annual series (I for one hope it doesn’t), Oklahoma and Texas probably wouldn’t want to move their traditional matchup in the Dallas area at the time of the Texas state fair to the end of the season and probably would want to (assuming they were playing A&M annually anyway) go back to playing the Aggies that week.
I do think no matter what arguments I make (or someone more notable makes) there is a high chance that people will reject a schedule that doesn’t pay more attention to perceived competitive balance than I did, but that’s unfortunate. Most teams are going to be luck of the draw anyway since every team in the SEC would be on your schedule at least once in a two-year period. Even if you get the annual opponents that seem easier, you might get the best Georgia team one year, the best A&M team the next, the best LSU team the year after that (and maybe another great Georgia team), and so on.
I’m not pretending these things don’t matter at all. Even when Vanderbilt is having a good run and Alabama is relatively mediocre, you’d still rather have Vanderbilt on the schedule. A mediocre Alabama team will have better athletes. Even in the 10 pre-Saban years you still would have had about a 1 in 3 chance of Alabama winning 75% or more of its conference games. Vanderbilt hasn’t won over 75% of its conference games since it was in the Southern Conference in 1929. The Commodores have only had two winning SEC records since 1959.
So there would be a percentage advantage or disadvantage in the big picture for some schools, but as long as it’s mostly beneficial to the schools who haven’t won, I think that’s OK. A given team playing South Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri has an easier route, but Kentucky has never played for a conference title and hasn’t even gotten particularly close to a divisional title that I know of. I’m OK with that. Vanderbilt could have three easy opponents if Tennessee and the Mississippi schools are having off years. I’m OK with that too.
Part of the reason I’m not in favor of the nine-game schedule is it makes the competitive balance more difficult. It’s much more likely that a team comes ahead or behind based on strength of schedule whether it’s due to the luck of the draw, annual opponent, or unequal number of conference home/away games. The big schools are the ones asking for this, so if whoever is near your team that makes sense historically and geographically is too good, join the smaller football schools in pushing to keep the eight-game schedule.
My Strongest Alternative Suggestion
I’m willing to be nice and show a willingness to compromise based on those last few paragraphs. I would also be extremely happy with this second option, which I think avoids a lot of potential gripes from Auburn and Texas A&M fan bases in particular.
I’m not only going to show you these two, but the other two that I made myself are variations on things other commentators are suggesting, so this is the only other one that’s purely based on what I want and believe in.
Someone might have read what I said about Alabama and thought I was only saying that because I wasn’t pairing LSU with Alabama. Although I prefer Texas A&M (and not just because of LSU’s record against them), my alternative plan is to put my money where my mouth is and keep LSU-Alabama an annual event.
This pays less attention to the newer rivalries even if they make sense.
You can just by looking at the map that I did a good job keeping the far western teams together, keeping the central teams together, and keeping the Eastern teams together. It lacks some series I like such as LSU-Arkansas, Florida-Auburn, and Alabama-Ole Miss, but it adds some good ones.
Arkansas would play both of its old Southwest Conference rivals (Texas and Texas A&M) annually. Florida would continue to play three of the five SEC East teams it has played every year since 1992. Florida-Kentucky has been a reliably good game lately even though until recently the Gators had a decades-long winning streak over the Wildcats. Auburn-Mississippi St. isn’t going to be the Game of the Century anytime soon, but it’s better than Auburn or Mississippi St. versus Vanderbilt. Also, I think given that Missouri has had a killer travel schedule and will continue to have one regardless, it’s only fair to give them the closest three teams as permanent opponents.
LSU would also play its closest conference rivals, in that case the ones with whom they share the most history. In recognition of the importance, LSU completed its conference season for almost 30 years in a row with those three, ending when Arkansas joined as mentioned previously. Before that stretch (when Tulane was still in the SEC), they were almost always three of the final four conference opponents.
Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee would play the same teams as the previous map. Vanderbilt would have a slightly longer trip to play Missouri than they would have to play Mississippi St., but I don’t think that’s a big deal.
LSU vs. A&M, Ole Miss, and Mississippi St.
This is a blend of my two suggestions as far as LSU is concerned. I don’t mind it. I think it’s good to promote the LSU/A&M rivalry again, and I think it’s worse to lose the LSU/Ole Miss rivalry than Alabama. I would say that even if this were the late 1990s or early ’00s.
It’s the one that Matt Moscona thought was likely, but as far as I know he didn’t opine about which other teams should play which.
This is similar to my first suggestion, but i connected Missouri and Arkansas with the roughly parallel traditional SEC East teams.
There are the same Auburn and Texas A&M issues as in the first suggestion here, so of course I did an alternate keeping these opponents for LSU.
More similar to my second map, this keeps the western teams who weren’t in the SEC before 1992 playing each other along with maintaining more SEC East rivalries. It’s too easy on Alabama in my opinion though.
LSU vs. A&M, Ole Miss, and Alabama
I usually respect what Ross Dellenger has to say, but what he laid out in Sports Illustrated is terrible. I don’t know if it was just a joke, but when I used to follow him on Twitter, he used to post about drinking whiskey on the rocks whenever he was stressed about something. Maybe he fell off the wagon while writing his article.
With all the long and overlapping lines, it almost looks like there are more permanent games here.
I already talked about how I don’t think Missouri-South Carolina or Kentucky-Arkansas make a lot of sense. Kentucky wouldn’t really play any games to be excited about. I mention that I don’t think they really care about Mississippi St. Those were just two of the teams without obvious cross-division rivals. It’s not something anyone is going to be heartbroken to end now. That would leave Georgia as the only annual SEC East series for the Wildcats. I know they would give the Bulldogs their best shot, but even their biggest fan would probably dread the game more than they would be excited about it. At least they’ve held their own against Tennessee, and that’s much more natural rival geographically as well as historically. Even Kentucky-Florida has been a better series of late even though Florida dominated for decades.
Dellenger added some extra, even more contrived rivalries that make even less sense. I’m sure everyone will be talking about their plans for the big Auburn-Vandy game every year. Florida-Oklahoma sounds like a good Orange Bowl or Sugar Bowl when Florida has a good year, but annual rival? What? If you’re going to make Florida play a second heavyweight program in addition to Georgia, Oklahoma should be last on the list.
Mississippi St. is another school that wouldn’t have any rivals to be invested in except for the obvious. State and A&M played in a snowy Independence Bowl in 2000 as Jackie Sherrill got to sneak out a victory against his old program, but that was the only time they faced one another between 1937 and 2012, the year the Aggies started SEC play. The only time one team had visited the other school’s campus was 1913. It was a good matchup for the Independence Bowl organizers in that one year, but I don’t think it’s something “the 12th man” would be excited about on an annual basis.
Anyway, I felt it necessary to find a scenario that I think makes sense assuming he’s correct about LSU at least.
This is the only one I’ve done where Florida still plays Tennessee, but I think it’s wrong not to have Kentucky play Tennessee.
I kept his plans for LSU in tact, but I made some trades to try to rehabilitate his list to make it more palatable. I can understand what he was trying to do with balancing the schedule, but you don’t just do that and ignore everything else. I did keep Kentucky-Mississippi St., but I gave the Wildcats Vanderbilt and South Carolina, both of which make more geographic sense. I don’t know the history before 1992, but they have played every year since. At least I eliminated several of the matchups that made absolutely no sense.
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 25th); 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
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 7th.
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.
I was in a hurry for last week’s rankings, so the numbers in parentheses refer to last year’s final ranking. The numbers in the middle for the top 25 are last week’s rating. Reasoning below.
Others ranked at end of 2016: (9) W. Michigan, (15) Colorado, (17) Boise St., (19) App. St., (21) VA Tech, (22) W. Virginia, (23) W. Kentucky, (24) Georgia Tech
Alabama’s Jalen Hurts looks to pass against Florida State.
As expected, Alabama once again asserted itself as a major contender for the national title, inasmuch as that can be done in Week 1.
Ohio St. struggled in the first half, but I didn’t see any other major teams playing a conference road game. I’m not going to pretend Indiana is great, but the Hoosiers have made it to bowl games in the past two seasons. Most importantly, the Buckeyes pulled away fairly easily in the second half.
There is nothing really to add about #3 to #8; they all did what they were supposed to do.
I didn’t have Michigan ranked all that highly at the end of last year – when they lost three of the last four – and they had very few returning starters, so that’s why I opted not to rank them in the preseason. I didn’t see them as another 2016 Ohio St. because Jim Harbaugh has only been there a couple of years, but it looks like he has enough good young players to compete against some of the top teams. I’m not predicting that they will beat Ohio St., Wisconsin, or Penn St., but the chances of winning one of them are higher than I had them before the Florida game.
Florida St. had more success against Alabama than they’re being given credit for because they only managed to score 7 points, but I’m also not going to pretend that the loss of their starting quarterback for the season doesn’t lessen their likelihood for success. So that’s why I put them behind Michigan even though a few days ago I had Florida St. projected in the playoff and Michigan unranked. There are a number of teams that won’t get to prove themselves for a few weeks like Michigan has, so it may be that other teams just need to catch up.
Some of the teams that are a spot lower didn’t do anything wrong but have Michigan inserted ahead of them, but I think Washington deserved to fall out of the top 10 after not putting away Rutgers (one of the worst power 5 teams last year) very convincingly.
Georgia and LSU both played apparently decent teams and both won by more than 20. If I really wanted to punish Washington I would have put them below those two; but like with Ohio St., I can’t be too critical about playing their first game on the road like that even though Ohio St. probably played a much better team.
Auburn didn’t have a very good opponent in Georgia Southern, but the Eagles did give Ole Miss about all they could handle last year.
USC seemed overwhelmed for all but the last 5 minutes or the game.
USC struggled with Western Michigan, which makes me feel vindicated about not rating them as highly as a lot of people did. We’ll see how well the Trojans handle Stanford though. If they win, I’ll likely put them in the top 10 all the same.
Kansas St. had a rough quarter and a half, but I can’t complain too much regardless of the opponent when you’re up 22 at halftime. I think they have more pieces in place than Florida or South Florida does. I need to see South Florida or Miami do more to put them ahead of the Gators as #2 in the state.
Louisville didn’t do very well against Purdue, but it’s a win over a power 5 team. There was certainly no reason to put Northwestern ahead after the Wildcats didn’t really separate themselves from Nevada until 5 minutes left in the game.
Washington St. finally took care of business against an FCS opponent after losing to Portland St. and Eastern Washington, respectively, in the past two years. TCU and Oregon also won easily over FCS opponents.
Tennessee held on in overtime against Georgia Tech, whom I regarded as #26 entering the year, so I saw no reason to move the Vols up or down relative to the neighboring teams.
(Georgia Tech’s failed conversion)
Paul Johnson of Georgia Tech got praise for going for 2, but that’s nonsense. It’s giving the other team the advantage when you go for 2 after they go for 1. You should make decisions to give your own team the advantage. Two-point-conversions are only successful about 40% of the time, and Georgia Tech had at worst a 50% chance of winning in overtime (or arguably higher given how easily the Yellow Jackets scored the last touchdown). The only good reason to go for two there is if you believe that Tennessee was somehow in the process of gaining more than a 3:2 advantage going forward. The commentators mentioned how they would have had to go for 2 in the next overtime anyway, but so did Tennessee. So in that case, it wouldn’t have been an automatic disadvantage.
I know what the television sports media does is look at bowl records as if that’s the end-all and be-all of a conference, rarely even giving credit for a large percentage of teams making bowls.
Before people tune me out, I will say upfront that the SEC did not have the best bowl season, but it was a strong second.
How is 50% (I’m not counting the national championship since I think it’s fairer to give each team exactly one bite at the apple) a strong second?
We need to look at how good the opposition is. For instance, not many conferences have their #9 team play the runner-up (who went 6-2 in conference, the third-best conference record) of a Power-5 (P5) conference. It was frustrating that Arkansas didn’t beat Virginia Tech after the Hogs built up a large lead, but even being in the game was an accomplishment.
I decided to break down the P5 conferences by team standings and bowl game. This is based on regular-season conference records. Ties are broken by head to head and, failing that, overall pre-bowl record.
Then I gave a projection of the approximate record a major conference should have had against that schedule. The first one I list is Alabama/Washington. Since it’s champion vs. champion, that’s a tossup. So the SEC should have expected ½ of a win (or .5). The SEC should have expected 0 from Arkansas/Virginia Tech, so that isn’t listed. If the SEC team had a better conference record in any matchup by more than half a game, that game would have projected 1 win. No such game took place.
So there were 6 approximately 50/50 games, and the SEC won 6 games. An average P5 conference would have only won 3.
The AAC had a very good year (before the bowls), and South Florida lost only one game in conference with wins over Navy and Houston. The non-conference team who beat the Bulls just won the Orange Bowl. The 10th SEC team losing to them in overtime is not in any way a black mark on the SEC, and I’d say that if it were any other conference.
The rest were all against power-5 opponents. If the SEC were an average conference, it would have only been expected to win about 3 bowl games. See below for explanation.
I would have liked to have seen Vanderbilt and Kentucky do better, but both overachieved by making bowl games at all. As I’ve mentioned before, even the two non-bowl teams had decent resumes that included multiple wins over eventual bowl teams.
Texas A&M wasn’t nearly as good of a team later in the season as earlier, but I put them first among the 4-4 teams because of their early-season overtime win over Tennessee. But no other team had as big of a swing as Miami U., which started 0-6 and entered the bowl game at 6-6. So when projecting how many the SEC should have won, it’s really hard to know how to treat that one, so
I’ll just say that was 50/50.
Hopefully you get the idea when I do this for other conferences below.
Bowl games SEC should have won:
#12 .5
#11 .5
#8 .5
#7 .5
#2 .5
#1 .5
Projected record: 3-9 = 25%
Actual record 6-6 = 50%
Difference +25
(1) ACC
#1 Clemson #1 7-1 W, Ohio St. #2 8-1
#2 Louisville 7-1 L, LSU #4 5-3
#3 Virginia Tech 6-2 W, Arkansas #9 3-5
#4 North Carolina 5-3 L, Stanford #5 6-3
#5 Florida St. 5-3 W, Michigan #3 7-2
#6 U. Miami 5-3 W, West Virginia #3 7-2
#7 Pitt 5-3 L, Northwestern #8 5-4
#8 Georgia Tech 4-4 W, Kentucky #8 4-4
#9 N.C. State 3-5 W, Vanderbilt #11 3-5
#10 Wake Forest 3-5 W, Temple #1 7-1
#11 Boston College 2-6 W, Maryland #10 3-6
(6) AAC
#1 Temple 7-1 L, Wake Forest #10 3-5
#2 South Florida 7-1 W, South Carolina #10 3-5
#3 Navy 7-1 L, Louisiana Tech #3 6-2
#4 Tulsa 6-2 W, C. Michigan #7 3-5
#5 Memphis 5-3 L, W. Kentucky #1 7-1
#6 Houston 5-3 L, San Diego St. #1 6-2
#7 Central Florida L, Arkansas St. #2 7-1
#4 1
#3 1
#2 1
#1 1
Projected record: 4-3 = 57%
Actual record 2-5 = 29%
Difference -28
For the record, I put the Big Ten third on that list because at least they qualified a large percentage for bowl games. The Pac-12 and Big XII (which is 10 teams) only had half their teams in bowl games.
Overall Conference Rankings
But this doesn’t answer what the best conference is.
Before I talk about my own ratings, I’m going to talk about the consensus of objective ratings. Excluding the three ratings (the two major polls and one computer rating) that only have a fraction of the teams rated, only three out of 92 other ratings have the SEC somewhere outside of the top two.
The ACC got a lot of 2s and 1s as well, but seven were outside of the top 2.
The SEC was on top in 57 ratings to the ACC’s 27 by my count. The other eight systems are nuts, I don’t know what more to say on that.
So in my own rating system, I suppose it comes as no surprise that the SEC is first, but the ACC made it very close, particularly with the national championship game. I don’t give that game any extra weight, but the way my system works is you get extra points for winning an extra game. No other team gets an extra game of that magnitude.
The ACC got some wins over SEC schools to be sure, but some of them were along the lines of Arkansas/Virginia Tech and Florida St./Ole Miss.
One thorn in the side of the ACC was Louisville, which lost both its last regular-season game and its bowl game to SEC teams that on paper the Cardinals should have beaten. The only ACC team to beat Louisville was Clemson, so all the other opponents were weighed down by their loss to the Cardinals, who also lost to Houston out of conference.
On the other hand something that might have given the SEC more of a buffer (at least in my ratings) was the two games that were not played as a result of moving the LSU/Florida game. As I mentioned last week, LSU would have moved up to about #20 with the addition of a win over South Alabama. Beating Presbyterian would have helped Florida in points slightly, but the Gators were too far behind Colorado to move ahead.
I think it’s fair to say this was a relatively weak year for the SEC at the top, but if it’s a weak year and the average team in your conference is better than the average team in any other conference, it’s hard to argue you’re not the best. Here are my averages:
1 SEC 0.441645
2 ACC 0.440546
3 Pac-12 0.314229
4 Big Ten 0.285768
5 Big XII 0.217209
6 AAC (American) 0.106448
7 MWC (Mountain West) 0.029324
8 SBC (Sun Belt) -0.008889
9 Independents -0.038589
10 MAC (Mid-American) -0.095654
11 CUSA -0.131416
I did take a few paragraphs out of this, so it’s less thorough than it could have been, but it was too long.
I’ve seen a lot of nonsense about the SEC having an off year even from SEC fans lately. Maybe the SEC has had more dominant years, but there really isn’t any legitimate doubt about the SEC still being the top conference top to bottom.
As has been the case for probably more years than I’ve been keeping track, the SEC is the consensus number 1 in computers top to bottom.
SEC vs. Big Ten
Why are people forgetting that the SEC still has the best overall record? Now I know if you exclude FCS games, the Big Ten has the best record, but I think it matters that the Big Ten lost two games to FCS opponents. I’m not talking about bottom-of-the-barrel teams either. Iowa finished 6-3 in conference, and Northwestern finished 5-4 in conference.
The media talks about how there is only one SEC team in the top 10. That’s true, but why is that? Records. Why are the records the way they are? (1) Opponents like Wisconsin, Clemson, and Florida St., and (2) other SEC teams.
There are a couple of losses that weren’t too pretty by teams who finished .500 and below in the SEC, but that’s not why LSU, Florida, Auburn, Tennessee, and Texas A&M aren’t a game or two better and in or nearer to the top 10 as a result.
Apart from the few teams from other conferences I mentioned, the reason for that is simply that if any of that group played one another, both teams had a reasonable chance to win and it evened out over the course of the year. If Alabama does as expected and wins Saturday, all five other teams will go into the bowls with exactly 4 losses. That doesn’t mean the SEC is having a down year, that means Alabama is beating everyone and no one is making a particularly strong claim on second-best in the conference.
I’m going to compare the SEC teams to the Big Ten, just because the Big Ten happens to be the conference were their wins and losses ended up placing four teams in the top 10. It could have happened just as easily in the Pac-12 or ACC.
There is a group of teams of relative parity in the Big Ten as well, but that group is right at the top of the Big Ten. That’s the main reason why the Big Ten has four teams in the top 10. The highest group just isn’t very vulnerable to losing to anyone lower (the only in-conference exception was Iowa over Michigan).
Another thing that helped is big wins were by this top group instead of lower teams. On the other hand, three of the four best SEC wins were by teams that finished 4-4 in conference (Kentucky over Louisville, Tennessee over Virginia Tech, and Georgia over North Carolina).
Imagine the following. LSU beat Alabama and Florida, Tennessee beat Texas A&M, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt, and Auburn beat Georgia and Texas A&M. Without changing out of conference results at all, the result is two one-loss teams (Alabama and Tennessee) and two two-loss teams (Auburn and LSU). All four would easily be in the top 10.
We didn’t change how good the SEC was, we just made the lower SEC teams worse and the second-tier (the group below Alabama) better with the exception of Florida. If we add in a couple of Florida conference wins (Arkansas and Tennessee), maybe we could get 5 SEC teams in the top 10. Would anyone say the SEC was having an off year then? Probably not. At least not anyone who doesn’t claim that every year. But the perception of the SEC is ironically hurt by the middle and lower teams being better. It’s nice to have a relatively easy opponent at some point in conference play, but that didn’t really happen.
There was one 2-6 team per SEC division, Missouri and Ole Miss. Missouri beat two bowl-eligible teams, and Ole Miss beat three. There were no 1-7 or 0-8 teams. There were 3 teams in the Big Ten who finished with one conference win or fewer, and those teams had one more chance to pick up a conference win than the SEC teams did. The lone 2-7 team (Illinois) didn’t beat anyone bowl-eligible; the Illini’s only FBS wins were over teams that finished below them in the Big Ten. So all Big Ten teams were guaranteed to have two less-dangerous conference games than anyone in the SEC faced in conference all year. Most had three such games (although Ohio St. to its credit wasn’t one of them).
SEC vs. ACC
There is one other conference argument I’ll address and that’s, “You just went 1-3 against the ACC [in the final weekend].” Let’s look at that another way.
I’m going to take out the names of teams and just put a list of the records. These are games over the course of the year. I just listed them in order of ACC record.
So the SEC won three games in which the SEC team had the worse conference record, while the ACC only won one game in which the ACC team had the worse conference record. Also, all of these games but two (7-1 ACC vs. 5-3 and 5-3 ACC vs. 2-6) were played by teams in the SEC East, the lesser SEC division. Five of the eight games were played by the top three teams of the ACC Atlantic, the better ACC division.
“SEC Wednesday”
I’ll keep the SEC Wednesday relatively short this time.
I guess I’ll finally give up and take Alabama -24, which probably will make the game close. It seems like Florida is fading. Judging by their games against LSU, it should be a nail-biter, but that’s not how it works. LSU played much worse against Florida, at least for the last 2 ½ quarters. For one analogy, I’m sure Arkansas thought LSU (who beat them by 28) was much better than Florida (whom they beat by 21).
Anyway, Florida seemed to fade toward the end of the last few games (they almost let LSU win after all), and Alabama always seems ready to get that one more score to beat the spread at the end. Alabama just beat a much-improved Auburn team by more than they beat them last year. So it might be Alabama by 14 at the half and they end up winning by 27 or something with a late touchdown or field goal.
Well, that’s it for predictions in this season. Bowl games have too many variables for me to include. I’ve made good bowl predictions in the past, but I’ve also made really bad ones. It’s like flipping a coin.
There might be a lot of this Saturday.
So a team favored by 7.5 (Vanderbilt) pulled an upset (over Tennessee), but I picked the wrong one (I picked Florida. Unfortunately, the wrong team scored meaningless points right at the end in multiple games (Florida St., LSU, and Alabama, for instance), which hurt me in the spread. I did not pick the 26.5-point underdog who won (Kentucky), but I did caution it could come down to the end. I did take the points in both upsets though. Too bad I couldn’t use the excess.
Georgia was in great shape up 13 late, but then they lost by 1.
I was wrong about LSU against the spread again. Maybe I should pick the other team more often so LSU plays well more consistently.
The Missouri team who beat Vanderbilt showed back up again against Arkansas, but I admit I didn’t see that coming. That was one reason I didn’t pick Vanderbilt to beat Tennessee. It’s like these teams try to screw with me.
South Carolina didn’t really show up at all, so that was another game that was completely uncharacteristic of the rest of the season. Same with Mississippi St. but for the opposite reason.
I think my readers can add one to either side of these after this weekend, so almost-final records: 85-26 and 42-52-1 against the spread.
I haven’t been right about an LSU line since Missouri. I justifiably felt really good when LSU had a great chance to go up 11 midway through the second quarter, but the second touchdown never came. It’s baffling to me that LSU scored almost 40 against Arkansas on the road but only scored 10 against a decimated Florida team at home the very next week.
I’ll talk about Texas A&M more below of course, but feel free to check out my LSU/A&M Rivalry blog. Despite the offensive deficiencies, LSU has not allowed more than 21 points all season, and A&M has not scored that many against LSU since the Aggies joined the SEC.
But the good news is I got every other FBS game right against the spread last week. The only other winner I got wrong was Vanderbilt. That was also kind of bizarre that Ole Miss scored 23 points in the fourth quarter against Texas A&M but only came up with 17 all game against Vanderbilt (including 7 after the game was out of reach). Even worse than that, they made Vandy’s offense look terrific. It could have been ugly had the Commodores not let off the gas after three quarters. I knew Vandy would run better, but I was surprised by almost twice as many yards per pass.
Vanderbilt’s Ralph Webb ran for three touchdowns against Ole Miss and is only 27 yards short of the school career rushing record.
I pretty much nailed everything else. There was no reason to believe Georgia would win by over 20 or A&M would win by almost 30. Tennessee cleared the spread by 10, which was about as expected. It makes sense to beat Kentucky by 13 and Missouri by 26 in consecutive games. I don’t know why the gamblers have over-valued the Tigers in all but one game in the last two months.
I really was not seeing Mississippi St. beating Arkansas under any circumstances (not that that’s a guarantee), but I was a bit surprised neither defense showed up. 100 combined points in an SEC FOOTBALL game? Were the quarterbacks Johnny Manziel and Cam Newton?
It’s usually pretty easy to pick the SEC team to beat FCS opponents. There were no real scares, although South Carolina winning by 13 (against a team that is winless on the road) is nothing to write home about.
I didn’t provide an updated total last week (probably a result of subconscious embarrassment), but my records improve to 82-20 and 40-45-1 against the spread.
Next Week
As is my custom, I am looking at the line on Wednesday even though this is published on Thursday.
I’ll take A&M +7.5. Maybe the LSU team that went to Arkansas shows back up and we win by 28, but last week we looked like we would struggle to win a rematch with Missouri by 7.5 or more. Ed Orgeron’s only road loss as an interim coach was @Notre Dame in his second game in 2013 (4-0 on the road as an interim coach since). I guess I’ll pick us to win, but I’m not confident at all. If I were an A&M fan, I wouldn’t be confident either though.
Speaking of Missouri and Arkansas, again I don’t see Arkansas being as bad or Missouri being as good as the gamblers do. The Hogs won by 16 in Starkville, so I have no idea why they don’t win by 8 in Columbia.
Georgia has had a problem with showing up in unexciting games against mediocre opponents. I don’t think the chance to close out the season with a home win over the Rambling Wreck qualifies. I also don’t think Georgia Tech is as good as a team like Tennessee and will beat them despite a great effort from the silver britches.
The two teams have the same record, and Georgia has played the better schedule. I have to go with the home team to win, and 4 points makes it hard to try to split the difference. I think if you played the game 10 times, Georgia wins by 4 to 14 points at least half the time, and there might be one in there they run away with.
Ole Miss didn’t play well in Nashville, but I don’t think that means they let Mississippi St. eliminate them from bowl eligibility. Do they win by 7.5 though? I’m going to guess yes based on the Bulldogs’ last couple of games, but I would not put money on it.
Maybe this year will be the exception, but rivalry games can generally be expected to stay within a couple of touchdowns more often than not. None of these next three underdogs are 3-8 and on a 6-game conference losing streak like Auburn was in 2012.
Louisville has played well at home, but I don’t know if home field is enough to go from losing to Houston by 26 to beating Kentucky by over 26. The Cardinals’ last home win was over Wake Forest by 32. Kentucky is better than Wake and is coming of a virtual bye against Austin Peay. Louisville hasn’t beaten Kentucky by more than 18 since 2006 despite the fact that the Wildcats had two 2-10 teams over that span. I think a Louisville win by between 14 and 21 points is most likely, but don’t discount the possibility that it could go down to the wire like it did two years ago even though the Wildcats entered that game on a five-game losing streak.
Against recent experience, I’m going to pick against Alabama. I just feel like if I finally break and pick them they won’t beat the spread. Auburn is a weird team that struggled in the last two weeks of the SEC schedule, but I just find it hard to imagine that they don’t find some inner strength to make it competitive. This is strange, but if Alabama is ever tempted to look ahead, this might be the situation. 17.5 is a relative beat-down compared to similar games. Alabama didn’t win by that last year, and the Tigers are improved. I don’t think the Tide plays better than they did last year in this game.
South Carolina is a mediocre team, but they have not lost ugly once (although I do scratch my head a bit over the Mississippi St. game back in Week 2). Clemson has won ugly more than they’ve won any other way. So I’ll take the Gamecocks +24.
About half the time Tennessee-Vanderbilt comes down to one possession. I think this is such a year. Vandy just beat another annual rival in Ole Miss handily at home, and this game is also at home. Obviously most of the time the Commodores are not playing for a bowl berth (even though they went to three in a row from 2011 to 2013). That has to add a little bit of motivation. I’ll take Vandy +7.5 but not to win. Apart from the three seasons I mentioned, losing close games is just more often than not something they do.
Same line for Florida-Florida St., but the home team is favored in this one. Like Georgia vs. Georgia Tech, the teams have the same number of wins (the Noles have an additional loss though). Actually in this one Florida has a weaker schedule, but I’d argue the Gators had a better conference schedule. Averaging in weak non-conference opponents can be misleading.
I’m going to go against the odds and pick Florida to win. Normally I pick the home team to win in a game like this, but I just have a weird feeling. Florida wouldn’t let LSU beat them 4 in a row for only the second time ever even though that was on the road. My guess is they won’t let the Seminoles beat them 4 in a row for the first time since 1990 (and third time ever) even though that will be on the road. The Gators’ last win in the series was at Florida St. in 2012 when both teams entered the game with 10-1 records.
I’ll talk about the game more in the SEC Wednesday blog, but I’ve updated the LSU-Arkansas rivalry entry.
Here is the one for Florida if you wanted to see that.
Going into this week, there was only really one team within striking distance of Clemson, and that was Michigan. We know what happened there.
Next was Ohio St., but in order to have enough points to move up to #2, the Buckeyes would have had to beat a better opponent than Maryland. Had they played Minnesota, for instance, it might have done the trick.
It doesn’t happen often among the higher teams, but it is possible to maintain a ranking despite a loss if you have a sufficient lead over some teams and you have nearby teams lose.
It also helped the Tigers that Troy got a quality win over Appalachian St. and Georgia Tech beat Virginia Tech. Clemson lost points overall, but they could have lost those points for the loss without gaining any for prior opponents.
Sometimes there is an even lower team that can pass up a losing team like Clemson, but not this week.
After Ohio St., the next team was 2-loss Penn St., who also has a loss to Pitt. That would have made zero sense. Three of the next four after Penn St. were Auburn, Washington, and Texas A&M. You don’t pass up #2 by losing. To round out last week’s top 10, we had Western Michigan, who beat a bad Kent St. team on Tuesday, and Louisville, who has lost to Clemson.
Although Ohio St. may not even make the Big Ten title game with a win, I think we can expect another classic Ohio St.-Michigan game.
So the gap between Clemson and Ohio St. did narrow from about 0.18 to about 0.01. So beating Michigan, for instance, on the same day the other team beats South Carolina counts for a lot more than 0.01, but I don’t project into the future; I just provide a snapshot of where things stand right now.
There is a simple argument for Louisville being ahead of Clemson: they play in the same division as Clemson and lost to a better team. Even assuming equal conference schedules (which isn’t really the case since Louisville didn’t play Pitt), Clemson also beat Auburn. The best non-conference win Louisville can hope for is Kentucky, which will most likely enter the game 6-5; but even then you shouldn’t get credit for a win until you play the game.
Just as before, I can’t come up with a good reason to put Michigan ahead of Clemson. I hope the CFP committee does better than the polls.
I mentioned Western Michigan should generally be going downward, but when you have four teams in front of you lose and you only gain one spot, that’s still evidence that they’re not accumulating many points.
Colorado did gain some points, but several other nearby teams gained more points; and the losses by good teams weren’t damaging enough to help.
Assuming only one team gets in from the Big Ten and the ACC, there is still another opening even though you have to go down to #7 in the polls before you get to the team. That team is Washington, which also lost of course (although I have them 12th). This was the first time since 1985 that numbers 2 through 4 all lost in the same weekend.
As more relevant games are being played, the Big XII teams are all moving up. It will be interesting to see if the Big XII champion is in the mix by the end.
Top 25
rank/team/prev
1 Alabama 1
2 Clemson 2
3 Ohio St. 4
4 Michigan 3
5 Penn St. 5
6 Louisville 10
7 W. Michigan 8
8 Boise St. 11
9 Wisconsin 12
10 Tennessee 14
11 Auburn 6
12 Washington 7
13 Oklahoma 18
14 Florida St. 17
15 Wash. St. 16
16 West Virginia 24
17 Nebraska 20
18 Okie St. 25
19 Texas A&M 9
20 N. Carolina 13
21 Houston 21
22 Utah —
23 Colorado 19
24 S. Florida —
25 Troy —
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/366AA4FKXLHSGWRJNFXL54LHGM.jpg)
:gifv():no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9177461/GT_loses.0.gif)
The Bayou Blogger 
Alabama, Arizona, Arizona St., Big Ten, Clemson, College Football, Florida, Florida St., Georgia, Georgia Tech, LSU, Missouri, North Carolina, North Carolina St., Ohio St., Oklahoma St., Ole Miss, Oregon, Oregon St., Pac-12, Pitt, SEC, Texas, UNLV, Washington, Washington St., West Virginia
Week 12 Top 25 and CFP Notes 2023
In Bowls, College Football, College Football Playoff, General LSU, History, Rankings, Rankings Commentary on November 22, 2023 at 5:04 PMRatings and College Football Playoff Response/Prediction
The first four teams are all undefeated now, just in time to lose at least one undefeated team this weekend. It happens to be the same top four as the CFP top 25. I can argue until I’m blue in the face about Oregon, but I guess people like flashy offenses and uniforms (not to mention years of a hype and a nationwide ad campaign for the quarterback) more than they like a good strength of schedule. It seems like they’re setting up the possibility of Oregon going to the Playoff in the event of revenge wins over Oregon St. (for last year) and Washington (for both last year and earlier this season).
I don’t think Washington, Georgia, or Florida St. (another undefeated not in the top four) have much chance of a loss this coming weekend, but losses by none of them (except maybe Georgia) would be much stranger than the time 4-7 Pitt beat 10-1 West Virginia in 2007 to help LSU make the championship game.
Florida and Washington St. have five wins apiece and are playing for bowl eligibility as well as in-state bragging rights, while Georgia Tech is already bowl-eligible. A late pick-six is likely the only reason Washington beat Arizona St., who is only 3-8. Despite one fewer win, Florida is a better team than Boston College, whom Florida St. only beat by 2. Georgia hasn’t really come close to a loss though.
Alabama and Florida St. both lost ground compared to higher teams as a result of playing FCS opponents. Alabama probably lost a bit less since the SEC gained strength with out-of-conference wins and because Chattanooga is an FCS playoff team.
I suspect that unless Washington and Georgia remain undefeated, removing Oregon and Alabama from the running in the process, the plan is that Florida St. will be excluded from the Playoff. I don’t know if this was the plan before their QB Jordan Travis was hurt or not.
I don’t think the CFP standings after Alabama matter too much for the national championship, but LSU fans (ironically) should cheer for Missouri and Ole Miss to lose for a better chance at a selection committee (or NY6) bowl or at the CapitalOne Bowl. It’s ironic because normally it would be a good thing if no one outside of the top 12 beat you and you had a top-10 win, but that’s not how the logic of bowl placement works.
It would be more logical for LSU fans to cheer for Alabama to beat Georgia (whom LSU did not play, if you haven’t noticed) in the SEC Championship game because that would retain the possibility of there being two SEC playoff teams. This might not be the year for that to happen though given the possibility of four undefeated teams going into championship weekend. There are also a couple of other teams (I mentioned Oregon; there is also Texas) who could be good one-loss candidates as conference champions. I think one-loss Texas will go ahead of one-loss Alabama even if they shouldn’t.
Anyway, the rest of this is just about my ratings, not the CFP rankings or what I think they will do.
The Big Ten is now much closer to the Pac-12, which is now #3, as they can look forward to taking the Pac-12’s two best teams (as well as UCLA and USC, which are more in the middle). They would still be behind the SEC, which will add the Big XII’s two best teams.
I mentioned Arizona St. earlier. Oregon’s win over the Sun Devils allowed them to get past Ole Miss, who beat an inferior UL-Monroe squad. Other relatively small differences in quality of opponents accounted for the movement in the rest of the top 20, apart from James Madison, who lost to Appalachian St. Oregon St. fell a smaller number of spots for losing to Washington, which was a close game as expected.
I had a little bit of trouble figuring out the last two. I strongly considered Oklahoma St. and Clemson, but they each had three losses that were all big negatives. Arizona had only one bad loss and one that was mediocre. Oregon St. and North Carolina St. only had one mediocre-to-bad loss apiece. Oklahoma St. had the best list of wins, but the others had comparable good wins. I didn’t hold the fourth loss (to Florida St.) against Clemson, but there weren’t really strong wins to counterbalance the other losses.
It might seem a little weird that North Carolina still has honorable mention status, but the four teams directly below them (Kansas, Utah, Tennessee, and USC) all lost also. Another interesting one is UNLV, whom I have never ranked in the top 25.
My Top 25
Honorable mention: Oklahoma St., UNLV, Clemson, Memphis, North Carolina