Maybe the Grass Isn’t Greener After All

I don’t know what the rankings will be yet with all the upheaval, but I couldn’t help but be amused by some of the results over the weekend.  It was a bad day to be a fan of a ranked team from Texas (I’ll mention the two big ones, but Houston and Baylor also lost), and it was a good day for Sun Belt teams to notch some historical road wins.  (I only recently realized Marshall had joined the Sun Belt after previous stints in the MAC and CUSA.)

Bryce Young of Alabama miraculously avoids a safety against Texas in Austin on Saturday.  He should have been flagged for intentional grounding, but he was not.  The Tide eventually defeated the Longhorns 20-19

The grass was really looking greener to LSU fans who wanted Jimbo Fisher or Billy Napier, for instance.  I think Notre Dame fans (even if they are genuine about having grown tired of Kelly) were insecure about their choice of Marcus Freeman, who had never been a head coach before; but their way of expressing it in most cases was to attack Brian Kelly any way they could and pretend to be overjoyed that he had been replaced.

Last week (last two sections in the link below), I wrote about reminding myself as an LSU fan not to take anything for granted.  Wearing the jersey and helmet and playing in Tiger Stadium might all but guarantee you beat Southern, but it doesn’t guarantee you anything against an SEC schedule. 

LSU/FSU Reactions and Season Outlook

More on Nebraska

I also mentioned in a separate blog how unless you were Oklahoma, Nebraska was pretty much untouchable for most of the 1970s and 1980s.  I think there is a lesson here for some of the LSU fans who are always unhappy with whomever the coach is. 

Rivalry Series: LSU vs. Florida St.

I didn’t mention it because they didn’t play LSU after that, but the Huskers kept it going through the 90s (I found out they had the second-best record among FBS teams in the decade after Florida St.) and had some good teams in the early 2000s.  After having two losing records (both on the recent end) from 1961 to 2014, the Huskers have only finished with a winning record once since then. 

To get to their current situation, they just lost to Georgia Southern, who was playing in the Southern Conference of FCS 10 years ago.  It wasn’t just one fluke loss either.  The Huskers have now lost eight consecutive games against FBS opponents.  The last such game that was a win was over Northwestern, 56-7.  You would have thought that at least the Huskers could stay better than that team, but they lost to the Wildcats at a neutral site just a couple of weeks ago.

After I wrote the above, Nebraska decided to part ways with head coach Scott Frost.  Mickey Joseph, who for whatever reason stayed loyal to Ed Orgeron and LSU from 2017 to 2021 as the wide receivers coach, will step in as the interim head coach.  He was obviously not retained by Brian Kelly but was classy all the way.  I wish him the absolute best of luck in that position.  If he doesn’t end up being a head coach, I wouldn’t be surprised if he returned at some point.

Joseph is the sixth man to coach Nebraska (including interims) since Frank Solich was fired in 2003.  Solich was the last coach to leave Nebraska after successfully avoiding a losing season for his tenure.  Only two men (Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne) coached Nebraska over the 36 seasons before Solich was hired.  There was another LSU connection as former Tigers defensive coordinator Bo Pelini was hired from Les Miles’s staff after the 2007 season.  Let’s just say he experienced mixed reviews, but he has had far and away the best winning percentage and longest tenure since Solich left. 

Another more indirect LSU connection: Solich employed Joe Burrow’s father Jimmy (whom he first hired as a graduate assistant at Nebraska) as defensive coordinator at Ohio from 2005 to 2018.  Solich himself retired after the 2020 season.

Recent Comments by LSU and Notre Dame Fans

Speaking of Joe Burrow, 2018 and 2019 (which his father had retired to witness) had the best combined winning percentage (89.3) of any two back-to-back seasons in LSU history.  Even though I think an average Power 5 head coach could have managed to go over .500 the next two seasons and Orgeron didn’t, it still looks bad that those great seasons only bought him two additional years.  I don’t know who they think is coming to the rescue if they run Kelly out of town without a fair shot at building the program back up.

At least one of the notions they had got knocked down a peg this weekend when Jimbo and Texas A&M lost at home to Appalachian St., a program Les Miles beat easily (with probably his worst team) the year after they upset Michigan in 2007.

Freeman, we were told, had already begun to correct for Kelly’s various misdeeds in recruiting and game strategy even though he started 0-2.  Well, Oklahoma St. (in the bowl last season) and Ohio St. (who beat the Irish in the opener) were certainly much better teams than Florida St. at least.  That last sentence is true enough, but I’m not so sure you could say the same about Marshall.

Marcus Freeman with his players after the home loss to Marshall on Saturday. After Notre Dame led 28-7 a minute before halftime of the Fiesta Bowl last season–Freeman’s first game as head coach–the Irish have been outscored 70-38.

The Jimbo crowd started going nuts last year when the Aggies knocked off Alabama (and LSU struggled in some early games) and then pretended the losses didn’t matter.  I think I prefer the way things have been at LSU.  When we beat Alabama, we’re going places that season.  These are the wins over Alabama since Saban was hired and the season results:

• 2007, National Championship (12-2)
• 2010, won Cotton Bowl to finish 11-2
• 2011, National Runners-up (to Alabama, 13-1)
• 2019, National Championship (15-0)

Texas A&M did go 11-2 in 2012, also winning the Cotton Bowl, but didn’t even keep the Tide from winning the SEC West as LSU at least helped to do all four years above.  Alabama finished fourth in the West in 2010, but they were still very much alive for a berth in the SEC title game (with wins over LSU and Auburn, to whom they would later lose by only a single point) when they visited Tiger Stadium that year.

Though I would take 8-4 before the bowl any kind of way this season, finishing 8-4 despite beating Alabama seems like a waste in your fourth year somewhere like A&M.

Kevin Sumlin, Jimbo’s predecessor, beat Alabama exactly once too.  He had a slightly better record in his first 50 games than what Jimbo has after 50 games with the Aggies.  This is despite the fact that Texas A&M has increased the head coach’s salary by about 50% since Sumlin left.  Almost two years of additional salary was paid to Sumlin to go away.  Jimbo’s most-recent extension takes him through 2031.  This makes his contract very similar to the one Kelly has.  Kelly makes $1 million more in base salary, but I’m not sure how the overall compensation compares.  Regardless, I’ll be interested to see which head coach has more success over the next 10 seasons despite Jimbo’s four-year head start. 

Jimbo Fisher, with former Texas A&M QB Zach Calzada (who is now third string at Auburn), during a similarly disappointing offensive performance in Denver last season

Good and Bad News from the SEC

Anyway, while in a way I’m disappointed that the SEC didn’t look nearly as good this week as it did in Week 1, I am somewhat encouraged by seeing some vulnerability in a few of the teams on LSU’s schedule in addition to Alabama (more on them later in the week) and Texas A&M:

• Tennessee needed overtime to beat Pitt, and that was against a backup QB who seemed like he was playing hurt after the starter had to leave the game.
• Kentucky beat Florida by 10 in the Swamp after the Gators failed to score an offensive point in the last 35 ½ minutes of the game. (Tennessee and Florida are LSU’s only two SEC East opponents.). Oh by the way, yet another contingent of LSU fans (they may overlap with some of the others) was angry that the Tigers didn’t hire Billy Napier, the former coach at UL-Lafayette and new coach at Florida.
• Auburn only beat San Jose St. by 8 points at home after trailing at halftime.

Interestingly, those five teams all had the same home/away status last week as they will against LSU.  So hopefully Alabama and Tennessee continue to have trouble on the road and the others continue to struggle at home.

I’ll have more to say when I post the rankings later in the week.

Brian Kelly Timeline and New Rankings

Brian Kelly Timeline

In the last blog, I decided not to speculate on some aspects of how the deal that brought Kelly to LSU materialized (through his agent) when and how it did.  I’m glad that I didn’t because more information has come out.  It’s not completely different from what I thought, but the picture is more complete now. 

Brian Kelly made an interesting comment to Rece Davis in an interview on GameDay.   He said that his agent Trace Armstrong told him about several inquiries that he had received; but he only discussed this at the end of the season.  Unless his agent called his wife and cleared it with her first, I don’t think he meant the very end of the season.  I suspect that he wasn’t so overwhelmed with the stress of Notre Dame’s looming game against 3-8 Stanford that he took a little bit of time to have conversations with his agent and his family during the week prior to that game.  It is plausible that the only direct conversation with Woodward was after the Stanford game though, and it makes sense that everything had to become settled relatively quickly.  My conclusion about Kelly having some prior conversations is also supported by LSU grad Booger McFarland, who said the deal with Kelly (or at least the formal offer) was already on the verge of being finalized on Saturday.

Rece Davis interviewed Brian Kelly in a meeting room on the LSU campus. The interview aired on GameDay yesterday.

I think Armstrong knew Kelly and Woodward were keeping quiet, so he had the opportunity to fill the void by suggesting the job was actually going to Riley.  Riley was probably going to USC at that point anyway, but Armstrong was able to get a more favorable contract approved more quickly than he would have otherwise.  It didn’t hurt Kelly that he was able to stay under the radar as long as he did.  Whether Riley’s name floating around helped Woodward to secure the funding I’m not sure.  Some have speculated that Woodward knew a long time ago, perhaps before even taking the job or at least before the Orgeron announcement, the money was going to be in place.

I imagine someone at LSU other than Scott Woodward had to be apprised of the situation to finalize the deal even though Woodward was given broad latitude.  At that point a leak was inevitable.  Any major news about LSU football gets all over town very quickly.  I’m not saying the leak was out of malice.  It might have just been to calm down some of the hysteria regarding Riley going to another team.  Some worried that Riley was the guy Woodward was counting on all this time and that he didn’t have a backup plan.

There was an article by former LSU beat writer Ross Dellenger, who now works for Sports Illustrated.  It says that Woodward made one last phone call to Jimbo Fisher prior to the weekend before proceeding with hiring Kelly.  I hope that isn’t true; but if it is, I’m glad Jimbo said no.  I know Woodward likes to hire champions, but Fisher left Florida St. as it was going down the tubes in the years after his national title there.  I certainly think his is an improvement over the previous coaching staff in College Station, but you don’t pay someone a salary like that to go 8-4.  I’m not certain Kelly will do better, but I’d rather have the uncertainty than the knowledge of what Jimbo has done in recent years.  If he were available, I think it would have cost a lot more than the Kelly deal did anyway.

Ratings and Playoff Commentary

I mentioned last week that Alabama did not schedule well out of conference; but the Tide played 6 games against SEC West opponents, all of whom were bowl-eligible and which included #9 Ole Miss, as well as otherwise-undefeated Georgia and 7-5 Tennessee. 

I explained last week that Oklahoma St. had a very good schedule, and it was even better than Alabama’s.  This is why the Cowboys are ranked higher than Notre Dame despite the additional loss.  To illustrate this point, Virginia and West Virginia are both 6-6 with almost identical strengths of schedule.  Notre Dame beat Virginia, while Oklahoma St. beat West Virginia.  Notre Dame only beat two teams that were better: Purdue and Wisconsin.  Oklahoma St. beat four teams that were better: Boise St., Kansas St., Baylor, and Oklahoma.  Both teams won 2/3 of their games against better teams, but being tested more often should give Oklahoma St. the edge. Even if we expand it to the top 80 (we are still talking about risky opponents here—#76 TCU beat Baylor, #77 Illinois beat two ranked teams on the road, and #70 Florida was a field goal away from beating Alabama), Oklahoma St. still played almost twice as many in that range.

Baylor does belong lower than Notre Dame though.  Although BYU was a good non-conference opponent, the Bears scheduled Texas St. (who went 4-8 and is my #111) and Texas Southern (who only beat two other FCS opponents).  Although they essentially played the game conference schedule as Oklahoma St. did, losing to bad teams is punished a little more harshly.  As mentioned, TCU is #76.  Iowa St., who beat Oklahoma St., is #49. 

All three are relatively close though.  There is more than twice as much separation between #4 Cincinnati and #5 Oklahoma St. than there is between #5 Oklahoma St. and #7 Baylor.  There is just under twice as much space between #7 Baylor and #8 Ohio St.

There is a consensus about who the four semifinal teams should be and since the focus of my ratings is creating a fair objective top four, I could not be more satisfied.  You can quibble about how high UL-Lafayette and UT-San Antonio are—I think teams like Michigan St., Oklahoma, and Utah would beat both easily—but I don’t mind giving credit to successful seasons.  Even with an expanded playoff, I wouldn’t want teams with more than one or two losses this season in it, so I don’t mind if 1-loss ULL or 1-loss UTSA are higher than teams who would be highly favored to beat them.

I also think if Cincinnati played number 5 through 10 they’d be lucky to win one or two.  On the other hand, the Bearcats are 1-0 against that group; and a lot of people would have told you out of 10 tries Oregon would beat Utah 9 or 10 of them.  If you missed it, the Ducks had two shots at the Utes and fell far short both times.  Anyway, I also don’t think a two-loss non-champion would be more deserving of a slot in the top 4 even if they look better to me.  Oklahoma St. and others had their chances and fell short. About a foot short in the case of Oklahoma St. against Baylor.  The best Cowboy teams always lose to Iowa St. though. This also happened 10 years ago when the Cowboys missed the top two in favor of the Tide.

Houston stayed close with Cincinnati for a while, so I don’t love the fact that they fell out of the top 25; but Utah St. deserved to move back into it after their solid win over San Diego St. for the Mountain West title.  I like seeing some stability as far as which teams are in the top 25.  In the last three weeks, only four teams have fallen out.  Utah St. was one of those four, so there are only three different teams than there were three weeks ago. 

Championship losers San Diego St., Appalachian St., and Wake Forest all managed to stay in the top 25.  There needs to be a penalty for losing; but just like I’m glad Oklahoma St. didn’t fall out of the top 5 in favor of Notre Dame, I like that it’s not so harsh that any of the three fell below enough idle teams to fall out of the top 25.  

Alabama QB Bryce Young drops back to pass in the SEC Championship Game against Georgia in Atlanta on Saturday. Alabama is now the consensus Number 1 team going into the bowls. The Tide will play Cincinnati in the Cotton Bowl on December 31.

I wrote everything above last night, but I just wanted to respond briefly to Michigan being placed ahead of Georgia.  It doesn’t really matter who #2 and #3 are, but it’s the only difference between the respective top fours, so I wanted to address it.

Georgia Tech isn’t even in that top 80 group I was talking about, but the Bulldogs are in luck because that’s the third-best team they scheduled out of conference.  I have Clemson just outside of the top 25 and UAB at #50.  Of course they avoided Alabama and Ole Miss in the regular season. Imagine the arguments if they had played Alabama.  Anyway, Arkansas and Auburn as the non-divisional games still aren’t bad.  Michigan’s Big Ten schedule did include some bad teams though.  Rutgers, Nebraska, Northwestern, and Indiana all have losing records compared to just one in-conference opponent for Georgia that had a losing record.  Michigan’s one Power Five opponent rates worse than Georgia Tech.  MAC champion Northern Illinois was a help and Western Michigan rated similarly to UAB, but it should not be enough to put them ahead.

That said, if the committee made the decision based on the team that will take the field at the end of the month being harder to beat rather than resume, I do agree with Michigan being ahead.  They finished very strong.  If they play the way they played against Ohio St. and Iowa, they can beat anyone.  If Georgia plays the way they played against Alabama, especially with the turnovers, they won’t have much of a chance.

Top 25

Rank	Team	Last
1	Alabama	3
2	Georgia	1
3	Michigan	4
4	Cincinnati	5
5	Oklahoma St.	2
6	Notre Dame	6
7	Baylor	9
8	Ohio St.	7
9	Ole Miss	8
10	B. Young	11
11	UL-Lafayette	16
12	Michigan St.	13
13	Oklahoma	15
14	TX-San Anton’	20
15	Pittsburgh	21
16	Utah	22
17	Wisconsin	18
18	Iowa	10
19	San Diego St.	12
20	Oregon	14
21	Boise St.	24
22	App. State	17
23	Arkansas	25
24	Utah St.	—
25	Wake Forest	19

Out of Rankings: (23) Houston

1-130 computer ratings

Coach O and Week 13 Top 25

Coach O

I haven’t had time to go into much detail with LSU. Now that there won’t be a full slate of games again, I can update the various rivalry blogs and talk about the new coach when there is one.

I want to say a few things about Coach Orgeron. First, I should acknowledge that I did think it was appropriate to go a different direction with the head coach, so don’t read my praises of the good things he did as criticism of the decision. Coach O admitted and seemingly understands that the last couple of seasons were not up to the LSU standard of performance. I don’t think he has had enough personal interest and enthusiasm in maintaining the 2019 success as he had in getting there, but I will always appreciate what he did in getting there.

There were some ups and downs in the first 54 weeks between Les Miles being relieved of his duties and the day LSU went to Gainesville in 2017; but from that point on, there was a clear upward trajectory. The only losses from that point until 2020 were two games against Alabama (one by 14 and one by 29), one game against Florida (by 8 the next season), and two rigged debacles (against Notre Dame and Texas A&M, respectively) that were decided in the final seconds, neither of which ultimately counted for much. There wouldn’t have been much excitement about a second consecutive Citrus Bowl win anyway, and the A&M loss didn’t deter the Fiesta Bowl from selecting the Tigers. Getting to that bowl, not to mention winning it, was the more important byproduct of the success of the 2018 team.

So unlike what some will tell you now, it wasn’t just one fluke year. Coach O did some serious heavy lifting to get from the team he took over in 2016 to the top of the mountain in 2019, but LSU started with a loss in 2020 and never showed that winning edge again. The Tigers didn’t even win consecutive games until December of 2020 (that season was all conference games) and didn’t win consecutive conference games at any point in 2021.

2021 also marked the second consecutive season in which the Tigers opened with a loss. The one time Les Miles did that in 12 seasons, he was gone within a month. LSU didn’t typically open with weak opponents either. Since 2005, LSU has started with 12 Power-Five opponents, 7 of them ranked in the top 25 at the time of the game.

Jimbo Fisher, former LSU offensive coordinator under Nick Saban and Les Miles who has been mentioned in various LSU coaching searches, exchanges pleasantries with outgoing LSU head coach Ed Orgeron in Baton Rouge on Saturday.

The point is we went from consistently starting on solid ground to only doing so a couple of times under Coach O. In hindsight, UCLA was the beginning of the end. The rumor was that Kentucky was a must-win, and I’m not sure that’s true; but it was definitely not acceptable to lose by 21 after letting Auburn sneak out a win (their first in Baton Rouge since 1999) the week before. That’s when I understand the decision was made. In the excitement yesterday, Coach O said the decision was made after Kansas; but it’s another basketball school that mostly wears blue and starts with a K, so I’m pretty sure he meant Kentucky.

Speaking of Kentucky, there are some LSU fans only who seem upset that the Tigers may hire Wildcat coach Mark Stoops, but they could do much worse. There may be a better coach for the amount they’re willing to spend, but it wouldn’t bother me at all. These are probably the same LSU fans who were heartbroken the Tigers didn’t get Tom Herman, who did much worse at Texas than Coach O did at LSU overall.

Playoff Race

That’s enough about a 6-6 team for now. I’ll move on to the top teams.

Some may be surprised that Oklahoma St. is so high, but that’s mostly a function of the Cowboys not being a team the media wants to hype. They’re not going to drive high TV ratings. It might also be partly because no matter how good they are, they typically lose to Oklahoma. Of course that didn’t happen this year; but the media isn’t going to admit they overlooked someone in the playoff conversation until the end of November, so they’ll pretend they’re fifth or sixth.

The media also forgets that this thing called non-conference scheduling exists. Of course the 8 teams Alabama has played in the SEC are better on average than the 9 teams Oklahoma St. has played in the Big XII, but those other teams matter too. Boise St. is very good team, better than U. Miami, but the low-IQ take is the Hurricanes were ranked when Alabama played them so they must have been good!

Whether you think U. Miami was better or not, one should also acknowledge that the Tide also scheduled Southern Miss and New Mexico St. (as well as an FCS opponent, but Oklahoma St. did the same, so I’m no using that against them for the purposes of the comparison). Southern Miss has had good seasons in the past, but they’ve been mediocre on a good day lately; and NMSU has only made one bowl game in 50 years. The two won a combined three games against FBS opponents for the season. Two of those wins were Saturday, over two teams who themselves have a combined one win over other FBS opponents.

Oklahoma St. wide receiver Tay Martin reaches out for the end zone in the win over the Sooners on Saturday in Stillwater. The Cowboys play Baylor for the Big XII Championship next week.

Alabama will be ahead if they beat Georgia, don’t get me wrong; but don’t fall for the idea of Oklahoma St. being undeserving just because Kirk Herbstreit or whoever doesn’t have them in the top four. I’m also not saying the Pokes are a lock against Baylor, especially since rematches are tough. By the way, they also don’t get nearly enough credit for beating the Bears the first time, just because Baylor hadn’t gotten a high ranking yet. Kansas is almost as bad as USM and NMSU, but obviously that’s a conference game.

As for Michigan, the only reason they’re even close is that they didn’t schedule an FCS opponent. Their average FBS opponent is about #60 whereas the average FBS opponent for Alabama or Oklahoma St. is about #52. The Wolverines scheduled a couple of respectable MAC opponents as well as Washington (who unfortunately had a bad year), but there are a number of mediocre teams in the Big Ten that dragged down their average. The best few teams in the Big Ten may be as good as or better than the best teams in the SEC or the Big XII, but more than one or two are clearly part of the bottom half of college football.

I think Michigan will also deserve to play for a national championship with a win. If the Wolverines play as they did Saturday, they will be hard for anyone to stop; but I like to reward the teams who play more of the types of opponents who are likely to beat a top a team.

Speaking of which, Cincinnati and Notre Dame is a split decision as far as weighted and unweighted; but the Bearcats will be ahead in both with a win on Saturday. I don’t have any qualms about them potentially losing out to four one-loss teams though. If Alabama beats Georgia, I would actually be annoyed if Cincinnati made it in ahead of a winning Oklahoma St. team. Terrific that they won their early-season Super Bowl over Notre Dame, but the results simply do not indicate to me that they could play a Big Ten, SEC, or Big XII schedule including the title game and finish with one loss or fewer.

If it’s undefeated Cincinnati versus two-loss Alabama, who was a field goal away from losing to Florida and who went to four overtimes with Auburn, I’d be on the other side of the argument though. I doubt the Bearcats could play Alabama’s schedule with only two losses either, but I’m willing to resolve that doubt in their favor. Also, Notre Dame, who began the season with narrow wins over Florida St. and Toledo, hasn’t played a ranked team (either currently or at the time) since Cincinnati. I would have no problem leaving the Irish out. In short, I’m not close-minded about teams from lesser conferences; but it should only be considered when multiple other options fall short.

Top 25

rank	team	last
1	Georgia	1
2	Oklahoma St.	3
3	Alabama	5
4	Michigan	7
5	Cincinnati	4
6	Notre Dame	2
7	Ohio St.	6
8	Ole Miss	9
9	Baylor	12
10	Iowa	14
11	B. Young	10
12	San Diego St.	20
13	Michigan St.	15
14	Oregon	21
15	Oklahoma	13
16	UL-Lafayette	19
17	App. State	16
18	Wisconsin	8
19	Wake Forest	18
20	TX-San Anton’	11
21	Pittsburgh	—
22	Utah	22
23	Houston	25
24	Boise St.	17
25	Arkansas	—

Out of Top 25: (23) Texas A&M, (24) Purdue

1-130 computer ratings

Week 1 Top 25 and LSU/Texas Series and Preview

TOP 25

rank/team/last

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

Out of top 25: (22) Florida St., (25) South Carolina

Top 25 Comments

I know it’s late for many of you, so I only used one picture. I usually try to avoid walls of text, but it couldn’t be helped.

I covered most of what I had to say about the games over the weekend on Sunday. 

I thought Michigan struggled too much to stay ahead of Ohio St., who dominated.

I think Auburn barely beat a much better team than Florida barely beat, so I switched the two.

I dropped Oregon close to the bottom just because they’re 0-1, but they can bounce back pretty quickly. 

Boise St. was a late cut from my list of potentials, so it was easy to put them in.

As for the other new team, I’m not in love with Stanford being that they only scored 17 points and will probably rely on the backup quarterback in the next game, but sometimes that helps teams.

Florida St. and South Carolina deserved to fall out for obvious reasons.  It may be a while before I consider South Carolina again, but Florida St. showed some good things.

If you need three overtimes to beat a FCS team like Iowa St. did (although it’s worth noting Northern Iowa has had a lot of success in recent history), that’s almost like a loss to a top-10 team.  A win is a win for the most-part (giving credit for strength of schedule of course); but with only one game to consider, you have to look at how easily the win came. 

Oklahoma and Notre Dame, who played since my last blog, took care of business.  

Notre Dame probably let Louisville hang around too long, but the Irish don’t typically have an offense that leaves the opposition in the dust right away anyway 

Oklahoma let Houston score a couple of touchdowns to get within two possessions late, but I don’t hold it against them.  I’m still skeptical about how the Sooners will do against Power 5 competition though.  It could be that the Big XII will make them look good even if they aren’t.  Texas looked all right, but nobody looked great. Speaking of the Longhorns…

LSU @ Texas

Texas QB Sam Ehlinger looks to throw against TCU last season. LSU HC Ed Orgeron said preparing for Ehlinger was similar to preparing for Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow.

All-time series: Texas leads, 9-8-1 (updated after the game)

The first game of the series was way back in 1896, LSU’s 11^th official game as a program (and 10^th intercollegiate game), but 10 of the 17 games in the series were clustered between 1935 and 1954, the last regular-season matchup (Texas won 20-6 in Austin).

The (January) 2003 Cotton Bowl (Texas 35, LSU 20) was the only matchup since 1963 (also the Cotton Bowl, which LSU won 13-0), so LSU fans shouldn’t despair too much about these facts.  The more-recent Cotton Bowl was the highest-scoring game of the series, beating out the 35-14 Texas win in 1952.  In the 2003 game, Texas entered at 10-2, and LSU entered at 8-4.  LSU would win the BCS national championship in the following January though.

The third-largest point total and largest margin of victory is also owned by Texas, 34-0 in 1941.  Other than the tie in 1936, the closest game was the 5-0 LSU win in San Antonio in 1902.

Texas leads the series in Austin, 7-2-1, the other LSU win coming in 1938. (updated after the game).

The Tigers lead 2-1 at “neutral” sites (two in Dallas, one in San Antonio) and 4-1 at home. 

Added after the game: Both teams scored more in 2019 (45 to 38 final in favor of LSU) than either had in this series before. LSU more than doubled its previous high of 20 (in the loss in Jan. 2003 and in wins in 1938 and 1953).

After Saturday, the next game is scheduled for Tiger Stadium on September 12 of next season with no future plans thereafter; although LSU plans to return to Big XII country (if the Big XII is still a thing) in 2027 to face Oklahoma.

Preview

Speaking of the Longhorns, there was a debate on the College Football Nerds YouTube channel (formerly known as SEC Fans) about whether Texas will beat LSU.

They absolutely can…  I’m not going to suggest for a moment it’s going to be as easy to stop Texas’s mobile quarterback as it was to stop the Georgia Southern quarterbacks.  I’m not a big fan of the Texas defense even before the loss of all but two or three starters, but I’m reasonably sure LSU will go scoreless on more than one drive with the first-team offense in the game. I also don’t discount the degree of difficulty in playing in Austin.  I don’t know if it’s the same as the best SEC stadiums, but we’ve had some of our best teams lose at home (like in the 2003 season) or lose at less-intimidating SEC places like Commonwealth Stadium (the sponsor isn’t paying me) in Lexington (like in the 2007 season).

.. But I don’t think they will.  LSU has a clear advantage in returning starters; but even if they didn’t, I think last year’s LSU team would have beaten last year’s Texas team even in Austin.  Oklahoma played terribly on defense and only lost by a field goal, and that was Texas’s best game.  The Longhorns only won the Sugar because Georgia was going to be the team that blew the lead to Alabama in the SECCG whether they beat Texas or not.  A month of relatively little motivation can make a big difference.  LSU in their worst game wouldn’t have lost to Maryland like Texas did.

Anyway, in the video, I don’t know if the guy arguing for Texas was advancing weak arguments on purpose or he was just trying hard to sell the only arguments he could come up with; but they weren’t very persuasive.  One was “we’ve heard it before that the offense is different.”  There were changes when Cameron was fired, there were changes when Canada came in, and there were changes last year; but there weren’t wholesale changes like this.  Neither Etling in 2015 and 2016 nor Burrow last year were ready for anything crazy anyway. 

Shea Dixon had some good stats on differences from last year.  In all of last season 14 players caught passes, four of them running backs.  On Saturday, 14 players caught passes, 5 of them running backs.  He also included a special teams stat: LSU had 52 yards in punt returns Saturday compared with 99 in all of last season.

Another one is “Texas doesn’t rebuilt, they reload.”  Charlie Strong (who still recruited a lot of the players) would be surprised to know that.  They’re not Alabama or Clemson all of a sudden because of one year with double-digit wins (which with 14 games isn’t what it used to be).  LSU has done a bit of reloading over the years as well.  It’s still an advantage to have more players back, especially from a successful year.  Speaking of Alabama and Clemson, they both had successful years in 2017; but Clemson had a lot more players back in 2018.  I think that helped the Tigers win the championship as easily as they did.  Even if Texas “reloads” an exact replica of last season on defense (though I’m not sure Louisiana Tech gets 340 passing yards last year), that’s probably a good sign for the LSU offense.  To be fair, the La. Tech scoring was all in the fourth quarter, but they had several earlier opportunities.  In short, I’m not convinced.

Another point I’m not buying is that Texas can handle the SEC based on the Georgia game.  If LSU played Georgia and that was LSU’s only SEC game last year, that wouldn’t mean LSU would beat every SEC team this year with.  LSU played a Georgia team that still had a potential national championship run in front of it too.  Also, bowl games are a lot different.  You don’t get the same players.  LSU had a patchwork team in the bowl game last season and looked pretty good, which is part of the reason I rank them so highly now; but I don’t know how different the Texas-Georgia game would have been if it had been a playoff game.

There was another point that might have been good had Texas had its defense back from last year, and that was that LSU’s new offense is more similar to what Big XII teams run.  Being used to scrimmaging against the Texas offense isn’t the same thing as a season of Big XII opponents.  When you’re up 42-3 at the half and take most of your starters out shortly thereafter, you’re not going to show everything anyway.  So we can’t be sure this would be so easy for an experienced Big XII defense anyway.  Also, let’s not forget even in the best team game for the Longhorns they allowed 45 points.  Do I think LSU will score 45?  No.  Do I think they’ll allow 48 like Oklahoma did?  That’s not even a serious question in my mind.

My final thoughts: I don’t want to discount the fact that Texas has a chance to win at home. It just seems less likely.  Maybe 60-40 odds in LSU’s favor.  If you point a gun to my head and make me bet, I’d take Texas and the points (5.5 according to ESPN), but it’s a close call. If someone wins the turnover battle 4-0 (as was the case when LSU beat Georgia last year), that team could win by 20+ though. I don’t think feel like I know enough about either team under pressure to even venture a guess as to over/under.

Last topic, speaking of turnovers, both teams were +2 in turnovers in the first game, but stats from last year indicate LSU might do better.  LSU was tied for 7^th in turnover margin last year (with an advantage of 0.8 per game).  Georgia Southern’s turnover margin was more than twice as much though (1.7, 1^st), so that makes the first game more impressive for the Tigers.  Texas was close behind LSU last year (0.6, tied for 18^th), but Louisiana Tech was barely positive (0.2, tied for 43^rd).

LSU More Qualified for #3 Seed Than Kansas

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worst Loss

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Losses

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

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

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

Key Wins and Conclusion

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

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

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

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

The Curious Case of LSU Basketball

Why I Generally Don’t Cover College Basketball

If you’ve been following my blog, you’re probably aware I don’t write much about college basketball.  It’s not because I’m not a fan – I actually pride myself on picking mostly correct tournament brackets over the years – but when I have free time during basketball season, a lot of times I’ll have 6 or 7 games recorded to watch and do that instead.  If I don’t watch as many teams who may be in the tournament as possible, I tend not to pick as well.

With college football, I usually watch whatever it is I’m going to watch on Saturday, leaving other days for writing, preparing, etc. I don’t concern myself as much with any kind of postseason picks. Given that only four teams are playing for anything important, the postseason in football is kind of a crap-shoot anyway. I usually finish my computer rankings before I go to bed Saturday night/Sunday morning; so other than writing and research, all of the effort I put into following football is confined to about 14 hours on one day of the week.   

Another part of a sport with so many games is whether I want to write about my team doing well or poorly, there’s always another game looming that can change that.  So if there is a game on Saturday and I don’t have time to write, edit, and post a blog about it until Tuesday, what I’ve written might be moot by then.

Brief Description of Recent LSU Basketball History

I’m writing this now because even if LSU doesn’t finish well, there are milestones and things to be proud of.  The last several years I’ve expected to be disappointed.  Since the Final Four season in 2005-06, I can’t think of one season in which we made it farther than I thought we should have.  When I’ve gotten my hopes up, I’ve just waited a few days (or maybe a couple of weeks) and with the help of the team I’ve gotten over it. 

Former LSU head coach John Brady was fired after the Tigers went 25-28 over the 53 games immediately following LSU’s last Final Four appearance. The Tigers have returned to the NCAA tournament only twice since.

With as bad as things have been for the program at times, it’s amazing that there have been three Final Fours in the last 40 years (and 4 in the last 65 years). For instance, the Tigers lost 10 games or more in all but three seasons in the 27 years between the first two Final-Four appearances. In all but one season since the last Final Four appearance (in which the Tigers entered the tournament with 8 losses), the Tigers have also suffered 10 losses or more. During that second span, LSU has only won a single NCAA tournament game.

The 26 seasons that included the second, third, and fourth Final Four teams weren’t exactly full of success either. There were only four other teams in that span who won one NCAA tournament game or more. Only two of those teams (not including any of the teams for which Shaquille O’Neal played) made the Sweet 16. Seven teams during that span, by contrast, finished with losing records.

LSU went only 2-3 in NCAA tournament games with Shaquille O’Neal on the roster.

What Makes This Team Special (So Far)

With the win over Tennessee, who for much of the year has been #1, I have to acknowledge things are a bit different from the situation to which I’d become accustomed.  It’s certainly possible that LSU or someone else could have been 16-10 and just shot really well and things fell into place for a win over a team like this.  Last year, for instance, the Tigers beat #11 Texas A&M on the road (despite ending up with a losing record in conference).

But this year, one of LSU’s expected starters (Wayde Sims) was killed in the lead up to the season.  On Saturday, arguably the top player on both sides of the ball (Tremont Waters) was sick and did not play.  The Tigers’ second-leading scorer, Naz Reid, who is normally also one of the main defenders in the post, went 0 for 9 from the field and sat for 17 minutes due to foul trouble.  In other years, this would have been an ugly blowout loss under these circumstances; and I wouldn’t have even faulted the team if it had been.

What makes the current situation stand out even more is LSU beat another then-5^th-ranked team on the road 11 days before.  It had been almost 40 years since the Tigers beat a team ranked that highly on the road.  Even the 1980-1981 Final Four team, the last LSU team with this small a number of losses this far into the year, lost in Rupp Arena, one of only two regular-season losses for that team. With apologies to Billy Gillispie (who was fired after failing to win an NCAA tournament game in consecutive seasons), this was the first LSU team to win there over a ranked Kentucky team since.

The Kentucky game was another comeback win and another night where some of the top scorers (such as Waters and Skyler Mays) were held in check. 

A couple other notes from that game. Only three times in 52 years had the Tigers overcome a halftime deficit of 8 points or more, and the Kentucky win was the second time in less than a week.  It so happened that both were on the road against ranked teams (the other had been in Starkville).  Also, John Calipari only averages one home loss per season since he took over the Kentucky program in 2009.

The Tigers recorded two wins over top-5 teams, although Tremont Waters (who leads the Tigers in points, assists, steals, and free throws made per game) did not play in one of them and made only 3 of 13 field goal attempts in the other.

This team is actually unbeaten on the road in conference (the Tigers did lose to now-#6 Houston in pre-conference).  Another remarkable thing is how many close games there have been.  The last 7 consecutive games have been decided by 5 points or fewer, and LSU has won 5 of them.  The Tigers are also 4-1 in overtime in conference play.  Three of those overtime wins were on the road. 

I’m going to backtrack a little bit to when I really started to pay close attention. Although I was encouraged by the win at Ole Miss (I’d seen the Rebels beat Auburn and Mississippi St.), I was still skeptical. I wasn’t sure if that might be something like the A&M game I mentioned last year: just one game not particularly apropos of anything (and maybe like the Aggies, the Rebels just happened to peak right before the game, which was apparently the case). 

I first really got the feeling there might be something a little different about this team with the overtime win over Missouri.  Missouri isn’t a great team, don’t get me wrong; but when you end up winning after being down 14 with 2:08 to play, you’ve done something impressive. It wasn’t a Division II school in a November tournament or exhibition; it was a road game against a credible program in a major conference.

Conclusion and Why You May Not Want to Bet the Farm on LSU

Before I finish, I want to include a couple of caveats. I don’t mean to suggest that the moment you get your brackets you need to put the Tigers in the Final Four regardless of the region or seeding.

While I think LSU can beat anyone anywhere now, the team also has a tendency to play down to the opposition, which can certainly cause problems in the postseason.  The Tigers lost to Arkansas at home by 1 and beat the Razorbacks on the road in overtime.  I think Arkansas is better than its record, but there is no reason LSU should be making a team 5-9 in the SEC look better than Tennessee and Kentucky regardless.  After beating Kentucky, the Tigers only got out of Athens with a 4-point win.  Georgia is only 1-13 in conference. There likely won’t be a worse team that LSU will play in the postseason.

After Georgia (and before Tennessee), LSU lost to Florida at home.  The Tigers will have to play the Gators again and also have rematches against Texas A&M (whom the Tigers beat easily in College Station) and Alabama (whom the Tigers struggled to put away in Baton Rouge), so finishing at the top of the conference or even top two is far from guaranteed.  They’re projected to be a #3 seed in the NCAA tournament, which usually makes a team safe to enter the round of 32, but if they fall below that I’d be very concerned about a loss in the first game.

Also, some of LSU’s second halves and final stretches would be less remarkable if it didn’t tend to fall behind in the first place, often due to poor shot selection. Although the Tigers were able to claw back against Kentucky and Tennessee as well as against some lesser teams, there could be an opponent in the post-season against which they are not so lucky.

For the reasons I mentioned though, I think it’s worth noting the accomplishments so far. 

Week 7 Top 25 and Recent LSU Thoughts

I had a long trip out of the country, so I haven’t had much time for blogging and so forth. I only included one picture, so I’m sure this will look like a wall of text in spots.

Troy-LSU

Not that more than a handful of people read what I have to say anyway (I never recovered from losing the free advertising TSN used to provide), but if you’re a regular reader and resorted to listening to mainstream media instead, my condolences.

Why are the most ignorant people who don’t even lift a finger to give themselves the level of knowledge that can be gained by five minutes with a search engine the ones with the biggest voices in national media? A perfect example from the NFL was Skip Bayless pretending Tim Tebow was going to the Hall of Fame, but there are people you can take seriously. I think Skip Bayless is what you get in college if you’re lucky.

Paul Feinbaum never seems to know basic facts. Maybe he’s just feigning ignorance, but if he’s that good of an actor, he should be in Hollywood.

For instance, before last year’s Florida game (the offense had looked good between Les Miles’ last game and Florida), he had no idea who Steve Ensminger was or how he came to be interim OC. He can have good commentary when he does read up on something, but he phones it in when it comes to details and it’s not a big game. Feinbaum also said the chance of Orgeron becoming head coach was infinitesimal. Why is he considered some kind of SEC guru?

Anyway, to get to the point, after Troy, he had on some guy who admitted being preoccupied with college BASKETBALL. Anyone in their right mind would have hung up instead of asking for anything about football. There are probably a million SEC fans who haven’t been distracted one iota by basketball he could have spoken to instead.

So this guy says that Orgeron is responsible for any lack of depth because he was a recruiter (for defensive linemen… for a year and a half) under Les Miles and then proceeds to bash the program in general. Who does that, who says, “I haven’t been paying attention to this sport, but here is my condemnation based on one final score”? A drunk at a bar maybe, and a relatively dumb one at that. I couldn’t keep listening.

We have had good recruiting classes the last couple of years, but that doesn’t magically give you a quality team when the field is loaded with freshmen. Go back to covering basketball, where leaving college early means not playing in college.

So then I listened to Damon Amendolara. At least that’s material I can work with, even though he’s obnoxious. I’ll respond to his points.

>LSU was embarrassed at Mississippi St.

Again, we are talking about a team playing a ton of freshmen, they should have been up 14-7 in the second quarter (but for a bullshit penalty), halftime score ends up 17-7, then the game gets away as offense starts desperation mode during a third quarter that didn’t go well. That’s not being embarrassed. Embarrassing final score maybe, but the performance was not as bad as the score.

>for the first time since 2000, a non-conference team walked into Death Valley…

Gee, who was the head coach then? That guy is probably selling life insurance now if not dead from chronic stupidity. Oh no, that’s one of the best college football coaches in history? Same difference.

You know what else that guy did? Lost his conference opener against a sub-top-20 team. He lost by 17, but it could have been worse had the other team elected to keep up the pressure.

By the way, I made these points to my family after the Troy game. I’m not just saying this because of Florida. By the way, after losing to UAB in 2000, LSU beat a ranked team the next week as well. The Tigers would finish 8-4 on the year, which I would take this year as well. The next season, they won the SEC Championship.

>Troy was up 17-0

They were up more and LSU didn’t quit and nearly came all the way back? That makes it worse if you’re a mainstream media sports guy?

>LSU frankly is a pathetic football team.

They didn’t even lose to a pathetic football team, and it was by 3 points. That’s not rushing to judgment at all. But at least if you say it like you know what you’re talking about…

>[Ed Ogeron] can’t fix the problem.

He clearly improved something being that LSU scored 21 of the last 31 points. I understand if he was arguing that LSU did the same exact things they did against Mississippi St., but this guy’s main gripe was Troy and seemed to be aware of no details of Mississippi St. You don’t see if the problems are fixed until the next game is played.

>Troy is trolling them on twitter (by saying they enjoyed the trip).

What is Orgeron supposed to do? Beat up on whoever controls their twitter? What a nonsensical point to even bring up.

These buffoons count on people to forget their mistakes. Don’t let them get away with it. Be as unforgiving as they are.

LSU struggled against the run, but the Tigers got just enough stops when they needed them.

LSU-Florida

I’m not going to pretend I knew it would work beforehand, but the important thing is players stepped up after the game to have a players meeting, and LSU maintained its normal routine before the Florida win.

You can say they got lucky with the extra point, but I would say they got unlucky with the officiating. There is no way blocking a guy with your hands around his shoulder pads is what any rules committee has ever meant by targeting even though the penalty was upheld. If that’s so dangerous you need to remove someone from the game, they need to ban blocking and tackling altogether.

There was also an LSU first down that was reversed on a spot judgment call, and yet Florida was given a first down when the guy stepped out a full two yards short of the line to gain. There was a personal foul called for bumping into a player while getting up. There was a roughing the punter that was only called running into. There were other examples, such as clear holdings that were not called, but I’m just saying what stood out. All in all, typical SEC officiating for the home team that had better prospects going into the game.

Both Florida touchdowns were set up by 15-yard LSU penalties. The other one was a correct call by the referee, but it was bad luck in a split-second decision. The defender could have gone in front of the receiver on a crossing route and broken up the pass (if not intercepted it) for a third-down stop. Instead, I think he misjudged the timing of the ball and wrapped up the receiver. Only problem was the ball hadn’t gotten there yet. To be fair, he had a perfectly-timed jump to tip a ball way over his head on the play before.

I mentioned Mississippi St. above and how pivotal the go-ahead touchdown would have been. I also think not going down 7-0 to Troy would have made a huge difference.

Of course that wasn’t the whole story. LSU did very well on third down after going 0-8 (I think a conversion or two was called back) the week before. The Tigers committed four turnovers against Troy and none against Florida. There were times they could have just hanged their heads like when Danny Etling missed wide-open receivers, when three offensive linemen had to leave the game, or when the targeting I mentioned was called and another quality offensive player was ejected. These seemed ominous as a fan, but I think the team has really worked on controlling what’s in their power and shrugging off everything else.

This was Ed Orgeron’s first-ever SEC road win as a permanent head coach. It was the third counting Texas A&M and Arkansas last season though, so he’s 3-1 in such games with the Tigers after going 0-12 at Ole Miss.

I didn’t have time before, but this weekend I will update both the Florida and Auburn rivalry blogs. Jim McElwain had previously done pretty well both in close games and in the Swamp, but LSU has won a fair number of games in both categories in recent years as well.

Top 25

I did calculate the official computer ratings for the first time this season. My top 25 for this blog is a little bit different. Summary of differences: Alabama moved from #3 to #1, Michigan put ahead of Florida (they beat Florida after all), Notre Dame ahead of Michigan St. (same reasoning), and Oklahoma St. #25 instead of South Carolina. I don’t like to remove teams from the top 25 just because they had a bye week, and it’s not like South Carolina has done anything special since Week 1. No team was moved more than two spots, and for the vast majority of teams I just let the chips fall where they may.

rank/team/prev.
1 Alabama 1
2 Clemson 2
3 Georgia 3
4 Penn St. 4
5 Wash. St. 9
6 Central Florida 7
7 TCU 6
8 San Diego St. 8
9 USC 11
10 Notre Dame 15
11 Mich. St. 20
12 Ohio St. 16
13 Wisconsin 14
14 U. Miami 18
15 Houston –
16 Iowa –
17 Navy 10
18 Washington 21
19 North Carolina St. –
20 Michigan 5
21 Florida 12
22 Kentucky 22
23 Oregon 19
24 Oklahoma 13
25 Okla St. 17

Out of rankings: (23) UCLA, (24) South Florida, (25) Maryland

LSU Keeps Coach O and Week 14 Top 25

I’m going to have to do three blogs this week to keep them from being too long. I’m not sure when I will have my SEC material ready, but since there is only one game coming up, I see no need to do that on Wednesday. I also want to talk about bowl games and other conferences.

LSU Sticks with Coach O

I don’t know what to believe about the LSU coaching search and the conversation with Tom Herman and his agent. One story is there never was any kind of final offer, just informal talks. Another story is Herman asked for $6 million per year and LSU rejected it. A third story is all details of the deal were in place and agreeable to both sides, but LSU withdrew its offer and hired Orgeron when Herman or his agent said he wanted to talk to Texas before signing.

Like Coach O (or Eaux as some fans spell it) said in the Texas A&M press conference, I really would have liked to have had that Florida game. LSU would be all but a lock for the Sugar Bowl as well as making this decision easier. Should falling short by a foot or so when we had a chance to get that win determine who the next coach should be on a permanent basis? I don’t think it should. I’ll talk more about bowl possibilities later in the week.

Coach Orgeron accepting “the greatest job in the country” Saturday.

I don’t want to belittle the job Steve Ensminger and the offensive staff did in trying to make a productive offense out of the playbook and offense that Les Miles and Cam Cameron left behind. It wasn’t very ideal to have to patch something together like that four games into the season, but offensive inadequacies were still exposed against Alabama and Florida and even in the first half against Southern Miss. I hope Coach Ensminger can stay on to help the new coordinator because I think it did show that he’s not just a run-of-the-mill tight ends coach.

If we get one of the best offensive coordinators like Orgeron says he wants to do and that guy has the whole offseason, that should put us in position to score more than 10 points against Alabama, more than 16 points against Florida, more than 18 points against Auburn, and more than 16 points against Wisconsin. Had we done that this season, we would be undefeated. I don’t know if the defense will be quite as good next year as some of our replacement players struggled on Thursday, but we will not be rebuilding from scratch either.

I’m more skeptical about LSU doing well next year than I was this year because I felt like the array of talent should have been just right this year (which was why starting 2-2 was bad enough to fire the coach), but sometimes you do better when you’re not quite as good on paper. One example was when we had a number of players drafted early and a new offensive coordinator in 2007 and had a better year than the year before.

I mostly agree with the decisions Alleva made, although I would prefer to have that Florida game at home next year.

Oh yeah, and we did a couple of neat things in the game (see bolded areas).

Rankings Comments

Before you have too much of a knee-jerk reaction, remember that Ohio St. and Michigan won’t gain any more points this week. It might benefit them slightly if Penn St. beats Wisconsin instead of losing to the Badgers, but the big points will go to the teams that win this weekend. Regardless of the Pac-12 and Big Ten champions, chances are that both will pass up Michigan. If Clemson wins, it is likely they will pass up Ohio St., but the Buckeyes should be secure in the top 4.

I don’t think Western Michigan would beat any team in the top 10, but I think this shows my system has adequate safeguards against an undefeated team with an easy schedule finishing ahead of a one-loss team or even in some cases a two-loss team with a strong schedule.

The idea is to rank playoff-worthiness. If there were an 8-game playoff (heaven forfend), I do think it would be fairer to include a team like Western Michigan than the fourth Big Ten team or the third ACC or Pac-12 team. If the season ended today, I think Wisconsin should get the 7th seed instead (since we won’t really establish which Big Ten team should be fourth until Saturday), but I’m not going to overhaul my formula over a 0.006-point difference between two teams that will be irrelevant after this weekend anyway.

The next thing I can see people griping about is Oklahoma taking a tumble, but that’s because some teams picked up meaningful points while the Sooners were idle. It also didn’t help the Sooners that Houston lost to Memphis, which is obviously more harmful than Ohio St. beating Michigan was helpful. An oversimplified explanation is that Houston’s FBS winning percentage fell 8 points while Ohio St.’s winning percentage only improved 0.8 points. Oklahoma should be able to recover all the lost ground with a win though.

Normally Boise St.’s loss would have hurt more, but of the Broncos’ four out-of-conference opponents, three of them won. The only loss was by Washington St. to Washington, which didn’t hurt very much. ULL and Oregon St. both got really important wins for them. Oregon was by far the best team Oregon St. beat; and Arkansas St. had been undefeated in the Sun Belt, so that was a big win for the Cajuns, who had only had four wins before that game.

Why is Tennessee still 16th? Well, they beat one conference champion (Appalachian St. of the Sun Belt) and three divisional champions (MAC East, ACC Coastal, and SEC East). That’s in addition to playing Alabama and Texas A&M as non-divisional opponents. Every SEC team is now in the top 75, so while there were only a few good arguments for the top 25, there is still a laundry list of at least somewhat decent teams that the Volunteers beat while none of the losses were catastrophic.

I’ll talk more about conferences later in the week, but because of what I said above, the SEC is still the best top-to-bottom conference in my rankings, although analysis of the top 40 (the part at the top) tells a different story.

Top 25

rank/team/prev
1 Alabama 1
2 Ohio St. 3
3 Clemson 2
4 Michigan 4
5 Washington 8
6 Penn St. 5
7 W. Michigan 10
8 Wisconsin 9
9 Colorado 12
10 Florida St. 14
11 Boise St. 7
12 Oklahoma 6
13 USC 22
14 S. Florida 21
15 Okie St. 16
16 Tennessee 11
17 Stanford 23
18 Florida 18
19 Nebraska 15
20 Louisville 13
21 West Virginia —
22 Auburn 19
23 Houston 17
24 Virginia Tech 24
25 Navy —

All 128 Teams

Out of rankings: (20) Texas A&M, (25) N. Carolina

Nega-Tiger Time & Head Coach Position

A few preliminaries:
Computer ratings of all teams after Week 11
Updated Florida Rivalry Blog
Texas A&M Rivalry Blog

I don’t know where this comes from exactly, but somehow on message boards there developed the concept of “nega-Tigers,” the more skeptical and pessimistic LSU fans, and “sunshine pumpers,” those who were more optimistic and stressed the positives. I try to be accurate and have seen the merits of both sides, but people have called me a sunshine pumper in recent seasons for pointing out that Les Miles had the best winning percentage of any coach of a substantial number of games in LSU history. Nega-Tigers tend to stress things like recent losses to teams like Alabama and Arkansas and the issues I’m about to discuss below.

One of the reasons I didn’t want to talk much about the Arkansas game was I didn’t want to get my confidence up too high. It’s just so disheartening that we can’t win a close game to save our lives. I don’t understand how you score one touchdown, you get a few yards away from another touchdown after driving for 75 yards, and then you can only come up with a single field goal for the last 37 ½ minutes of the game.

Technically, the Tigers beat Mississippi St. in a close game, but LSU was ahead by 17 with five minutes left. So let’s look at it another way:

Close game (<17 points) with 5 minutes left … result
Wisconsin 16, LSU 14 … Wisconsin 16, LSU 14
Auburn 18, LSU 13 … Auburn 18, LSU 13
Alabama 7, LSU 0 … Alabama 10, LSU 0
Florida 13, LSU 10 … Florida 16, LSU 10
Total: 0-4, scored 0 points, gave up 6 points

I don’t see a way out either even with a coaching change. We have to know how to win close games somehow. I know we were one positive play from beating Wisconsin, one second away from beating Auburn, and maybe one foot away from beating Florida, but losing all three is almost unforgivable.

Jimbo Fisher (right) with Nick Saban. Fisher also coached under Les Miles for two seasons as the offensive coordinator.

Jimbo Fisher is going to fix it (assuming we can get him anyway)? We had one of our best offenses in 2006 when Fisher was the offensive coordinator, and we lost to Auburn 7-3 and Florida 23-10. We also only managed 20 points in regulation against a pretty sorry Ole Miss team (coached by a guy called Ed Orgeron). You can’t tell me we can rest assured about not having games like this again.

Florida State has 3 losses against an ACC schedule and their best out-of-conference opponent was Ole Miss. If they’d played Wisconsin instead, that likely already puts them at 4 losses right now even if we pretend their conference schedule was just as hard as LSU’s.

Had the Seminoles played SEC opponents instead of North Carolina St. (won by 4) and U. Miami (won by a missed extra point), that could have made 5 or 6 losses.

That’s great that they only had two regular-season losses over the previous three seasons, but again, I think that has a lot to do with schedule. In 2014, there were five games that came down to one possession.

Jameis Winston was a great college football player and 2013 was a great season for the Noles; but we’re not talking about Gene Chizik, and he had a great season with Cam Newton as his QB in 2010. This is not a motivated team who plays to the best of its ability every week either. When you have an off game in the SEC, you lose the majority of the time no matter how good of a coach you are.

One big reason Alabama doesn’t have more losses is they don’t really have off games against teams that can beat them. They have sloppy games sometimes, but they seem motivated and ready to play every time, and the sloppiness is rare in big games. So I don’t mean that you can prevent guys in their late teens and early 20 from having an off night in all cases, but you can have a focused team that responds appropriately when things go wrong.

The Guice fumble was an example of sloppiness, but there is no way in the world Alabama would respond to something like that by shutting down on offense and allowing the other team to get ahead like LSU did. Outside of maybe a bowl game or two, I can’t think of an example of Alabama doing that since Saban’s first season.

Houston’s Tom Herman

I’m even less impressed with Houston, led by Tom Herman (who actually beat the Seminoles in the Peach Bowl last year). There is no way Navy or SMU has even close to Houston’s level of talent, but the Cougars lost to both within 3 weeks this season. They had a full month of subpar play. In addition to those two games, they needed overtime to beat Tulsa in between, and then after the SMU game (which they lost handily), they struggled against Central Florida. Tulsa and Central Florida were home games. Houston apparently needed a bye week to snap out of it before easily beating Tulane and Louisville.

Maybe if we get a better offensive coordinator or maybe even if Ensminger is allowed to develop his own offense and playbook over an off-season, Orgeron can still be the guy, but how many chances did Les Miles get to figure out the right combination of coordinators to no avail?

Pretty soon recruits aren’t even going to remember the 2011 regular season, and LSU is going to be that team that gets hyped up every so often only to lose the big games.

I hope we give A&M a serious beat-down, and Orgeron somehow figures out a better plan for the offense and keeps his job, but here we are waiting till next year again. I’m not even talking about a national championship. I’m talking about losing fewer than 3 conference games in a season. 2011 was the last time that happened.

CFP Response and SEC Wednesday #10

A little later than I prefer, but I thought some Eastern Time sports fans may be up due to the baseball.

I honestly wasn’t surprised by anything in the CFP rankings, so that’s why I didn’t write a special blog last night. I do have something I wanted to rant a little bit about before getting to the SEC Wednesday blog though.

I was confident a team with a loss was going to be in the top 4. Obviously I had Ohio St. in the top 4, but A&M was a very close fifth. I guess they felt more comfortable with a loss to Alabama than a loss to Penn St. for obvious reasons.

Although I have them very high—and I’ve discussed why multiple times—I wasn’t expecting Western Michigan to be in the top 20, but I’m encouraged they were ranked at all since the CFP is notoriously skeptical of Group of Five teams.

I’m also encouraged WMU is the top Group of Five (G5) team.

I’m not sure what it will take for the committee to buy into the G5 teams more. Maybe it just needs to try harder to appoint people from G5 backgrounds. G5 teams have won a lot of games out of conference against major teams. They’ve done well in the major bowls in the past. I wanted to just give a list of the results. Pre-bowl records in parentheses:

2015 – Houston (12-1) 38, Florida St. (10-2) 24
2014 – Boise St. (11-2) 38, Arizona (10-3) 30
2013 – Central Florida (11-1) 52, Baylor (11-1) 42
2012 – Florida St. (11-2) 31, Northern Illinois (12-1) 10
2010 – TCU (12-0) 21, Wisconsin (11-1) 19
2009 – Boise St. (13-0) 17, TCU (12-0) 10
2008 – Utah (12-0) 31, Alabama (12-1) 17
2007 – Georgia (10-2) 41, Hawaii (12-0) 10
2006 – Boise St. (12-0) 43, Oklahoma (11-2) 42 (OT)

The G5 teams usually had one fewer loss than the opposition. I would point out that Northern Illinois and Hawaii had atrocious schedules and only got so high on account of their record.

It pre-dated this blog, but I can assure you I was a Hawaii detractor the whole year in 2007, and you may remember how I felt about Northern Illinois. I had the Huskies 17th (behind Florida St.) going into the bowls that year. I had stronger loss penalties than I do this year, so now they would be even lower. It’s not worth the trouble of searching, but I believe I said here that they weren’t really 17th-best.

I’d also like to mention that Northern Illinois went 1-1 against P5 teams in 2012, but the win was against Kansas, which finished 1-11. In 2007, Hawaii’s only game against a P5 opponent was a close win over a Washington team that also finished with a losing record.

This year, by contrast, it appears that both Western Michigan and Boise St. have defeated at least one eventual P5 bowl team apiece. Northwestern still has to win two games, but Purdue and Illinois only have two conference wins combined. The Wildcats also play un-ranked Minnesota, which has the same conference record (3-2) as they do. Western Michigan and Boise St. are both 2-0 against P5 opponents regardless.

SEC Wednesday

Last Week

The first three games got my hopes up before disappointing me.

Unfortunately, the Texas A&M defense allowed a touchdown after holding the other Aggies to 3 points over the first three quarters. This caused the closest New Mexico St. game against an SEC team other than Kentucky in several years.

Georgia hung tough for a half, but I was very surprised the Bulldogs were shut out by the Gators in the second half.

I knew when South Carolina scored in the fourth quarter, Tennessee most likely was not going to beat the spread, but I thought the Vols would come back to win until the very end.
Thankfully the reverse happened with Auburn, who trailed after every quarter but the fourth, which they won 13-0 to beat the spread.

I mentioned Kentucky earlier. The Wildcats are still not a great team, but they’re beating the spread every week. I don’t know what the bookies were thinking with Missouri.

Similar to last week, I was 5-1 in picking winners and 2-3 against the spread. (Mississippi St. won an FCS game against Samford.) This brings my records to 64-12 overall and 30-35-1 against the spread.

Next Week

Rather than wasting words, I’ll just let you know when I pick an upset win below.

I’m picking Georgia Southern to beat the spread of 27.5 against Ole Miss. It could be a blowout, but the Eagles took Georgia to overtime last year. Ole Miss beat a similar team in Memphis this year but only won by 20. Also this year, Georgia Southern’s only game against a P5 opponent was a 35-24 loss to Georgia Tech.

Despite falling short of the spread against New Mexico St., I think Texas A&M wins by at least 14 this week. The Aggies beat Auburn by 13 (on the road) and Arkansas by 21 (at a neutral site). The only thing that worries me is that the Aggies only won at South Carolina by 11. I’m put somewhat at ease by what I think is the most similar Mississippi St. game, which was when they hosted Auburn about a month ago and lost by 24.

Vanderbilt is a decent team that has fought admirably in the Commodores’ three conference losses so far, but they haven’t played an opponent as good as Auburn yet. If you can lose in Atlanta by 31, you can lose on the Plains by more than 26 (even). Also, I think Arkansas is better than Vanderbilt (albeit not by a whole lot), and I don’t need to recount what happened to them a couple of weeks ago.

Speaking of Arkansas, the Hogs host Florida, which is now on track to win the SEC East. The Gators even have a loss to spare. Arkansas should be fresh after a week off though, and Florida hasn’t performed that great on the road (loss to Tennessee by 10 and beat Vandy by 7). Gators by 3, which is less than the 5.5-point spread.

I think South Carolina is improving and Missouri is getting worse. If it were @Missouri, I’d think about it, but Gamecocks -7 all day long.

With Tennessee, I’ll just go with the win of course since there is no ESPN line for FCS games.

Georgia is favored by 2 over Kentucky. Although the Wildcats always seem to disappoint in the end, they’ve treated me well the past few games while picking Georgia has been a disaster most of the year. Kentucky to win.

Marcus Randall, not to be confused with JaMarcus Russell, may have engineered the “Bluegrass Miracle” in 2002 but could not even get the Tigers on the board against Alabama that year.

Alabama is favored by almost an overtime-safe margin (very rare to win by 8 in OT), so I have to take LSU. The worst two LSU teams of the Miles tenure (2008 and 2014) both lost to the Tide in overtime at home. Other recent home games in the series for LSU were a loss by 4 in 2012 and a win by 3 in 2010. I really don’t think this will be the worst LSU does in the series at home since 2002.

I can’t countenance LSU losing to Alabama again, so I’ll tell myself it won’t happen this year even though the prudent pick is Alabama to win. The best argument I have is the gambler’s fallacy: LSU has to win a marginal game against Alabama at some point; and as I said, I don’t think this is the first team to lose by more than one possession at home to the Tide since 2002, which incidentally was Nick Saban’s worst team at LSU (8-5). I’ve plugged it a few times, but for more on the LSU-Alabama series, you know what to do.