LSU’s 2024 Schedule : Historical and Competitive Ramifications
I’ve sat down to this blog a few times, and each time some other news item comes out. The most recent event was the release of LSU’s schedule with the actual dates.
I decided to just cover that and the top 25 for now. Interesting bowl games (to me anyway) are still about two weeks away, so the rest can wait.
We’ve known all the teams on LSU’s 2024 schedule for a while but not who LSU was playing on what date. The one constant going back as long as I remember is Alabama after a bye week and between about November 3 and 12, this time on the 9th. Alabama seems to keep roughly the same order from year to year, but no one else does that I’ve noticed.
Given the addition of the second bye, I like that it was added before Ole Miss. That’s been a tough contest lately. LSU has a three-game losing streak in College Station, but I’m still less worried about that game than about Ole Miss.
Texas A&M was scheduled on the traditional late October date for Ole Miss though. LSU will play the Rebels two weeks earlier, with Arkansas sandwiched in between.
LSU WR Chris Hilton and the Tigers came up short in the final seconds in Oxford in September. LSU won four “Magnolia Bowls” in a row from 2016 to 2019, but since then the winner has always been the home team.
Florida was traditionally around the date the Ole Miss game is scheduled, but this might be the last year of what has been an annual series since 1971 anyway. It was also after Alabama this year, so it was easy to leave it where it was. At least they weren’t both road games in either year.
LSU doesn’t have a long ongoing annual tradition with anyone else on the 2024 schedule.
They had only played Texas A&M once (in a bowl) between 1995 and 2012, the year the Aggies joined the SEC. LSU had previously played the Aggies in early September, but it’s different when it’s not a conference game.
I wouldn’t be opposed to making it an early game in the future though, especially since LSU won’t play Auburn annually anymore. Mississippi St. was a typical September fixture for a while also, although on the traditional schedule they were after Alabama. I’m still annoyed LSU plays neither Auburn nor Mississippi St. next year.
Since the annual series with Tulane ended in 1994, LSU has played whatever somewhat proximate SEC is left without a good end-of-year rival. Arkansas was not particularly close to and had no longstanding recent rivalry with anyone in the SEC when it entered, so that was fine for about 20 years. Then after Missouri and Texas A&M joined (and two “transitional” years elapsed), it made sense to split that up when it became clear that the Aggies weren’t playing Texas anytime soon.
Now that the Thanksgiving/rivalry-week Longhorns-Aggies series is rekindled and Bedlam is on hiatus, it wasn’t a huge shock that LSU finishes with Oklahoma in Baton Rouge. We are used to playing a team with a reddish color from a neighboring conference to the west.
The SEC could have mixed things up in some other ways in 2024, but it was easier not to, especially since next year is just a one-off and not part of any dedicated rotation. Just as a neutral fan of college football and historical rivalries, my hope is that Oklahoma either can manage to schedule Oklahoma St. again or that they play Missouri on rivalry week. I would be OK with LSU going back to Arkansas or having some type of rotation (perhaps switching between Oklahoma and Arkansas or between Vanderbilt and Kentucky). There was some history with Kentucky. LSU played the Wildcats 51 years in a row at one point (ending with the 2002 season).
Ollie Gordon II rushes for one of two touchdowns in the 27-24 win in Stillwater, OK, on November 4. Although Bedlam has typically been a close game in recent years, Oklahoma had beaten Oklahoma St. eight of nine seasons going into 2021. The Cowboys ended on a high note though, winning two of the last three.
As far as I’m concerned, LSU could even go back to playing Tulane if the two sides could come anywhere close to a mutually agreeable deal; but since that hasn’t happened in nearly 30 years, I’m not optimistic. There was a home-and-home in 2006 and 2007, but LSU felt like they gave up revenue from a potential home game to enrich Tulane. Since then, LSU has played every other Louisiana Division I program, all of whom seem content with being paid money to travel to Tiger Stadium occasionally rather than expecting a home-and-home exchange.
Anyway, putting tradition aside, I like that there aren’t brutal back-to-back weeks. Going to Florida after hosting Alabama isn’t ideal, but there is only one instance of LSU playing 2023 bowl teams two weeks in a row, and that’s UCLA and South Alabama (both were barely eligible and both will be home games).
USC and UCLA are separated by Nicholls St. and South Carolina. The Bruins or Gamecocks could have a good year, but I doubt both will. I don’t see much risk of looking past an SEC road game or coming down from an emotional high for the first home game that is against a Power 5 opponent.
There were years when I’ve been glad LSU got an apparently tough opponent from what we used to call the SEC East, but we didn’t need one given the out-of-conference slate. Also, I’m not even sure if you need a good non-annual schedule, especially if the SEC eventually adds a ninth game, in the playoff system. I guess we will see how lines get drawn between 4 and 5, 8 and 9, and 12 and 13 in playoff selection
Top 25
Other than their effects upon the Playoff resumes as mentioned in the previous blog, I didn’t have much to say about the conference championship games because they weren’t very surprising. I don’t know why Oregon was favored by so much; but as I kept telling everyone, they didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t a big believer in Georgia since the only SEC West teams they faced were Auburn and Ole Miss and they didn’t do anything out of conference until beating an average Georgia Tech team a couple of weeks ago. Very good Alabama teams have struggled with Auburn before, so I didn’t attach much importance to that. In lieu of Georgia, I admittedly picked the “wrong” Big Ten team as #1, but it wasn’t my fault Ohio St. had a better schedule than Michigan. As expected, the Wolverines had no problem with Iowa.
I’m listing my top 25 teams below, but I think they all fairly logically proceed from the results of those games and what I had written about the Playoff teams last week.
My top 4 agrees with the committee’s, and I would even have the same matchups. I would have had Washington and Texas in the Rose Bowl though, which makes more sense geographically; and I wouldn’t have made the Longhorns (who are supposedly the worse seed) close being at home.
My top 4 is based on the best teams. I’m not saying that I don’t think a team like Florida St., which went undefeated and even played two programs with multiple championships in the last 20 years out of conference, should be included in the top 4; but I think Alabama and Texas both have strengths of schedule that cancel out the additional loss and then some.
Florida St.’s Exclusion
The committee’s instructions do not include something that says, “an undefeated conference champion should be given priority over a conference champion who is not undefeated.”
I would be OK with adding such a stipulation, especially if it also added language that said an exception could be made if the non-conference schedule is particularly weak, which would certainly not be the case here.
My point is the committee did its job. If I were a one-man committee with the same instructions, I would have put aside my preference for including Florida St. and given the same list of best 4 teams.
There is also language that the committee can consider injuries to major players. I don’t consider anything like that in my formula, and I can’t think of any consistent way you could apply that to any formula. There are no strict standards for injury reporting in college football like there is in the NFL. Even if there were, it would be difficult to enforce that and provide consistent oversight for injury reports of all 133 teams and then add those reports to a formula. I don’t like the idea of using that as an argument because every team has a mix of players who are hurt or otherwise unavailable from game to game that can affect any outcome. Others are playing hurt or playing with some other type of stress or distraction.
In the only touchdown drive of the game by either team, Lawrance Toafili (#9) rushed for 75 yards in two plays. Florida St. won the ACC championship, 16-6, over Louisville in Charlotte last night. It was the Seminoles’ first conference championship (and first 13-0 start) since Jimbo Fisher and Jameis Winston led the team in 2014.
What I do think is fair, and what I think the committee did, is to look at how they played at the end of the year. They did not look like a top-4 team against Florida or Louisville. I don’t think they looked like a top-20 team in either game. I have Louisville in the top 20; but if I considered the trajectory of their season, I wouldn’t have them anywhere close. I have Kentucky #47 right now, and the Wildcats won at Louisville 8 days ago.
I don’t include that in my formula, but I’ve never had a problem with the basketball or baseball committee’s giving more weight to recent results, and I don’t fault the football committee for doing so. If there were no SEC championship and Alabama beat Georgia earlier in the year, I wouldn’t want them to be given less credit for that, but obviously the committee isn’t being unfair about when you any played a given game. If anything, I think they’re being charitable to Texas for not considering how long ago the Alabama game was (or any game against a top-20 opponent was) in ranking Texas #3. But the point is that’s why I don’t include it in my formula. It could yield unfair results that way, but a person can avoid such outcomes.
So I have Florida St. fifth without considering margin of victory, how the Seminoles looked in those games, or the Jordan Travis injury. I also didn’t consider how Florida and Louisville were playing, just their respective seasons as a whole. So I think there are more than enough factors not to consider Florida St. to be a top-4 team. It’s not just one thing. But as I said, I’m very sympathetic if you ask me who should get to play for the championship instead of who the four best teams are.
Some people are coping by saying, “at least it’s an expanded playoff next year”; but that doesn’t give me any consolation personally. None of the major-conference championship games would have been for a spot in the top 12 this year. I might not even watch next year if LSU isn’t in it. There is a good chance the committee will already know exactly who the top 12 is by championship weekend, and the games will solely be for seeding. I’ll have my opinions again, but it will lose a lot of the excitement.
Alabama vs. Texas
To go back to the Alabama-Texas discussion I began in previous blogs (especially the last rankings blog) and touched on a couple of paragraphs ago, I think too much attention is being paid to a head-to-head game in September and not enough attention is being paid to all the games since then. I have Alabama #2 in strength of schedule vs. FBS teams and Texas 21st. Texas does get a little more credit for playing all FBS teams though. If I ignore Chattanooga from Alabama’s schedule and drop Baylor from Texas’s schedule, Alabama still ends up stronger. The average of the best 12 teams Alabama faced is about equal to that of #39 Iowa St. The average of the best 12 teams Texas faced is about equal to that of #51 Northwestern.
So now I’m going to get to arguments from outside of looking at the computers. Alabama has a better loss from longer ago. The #1 wins by each team are roughly even (Alabama vs. Georgia), but I would give Alabama more credit for getting the win in December versus September. Even if you still give Texas a point from there to make the two teams even, I don’t know how you argue LSU and Ole Miss aren’t better wins than Oklahoma St. and Kansas St.
I think Texas would have to have a far superior list of the more middle-of-the-road wins to overcome that, and I don’t think they do. Texas beat Wyoming, Iowa St., and Texas Tech. Alabama beat Kentucky, Texas A&M, and Auburn. Those are pretty similar lists of three. Although it did fall a little short, I do think the Longhorns made a very good attempt at playing the necessary type of schedule to prepare them for an SEC season. If you’re one of those people who says, “sorry, that win over Auburn was ugly and if they’re that close, I’m going with head to head,” that’s a reasonable point of view. It’s just not how I see it. I would have been perfectly happy to have joined you in laughing at Alabama if Texas and Florida St. had made it ahead of the Tide though.
Alabama WR Isaiah Bond (who may have pushed off first) catches the go-ahead touchdown pass on fourth and 31 in Auburn 8 days ago. The need for a miracle finish in this situation is one argument against Alabama’s inclusion in the top 4.
As I mentioned, what I don’t like is when someone says, “I don’t care what else they did, they each have a loss and Alabama’s is to Texas. End of story.” That’s just wanting to rush to a conclusion and not consider the season as a whole. Word keeps telling me not to use the phrase “season as a whole,” but I don’t know a better way to distinguish my more holistic approach from the approach of just cherry-picking a couple of factoids and stopping there.
Washington vs. Michigan
I don’t have strong feelings about Washington ahead of Michigan, but I’ll lay out the arguments. I have Michigan about 99% as good as Washington, so there isn’t a huge separation. I like that Washington had a much tougher game this weekend, but obviously Michigan had a much tougher rivalry-week opponent. Maybe some of the narrow margins of victory (both Oregon games, Arizona, Arizona St., Utah, Oregon St., and Washington St. were all within one possession) hurt the Huskies. Michigan had a robust list of top-three wins: Ohio St., Penn St., and Iowa. I think Oregon would beat Ohio St. and Penn St. but it was just unfortunate for the Ducks that they had to play a top-2 team twice instead of Ohio St.’s once. Iowa is a better third win than Washington’s third, which might be Arizona. But then Michigan’s fourth- and fifth-best wins are UNLV and Bowling Green (they didn’t play Northwestern or Wisconsin, which are my two highest Big Ten teams after Iowa). I strongly believe both would lose to both Oregon St. and Utah and probably USC as well.
LSU Bowl Selection Reaction
D’Cota Dixon celebrates the game-clinching interception of LSU QB Brandon Harris in 2016 in Green Bay, Wisc., as LSU was driving with just under a minute left in the game. This was one of the final nails in the coffin for LSU head coach Les Miles, who was fired three weeks later.
I’m sure I’ll go more into bowl match-ups later, but I’m disappointed that LSU will be playing Wisconsin. I was hoping for either Notre Dame, which would give the Tigers a chance to get revenge for some foolishness in bowl losses over the last 10 years (as well as being the Brian Kelly bowl), or Iowa. The contrast in styles for Iowa/LSU would have been worth getting up early for. Wisconsin isn’t an offensive juggernaut – they haven’t scored more than 30 points in a game since September – but they’re not Iowa. Wisconsin isn’t even in my top 50. I think either LSU won’t get up for the game and it will be ugly regardless of the winner or we could get another blowout like last season. Neither would be a very satisfying end to the year. It’s one of six bowl games between the SEC and the Big Ten.
Top 25 Later This Week
I have my top 25 ready. Of course it’s mostly based on my ratings with a few adjustments, but I don’t want to overshadow it with all of the discussion of the top 4, so look for that later in the week.
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.
I’m not going to tell you who’s going to win the LSU-Alabama game or whether Alabama is likely to beat the spread. There are plenty of people to do that. However, there are some things some of those supposed experts have been getting wrong that I’d like to correct.
LSU did suffer injuries, but…
LSU is only down one member of the secondary who has played in the last month or so, Zy Alexander. Some people are saying it’s four or five players. It is that many cumulative going back to the offseason, but the Tigers struggled more when some of those players were playing than they are now. So the idea that LSU is already terrible and now they’re likely getting a lot worse due to a slew of injuries that some people who are picking Alabama keep promulgating isn’t quite accurate.
The Tigers will also miss lineman Mekhi Wingo, but that absence is the result of surgery for a nagging injury that had kept him from playing at full strength all season, and LSU’s front seven has been pretty decent (with some depth) since they settled on the 4-3 formation. Jordan Jefferson (see the next section if you’re confused) has been the standout this season, not Wingo.
Alabama is the healthier team, so if people just make that point and leave it at that, they’re not misleading you.
No College Starting QB Has Beaten Saban 2 in a Row Since…
There was report, I think circulated by ESPN, that last starting college quarterback to beat Nick Saban two years in a row was Drew Brees. Brees even shared it on Twitter. That would be a cute factoid, if it were true, especially given that Saban passed on a chance to bring Brees to Miami. It was actually Rex Grossman, who easily beat the Tigers in both 2000 and 2001 as the Florida QB. Brees might have been the last one who played the full game, but letting a backup play at some point doesn’t change who the starter was. At any rate, it’s been over 20 years, so it would still be quite an accomplishment for Jayden Daniels.
Fun fact: This is not Rex Grossman.
Some LSU fans have mentioned Jordan Jefferson, the former LSU quarterback from 10-15 years ago (and older brother of Justin Jefferson), not the current defensive lineman. Jefferson didn’t start in 2011, so he doesn’t count; although he did help win the game… to the extent anyone on the offense deserves credit when only six points are scored in regulation.
Homefield Advantage?
There are a couple of interesting notes about the 2019 LSU team. No SEC team has won in Tuscaloosa since then. Obviously, I had to add the *SEC* qualifier because Texas won there this season. I also wanted to mention that Alabama was favored by more points in that game than there are in this game. I believe this is the fifteenth straight game in which Alabama has been favored against LSU, and this might be the smallest point spread over that time. Also, the 2021 LSU team (our last trip there) was a relatively rare team who made it close in Tuscaloosa despite it being the first LSU team with a losing final record since 1999.
I haven’t done anything with updating my rivalry blogs this year, but it has been a weird pattern over the years that LSU has typically done better at Alabama than they do against the Tide at home. Neither record is great of course. However, before 2019, LSU had lost three in a row in Tuscaloosa by at least 14 points in each game. So it seemed like we were even losing that silver lining.
Joe Burrow takes off for a 19-yard run in Tuscaloosa on November 9, 2019. In the last two LSU wins over Alabama, Tiger QBs accounted for 734 combined yards. The 2019 win was LSU’s first over the Tide in 8 years. The 2022 win was LSU’s first home win over the Tide in 12 years.
A third consecutive strong showing in Tuscaloosa (and a fourth strong showing in five years overall against Alabama) would be a good sign even if it’s a loss. I’m not looking for moral victories in advance (of course I was very happy about the actual victories in 2019 and 2022), but obviously you have a better chance to win games against a given team or in a given location if you have a habit of at least keeping such games close. I think there is a psychological impact when you have a series of disappointing results in a given situation. Even though there weren’t too many players in common, I think that 2019 team had something to do with the confidence with which LSU played last year (as well as 2021), and obviously I hope that continues. It’s also good to look for signs of an improving program (at least relative to Alabama, in this case) in the bigger picture.
Will the team who scored 10 points in 59 minutes against South Florida outscore the team who averages 44 points per game?
The fact that my answer is “quite possibly” means I’m not blowing off all criticisms of LSU’s defense or ignoring the quality of Alabama’s. It’s a little tongue in cheek because no one is actually asking this question, but similar silly questions are being asked to suggest LSU will lose. (By the way, the 44-point average does not count the Grambling game.)
Like I said earlier, I’m not going to tell you where to put your money if you’re into gambling, but I do want to go over some things to look for whether it’s out of financial interest or not.
To pick up where I left off about the injuries, there are certainly some question marks on the LSU defense, don’t get me wrong; but the same is true of the Alabama offense especially. I don’t understand how it’s OK to pretend all their ills are solved because their last half of football went well, but LSU’s defense is still what it was against Ole Miss (or worse), and LSU’s offense is still what it was against Florida St. LSU was not playing a terrific Army team, but you can’t do better than a shutout as far as points are concerned. They looked significantly better than they did against Grambling, and Army would probably blow out Grambling.
Anyway, in response to the Alabama predicters and supporters picking on the Florida St. and Ole Miss games, we could just as easily pretend Alabama’s offense is just as bad as it was against South Florida (who gave up more points to Florida A&M than they did to the Tide) and Alabama’s defense is just as bad as it was against Texas. Another thing I realized was before the final drive that ended in a touchdown with 33 seconds left against the Bulls, Alabama had had more possessions (11) than points (10).
I don’t think any Alabama fan would have taken you seriously if you told him that Daniels would account for 277 yards in last year’s game after he only accounted for 139 against Auburn the month before, so I don’t think this fan habit of trying to cherry-pick stats from an earlier game to tell you what to expect in the next game is very reliable. But to the extent it is, it can go both ways.
It’s true that LSU can’t rely on the defense to show up strong, especially not in the secondary. LSU doesn’t have to have a terrific secondary for there to be some stops though. Even though the Ole Miss game was historically bad defensively, LSU still got stops when there were long-yardage situations on second and third down. Alabama has had a problem throughout the season in putting themselves in bad down-and-distance situations through sacks and penalties.
The Tide has succeeded on some deep shots, but I don’t think they’ve faced an offense (other than possibly Texas) that really penalized them for low-scoring halves like I think LSU can. Bama does keep teams to relatively low scores, but LSU has been scoring in the upper 40s even in conference games. Alabama has typically been allowing scores in the low 20s.
I think LSU will likely score somewhere in the 30s, but that could mean LSU wins 38-24 or scores 31 and loses. I’m not sure what Alabama’s upper limit is; but they did get up to 40 against Mississippi St., and I’m sure they weren’t desperate to score on every drive after they led 31-10 at the half.
If Alabama finds that kind of offense again and doesn’t let up, LSU could also conceivably lose by a couple of touchdowns. I think LSU winning by a couple of touchdowns is slightly more likely, especially if they’re able to get up into the 40s and it doesn’t make strategic sense for Alabama to try to get points from their kicker. LSU has a capable but less consistent kicker; so, if it’s a closer game, that could be an advantage for the Tide.
The Steele Curtain
Some Alabama fans have brought this up, and it’s legitimate enough to address it. By far the best game plan against Joe Burrow was implemented by Kevin Steele when he was the coach of Auburn in 2019 and held LSU to 23 points, but there isn’t some magic that takes place just because the uniforms are the same. Obviously, he can’t make his defenses consistently play that well, because this year’s Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas A&M aren’t anywhere near the 2019 LSU team and all of them also scored in the low 20s against a Kevin Steele defense. I think that’s a bit more relevant.
Kevin Steele and Ed Orgeron at their introductory press conference before the 2015 season. 2015 was one of only two seasons since 2011 that Steele coached somewhere other than Auburn or Alabama.
Steele might be a genius in stopping what Coach O called “da Joe Brady offense,” but that’s not what Mike Denbrock runs. This is much more of a ball-control offense than LSU was in 2019. Even Saban has compared it to the triple option (2/3 of which involve a back taking the ball downfield). Burrow could run when needed (see the picture above), but he didn’t run with the same ease as Daniels. Clyde Edwards-Hellaire came through in the Auburn game I mentioned, but he had only averaged 78 yards per game before that even though LSU was often trying to run out the clock on large leads. Logan Diggs has averaged 107 yards per game over the last four SEC games, so I don’t think it’s as tempting to see what LSU can do with runs and short passes.
Daniels doesn’t check down as much to the tight end Mason Taylor as last year (for obvious reasons), but he’s still there if Steele focuses on stopping long passes as he did in 2019. TE Thad Moss had 7 receptions in 2019. If Daniels throws it to Taylor that many times, he may go for 100 yards. Also, Steele obviously doesn’t control the offense. The boom-and-bust offense that Alabama runs now isn’t likely to minimize the LSU possessions as the Bo Nix Auburn offense did in 2019.
That’s all I have to say really about things to look for as far as X’s and O’s, but I did come across some other items worth addressing.
Common Opponent and Why Alabama is Favored
I’m sorry if what I’ve covered is not too illuminating about who’s going to win, but we could have made similar competing arguments last year (although the teams were more balanced), and the game went to overtime. The reason the line is closer this time is that there wasn’t a recent common opponent that made Alabama look a lot better. Last year, Alabama had lost to Tennessee by 3 on the road, and LSU had lost to Tennessee by 27 at home. Both games were within the previous month.
There is a common opponent this season that Bama fans have brought up, and that’s Ole Miss. One difference is both teams played the Rebels in September rather than October. Alabama only beat them by 14, and LSU-Ole Miss came down to the final play (similarly to how Alabama-Tennessee ended last season, even though Ole Miss won by a couple more points). It is a good point total if you add the two margins of victory together, but we aren’t talking about a close game versus a blowout. Also, rather than homefield advantage magnifying the difference between Alabama and LSU vis-à-vis the common opponent, it’s a mitigating factor this year. If they were focused on the common opponent, the gamblers this year would have Alabama favored by a lot more than 3 points, which is essentially just the home advantage (although maybe that’s only part of it in this case). They’re basically telling us that what they’ve seen from these two teams is close to dead even in the aggregate.
Another reason one might lean toward Alabama is they are the more proven team even if there weren’t one fewer loss. They’ve played three teams that were in the top 20 at the time they played them and have won the last two (2-1 overall). In between those two, they won a game in College Station (where LSU has lost three games in a row, by the way). LSU may finish with a better schedule, but the Tigers have already played their FCS opponent and have already played Auburn, which for now is not as good as Texas A&M. LSU is 0-2 against top 20 teams, although Missouri was #21 (AP; #22 Coaches) and has since improved to #12 (CFP). These things do not tell us who will win matchups on the field, but there is something to be said for being tested.
SEC West Implications
I don’t want to imply that LSU is going to win this game not to mention win out, so I’ll start with saying if you’re an Alabama fan, you can book your tickets (or at least your hotel room) to Atlanta the second the game ends if they win. Alabama likely wouldn’t technically clinch though because theoretically Ole Miss can represent the West if the Rebels win out AND Alabama loses to Kentucky and Auburn.
But I did want to mention one other factual thing a lot of people are getting wrong. LSU is still the favorite to win the West if they do win out even if Ole Miss beats Georgia. Yes, Ole Miss would win a head-to-head tiebreaker, but head-to-head means it’s just those two teams. I suspect Alabama will beat Kentucky and Auburn, so that would make it a three-way tie with all teams 1-1 against the other two.
I guess it would be fitting for the last SEC West title race to come down to games like… Missouri vs. Tennessee on November 11 in Columbia. The Volunteers won by 6 touchdowns in Knoxville last season; but their point total dropped by over 30 against Alabama from last season, so I wouldn’t look for a similar score this year against Mizzou.
I have a standalone blog ready if Ole Miss does beat Georgia (and no other relevant upsets take place) that will tell you everything you need to know, but for now just know a three-way tie (meaning LSU beats Alabama and no one else beats LSU, Alabama, or Ole Miss the rest of the season) will come down to whose SEC East opponents do best. Ole Miss has already played Vanderbilt and will play Georgia; LSU has already played Missouri and will play Florida; and Alabama has already played Tennessee and will play Kentucky. LSU’s opponents have the best combined record at the moment.
My vacation has been over for more than a week, but I’m only about 1/5 of the way through adding results for an eventual computer rating, which I hope to have some semblance of by next week. Given that a team playing tonight is in my top 25, I couldn’t wait any longer to put up another subjective top 25.
LSU and Florida could well be among the best 25 teams; but consistent with my approach last week, I think if you have two losses right now, that’s too many to remain ranked. Also, either could seemingly lose several games by being unable to stop teams with any regularity when on defense.
Since Kentucky beat Florida easily and is undefeated, that seemed like a good option to take the Gators’ place. I haven’t thought Texas A&M was deserving of a ranking since last September; but in hindsight, the Aggies seem to have meaningfully improved from last year judging by the first couple of SEC games. Since their only loss is to U. Miami, who is undefeated, I thought it made sense to give the Hurricanes the final spot given that I’d decided it could not go to Florida or LSU.
Kentucky RB Ray Davis scored 4 touchdowns and ran for 280 yards against Florida in Lexington on Saturday.
I will not be giving any details about the Bulldogs, just about what is going on with LSU. I have updated my Rivalry Series blog in light of the upcoming game though.
LSU has either lost to or barely beat the Bulldogs in every game recently except for the two years in which Joe Burrow was the starting quarterback. If we win at all, I’ll be satisfied. If we win somewhat comfortably, I’ll be very encouraged. A loss won’t necessarily be devastating, but LSU should beat unranked SEC opponents at home (even though I think the Bulldogs should be ranked) even in a mediocre year. I know it’s easier said than done, but it should be an expectation.
Malik Nabers carries the ball in the fourth quarter last year in Starkville. Nabers was the leading wide receiver in the game against Southern on Saturday.
One of the LSU shows found the biggest LSU naysayer they could. Even he picked LSU to win this game (and lose all the other SEC games). So while I do think the Bulldogs are underrated, I won’t be resting easy if LSU loses.
Usually I’d barely mention an FCS opponent, but I hope it gave the coaches more data to make better decisions in the future. What was done in the Southern game may also be a bit of a preview of what they’ll try to do against Mississippi St. I’m not going to preview the Bulldogs though.
LSU did shore up some concerns in the game against Southern even though obviously what works against Southern may not work in ANY future games. I think we can compare it to an NFL preseason game. Cuts to an NFL roster and to some extent decisions about plays and the depth chart are made based on performances against opposition players who themselves often aren’t going to be playing a whole lot in the NFL. Similarly, most Southern players could not get meaningful playing time at an SEC school (though a couple of former FCS players play for Florida St. and at least one plays for LSU). But I think going through the motions of a game against at least some competitive athletic talent can tell you a little bit.
It certainly gives you a basis for comparison of one player to another. It provides some data points by which to determine who plays where in future games. Coaches have a better idea of whom they can trust during the game. You can’t always know that from practices and scrimmages alone.
I don’t know if the new center Charles Turner will be better than Garrett Dellinger, the center in the Florida St. game; but I didn’t notice any problems with snaps, and the coaches seem to like how he communicated. Dellinger will still get a lot of playing time, but it will just be at guard instead. I don’t think anyone is pretending we know how well Turner will block an SEC defensive lineman at center because he did an adequate job against Southern, but they could see how he handled the game environment and worked with his teammates.
Jayden Daniels did leave the game early enough that I think we were able to get some information about where he is compared to the backup Nussmeier. Kelly said before the Florida St. game that they were 1-A and 1-B rather than 1 and 2 on the depth chart. I’m pretty sure that was a lie. We didn’t see Nussmeier at all in the Florida St. game even after the Tigers.
LSU only came up with 3 points in the first half; and although Nussmeier ended up throwing for more yards against Southern, he completed only 59% of his passes compared to Daniels’s 91%. Daniels did not commit a turnover in either game, and Nussmeier threw two interceptions. Daniels threw three touchdowns, and Nussmeier threw none. I don’t always think QBR is that great of a stat, but when one guy is near 100 and the other is under 20, I think that sums it up pretty well.
Again, I’m not banking on this counting for anything; but the starters did absolutely all they could. It has been 129 years since LSU first played intercollegiate football, and the Tigers had never scored 37 points in a quarter before. It only took 40 seconds of the second quarter to get to 44 points. As for the defense, Southern didn’t score until one of those Nussmeier interceptions was returned late in the third quarter. The LSU defense didn’t give up points until about 8 minutes remained in the game. That was probably the third or fourth team by then.
Micah Baskerville (23) blocks a punt late in the first quarter against Southern in Baton Rouge on Saturday.
Some players who weren’t even starters in the first game played great. For instance, the game ball went to Micah Baskerville, who blocked a punt (which resulted in a safety) and returned an interception for a touchdown. I’m told he was only in about a dozen plays against Florida St. I don’t care if it was against easy competition, doing both of those things in the same season is hard to do, not to mention the same quarter. Freshman 5-star recruit Harold Perkins, Jr., whom LSU just barely kept from going to Texas A&M, had a good game too with 7 tackles.
Malik Nabors was relieved of punt-return duties after two turnovers in that role against Florida St., but it was nice to see him score a touchdown on one pass and go for 60 yards on another. Even if the latter were his only catch, Nabors would have led both teams in receiving yards. It’s good that the ball was spread around by both quarterbacks too. Hopefully it will keep the receivers more engaged and facilitate better communication and trust than we saw against Florida St.
Also, importantly, LSU had no major injuries and a couple of key players are actually available against Mississippi St. when they were not against Southern. This includes RB Jon Emery, Jr., and DE BJ Ojulari. DE Ali Gaye was suspended for a half for targeting, so he will be back as well.
Top 3
This first section ties into last week about certain SEC opponents looking more like winnable games than they did at first blush, but it’s also relevant as to why I’ve made a change at #1. I did think it was a little unfair that Alabama had to play Georgia in a rematch, but maybe it was the SEC championship game that was the aberration last year.
Alabama has rebounded from looking vulnerable and even losing in September before; but even if by some miracle LSU had been able to convince Saban to come back (there is a contingent of LSU fans who had been trying to orchestrate that for 15 years… I think they finally gave up now that Kelly has a 9-figure contract and Saban is 70 years old), we probably would have had to start thinking about the future by now anyway. Alabama may still win the national title, but the close win over Texas can be added to the following somewhat concerning close games last season (with final record of opponent and margin of victory):
7-6 Florida, 2 points
8-4 Texas A&M, LOST by 3 points
6-7 LSU, 6 points
9-4 Arkansas, 7 points
6-7 Auburn, 2 points
I haven’t changed my mind about Oregon (Georgia’s big win) being overrated in preseason. I would have liked to have seen more Georgia Bulldog offense against Samford, but the defense can’t do anything better than a shutout.
The reason I made the change is that Alabama won by a single point (and as I mentioned probably deserved to lose), and obviously the shine is taken off of Ohio St.’s win over Notre Dame given the Marshall game. A team can win by one possession in a fluke, but the Irish had to score in the final moments of the game just to make it close. So that’s really a similar type of game to what the Irish did in Columbus.
Remainder of Top 25
The rest of the top 10 remained intact. Kentucky had a decisive road win against Florida, so that’s why the Wildcats moved up so much. BYU’s win over Baylor was at home in overtime, and Baylor was one of the teams I was doubtful about (along with Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma St.). The Cougars still got credit for beating a ranked team but not as much as what Kentucky did.
Apart from Baylor (whom I didn’t want to drop double digits for an understandable close loss), the rest of the top 20 is made up of teams who moved up by default.
Marshall is obvious. Oregon St. may not be, but I had Boise St. as one of the top unranked teams going into the season, and the Beavers beat the Broncos handily in Week 1. Last week, Oregon St. went on the road to Fresno St. (who won 10 games last year) and won, albeit in a close contest.
Oregon St. WR Silas Bolden escapes a Fresno St. defender during a touchdown play in the first half in Fresno on Saturday.
Tennessee wasn’t great against Pittsburgh, but it’s still a Power 5 road win, so I gave the Vols the Panthers’ former spot.
Houston was also on my waiting list in preseason, so I went ahead and gave Texas Tech a spot for beating the Cougars.
Iowa St. didn’t look a whole lot better than South Dakota St. had against Iowa (both games in Iowa City); but the Jackrabbits were one of the best FCS teams last year. As for the Cyclones, while they had needed the Hawkeyes to miss a field goal to escape with the win, I was still impressed by the defense. Iowa’s one score was on a very short field.
I give Texas A&M some credit for their defense against Appalachian St. (who put up 40 points in one quarter against North Carolina after all) as well and considered leaving the Aggies in the Top 25 instead. Although I do think the Aggies would likely beat the Cylones, 2-0 beats 1-1. Texas A&M will go ahead of the Cyclones with a win this weekend anyway, so I also don’t mind giving Iowa St. the benefit of the doubt for now.
Speaking of the Aggies, I learned a couple of facts I wanted to share. (1) Jimbo Fisher makes more than 20 times as much per year as Appalachian St. head coach Shawn Clark. (2) Texas A&M has 56 players who were either 4- or 5-star recruits out of high school, but Appalachian St. has just 1.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve had some computer problems that have prevented me from writing more and posting blogs when people are most likely to read them. I have switched browsers for blog-posting; but if that doesn’t work, I may have to go to a new site. If that happens, I will do my best to post a link here. You can also follow me on Facebook for updates. I also have a twitter account @TheBayouBlogger.
I will elaborate further later in the week, but I just wanted to say a few things about the LSU game and some of the reactions.
I HATE how the media is always in competition to say the most dramatic outlandish things after a single game. There is no accountability for being wrong, they just get more clicks by being dramatic. If it were up to the media alarmists, Ed Orgeron wouldn’t have made it past the Troy game. Les Miles wouldn’t have lasted past the loss to Tennessee in 2005. (I don’t remember it being this bad in 2000, but I’ll get to that.) Oh all problems at LSU aren’t fixed, I guess Brian Kelly stole 10 million dollars! He should never show his face in public again after a one-point loss to a Power 5 opponent at a neutral site (FSU fans were there in droves, don’t give me that)! He’s blaming everyone but himself when he cited coaching as an issue four times in an 11-minute press conference! He made a sarcastic comment about how maybe they could have played worse at halftime!
Then every November and December, these same people decry how fast coaches get fired after their fan bases are bombarded with dire negativity after every loss. Some of them (Colin Cowherd, for instance) even attacked LSU in 2019 (when the Tigers had NO losses all year), saying they weren’t up to snuff because they allowed too many points and yards to Vanderbilt and Ole Miss in garbage time.
Top 25
I don’t like to shake things up too much after one game. Two months from now, I won’t really care about margin of victory; but I think a couple of these teams showed more problems than teams like Notre Dame and Cincinnati showed in losses. All four Division I teams Brian Kelly has coached lost this week.
I think replacing Utah with Florida was obvious, but the game certainly could have gone the other way. Even Oregon might well be a top-25 team. In 2006, Arkansas lost by even more to USC (the defending national runner-up); and the Razorbacks were national-title contenders until late November.
I listed six teams that I thought were good candidates for the last spot in preseason, but Maryland was the only one that played up to expectations. Obviously, the Terps may not be a top-25 team, but there was no obvious candidate to move ahead of them. One team I considered was Penn St., who had a good win at Purdue. Another was Indiana, who beat Illinois after the Illini easily beat Wyoming in “Week 0”, so right now there are seven Big Ten teams in my top 30. Not quite as many as the SEC, but close.
I only have the Bulldogs #3, but they certainly put up the most impressive score of the weekend. Pictured is Kenny McIntosh finding the corner of the end zone for a rushing touchdown during the first half against the Oregon Ducks in Atlanta on Saturday.
Some have said Georgia should be #2, but I think Notre Dame is significantly better than Oregon at the moment. I certainly understand if people who believed Oregon was a top-10 team differ with that assessment.
I think most of the changes are obvious if you just look at the results of a given team. The only one who slipped a little who might not be obvious based on the final score is Kentucky, who won 37-13 over Miami U.; but they only led 13-10 at halftime, and they only out-gained the RedHawks by 53 yards on offense.
This is not to complain or make excuses, but the college football landscape has changed a good bit since 2019. Some of it was due to COVID, but a lot of it is just due to the changing business of college football. I might not have even used the phrase “business of college football” a few years ago, but the bottom line definitely comes first even for most of the well-known players now.
I can’t do what I used to do (most recently in the lead-up to the 2019 season) and just look at how good a team was last year and the returning starters. Not that that was ever ALL I did, but it was a very good place to start. After the top 10 or so, you didn’t really have to go into much detail about who those players were.
One of the things that fundamentally changed how to do this is the transfer portal. A player might transfer out of a school at one position and a player who’s just as good or better (or at least has the same status as returning starter) might transfer in. A change at a position isn’t necessarily a negative. Sometimes it’s an upgrade. That was rarely true in the past. If you brought in a new quarterback, that guy had probably never started a game before. Even if he was a better recruit, he wasn’t ready to be a starter at the beginning of the season like a veteran would be.
The disappointment of his NFL career notwithstanding, a good example of this was JaMarcus Russell, who started his first game at Florida in 2004, Nick Saban’s last year. LSU had a veteran quarterback on the sidelines named Marcus Randall (confusing, I know). It looked like LSU was going to lose the game after the first few series with JaMarcus in the game (it’s less confusing to me if I call him that). In contrast to JaMarcus (who as you may recall was the #1 draft pick over the great Brady Quinn), Randall would go undrafted and ended up being a defensive player. His only official NFL stat was three tackles with the Tennessee Titans in 2005. Anyway, Randall came in to salvage the game and helped lead the Tigers to a respectable season. (They were a botched final play away from going 10-2.) With all the potential JaMarcus had compared to Randall, it was still better to have a veteran in that situation.
Marcus Randall (owner of the yellow helmet you can barely see in the back) was best known for throwing the “Bluegrass Miracle” winning touchdown pass as Kentucky fans began to storm the field and take the goalposts down.
In a more recent era, there might have been a graduate transfer or transfer portal player who stepped in for that year. If he were eligible for two seasons, JaMarcus might have transferred out in light of losing the job that day.
I also don’t know which QBs (the most important position to have a returning starter) even count. Is Max Johnson a “returning” starter albeit on another team (I heard today he’s not even a starter, but he would have counted if he’d stayed at LSU even if he ended up not starting)? Haynes King started last season for the Aggies but only played in two games (completing fewer passes than LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier), does he count? Bo Nix? TJ Finley? Jayden Daniels? That’s just talking about QBs who went to LSU or competed against a one-time LSU player, so you could have this conversation about every team at some position.
Philosophy of Preseason Ranking
I guess I’ve also gotten more mature and learned to relax better. Part of that means I’m not going to invest time into reinventing the wheel when there are knowledgeable people who do this stuff for a living. I’ve also grown accustomed to the idea that that will probably never be me.
In light of that, I’ve decided to just rely on a third party to calculate how much returning production there is per team. This is even more important than in pre-COVID years because the final team ratings last year were still thrown off by canceled bowl games and other COVID-related events. Anyway, I don’t have any objection to their formula. I’m just assuming they’re not made-up numbers.
The Top 15 is only partially based on last year and this formula anyway. Given what Georgia has done in recent years, I wasn’t comfortable dropping the Bulldogs out of the top five despite not having that much talent back by this measure. I also didn’t want to drop Baylor and Oklahoma State any more spots until they lose to someone.
I could have been a homer and snuck LSU in there, but I didn’t. Brian Kelly is a much more proven head coach than Lincoln Riley and Brent Venables, so I’m also not bending over backwards to put USC and Oklahoma very high (Oklahoma is in the heart of the top 25, but it’s low for them). USC could have returned 100% of its production from last year, and that wouldn’t be enough for me to put them in the top 25. Maybe USC or LSU will be knocking on the door of the top 10 by the end of the year, but I don’t just wipe the slate clean because you got a new coach and some transfers. Either could also be highly mediocre. You have to show everyone gelled and things are working out for a period of time to rehabilitate the respective losing records of last year (when USC was much worse than LSU, for the record).
I also want to make clear that (although I do think it’s relevant what a team’s overall ability to achieve is), this isn’t a prediction for the rankings at the end of the season. It’s more which teams I think are likely to have their act together in the next month. Otherwise I wouldn’t have put the Big XII teams as high as they are.
Even though it’s not an end-of-year prediction, I sort of pre-screened the top 15 for teams that might do well for a long period of time, I just happened to run out of teams that I could see competing for the playoff right when I got to #15. I do think those Big XII teams might get blown out in a playoff, but I could see any of the three going undefeated (or certainly finishing with only one loss) in the Big XII. Arkansas and Ole Miss are long shots, but only because they play in the SEC West. If they were in the Big XII, they would be in the same boat, maybe even a little bit ahead of that group.
After #15, I just calculated the most usable version of my computer rating system and multiplied it by returning production converted into a percentage. I tried a few different ways of multiplying it out, and there wasn’t a difference in the order for most teams. I did prefer the outcome where they were two fewer Group of Five teams. Houston and Boise St. were left out in lieu of Utah and Oregon. The Power Five teams had slightly more returning production, and Power Five teams almost invariably have deeper benches. I didn’t move anyone in numbers 16 through 25 even one spot once I settled on the final formula.
Comments about Selected Teams
Alabama was the runaway #1 in the formula. Obviously they’ve been the best team in the long run. The Tide have only failed to win 13 games or more once since (and including) 2015. They didn’t reach that mark in 2013 or 2014; but in 2013 (before there was a Playoff) the Tide started 11-0 before the Kick Six game, and in 2014 the Tide lost only one regular-season game before falling to Ohio St. in the national semifinal.
There is a strong chance Alabama will face Georgia in the postseason yet again.
By the way, even though obviously it did nothing for LSU, I am glad that Alabama fans got to feel the frustration of losing a national championship to a team you had already beaten. It’s not fair to have to beat them twice. One thing that doesn’t make it quite as bad is Alabama at least has one more loss than Georgia does. In 2011, LSU finished 13-1 (against a better schedule) and Alabama 12-1.
Speaking of Ohio St. (two paragraphs up), the Buckeyes had the best returning production on the list after BYU and Mississippi St. I couldn’t see a strong argument to make anyone else #2.
Clemson is still the most-recent national champion who doesn’t play in the SEC and also had good returning production, so I thought they deserved the nod for #3.
Cincinnati was #4 8 months ago and has a decent number of players coming back. Like the Georgia Bulldogs I mentioned, I wanted to keep Cincinnati in the top 5 until someone else earned their way in. I put the Bearcats higher because they have a good bit more coming back. Georgia probably still has a better team, but I’ll wait until the new players prove themselves.
I am a little more skeptical of Michigan. There was a big gap between Michigan and Georgia in the bowl. I think the Wolverines got up to this point more quickly and have a larger propensity to fall back down. I was proven wrong about them in the Big Ten (which might be the most exciting conference race) last year though. Maybe I will be again. If a team who loses a semifinal game was in my top 8, I won’t consider myself that wrong though.
Nine to 11 might seem strange, but I didn’t know where else to put them. The cupboard isn’t looking bare for them like it is for 12 to 14. They’re all credible up-and-coming major-conference programs. I guess I could have put them after Texas A&M, but I’m less comfortable with the teams I would have had to put higher. I did decide to keep Arkansas out of the top 10 given that I’d think there have to be some lingering effects from only winning 7 games from 2018 through 2020. Also, it’s hard to be any higher when you had a 3-game losing streak (that included a loss to Auburn) the season before. The Razorbacks played down to Mississippi St. and LSU (beating each by a single field goal) down the stretch as well before a good showing against Alabama.
As for Ole Miss, they finished 10 spots ahead of Iowa last year in my ratings, so I’ll give them a slight edge despite not having quite the same returning group. I don’t fault Iowa for the losses to Michigan and Kentucky to end the year, but like Arkansas, the Hawkeyes had an ugly stretch toward the middle (barely beat Penn St., whom the Razorbacks beat somewhat comfortably, at home, lost by a few possessions apiece to Purdue and Wisconsin, and only beat Northwestern by 5). I don’t think the downside risk is as bad for the Hawkeyes (who have only lost 9 games in the past three years and have not had a losing record since 2012) as it is for the Razorbacks though.
That’s about three pages of writing on my Word document. I’ll have to leave it there.
Top 25
Alabama
Ohio St.
Clemson
Cincinnati
Georgia
Michigan St.
Notre Dame
Michigan
Ole Miss
Iowa
Arkansas
Oklahoma St.
Oklahoma
Baylor
Texas A&M
North Carolina St.
Brigham Young
Kentucky
Mississippi St.
Texas Christian
U. Miami
Wake Forest
Pittsburgh
Utah
Oregon
Honorable mention: Houston, Maryland, LSU, Boise St., SMU, San Diego St.
Maryland went 7-2 last year against teams outside of the top ten, including a 54-10 win over Virginia Tech in the Pinstripe Bowl late last year.
I wanted to start by saying that I know I’m behind as far as things I’ve been planning on.
I saw a joke online recently that said. “Hobbies? I am thirty-xx years old. I do not have hobbies. When I have any free time at all, I will go lie down.”
Sadly, that has been my pattern at times lately; although I do still have some hobbies. I still haven’t gotten my normal pattern back since the lockdowns and whatnot. I have gotten to travel a few times over the last couple of years, so I guess that counts as a hobby; but the way my work schedule works is I just have more to do before I leave and after I get back. So if I’m gone for a week, I can’t even think about blogging for two weeks, sometimes longer.
I still need to update the rivalry blogs. Since we are almost at the end of the academic sports calendar (schools are done, but baseball is still going), I’m going to wait until then to give an update as to what conference has been doing what in the major sports as far as top-four finishes.
I’ll wait until the football preseason to recap the last football year. I didn’t really wrap that up after the championship game. I was glad that four teams were able to vie for the championship rather than two; but due to the whole holiday situation I mentioned earlier (also, even if I wanted to, it’s hard to schedule a lot of things in December), I rarely have time to say much after the actual champion is crowned. I’m more interested in who goes to what bowl and who makes the Playoff now anyway since championship controversies are basically over with, but it was still nice to bring things to a nice conclusion when the season ended with the big bowls right around New Years before work was full-speed again.
Anyway, about a month ago, the SEC meetings in Destin, Florida, took place. Thankfully no final decision was made or there would have been no point to blogging about it at this point.
Two options were presented regarding scheduling once Texas and Oklahoma enter the SEC.
There are so many considerations and things to be aware of, so I’m just going to write one big long article. Maybe I’m not enough of a marketer, but I don’t have the time and the energy to split it up into small segments to tease where I’m going with this. I’d rather spent time catching up on the other things, so everything I think is worth noting on the topic will be here.
Option 1: Eight Games with One Permanent Opponent
The first is easy to dispense with, so I’ll start there. That would be an 8-game schedule with one permanent opponent. Among the established SEC teams, there are three two-team states [Alabama-Auburn, Ole Miss-Mississippi St., and Tennessee-Vandy], so that knocks out 6 of the 16 teams. Going forward there will be two annual neutral-site games. I’m not calling them the PC names—The Cocktail Party between Georgia and Florida and the Red River Shootout between Texas and Oklahoma. I know Texas A&M-Texas would be in-state, but I think both Oklahoma and Texas would insist on playing each other annually instead. Anyway, that takes out 4 more, leaving 6 teams to match up. I think they’re fairly common-sense:
I don’t think this is very controversial
LSU-Texas A&M (long-term occasional rivals before the Aggies joined the SEC, they’re in neighboring states and battle over many of the same recruiting prospects)
Arkansas-Missouri (existing annual rivals; and apart from Oklahoma, who’s obviously taken, they’re in a geographic area all to themselves while being close to one another)
Kentucky-South Carolina (annual rivals since the Gamecocks joined the SEC for the 1992 season, and frankly they’re the only leftovers on the eastern side of the map.)
I will acknowledge a few small arguments that might come up. I’ve seen some suggest Arkansas-Kentucky and Missouri-South Carolina, but that’s silly, especially if you’re only picking one matchup per team. Missouri and South Carolina were illogically forced into the SEC East together and made the best of it by creating a trophy; but that doesn’t mean the series must continue annually. Other than in years where Arkansas has a good basketball team, I don’t think anyone would be excited about Arkansas-Kentucky.
I think both Arkansas and LSU fans would acknowledge that they’re not that geographically close to each other [despite the two states sharing a border, Baton Rouge is in the Southeastern part of Louisiana, and Fayetteville is in the Northwestern corner of Arkansas; Little Rock and Shreveport are no longer suitable venues for major SEC games as they were in the 1930s and 1990s, respectively], and the trophy they pass back and forth was also kind of forced.
Texas A&M played Missouri a few times when both were in the Big XII, but they were never annual opponents except briefly in the couple of years after the Aggies joined the SEC, and that didn’t evolve into any kind of meaningful rivalry. Geographically, there is a lot of Texas to the North and East of College Station; and Texas and Missouri aren’t neighboring states.
Intro to Option 2: Nine Games with Three Permanent Opponents
It’s the other option that’s liable to cause a bar fight somewhere in SEC country. That would be 9 games with three permanent opponents.
First of all, why a 7/1 and 6/3 format? Why isn’t 7/2 or 6/2 an option? It’s simple. This would allow you to play the OTHER teams exactly twice every four years, one home and one away. So if there are 16 teams with an 8-game schedule, you subtract the team in question and the annual opponent (16-1-1=14). That leaves 7 spots for 14 teams. You play half of them the first year and the other half the second year. In the third year, you repeat the same schedule as the first year except it’s in the opposite respective stadiums. In the fourth year, you swap stadiums but otherwise with the same schedule as the second year.
With the 6/3 format, you subtract the team in question and three annual opponents (16-1-3=12). That way you have an even number and can play exactly half of the teams one year and the other half the next along the same lines as the 7/1 format I explained.
This is the option favored by the big wigs who have gone undefeated and/or have won national championships despite a loss.
I can definitely see a capable program like Ole Miss (with no national-championship team in 60 years and no consensus national championship ever) or Tennessee (with one in the last 70 years) worried they might get just one shot and blow it by losing the extra SEC game or that they might finish second in the SEC rather than first as a result of the extra game and not get the same forgiveness that Alabama might get when they finish second.
Even more marginal programs like Vanderbilt would probably prefer 8 games. If they can only manage to win three or four, they still have a shot at a bowl game. If they went 3-6, they would have to be perfect in the other games to make a bowl. If they went 2-7, they wouldn’t be allowed to play in a bowl. At 2-6, they might still have a shot if they can run the table out of conference. At 3-5, they can afford to lose one out of conference.
Also, an extra home game in Nashville every other year isn’t going to yield a program-changing amount of money regardless of the opponent. An extra Alabama-Florida or LSU-Georgia game by contrast is a huge sum of money and probably gets a prime TV spot. You can bet it’s not going to be at 11 a.m. on the SEC Network.
The other issue is with one more conference game, that’s one less spot for a meaningful non-conference game. Some argue that all 16 teams will just play one more easy opponent, but that hasn’t historically been the case. There have been many instances of an SEC team scheduling two quality opponents out of conference. I think if there are 9 SEC games, any team would be crazy to have more than one ever, at least not without a major expansion of the Playoff.
Rivalry Week
I didn’t think of this until I almost completed writing this blog, but the 9-game series would also make Rivalry Week weird for LSU.
If there is only one permanent opponent (as above), Texas A&M stays available for LSU in Rivalry Week since the Aggies won’t be playing Texas that week every year, assuming Texas-Oklahoma is the annual game instead. There isn’t an obvious team for Texas to play that week, but I imagine they could keep at least sporadic series going with former Big XII and Southwest Conference foes. Texas-Oklahoma is earlier in the year, and I hope Oklahoma would keep playing Oklahoma St. An alternative arrangement would be for LSU to play A&M earlier in the schedule in years where the Aggies are playing Texas and during Rivalry Week in other years, but then both LSU and Texas would have to find alternatives every other year. I would prefer if LSU/A&M kept the same date.
It gets trickier for LSU if A&M is playing Texas during Rivalry Week every year, which would most likely be the case in the 9-game schedule. These are the obvious Rivalry Week games in that scenario, assuming Oklahoma keeps playing Oklahoma St.:
Non-SEC teams are added as abbreviations with a transparent background. I’ll explain below why Louisville isn’t included.
If the annual series between Texas and Texas A&M is once again played during Rivalry Week (as was the tradition before the Aggies left the Big XII for the SEC), for the third time in 30 years the Tigers would be losing an annual “Rivalry Week” opponent. I’ll elaborate in the next two paragraphs for anyone who wants that explained.
With only a handful of exceptions from the 1930s through 1991 (a couple of rescheduled games and a couple of series against non-major Western teams), LSU completed its regular season against Tulane. Starting in 1992, LSU began to complete the season against Arkansas, which had just joined the SEC and needed to start (or re-start if you take a long enough view) a semblance of a rivalry with someone. Starting a few years after that, LSU decided it wasn’t worth it to play annual home and home series against Texas A&M (which usually started the year) or Tulane (which was second-to-last for a few seasons) in addition to the various SEC series.
A couple of years after Missouri and Texas A&M joined the SEC in 2012, it made sense that rather than playing each other they would play Arkansas and LSU, respectively. So since 2014, LSU has played Texas A&M (in part to replace Texas and in part because that was a “historical” series still in most fans’ memory) during Rivalry Week.
There would be no obvious SEC team to fill the gap for LSU. Traditionally (before 2014), Tennessee ended its season with Vanderbilt and Kentucky (for a long time Vanderbilt was last, but then they switched), but obviously the Volunteers can’t play both on the same weekend. Maybe if Tennessee ends with Vandy one year and ends with Kentucky the next, whoever isn’t playing Tennessee during Rivalry Week can play LSU. Kentucky has been playing Louisville that week of late, but traditionally the Kentucky-Louisville game was earlier in the season anyway. Surely the Cardinals could go back to playing someone else that weekend. I don’t want to get into ACC scheduling politics, but there are teams in the ACC without obvious traditional opponents for that week.
Suggested Permanent Opponents under Option 2
My Preferred Permanent Opponents
Alabama: Auburn, Ole Miss, Tennessee
Arkansas: Missouri, Texas, Vanderbilt
Auburn: Alabama, Florida, Georgia
Florida: Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina
Georgia: Auburn, Florida, South Carolina
Kentucky: Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee
LSU: Arkansas, Mississippi St., Texas A&M
Mississippi St.: LSU, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt
Missouri: Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma
Oklahoma: Missouri, Texas, Texas A&M
Ole Miss: Auburn, Mississippi St., Vanderbilt
South Carolina: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky
Tennessee: Alabama, Kentucky, Vanderbilt
Texas: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M
Texas A&M: LSU, Oklahoma, Texas
Vanderbilt: Arkansas, Ole Miss, Tennessee
If the competitive balance isn’t right or one of your favorites is missing, keep reading.
Hopefully, you can understand the basics of how the map works and I don’t have to provide the information in list format for every map I saw fit to mention in this blog.
Most of these should be obvious why I chose them on the map or based on a passing familiarity with the historical rivalries, but I’ll explain a few that I chose over others I could have chosen.
Oklahoma and Texas A&M were both in the Big XII South, and Oklahoma was in both the Big XII (albeit in another division) and Big 8 with Missouri. There isn’t a similar tie between Oklahoma and Arkansas even though they’re both in the Northwestern part of the map. Also, Arkansas and Texas were annual rivals in the Southwest Conference before the Razorbacks joined the SEC and have renewed the rivalry several times since. I mentioned that when that happened, the LSU-Arkansas rivalry was kind of forced and therefore not one that had to take place every year. However, being the #3 rivalry for both schools is reasonable.
Vanderbilt could have been matched with Arkansas or Missouri, but the only logical opponent to drop would have been Mississippi St., which has a really forced annual series with Kentucky that doesn’t make a lot of geographic sense. Why make longer trips for both if there isn’t a compelling reason to do so? Mississippi St. could have also been replaced with Kentucky, which would be slightly better for Vanderbilt but would make even less sense for Mississippi St.
Since I ruled out Missouri playing Vanderbilt annually, the only real option to Missouri’s east was Kentucky. Kentucky and Missouri are the two northernmost teams in the SEC, and neither had another strong competitor for the #3 slot.
While not quite as unnatural, hence Florida joining the SEC many decades before, the Gators have a similar issue to Missouri being that they’re in an extreme position on the map somewhat alone. In the last 10 years or so, they were probably happy to play Tennessee rather than Auburn most of the time; but I’m not sure Auburn is going to be a better program going forward.
Younger fans may not understand why other than geography Florida should play Auburn at all. Unlike some of the others I discussed there is nothing artificial about this rivalry. I know they’ve only played once since 2011, but bear with me. Until 2002, each team had two cross-divisional opponents. Florida-Auburn was important enough to be annual until then. It wasn’t quite as prominent as Auburn-Georgia though (and Florida was a more interesting and logical opponent for LSU than Kentucky was), so it had to go. In the 58 seasons between the end of World War II and the revamping of SEC schedules in 2003, Auburn played Florida 59 times. (They played in a rematch in the SEC Championship in 2000.)
So by now, you’ve probably figured out why Auburn might be perturbed with this map. They’re paired with three opponents who are among the most successful programs in the conference over the past several years in terms of championships and championship game appearances. No one else has three opponents all of whom have at least one national championship in the last 15 years. But a lot has changed with Florida since that Gators national championship in 2008. Other than 2020, when there were two extra SEC games (and the winning percentage in a typical year probably would have resulted in six wins), the Gators have only won 7 or 8 conference games three times since that championship season. One of those was the year after. By contrast, the Gators won four SEC games or fewer (that’s .500 or below) six times. Since 2008, Georgia and Florida have only combined for 13 wins twice. They combined for 10 or fewer wins seven times. Georgia has been a rock-solid program the past five years, don’t get me wrong; but the point is Georgia and Florida are rarely top teams at the same time.
As for Alabama, it’s possible Saban has peaked or at least will have in two or three years (or longer… they could start with 8 and go to 9 later) before this would go into effect. I don’t know if 2011 to 2017 Alabama would have lost to LSU in 2019 or to Georgia last year. I’m not saying he’s on his way out or that he might not have a more national championships in him, but I am saying we shouldn’t assume Alabama is going to be dominant for the foreseeable future. I know it was a long time ago, but in 7 of the 10 years before Saban was hired, the Tide won four games or fewer in the SEC.
If Saban retired tomorrow, Alabama could still win a national championship in January, but ask Auburn what happened after the last time they won one in 2010 or even LSU what happened in the last two years. Things can go downhill in a hurry. Malzahn nearly won one at Auburn in his first year in 2013, and it was pretty much downhill from there. Even that 10-year period at Alabama before Saban I mentioned… the first of those was only five years after Gene Stallings’ national championship season. As I mentioned, Florida has had just a few really good seasons since winning two national championships in three years under Urban Meyer. It’s not going to be three national-championship-caliber opponents every year.
It could be that Texas A&M would have more of a gripe with their schedule, but that depends how well Oklahoma is able to withstand its latest coaching change, how quickly Brian Kelly can get acclimated in Baton Rouge, and how soon Texas returns to national prominence. For Texas, it’s been “any season now” since 2009. Oklahoma has been a reliable standard-bearer in the Big XII and a regular participant in Playoffs and championships. Texas played for two national championships in the first decade of this century. I don’t like to brag about LSU this way, but obviously the Tigers have won three national titles and played for another in the last 20 years.
Speaking of Texas A&M, as I touched on at the end of the last section, it occurred to me that if they do start playing Texas every year once again (and almost everyone thinks they should if there are three permanent opponents), there would be some turmoil regarding who plays whom on Rivalry Week. Even if Bedlam stops being an annual series (I for one hope it doesn’t), Oklahoma and Texas probably wouldn’t want to move their traditional matchup in the Dallas area at the time of the Texas state fair to the end of the season and probably would want to (assuming they were playing A&M annually anyway) go back to playing the Aggies that week.
I do think no matter what arguments I make (or someone more notable makes) there is a high chance that people will reject a schedule that doesn’t pay more attention to perceived competitive balance than I did, but that’s unfortunate. Most teams are going to be luck of the draw anyway since every team in the SEC would be on your schedule at least once in a two-year period. Even if you get the annual opponents that seem easier, you might get the best Georgia team one year, the best A&M team the next, the best LSU team the year after that (and maybe another great Georgia team), and so on.
I’m not pretending these things don’t matter at all. Even when Vanderbilt is having a good run and Alabama is relatively mediocre, you’d still rather have Vanderbilt on the schedule. A mediocre Alabama team will have better athletes. Even in the 10 pre-Saban years you still would have had about a 1 in 3 chance of Alabama winning 75% or more of its conference games. Vanderbilt hasn’t won over 75% of its conference games since it was in the Southern Conference in 1929. The Commodores have only had two winning SEC records since 1959.
So there would be a percentage advantage or disadvantage in the big picture for some schools, but as long as it’s mostly beneficial to the schools who haven’t won, I think that’s OK. A given team playing South Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri has an easier route, but Kentucky has never played for a conference title and hasn’t even gotten particularly close to a divisional title that I know of. I’m OK with that. Vanderbilt could have three easy opponents if Tennessee and the Mississippi schools are having off years. I’m OK with that too.
Part of the reason I’m not in favor of the nine-game schedule is it makes the competitive balance more difficult. It’s much more likely that a team comes ahead or behind based on strength of schedule whether it’s due to the luck of the draw, annual opponent, or unequal number of conference home/away games. The big schools are the ones asking for this, so if whoever is near your team that makes sense historically and geographically is too good, join the smaller football schools in pushing to keep the eight-game schedule.
My Strongest Alternative Suggestion
I’m willing to be nice and show a willingness to compromise based on those last few paragraphs. I would also be extremely happy with this second option, which I think avoids a lot of potential gripes from Auburn and Texas A&M fan bases in particular.
I’m not only going to show you these two, but the other two that I made myself are variations on things other commentators are suggesting, so this is the only other one that’s purely based on what I want and believe in.
Someone might have read what I said about Alabama and thought I was only saying that because I wasn’t pairing LSU with Alabama. Although I prefer Texas A&M (and not just because of LSU’s record against them), my alternative plan is to put my money where my mouth is and keep LSU-Alabama an annual event.
This pays less attention to the newer rivalries even if they make sense.
You can just by looking at the map that I did a good job keeping the far western teams together, keeping the central teams together, and keeping the Eastern teams together. It lacks some series I like such as LSU-Arkansas, Florida-Auburn, and Alabama-Ole Miss, but it adds some good ones.
Arkansas would play both of its old Southwest Conference rivals (Texas and Texas A&M) annually. Florida would continue to play three of the five SEC East teams it has played every year since 1992. Florida-Kentucky has been a reliably good game lately even though until recently the Gators had a decades-long winning streak over the Wildcats. Auburn-Mississippi St. isn’t going to be the Game of the Century anytime soon, but it’s better than Auburn or Mississippi St. versus Vanderbilt. Also, I think given that Missouri has had a killer travel schedule and will continue to have one regardless, it’s only fair to give them the closest three teams as permanent opponents.
LSU would also play its closest conference rivals, in that case the ones with whom they share the most history. In recognition of the importance, LSU completed its conference season for almost 30 years in a row with those three, ending when Arkansas joined as mentioned previously. Before that stretch (when Tulane was still in the SEC), they were almost always three of the final four conference opponents.
Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee would play the same teams as the previous map. Vanderbilt would have a slightly longer trip to play Missouri than they would have to play Mississippi St., but I don’t think that’s a big deal.
LSU vs. A&M, Ole Miss, and Mississippi St.
This is a blend of my two suggestions as far as LSU is concerned. I don’t mind it. I think it’s good to promote the LSU/A&M rivalry again, and I think it’s worse to lose the LSU/Ole Miss rivalry than Alabama. I would say that even if this were the late 1990s or early ’00s.
It’s the one that Matt Moscona thought was likely, but as far as I know he didn’t opine about which other teams should play which.
This is similar to my first suggestion, but i connected Missouri and Arkansas with the roughly parallel traditional SEC East teams.
There are the same Auburn and Texas A&M issues as in the first suggestion here, so of course I did an alternate keeping these opponents for LSU.
More similar to my second map, this keeps the western teams who weren’t in the SEC before 1992 playing each other along with maintaining more SEC East rivalries. It’s too easy on Alabama in my opinion though.
LSU vs. A&M, Ole Miss, and Alabama
I usually respect what Ross Dellenger has to say, but what he laid out in Sports Illustrated is terrible. I don’t know if it was just a joke, but when I used to follow him on Twitter, he used to post about drinking whiskey on the rocks whenever he was stressed about something. Maybe he fell off the wagon while writing his article.
With all the long and overlapping lines, it almost looks like there are more permanent games here.
I already talked about how I don’t think Missouri-South Carolina or Kentucky-Arkansas make a lot of sense. Kentucky wouldn’t really play any games to be excited about. I mention that I don’t think they really care about Mississippi St. Those were just two of the teams without obvious cross-division rivals. It’s not something anyone is going to be heartbroken to end now. That would leave Georgia as the only annual SEC East series for the Wildcats. I know they would give the Bulldogs their best shot, but even their biggest fan would probably dread the game more than they would be excited about it. At least they’ve held their own against Tennessee, and that’s much more natural rival geographically as well as historically. Even Kentucky-Florida has been a better series of late even though Florida dominated for decades.
Dellenger added some extra, even more contrived rivalries that make even less sense. I’m sure everyone will be talking about their plans for the big Auburn-Vandy game every year. Florida-Oklahoma sounds like a good Orange Bowl or Sugar Bowl when Florida has a good year, but annual rival? What? If you’re going to make Florida play a second heavyweight program in addition to Georgia, Oklahoma should be last on the list.
Mississippi St. is another school that wouldn’t have any rivals to be invested in except for the obvious. State and A&M played in a snowy Independence Bowl in 2000 as Jackie Sherrill got to sneak out a victory against his old program, but that was the only time they faced one another between 1937 and 2012, the year the Aggies started SEC play. The only time one team had visited the other school’s campus was 1913. It was a good matchup for the Independence Bowl organizers in that one year, but I don’t think it’s something “the 12th man” would be excited about on an annual basis.
Anyway, I felt it necessary to find a scenario that I think makes sense assuming he’s correct about LSU at least.
This is the only one I’ve done where Florida still plays Tennessee, but I think it’s wrong not to have Kentucky play Tennessee.
I kept his plans for LSU in tact, but I made some trades to try to rehabilitate his list to make it more palatable. I can understand what he was trying to do with balancing the schedule, but you don’t just do that and ignore everything else. I did keep Kentucky-Mississippi St., but I gave the Wildcats Vanderbilt and South Carolina, both of which make more geographic sense. I don’t know the history before 1992, but they have played every year since. At least I eliminated several of the matchups that made absolutely no sense.
The Bayou Blogger 
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Pre-Bowl Top 25 and LSU 2024 Schedule
In College Football, General LSU, History, Rankings, Rankings Commentary, Rivalry on December 15, 2023 at 4:04 PMLSU’s 2024 Schedule : Historical and Competitive Ramifications
I’ve sat down to this blog a few times, and each time some other news item comes out. The most recent event was the release of LSU’s schedule with the actual dates.
I decided to just cover that and the top 25 for now. Interesting bowl games (to me anyway) are still about two weeks away, so the rest can wait.
We’ve known all the teams on LSU’s 2024 schedule for a while but not who LSU was playing on what date. The one constant going back as long as I remember is Alabama after a bye week and between about November 3 and 12, this time on the 9th. Alabama seems to keep roughly the same order from year to year, but no one else does that I’ve noticed.
Given the addition of the second bye, I like that it was added before Ole Miss. That’s been a tough contest lately. LSU has a three-game losing streak in College Station, but I’m still less worried about that game than about Ole Miss.
Texas A&M was scheduled on the traditional late October date for Ole Miss though. LSU will play the Rebels two weeks earlier, with Arkansas sandwiched in between.
Florida was traditionally around the date the Ole Miss game is scheduled, but this might be the last year of what has been an annual series since 1971 anyway. It was also after Alabama this year, so it was easy to leave it where it was. At least they weren’t both road games in either year.
LSU doesn’t have a long ongoing annual tradition with anyone else on the 2024 schedule.
They had only played Texas A&M once (in a bowl) between 1995 and 2012, the year the Aggies joined the SEC. LSU had previously played the Aggies in early September, but it’s different when it’s not a conference game.
I wouldn’t be opposed to making it an early game in the future though, especially since LSU won’t play Auburn annually anymore. Mississippi St. was a typical September fixture for a while also, although on the traditional schedule they were after Alabama. I’m still annoyed LSU plays neither Auburn nor Mississippi St. next year.
Since the annual series with Tulane ended in 1994, LSU has played whatever somewhat proximate SEC is left without a good end-of-year rival. Arkansas was not particularly close to and had no longstanding recent rivalry with anyone in the SEC when it entered, so that was fine for about 20 years. Then after Missouri and Texas A&M joined (and two “transitional” years elapsed), it made sense to split that up when it became clear that the Aggies weren’t playing Texas anytime soon.
Now that the Thanksgiving/rivalry-week Longhorns-Aggies series is rekindled and Bedlam is on hiatus, it wasn’t a huge shock that LSU finishes with Oklahoma in Baton Rouge. We are used to playing a team with a reddish color from a neighboring conference to the west.
The SEC could have mixed things up in some other ways in 2024, but it was easier not to, especially since next year is just a one-off and not part of any dedicated rotation. Just as a neutral fan of college football and historical rivalries, my hope is that Oklahoma either can manage to schedule Oklahoma St. again or that they play Missouri on rivalry week. I would be OK with LSU going back to Arkansas or having some type of rotation (perhaps switching between Oklahoma and Arkansas or between Vanderbilt and Kentucky). There was some history with Kentucky. LSU played the Wildcats 51 years in a row at one point (ending with the 2002 season).
As far as I’m concerned, LSU could even go back to playing Tulane if the two sides could come anywhere close to a mutually agreeable deal; but since that hasn’t happened in nearly 30 years, I’m not optimistic. There was a home-and-home in 2006 and 2007, but LSU felt like they gave up revenue from a potential home game to enrich Tulane. Since then, LSU has played every other Louisiana Division I program, all of whom seem content with being paid money to travel to Tiger Stadium occasionally rather than expecting a home-and-home exchange.
Anyway, putting tradition aside, I like that there aren’t brutal back-to-back weeks. Going to Florida after hosting Alabama isn’t ideal, but there is only one instance of LSU playing 2023 bowl teams two weeks in a row, and that’s UCLA and South Alabama (both were barely eligible and both will be home games).
USC and UCLA are separated by Nicholls St. and South Carolina. The Bruins or Gamecocks could have a good year, but I doubt both will. I don’t see much risk of looking past an SEC road game or coming down from an emotional high for the first home game that is against a Power 5 opponent.
There were years when I’ve been glad LSU got an apparently tough opponent from what we used to call the SEC East, but we didn’t need one given the out-of-conference slate. Also, I’m not even sure if you need a good non-annual schedule, especially if the SEC eventually adds a ninth game, in the playoff system. I guess we will see how lines get drawn between 4 and 5, 8 and 9, and 12 and 13 in playoff selection
Top 25
Other than their effects upon the Playoff resumes as mentioned in the previous blog, I didn’t have much to say about the conference championship games because they weren’t very surprising. I don’t know why Oregon was favored by so much; but as I kept telling everyone, they didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t a big believer in Georgia since the only SEC West teams they faced were Auburn and Ole Miss and they didn’t do anything out of conference until beating an average Georgia Tech team a couple of weeks ago. Very good Alabama teams have struggled with Auburn before, so I didn’t attach much importance to that. In lieu of Georgia, I admittedly picked the “wrong” Big Ten team as #1, but it wasn’t my fault Ohio St. had a better schedule than Michigan. As expected, the Wolverines had no problem with Iowa.
I’m listing my top 25 teams below, but I think they all fairly logically proceed from the results of those games and what I had written about the Playoff teams last week.
Honorable mention: Kansas St., Oklahoma St., Oregon St., Clemson, Memphis