Rivalry Week Top 25 & Look Ahead

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

CFP Reaction and Playoff Considerations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LSU’s Defense Going Forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments About My Top 25

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

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

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

My Top 25

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

Out of Top 25: (16) Kansas St.

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

Week 10 Top 25 2023

I mentioned in the last blog that my ratings were delayed this week.  I realized while I was compiling them that not enough credit was being given for playing a series of good opponents.  I’m ok with giving undefeated teams or teams with very good records against mediocre to bad opponents the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not OK with James Madison being #6, Liberty being #11, and Troy being #17.  I think if any of those teams played a random selection of top 25 opponents every week, their record would be about 1-9 or 2-8 right now.  

Adjusted Approach to Top 25 and Possibly to Ratings

In recent years I added what I called weights to “good” games. 

To explain how this came about, my original formula from about 18 years ago was sort of based on a 10-point scale.  If you beat every team you played and those teams beat every team they played apart from you, you’d be between 9 and 10 depending on how good the opponents of the teams you beat were.  This was the entire rating at first, but it later became sort of the first round where I used that number to decide how much credit you got for a win or how much you got subtracted for a loss. 

Realistically the best teams can hope to be around 7 (Ohio St. right now is 6.676).  So what I did with the “weights” was if you played teams better than 5 points (which right now is 14 teams), you’d have a certain number added to your overall rating.  Another 16 teams are between 4.25 and 5, so I would add a smaller number for playing those teams. 

This was regardless of whether you won or lost because you already lost points, so getting some of them back because it’s a good team isn’t a bad thing.  I don’t just want to reward beating them.  I wouldn’t want to reward Texas for beating Alabama and losing to Kansas St. (if the Longhorns had lost over the weekend) where I would not reward another team (like LSU) for beating Missouri and losing to Alabama. I actually think it’s better if you consistently beat teams lower than you and only fall short if you have a very good opponent.

Anyway, I’m starting to question if that’s the best approach.  Wherever I draw the line is ultimately going to be kind of arbitrary. I mentioned the 5-point thing.  Kansas is 4.98.  How much less credit should you get for beating them than you do for beating Louisville at 5.01?

I also didn’t want to go backwards and introduce more subjectivity on my part.  What I decided to do was just to add that initial number to what I have been publishing as the computer ratings.  I could only use a fraction of that number because the other ratings right now tops out at 0.93.  For most top 25 teams, the largest number is about 10x the smallest number, so I though the fairest thing to do was divide the largest number by 10 and then add the two together.

I’m still giving myself the leeway to move teams up to three spots for the top 25.  I might go down to two next week, and I will let you know if I made a change to the published ratings.  I want to see how it plays out.  Sometimes when I make changes, they’re great for one week but I quickly see problems going from one week to the next.  That’s fine for my top 25, but I don’t think it’s good for the computer rating.  It’s good to be able to compare numbers over longer periods of time. 

Big Picture for LSU after Bama Loss

I had a couple other quick thoughts about Saturday’s game. I’ve mentioned LSU’s personnel issues on defense. I also mentioned that the LSU defense was put in a really difficult spot in the fourth quarter when Alabama received the ball at the LSU 25 after an interception only a few seconds on the clock after the previous Alabama offensive drive (3 minutes and 65 yards).

I don’t blame Jayden Daniels for trying to make a play, the ball getting tipped, etc., but giving up a touchdown after the quick turnaround is not proof of a bad defense in that moment. No LSU fan goes on about how bad the 2019 defense was, and no one wanted Dave Aranda to be fired; but LSU gave up 41 points in that game. The Tigers gave up three touchdowns in the fourth quarter and the SHORTEST touchdown drive was 75 yards. I highly doubt that if Joe Burrow threw an interception two plays after one of those drives that the defense would have stopped the Tide from scoring.

“Hot seat” isn’t nearly dramatic enough for Baton Rouge media personalities when they get worked up about something.

So I’m not on the “Fire Matt House” bandwagon that others are on. I know that in hindsight we should have tried to spy more because knowing what we know now, the offense didn’t get close to enough points for the defense that we played. Maybe LSU would have gotten lucky and there would have been a bunch of drops and bad passes. However, we don’t know if more open receivers would have backfired. I don’t hear anyone saying Nick Saban and his defensive coach are incompetent for sacrificing QB rushing yards for more pass coverage. Jayden Daniels ran for more yards than Jalen Milroe, and the former left the game with 13 minutes left.

If both teams had scored in the 40s in an LSU win like four years ago, everyone would be happy. But LSU commentators are going on the radio or on YouTube and saying giving up 40+ to Alabama is never OK regardless.

Even though he’s one of those who I think has been too much of an alarmist about the defense, Matt Moscona pointed out an interesting thing Kelly has been dealing with. You’d think no matter how badly things went off the rails, if you take over a team less than two years after a national championship, you’d have a pretty good recruiting class coming of age. But no, there are only three players left who were recruited in the wake of that championship. The rest of the team is either players Kelly brought in or players that came to play for a team that was going .500. The older players in the subsequent classes who stayed with the team are great. I always have a soft spot for overachiever types, but to think there isn’t a significant talent gap just because we escaped with a win over Alabama last year is silly. Having a better personality and recruiting in a better location than Saban was only getting Coach O so far.

Speaking of which, I want to compare with Saban for a moment. Saban went 26-12 (68.4%) in his first three years at LSU. Kelly is at 69.5% right now. Pretty good for having almost no junior class last year and almost no senior class this year. LSU has a chance to go 4-0, but let’s say they go 3-1 the rest of the way. That would give Kelly a 70.4% mark going into next season. In his last three Division I stops, there was a significant improvement in year three; but even if there isn’t, far too many fans are overreacting.

Granted, LSU had a worse record the two years before they hired Saban than they did the two years before they hired Kelly, but there wasn’t a transfer portal back then. There were good players who had come in after respective 9- and 10-win seasons in 1996 and 1997 who didn’t have a good option other than to stick it out. (By the way, there was only an 11-game regular season back then.). Gerry DiNardo, Saban’s predecessor, won 69.7% over his first three years, so it’s not like Saban blew away anything anyone had seen in recent years right away.

To make some less big-picture comments and get back to the rankings, I think it still makes sense to put Texas ahead of Alabama.  That may change if Oklahoma loses again and LSU wins out.  I’ve mentioned that LSU can get some meaningful positive points in each of the next few weeks.  They’ll definitely be favored in the next two and they haven’t lost to Texas A&M in Baton Rouge since 1994 (the year before DiNardo started), so chances are pretty high they’ll be favored in that one too.  Unfortunately, Georgia St. (who is in between Florida and Texas A&M) has lost two in a row though.  They still may be the second-best team in Georgia.

College Football Playoff Rankings

I think it’s ridiculous that the committee thinks Oregon is the top one-loss team. The Ducks have the 82nd-best schedule. I know they played undefeated Washington, but the Huskies have played the #99 schedule. I don’t even factor in opponents’ opponents’ records as much as many similar blogs do. Some count that equally to opponents’ record because it’s a much narrower range from team to team. Utah, the Ducks’ best win, has a top-50 schedule but two losses.

The big difference comes after Oregon’s marquee win. The highest-rated opponent after that is Colorado, which is #69 overall. Alabama and Penn St. have each beaten four teams who are better than Colorado. Ole Miss, Texas, and Louisville have each beaten five teams who are better than Colorado. I can understand giving some credit for having one close loss to an undefeated team, but it shouldn’t compensate for about every other game being against a team in the top half of the FBS versus about 20% of games being against such teams. Any other team that’s a candidate for the college football playoff would be all but guaranteed to be 8-2 against the Ducks’ schedule, and most would probably beat Utah, my number 20 and the CFP’s #18.

I also don’t think Oregon St., who played no one of note out of conference, is close to the best 2-loss team. I don’t know where they get the idea the Pac-12 is so great. Arizona lost to Mississippi St. and is now half a game out of third place. Notre Dame has suffered a third loss now, but they beat USC (who actually is third place) easily. Wins over Wisconsin and TCU (albeit by lesser teams) have lost their luster.

There isn’t reason to get too annoyed yet, but the committee’s disregard of quality of opponents is something to watch out for going forward.

Comments about My Top 25

I think Purdue is better than their record, but Michigan hasn’t added as many points per week as other major-conference teams do on average.  Even with USC’s struggles, they’re worth a lot more than Purdue.  Alabama and Texas both added high-quality wins as well.  Texas was a lot closer to losing at the end, but I don’t factor that in.  

Georgia and Michigan can each get a good number of points next week though.  Penn St. (who is playing Michigan) and Ole Miss (who is playing Georgia) are right behind them, but neither the Nittany Lions (Rutgers and Michigan St.) nor the Rebels (UL-Monroe and Mississippi St.) have nearly as many potential points to gain in the last two weeks of the season as the Bulldogs (Tennessee and Georgia Tech) and Wolverines (Maryland and Ohio St.) do.

The last time Ole Miss played Georgia, Rebel QB Chad Kelly led the team to a 45-0 lead in Oxford in 2016. Bulldog QB Jacob Eason (right) was only able to complete 44% of his passing attempts and failed to throw a touchdown. Somehow the Bulldogs’ long-awaited chance at revenge is not the SEC game of the week. I wish Ole Miss would go back to those uniforms. by the way.

So if you want to see an SEC team in the playoff, you need to be for Georgia (even if you’d rather see Alabama).  If you want to see a Big Ten team, you need to cheer for Michigan (even if you’d rather see Ohio St.).  I’m not saying the CFP committee always agrees with me, but high-quality wins are usually important to them in the end.  Even if two or three one-loss teams make it, I doubt either one will be Penn St. or Ole Miss.

The order of Kansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St. is mostly explained by what I said earlier about bad losses.

I liked not having to drop Missouri, Kansas St., and LSU too far.  Part of that is due to Tulane and Toledo playing fairly weak opponents (even though Tulane barely won again). Losses by USC and UCLA helped too. 

USC almost stayed in the top 25 given that the Washington loss didn’t hurt much, but there is only so much room for 3-loss teams.  The rest of the honorable mentions are from outside of the major conferences.

They didn’t make the honorable mentions, but Duke, Arizona, North Carolina St., and U. Miami are the other major-conference three-loss teams in the top 40.  North Carolina still only has two losses but has a relatively low schedule strength.  It’s interesting how many ACC teams are in the 30s.  Clemson (despite four losses) has a good chance of joining that group in the next few weeks.

Top 25

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

Out of Top 25: (18) Southern CA, (21) Air Force

Honorable mention: Tulane, Southern CA, Toledo, Memphis, Fresno St.

Week 9 Top 25 2023

Welcome New Readers

Since I’ve been on WordPress, I’ve always gotten a big boost in readers for the LSU-Alabama weekend, but the last couple of weeks have been the best non-Alabama weeks over the past two seasons. I wasn’t able to look at weekly stats from before that, but given that I wasn’t really committed to this in 2020 and 2021 and LSU was pretty irrelevant anyway (I didn’t even bother to say much about the respective Alabama games, although 2021 was close), I doubt any weeks in those years were better.

It’s quite possible 2019 had better weeks, but I’m sure that was more Joe Burrow’s doing than mine. I’ve also done a lot less to garner views than I did in prior years. I guess I’ve gotten more serious about work and health and things like that, and I also spend more time just relaxing.

At any rate, I wanted to welcome anyone who is new to my page. I’ve been a pretty avid LSU football blogger (during the season anyway) since the 2005 season, which happened to be when Les Miles came to Baton Rouge. My ranking system was developed from 2003 to 2005 and improved in a couple of ways since then, but I only have an online archive going back to my 2008 rankings. I don’t mind that because they became a little more sophisticated that year (qualifying for Massey’s comparison site) anyway. I’ve done a personal ranking since 1995, but to my knowledge I haven’t published anything I wrote before 2006.

Although I am an LSU fan, I’m very strict about not letting my personal views affect my computer ratings. In fact, at this moment, on my list LSU is as lower as or lower than they are on any other ratings list that Massey indices. This is not to be confused with top 25 rankings blogs like the one below that deviate less and less from the computer ratings as the season progresses.

Comments about CFP Rankings

I made an unexpected trip to the dentist on Tuesday, so I didn’t have the time to post this that I originally thought I would have. The delay does give me the occasion to comment on the first College Football Playoff rankings. Obviously, I agree with #1; but if you’re disregarding last year and basing the order of the top four solely based on quality of this year’s wins, there is no logical way to place Florida St. below Michigan and Georgia. If you are basing it on prior years and think Georgia is close to #1, why not keep them #1 until they lose, especially since that could be any week as the Bulldogs get into the difficult portion of their schedule (following the win over Florida with games against Missouri, Ole Miss, Tennessee, and Georgia Tech in consecutive weeks).

What if I told you there is an SEC game this weekend that will likely decide the division wherein the one-loss team is trying to avenge last season’s close loss (which took place after giving up two late touchdowns) and that I’m not talking about the SEC West?

I don’t see the argument for Michigan to be ahead of the Seminoles at all. The last time we saw them before this season they were losing to TCU in the semifinal. I don’t think that gives you the right to rest on your semifinal-loser laurels for the next 10 months. Is it purely a prediction of where they think the teams will end up? When did we ask this committee to prognosticate like that? I thought they were supposed to evaluate how good the respective teams are currently this year.

Comments about My Top 25

I was not surprised by too much that happened over the weekend, although I wouldn’t have bet on both Arizona teams winning.  They had both been on the wrong side of some close games before, so it’s not like I thought either team was incapable.  Perhaps Oregon St. and Washington St. just don’t have the depth and talent (and possibly not the coaching either) to keep their early-season success going.  I would have laughed if USC had lost again, but one win and one loss in the last two weeks is probably the deserved outcome.

I feel somewhat vindicated that Ohio St. nearly became the computer #1 after I had to assist them the past few weeks.  Ohio St. has a much better remaining schedule.  Florida St. still plays Pittsburgh, who only has one FBS win, and North Alabama, a subpar FCS team.  Of course, Ohio St. still plays Michigan, who is much better than anyone the Seminoles will play.

I didn’t predict Kansas to beat Oklahoma per se, but I didn’t think the Sooners would finish undefeated, and a road game against a team that I had ranked a couple of weeks ago isn’t the most surprising one for the Sooners to have lost.  Oklahoma may also struggle to beat Kansas St. and/or Oklahoma St., both of whom have re-entered the top 25.

I know some people think if Texas and Oklahoma each have exactly one loss, Oklahoma should automatically be higher; but I strongly disagree.  Texas has a much better strength of schedule given the game against Alabama (Rice and Wyoming aren’t terrible either), and the Longhorns also beat Kansas

Another interesting side effect of the upset is that now there are five former Big 8 teams (Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Kansas St., and Oklahoma St.) in the top 25.  One of the others, Colorado, was ranked earlier in the year and is still in the top 60.  The other two, Nebraska and Iowa St., are both in the top 45.  When Oklahoma plays Missouri next year, it will be the first SEC game between two former Big 8 teams.  Colorado will rejoin the Big XII, where four other former Big 8 teams will play next season.  Nebraska will remain in the Big Ten.

Kansas RB Devin Neal dives for a touchdown against old Big 8 (and Big 6 and Big 7) rivals Oklahoma on Saturday in Lawrence, Kan. The Big 8 conference broke up in 1996, and it had almost been that long since Kansas had beaten Oklahoma. Neal ran for 112 yards in the Jayhawks’ 38-33 upset win.

As I anticipated last week, I didn’t do any subjective ranking to factor in.  I did move teams up to three spots.  I was a little bit liberal about what that means though.  For instance, Troy, Oregon St., LSU, and UCLA were all between 0.350 and 0.360, so I considered that a tie for 25^th.  (0.01 is a typical gap between consecutive teams after the top 10, where many gaps are even larger.)  That’s how I got LSU as high as they are.  I’m going to elaborate just for illustrative purposes, but if you’re not interested in a detailed breakdown, skip the next three paragraphs.

I am more lenient toward teams who play in more difficult conferences and who have more understandable losses anyway.  Part of the reason is I’m less concerned about such teams getting away with anything.  LSU will either lose to Alabama and likely fall out (continuing the current trajectory anyway), or they’ll beat Alabama and this will avoid the volatility of being 16^th one week, unranked the next, and being back in the top 20 (or maybe even in the top 15) the week after that.

One of LSU’s losses was two months ago to a team that is still undefeated in relatively hostile territory (not a true road game but close), and the other was on the road and was just a matter of which team was able to score last in the last two minutes. 

I think it was right to have the gap between Oregon St. and LSU since the two teams who beat the Beavers have seven combined losses to the one combined loss by the two teams who beat LSU.  LSU’s best win Missouri and Oregon St.’s best win Utah are similar, but I give the edge to Missouri (who still only has one loss…for now). 

Falling 11 spots for a loss to a team with a winning record seems harsh enough though, so I was not inclined to let Oregon St. fall out of the top 25 completely.  Also, teams like Troy and Tulane (the other candidates for top 25 other than UCLA, whom the Beavers beat and who is lacking in quality wins) aren’t going to be seriously tested in the future like Oregon St. will be.  Three of the four remaining opponents for the Beavers (Colorado, Washington and Oregon) are more highly rated than any team that remains on Tulane’s schedule, for instance.  Only one of Troy’s upcoming opponents (Louisiana-Lafayette) is higher-rated than Colorado, and it’s not by much.  (All of LSU’s remaining opponents are better than all of the remaining opponents for either Troy {who already played Georgia St.} or Tulane.)

I mentioned UCLA in the last paragraph.  It was a little weird to take them out after getting their second-best win, but every previous Pac-12 opponent (Utah, Washington St., Oregon St., and Stanford) lost.  Also, they were 28^th, so the only way to rank them would have been to remove Oregon St., which did not make sense.

Wisconsin and Minnesota were in a virtual tie in the computer, so I included them both in the “honorable mention” list.  That list is usually only five teams, but I made an exception.  I believe Toledo is the first MAC team on the list this season.

Top 25

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

Out of Top 25: (19), North Carolina, (21) Wisconsin, (25) UCLA

Honorable mention: Troy, Tulane, UCLA, Toledo, Wisconsin, Minnesota

LSU/Mizzou & Week 6 Top 25 2023

Intro

I actually have two blogs of material this week since I didn’t have time to post the other one last week.  I finally did get around to entering all the FBS results into the spreadsheet for my computer formula.

I thought posting the rankings blog was more important to get more back on schedule.  I haven’t even promoted them like I usually do because most people aren’t really interested on Thursday and Friday.

LSU QB Jayden Daniels keeps the play alive in the first quarter in Columbia on Saturday. Daniels was responsible for 389 total yards and four touchdowns (with no turnovers). It should have been more scores, but we don’t need to get into why he didn’t get credit for more.

LSU/Missouri Recap and Reaction

I wanted to include a couple of comments about LSU’s win over Missouri even though my next blog will in part be about the game before.

It was nice to get Mizzou back for the first game after Covid, when LSU’s rising star quarterback Myles Brennan played a great game in Columbia but got hurt and was never seen in meaningful action again.  I’m torn between saying LSU deserved to win that game and that LSU was lucky they competed in any games in 2020 and 2021.

Anyway, that was also the only season I know of when the LSU defense was nearly as bad as it is this year.  I have barely even watched LSU play defense the last two games, by the way.  Auburn’s offense isn’t as good as that of Mizzou or Ole Miss, so I’m hoping it might be more tolerable next game. 

The second half of the Mizzou game was not bad though, to be fair.  Six of the home Tigers’ 8 possessions did not result in points.  Ideally LSU would like to force the other team to punt more, but missed field goals and interceptions result in the same number of points that “three and outs” do.

Preface of Rankings

For the rankings this week, it’s still mostly subjective; but there is an objective element now.  I gave each team a score that was a combination of my subjective and objective ratings, and then I allowed myself to move teams a maximum of five spots from the order the improvised formula put them in.  For most teams, it was only one or two spots though. The objective ratings aren’t as thorough as they will be (for instance, no credit was given for quality of FCS opponents), but they’re complete enough to give a strong idea of who the most accomplished teams are.

Oklahoma was the best team in my formula, but it’s partly because they beat 6 FBS opponents (none of which were very good before last week).  So I felt the need to move them up considerably.   I haven’t been impressed with them in “the eye test” since Caleb Williams transferred to USC, which is partly why they weren’t higher going into the week; but I couldn’t move Georgia any higher given the rules I made above.  Florida St. has had two lucky wins, so I didn’t want to put them in the top 3 either.

Oklahoma’s Nic Anderson catches the winning touchdown pass from Dillon Gabriel in Dallas on Saturday. Gabriel did not complete as many passes or throw for as many yards as Texas’s Quinn Ewers, but he threw no interceptions and Ewers threw two as Oklahoma got revenge for a 49-0 loss to the Longhorns last season.

Speaking of USC, I’m not impressed with them much at all once I sat down and looked at who they’ve beaten and the records of those opponents.  They just went to triple overtime against Arizona, who lost to Mississippi St., possibly the worst team in the SEC West.  The Trojans are undefeated though, so I thought I would put them ahead of the best two-loss team, Notre Dame.  I would not be surprised to see USC lose to the Irish or any of the ranked Pac-12 teams though.

There were a couple of other large movements in the rankings. Louisville is another undefeated team who had a big, somewhat unexpected win over the weekend. North Carolina also made a big jump, but I am still concerned by the narrow home win over Appalachian St. One of the things I do when I move to more objective rankings is to de-emphasize margin of victory though. I added a couple of Big Ten teams with understandable losses, as well as adding LSU back.

Even though I understand it can look bad to move teams too dramatically, I still think it was the right choice to take LSU out when they fell to 2-2 against FBS opponents (which included a 3-point home win over Arkansas) going into the Missouri game. I also still think I was right to put Mizzou ahead of the four teams who fell out (as I’ll explain, formerly #21 Kansas didn’t fall far), but at any rate it makes sense for LSU to be a bit higher than those other Tigers now.

I can defend most of the choices I made last week, but the idea is to be as accurate as possible now, not to put last week on a pedestal and see who deserves to move up or down a set number of spots based on a preconceived idea of how good last week’s respective opponents were. I continue to think it’s the right thing to start evaluating teams differently around this time of year. Preseason, knee-jerk reactions to one or two early results, and margin of victory should count for very little going forward.

I’ve hardly had any teams from the G5 (those outside of the Power 5 conferences) ranked this season, but four of the best five unranked teams by both the computer and the overall formula are G5.  They are as follows: James Madison, Kansas, Liberty, Memphis, and Wyoming.

I was going to leave it at that, but since I mentioned Liberty, it will be interesting to see how former Liberty and Ole Miss head coach and current Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze does in his first trip to Tiger Stadium since 2016. He was winless in three contests there as the head coach of Ole Miss, most notably in 2014 when his undefeated #3 Rebels were upset 10-7 in one of those Les Miles defensive and ball-control classics. When I get a chance, I’ll try to get caught up on the rivalry blogs.

Top 25

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

Out of Top 25: (21) Kansas, (22) Kansas St., (24) Tennessee, (25) U. Miami

Week 4 Top 25

This was another vacation week, but I’ll start getting things back to normal in the coming week. This is still all in my mind and not based on my formula at all, but it’s meant to be at least somewhat of an estimate. If you didn’t play a good team last week and someone lower than you did, you might fall. Just to make up numbers, let’s say you had 20 points and the team after you had 19 last week. If that team got a quality win worth 3 and you got a mediocre win worth 1, you fall below that team. I don’t care how good you looked beating a winless team or an FCS team or whatever, you’re not entitled to keep your spot. I’m also allowed to change my mind about how good an opponent earlier in the year was. I know these are things most pollsters don’t do; but if I thought most did a good job, I wouldn’t have started doing my own top 25 28 years ago. However, since this was slightly rushed, there probably were a couple of cases where I just left teams about where they were by default and wouldn’t have with closer analysis.

Also, if you lose a game I fully expected you to lose to a higher-ranked team, I’m not inclined to lower you too much. An exception to that is if it’s a 2-loss team. A team that has two losses right now could end up being one of the best teams, but it’s going to take a while to recover a rating, so I don’t put teams like that in the top 25 right now.

Alabama looked a little more like what we expect from a Nick Saban Tide team against Ole Miss in Tuscaloosa on Saturday. Above, Rebel QB Jaxson Dart was pressured into a bad throw by DL Justin Eboigbe. Ole Miss was held to 10 points or fewer for only the second time since 2018 (the other being against Baylor in the Sugar Bowl two seasons ago).

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

Out of Top 25: (18) Clemson, (22) Central Fla., (25) Colorado

Week 12 Top 25 and CFP Reaction

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

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

The Race for #5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Developments in the Rankings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top 25

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

Week 10 Top 25 & Week 11 Preview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top 25

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

Weeks 4 and 5 & Return to Objectivity

Top 25s

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.

Rank	Team	Last	Prev.
1	Alabama	2	2
2	Ohio St.	3	3
3	Georgia	1	1
4	Clemson	4	4
5	Ole Miss	6	6
6	Michigan	5	5
7	Wake Forest	19	20
8	N. Carolina St.	8	10
9	Oregon	9	11
10	Kansas	25	—
11	Penn St.	22	25
12	Kentucky	7	8
13	USC	14	18
14	Texas Christian	18	19
15	Tennessee	21	23
16	Florida St.	—	—
17	Mississippi St.	—	—
18	Oklahoma St.	11	13
19	Washington	10	12
20	Cincinnati	12	15
21	LSU	—	—
22	B. Young	15	16
23	Maryland	20	17
24	UCLA	—	—
25	Syracuse	—	—
—	Arkansas	13	9
—	Baylor	16	21
—	Oklahoma	17	7
—	Texas A&M	23	—
—	Texas Tech	24	—
—	Michigan St.	—	14
—	Oregon St.	—	22
—	Iowa St.	—	24

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.

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

2021 Week 8 Top 25

The computer rankings are still a little more volatile than I’d like, so there are still some manual adjustments on my part, though not as much as last week. Part of the reason is that the middle of the top 25 is very close together.  This is why Penn St. fell 11 spots, which is unusual when it’s almost November, even though Illinois is a pretty bad team to lose to.  Auburn fell 7 spots just for having a bye week.  I was merciful to both and put them both a spot higher below, but that was mostly because I didn’t think it made sense for Virginia to jump ahead.  It’s not like Georgia Tech (the Cavs’ opponent on Saturday) is a powerhouse right now. Also, they will have the opportunity to prove me wrong against any of their next three opponents, who are all currently ranked.

For illustration of how close the middle of the rankings are, Michigan is further ahead of Wake Forest (#3 in the computer ratings) in points than #9 Kentucky is ahead of #20 BYU.  Also, #10 Oklahoma is as far ahead of #23 Auburn as #1 Georgia is ahead of #2 Michigan. 

Illinois WR Casey Washington celebrates the winning catch in the 9th “overtime”/6th round of 2-point conversion shootout in State College, PA, yesterday.

Speaking of which, Oklahoma once again didn’t look much better than one of the worst teams in the computer ratings.  In week 1, the Sooners were a score away from losing to now-#127 (that’s 4^th-to-last) Tulane at home.  Yesterday in Lawrence, #115 Kansas led OU going into the fourth quarter and was within one score until the final minute of the game.  Anyway, I guess reasonable that Oklahoma isn’t that far statistically from the bottom of the top 25 even though they look secure if you just look at the number of spots. 

It’s also a reminder that being near the bottom of the list doesn’t mean a team is not capable.  You can understand why a team like Tulane was bowl-eligible a couple of years ago.  This is why it doesn’t bother me that undefeated teams that aren’t very tested on paper have found their way in to the top 20.  There may be a few teams near the bottom pf FBS and some FCS opponents who aren’t as capable as Tulane and Kansas, but a good record is more meaningful to me now than it used to be since this year has shown just how deep the capable teams go. It might have something to do with good players who don’t get a chance at the top schools being able to find a team in the transfer portal, I’m not sure.

As I indicate in the intro to the computer ratings, it will likely be over a week before you hear from me again.  I will try to figure out a better way of publishing them than what I have now.

I made the right decision not to include either Western Michigan or North Carolina St. in my list last week. I made a similar judgment this week. I decided to keep Arkansas in the rankings in lieu of replacing them with Wisconsin. It will be interesting to see if the Razorbacks can return to their level of play against Texas A&M. Regardless, the Badgers have an opportunity to get the necessary points against Iowa.

Top 25

rank team last
1 Georgia 1
2 Michigan 2
3 Alabama 9
4 Wake Forest 13
5 Cincinnati 5
6 Oklahoma St. 3
7 Iowa 7
8 Oklahoma 4
9 Kentucky 6
10 Michigan St. 8
11 Notre Dame 11
12 Ohio St. 12
13 Ole Miss 14
14 San Diego St. 22
15 Baylor 16
16 TX-San Antonio 21
17 Texas A&M 23
18 Oregon 24
19 Pittsburgh 18
20 B. Young 19
21 Penn St. 10
22 Auburn 15
23 Virginia —
24 Air Force 17
25 Arkansas 25

Out of top 25: (20) Purdue