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 mentioned in the last blog that my ratings were delayed this week. I realized while I was compiling them that not enough credit was being given for playing a series of good opponents. I’m ok with giving undefeated teams or teams with very good records against mediocre to bad opponents the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not OK with James Madison being #6, Liberty being #11, and Troy being #17. I think if any of those teams played a random selection of top 25 opponents every week, their record would be about 1-9 or 2-8 right now.
Adjusted Approach to Top 25 and Possibly to Ratings
In recent years I added what I called weights to “good” games.
To explain how this came about, my original formula from about 18 years ago was sort of based on a 10-point scale. If you beat every team you played and those teams beat every team they played apart from you, you’d be between 9 and 10 depending on how good the opponents of the teams you beat were. This was the entire rating at first, but it later became sort of the first round where I used that number to decide how much credit you got for a win or how much you got subtracted for a loss.
Realistically the best teams can hope to be around 7 (Ohio St. right now is 6.676). So what I did with the “weights” was if you played teams better than 5 points (which right now is 14 teams), you’d have a certain number added to your overall rating. Another 16 teams are between 4.25 and 5, so I would add a smaller number for playing those teams.
This was regardless of whether you won or lost because you already lost points, so getting some of them back because it’s a good team isn’t a bad thing. I don’t just want to reward beating them. I wouldn’t want to reward Texas for beating Alabama and losing to Kansas St. (if the Longhorns had lost over the weekend) where I would not reward another team (like LSU) for beating Missouri and losing to Alabama. I actually think it’s better if you consistently beat teams lower than you and only fall short if you have a very good opponent.
Anyway, I’m starting to question if that’s the best approach. Wherever I draw the line is ultimately going to be kind of arbitrary. I mentioned the 5-point thing. Kansas is 4.98. How much less credit should you get for beating them than you do for beating Louisville at 5.01?
I also didn’t want to go backwards and introduce more subjectivity on my part. What I decided to do was just to add that initial number to what I have been publishing as the computer ratings. I could only use a fraction of that number because the other ratings right now tops out at 0.93. For most top 25 teams, the largest number is about 10x the smallest number, so I though the fairest thing to do was divide the largest number by 10 and then add the two together.
I’m still giving myself the leeway to move teams up to three spots for the top 25. I might go down to two next week, and I will let you know if I made a change to the published ratings. I want to see how it plays out. Sometimes when I make changes, they’re great for one week but I quickly see problems going from one week to the next. That’s fine for my top 25, but I don’t think it’s good for the computer rating. It’s good to be able to compare numbers over longer periods of time.
Big Picture for LSU after Bama Loss
I had a couple other quick thoughts about Saturday’s game. I’ve mentioned LSU’s personnel issues on defense. I also mentioned that the LSU defense was put in a really difficult spot in the fourth quarter when Alabama received the ball at the LSU 25 after an interception only a few seconds on the clock after the previous Alabama offensive drive (3 minutes and 65 yards).
I don’t blame Jayden Daniels for trying to make a play, the ball getting tipped, etc., but giving up a touchdown after the quick turnaround is not proof of a bad defense in that moment. No LSU fan goes on about how bad the 2019 defense was, and no one wanted Dave Aranda to be fired; but LSU gave up 41 points in that game. The Tigers gave up three touchdowns in the fourth quarter and the SHORTEST touchdown drive was 75 yards. I highly doubt that if Joe Burrow threw an interception two plays after one of those drives that the defense would have stopped the Tide from scoring.
“Hot seat” isn’t nearly dramatic enough for Baton Rouge media personalities when they get worked up about something.
So I’m not on the “Fire Matt House” bandwagon that others are on. I know that in hindsight we should have tried to spy more because knowing what we know now, the offense didn’t get close to enough points for the defense that we played. Maybe LSU would have gotten lucky and there would have been a bunch of drops and bad passes. However, we don’t know if more open receivers would have backfired. I don’t hear anyone saying Nick Saban and his defensive coach are incompetent for sacrificing QB rushing yards for more pass coverage. Jayden Daniels ran for more yards than Jalen Milroe, and the former left the game with 13 minutes left.
If both teams had scored in the 40s in an LSU win like four years ago, everyone would be happy. But LSU commentators are going on the radio or on YouTube and saying giving up 40+ to Alabama is never OK regardless.
Even though he’s one of those who I think has been too much of an alarmist about the defense, Matt Moscona pointed out an interesting thing Kelly has been dealing with. You’d think no matter how badly things went off the rails, if you take over a team less than two years after a national championship, you’d have a pretty good recruiting class coming of age. But no, there are only three players left who were recruited in the wake of that championship. The rest of the team is either players Kelly brought in or players that came to play for a team that was going .500. The older players in the subsequent classes who stayed with the team are great. I always have a soft spot for overachiever types, but to think there isn’t a significant talent gap just because we escaped with a win over Alabama last year is silly. Having a better personality and recruiting in a better location than Saban was only getting Coach O so far.
Speaking of which, I want to compare with Saban for a moment. Saban went 26-12 (68.4%) in his first three years at LSU. Kelly is at 69.5% right now. Pretty good for having almost no junior class last year and almost no senior class this year. LSU has a chance to go 4-0, but let’s say they go 3-1 the rest of the way. That would give Kelly a 70.4% mark going into next season. In his last three Division I stops, there was a significant improvement in year three; but even if there isn’t, far too many fans are overreacting.
Granted, LSU had a worse record the two years before they hired Saban than they did the two years before they hired Kelly, but there wasn’t a transfer portal back then. There were good players who had come in after respective 9- and 10-win seasons in 1996 and 1997 who didn’t have a good option other than to stick it out. (By the way, there was only an 11-game regular season back then.). Gerry DiNardo, Saban’s predecessor, won 69.7% over his first three years, so it’s not like Saban blew away anything anyone had seen in recent years right away.
To make some less big-picture comments and get back to the rankings, I think it still makes sense to put Texas ahead of Alabama. That may change if Oklahoma loses again and LSU wins out. I’ve mentioned that LSU can get some meaningful positive points in each of the next few weeks. They’ll definitely be favored in the next two and they haven’t lost to Texas A&M in Baton Rouge since 1994 (the year before DiNardo started), so chances are pretty high they’ll be favored in that one too. Unfortunately, Georgia St. (who is in between Florida and Texas A&M) has lost two in a row though. They still may be the second-best team in Georgia.
College Football Playoff Rankings
I think it’s ridiculous that the committee thinks Oregon is the top one-loss team. The Ducks have the 82nd-best schedule. I know they played undefeated Washington, but the Huskies have played the #99 schedule. I don’t even factor in opponents’ opponents’ records as much as many similar blogs do. Some count that equally to opponents’ record because it’s a much narrower range from team to team. Utah, the Ducks’ best win, has a top-50 schedule but two losses.
The big difference comes after Oregon’s marquee win. The highest-rated opponent after that is Colorado, which is #69 overall. Alabama and Penn St. have each beaten four teams who are better than Colorado. Ole Miss, Texas, and Louisville have each beaten five teams who are better than Colorado. I can understand giving some credit for having one close loss to an undefeated team, but it shouldn’t compensate for about every other game being against a team in the top half of the FBS versus about 20% of games being against such teams. Any other team that’s a candidate for the college football playoff would be all but guaranteed to be 8-2 against the Ducks’ schedule, and most would probably beat Utah, my number 20 and the CFP’s #18.
I also don’t think Oregon St., who played no one of note out of conference, is close to the best 2-loss team. I don’t know where they get the idea the Pac-12 is so great. Arizona lost to Mississippi St. and is now half a game out of third place. Notre Dame has suffered a third loss now, but they beat USC (who actually is third place) easily. Wins over Wisconsin and TCU (albeit by lesser teams) have lost their luster.
There isn’t reason to get too annoyed yet, but the committee’s disregard of quality of opponents is something to watch out for going forward.
Comments about My Top 25
I think Purdue is better than their record, but Michigan hasn’t added as many points per week as other major-conference teams do on average. Even with USC’s struggles, they’re worth a lot more than Purdue. Alabama and Texas both added high-quality wins as well. Texas was a lot closer to losing at the end, but I don’t factor that in.
Georgia and Michigan can each get a good number of points next week though. Penn St. (who is playing Michigan) and Ole Miss (who is playing Georgia) are right behind them, but neither the Nittany Lions (Rutgers and Michigan St.) nor the Rebels (UL-Monroe and Mississippi St.) have nearly as many potential points to gain in the last two weeks of the season as the Bulldogs (Tennessee and Georgia Tech) and Wolverines (Maryland and Ohio St.) do.
The last time Ole Miss played Georgia, Rebel QB Chad Kelly led the team to a 45-0 lead in Oxford in 2016. Bulldog QB Jacob Eason (right) was only able to complete 44% of his passing attempts and failed to throw a touchdown. Somehow the Bulldogs’ long-awaited chance at revenge is not the SEC game of the week. I wish Ole Miss would go back to those uniforms. by the way.
So if you want to see an SEC team in the playoff, you need to be for Georgia (even if you’d rather see Alabama). If you want to see a Big Ten team, you need to cheer for Michigan (even if you’d rather see Ohio St.). I’m not saying the CFP committee always agrees with me, but high-quality wins are usually important to them in the end. Even if two or three one-loss teams make it, I doubt either one will be Penn St. or Ole Miss.
The order of Kansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St. is mostly explained by what I said earlier about bad losses.
I liked not having to drop Missouri, Kansas St., and LSU too far. Part of that is due to Tulane and Toledo playing fairly weak opponents (even though Tulane barely won again). Losses by USC and UCLA helped too.
USC almost stayed in the top 25 given that the Washington loss didn’t hurt much, but there is only so much room for 3-loss teams. The rest of the honorable mentions are from outside of the major conferences.
They didn’t make the honorable mentions, but Duke, Arizona, North Carolina St., and U. Miami are the other major-conference three-loss teams in the top 40. North Carolina still only has two losses but has a relatively low schedule strength. It’s interesting how many ACC teams are in the 30s. Clemson (despite four losses) has a good chance of joining that group in the next few weeks.
I’m still moving toward my completely objective top 25; but if you just want to know what the computer says, go here. Last week, it was less than 1/3 objective. Today, it’s roughly half. The initial list I made was 60% objective, but I still allowed myself to move teams by up to 5 spots after that. The only exception was Ohio St., whom I moved six spots. There is a good chance the Buckeyes will be near #1 on their own merit next week anyway (if they beat Penn St. of course).
This might be the last week I can have Georgia ahead of all the one-loss teams though. Texas has the #3 schedule, and Georgia has one of the worst in FBS. Adding a bye week doesn’t help. The Bulldogs have a gauntlet after that (three games against ranked teams, one on the road, and two other good teams away from home), so they’re not pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes to get back to the Playoff; but this is meant to be a snapshot. They should not be in the top four or even the top eight if the season ended now. Not only was Vanderbilt a weak opponent, but all of the Bulldogs’ best three opponents so far (Kentucky, South Carolina, and Auburn) lost to teams the Bulldogs have not yet played or will not play.
Just like last week though, most teams did not move more than a couple of spots from the improvised formula. There may still be some volatility in the coming weeks because for many teams next week’s result will still make up 1/6 of their FBS opponents, so it counts for about twice as much as a game does at the end of the year. Also, I’m going to continue to give myself less power to smooth out any transitions up or down the rankings.
The top 9 should make a lot of sense based on last week.
Iowa is exactly where the formula put them. If Penn St. loses, the Hawkeyes may fall a spot or two, but I think this is fair for right now. North Carolina is undefeated and has played a significantly better schedule than Georgia has, so I thought that spot was good for them.
Louisville followed up on the win over Notre Dame with a loss to Pitt, so this allowed LSU to move ahead of the Irish despite having a much less impressive win. The only loss by either of the two teams who beat LSU was to Alabama, so LSU’s two losses look much more excusable right now. Pitt already had four losses and had no FBS wins going into last week. They had a significant drop-off from last season. Former Pitt (and USC) quarterback Kedon Slovis going to BYU didn’t seem to do either side any good.
Michael Penix, Jr., of Washington prepares to attempt a pass against the Oregon Ducks in Seattle on Saturday. While both teams did have some success on the ground, the anticipated quarterback battle largely delivered. Although Penix threw for fewer yards and a lower completion percentage and threw the game’s only interception, he made up for it by throwing for two more touchdowns and about half a yard more per attempt than Oregon’s Bo Nix threw.
Oregon is still a good team despite the setback in Seattle. Their loss is similarly excusable to LSU’s losses, but there just isn’t a quality win like LSU and Notre Dame have. Missouri also only has one loss, but obviously I think hosting LSU is a step down from traveling to Washington right now.
Five of the remaining nine teams in my top 25 are in the Pac-12. It took me a while to sort them. I think it’s easier to explain in reverse order. Despite two losses in a row, Washington St. deserved to stay ranked because they beat Wisconsin, the team I would otherwise have put #25. Colorado St. isn’t bad for a second-best out-of-conference win either.
I don’t know why Wazzu lost to Arizona so badly, but margin of victory (or loss in this case) isn’t a big concern for me going forward. The week before, the Cougars lost to UCLA, so I put the Bruins higher. Oregon St. beat UCLA, and I think they only ended up losing to Washington St. because the game was in Pullman. Also, it’s a singular loss. The Beavers also beat Utah, so I think putting them between Washington St. and Utah made sense.
USC lost, but it was out of conference to Notre Dame, so I don’t have a problem with leaving the Trojans ahead of Oregon St., UCLA, and Washington St. You could argue about Utah, but it helps that the Utes beat Florida, whom I have #32 right now. Baylor isn’t having the best season, but going to Waco is still a strong second-best out-of-conference game. I don’t think USC has beaten anyone nearly as good as Florida. The Utes are 1-1 against the rest of the top 25 (win over UCLA, loss to Oregon St… another reason the Beavers are ahead of the Bruins), which is of course better than 0-1.
I squeezed Duke ahead of USC because they played Notre Dame closer and also because Clemson is creeping their way back toward the top 25 like Florida is.
I wasn’t blown away by the fact that Tennessee beat Texas A&M at home, but I like the way that they were able to grind out a low-scoring win and never seemed panicky or particularly at risk of losing. There were times last year when the Volunteers were out of their element when a defense was able to slow them down. I’m seeing some maturity and consistency that I’m not seeing from teams that are lower; and I mentioned Florida vis-a-vis Utah, so I’m more forgiving of that loss than the combinations of two losses below or the singular loss to Pitt.
I moved James Madison as far down as I could, so I don’t think the Dukes would beat the Volunteers on a neutral field right now; but this is a normal consequence of the computer formula. I could be wrong though. I would have sworn all last year that Tulane wouldn’t have beaten USC on a neutral field, for instance. I have Tulane #31, by the way, between the five honorable mentions and Florida. Kansas St. is right after Florida, which explains in part why Missouri is still as high as they are. Kentucky isn’t a bad #2 win for a one-loss team either.
I actually have two blogs of material this week since I didn’t have time to post the other one last week. I finally did get around to entering all the FBS results into the spreadsheet for my computer formula.
I thought posting the rankings blog was more important to get more back on schedule. I haven’t even promoted them like I usually do because most people aren’t really interested on Thursday and Friday.
LSU QB Jayden Daniels keeps the play alive in the first quarter in Columbia on Saturday. Daniels was responsible for 389 total yards and four touchdowns (with no turnovers). It should have been more scores, but we don’t need to get into why he didn’t get credit for more.
LSU/Missouri Recap and Reaction
I wanted to include a couple of comments about LSU’s win over Missouri even though my next blog will in part be about the game before.
It was nice to get Mizzou back for the first game after Covid, when LSU’s rising star quarterback Myles Brennan played a great game in Columbia but got hurt and was never seen in meaningful action again. I’m torn between saying LSU deserved to win that game and that LSU was lucky they competed in any games in 2020 and 2021.
Anyway, that was also the only season I know of when the LSU defense was nearly as bad as it is this year. I have barely even watched LSU play defense the last two games, by the way. Auburn’s offense isn’t as good as that of Mizzou or Ole Miss, so I’m hoping it might be more tolerable next game.
The second half of the Mizzou game was not bad though, to be fair. Six of the home Tigers’ 8 possessions did not result in points. Ideally LSU would like to force the other team to punt more, but missed field goals and interceptions result in the same number of points that “three and outs” do.
Preface of Rankings
For the rankings this week, it’s still mostly subjective; but there is an objective element now. I gave each team a score that was a combination of my subjective and objective ratings, and then I allowed myself to move teams a maximum of five spots from the order the improvised formula put them in. For most teams, it was only one or two spots though. The objective ratings aren’t as thorough as they will be (for instance, no credit was given for quality of FCS opponents), but they’re complete enough to give a strong idea of who the most accomplished teams are.
Oklahoma was the best team in my formula, but it’s partly because they beat 6 FBS opponents (none of which were very good before last week). So I felt the need to move them up considerably. I haven’t been impressed with them in “the eye test” since Caleb Williams transferred to USC, which is partly why they weren’t higher going into the week; but I couldn’t move Georgia any higher given the rules I made above. Florida St. has had two lucky wins, so I didn’t want to put them in the top 3 either.
Oklahoma’s Nic Anderson catches the winning touchdown pass from Dillon Gabriel in Dallas on Saturday. Gabriel did not complete as many passes or throw for as many yards as Texas’s Quinn Ewers, but he threw no interceptions and Ewers threw two as Oklahoma got revenge for a 49-0 loss to the Longhorns last season.
Speaking of USC, I’m not impressed with them much at all once I sat down and looked at who they’ve beaten and the records of those opponents. They just went to triple overtime against Arizona, who lost to Mississippi St., possibly the worst team in the SEC West. The Trojans are undefeated though, so I thought I would put them ahead of the best two-loss team, Notre Dame. I would not be surprised to see USC lose to the Irish or any of the ranked Pac-12 teams though.
There were a couple of other large movements in the rankings. Louisville is another undefeated team who had a big, somewhat unexpected win over the weekend. North Carolina also made a big jump, but I am still concerned by the narrow home win over Appalachian St. One of the things I do when I move to more objective rankings is to de-emphasize margin of victory though. I added a couple of Big Ten teams with understandable losses, as well as adding LSU back.
Even though I understand it can look bad to move teams too dramatically, I still think it was the right choice to take LSU out when they fell to 2-2 against FBS opponents (which included a 3-point home win over Arkansas) going into the Missouri game. I also still think I was right to put Mizzou ahead of the four teams who fell out (as I’ll explain, formerly #21 Kansas didn’t fall far), but at any rate it makes sense for LSU to be a bit higher than those other Tigers now.
I can defend most of the choices I made last week, but the idea is to be as accurate as possible now, not to put last week on a pedestal and see who deserves to move up or down a set number of spots based on a preconceived idea of how good last week’s respective opponents were. I continue to think it’s the right thing to start evaluating teams differently around this time of year. Preseason, knee-jerk reactions to one or two early results, and margin of victory should count for very little going forward.
I’ve hardly had any teams from the G5 (those outside of the Power 5 conferences) ranked this season, but four of the best five unranked teams by both the computer and the overall formula are G5. They are as follows: James Madison, Kansas, Liberty, Memphis, and Wyoming.
I was going to leave it at that, but since I mentioned Liberty, it will be interesting to see how former Liberty and Ole Miss head coach and current Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze does in his first trip to Tiger Stadium since 2016. He was winless in three contests there as the head coach of Ole Miss, most notably in 2014 when his undefeated #3 Rebels were upset 10-7 in one of those Les Miles defensive and ball-control classics. When I get a chance, I’ll try to get caught up on the rivalry blogs.
I got more views this week than I’ve gotten since the pandemic, so welcome to anyone who might be new here. Happy Veterans Day as well.
I thought about making this week the week where I removed the subjective input into the top 25 below (see here for the completely objective unweighted ratings as of right now), but the weighted rankings aren’t quite where I want them yet. This coming week may clear up a few things. I think the big game to watch will be in the SEC again, Alabama against Ole Miss. I’m not one to be sympathetic to Alabama; but win or lose it was going to be hard for them to physically and mentally recover from Saturday and play another road game that could help decide the SEC West (somehow LSU is in the driver’s seat now though).
Oregon-Washington is an interesting upset opportunity. The Huskies just beat a ranked Oregon St. team for their third straight win, and UO-UW is a rivalry game for both teams. They’re often the two best Pacific Northwest teams, especially now that Boise St. has reverted to mediocrity, and both teams are a little more high-profile than their respective in-state counterparts.
Washington RB Sean McGrew is tripped up for a loss last year in Seattle. The Huskies were held to an average of 2.3 yards per carry and did not score a touchdown until the fourth quarter as Oregon won 26-16, the Ducks’ third straight win in the series. The previous two games in the series (2018 and 2019) were decided by a total of only seven points though.
It will also be interesting to see if Clemson bounces back against Louisville. The Cardinals have won four in a row after a 2-3 start.
There are two other matchups of ranked teams according to the polls. TCU travels down the I-35 to Austin, and Central Florida visits New Orleans to play Tulane. I want to make sure not to over-rate TCU or Tulane for having good records but not playing great competition. Either they’ll earn their ranking a little bit better or they’ll prove the skeptics right.
Also, I thought there was enough overhaul going on this week as is with the two big SEC games and the instability of the ACC and the Big XII. It’s hard to balance record versus big games. I want to make sure teams like Alabama aren’t penalized too much for losses to very competitive teams; but if I lessen the effect of “good” losses, Tennessee could be as high as #2. I’m not sure that’s appropriate either.
With Arkansas’s loss to Liberty, the Big XII is starting to creep up on the SEC. We will know a lot more the last two weeks of the season though. Almost half of the SEC plays out of conference in two weeks, and then there are the annual rivalry games the following week. I at least expect Georgia to beat Georgia Tech, but anything can happen in the others: Kentucky-Louisville, Florida-Florida St., and South Carolina-Clemson.
Speaking of the Big XII and Rivalry Week, I like that KU and K-State are now playing one another at the end of the season unlike in prior years; and they’re both pretty good now. TCU will likely finish in first place in the Big XII regular season being that the Horned Frogs are two games ahead, but K-State is part of a 3-way tie for second with Baylor and Texas (who play one another during Rivalry Week). Kansas is tied for fourth with Oklahoma St. Every team has three games left. There are no late bye weeks or late out-of-conference games like there are in the SEC.
Among the conferences (these are listed after the team ratings), the Pac-12 and Big Ten were almost tied for a distant third, but they’re both rather top-heavy. The ACC is more split along divisional lines, and obviously the top ACC team took a big hit out of conference. At least the ACC is still one of the top five conferences. There is a big separation among the non-Power-5 conferences though. The American, the Sun Belt, and the independents are leaning toward respectability, while the CUSA, Mountain West, and MAC lag way behind.
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.
rank team last 1 Alabama 1 2 Georgia 2 3 Oregon 5 4 Penn St. 4 5 Florida 7 6 Ohio St. 8 7 Cincinnati 6 8 Iowa 3 9 B. Young 9 10 Coastal Car. 13 11 Arkansas 17 12 Oklahoma 11 13 Notre Dame 15 14 Oklahoma St. 16 15 Texas 19 16 Ole Miss 20 17 Michigan 22 18 Michigan St. 23 19 Texas A&M 14 20 Baylor — 21 Fresno St. 21 22 Louisville — 23 C. Florida — 24 UCLA 25 25 San Diego St. —
Out of rankings: (10) Clemson, (12) Liberty, (18) Iowa St., (24) Wyoming
Sorry this is so late. Normally I would push a blog back at this hour, but it had to be posted given that it’s now Saturday on the east coast.
I don’t usually drop a team as far as I did Clemson, but that’s the danger with leaving a 1-loss team in the top 25 at this time of the season. Two losses is too high a percentage of the season to stay ranked, but at the same time losing to what looks like one of the best teams so far shouldn’t necessarily knock you out of the top 10.
Liberty also fell all the way out, but I don’t think I’ll get much push-back there.
I can’t get on board with some of the other ACC teams I’ve seen getting votes right now. North Carolina looks bad. North Carolina St. lost to Mississippi St. In its only games of note, Wake Forest beat Virginia, who has another loss and it’s to North Carolina, and Florida St. No need to elaborate about the ’Noles.
Some lazy pollsters ranked Auburn, but the Tigers should at least go win in Baton Rouge if they want to show there is something special about this year’s team as compared to others from the Plains in recent years. Maybe Penn St. was a moral victory in the eyes of some, but if there are undefeated teams with actual victories over opponents of some quality, I’ll take them instead.
Iowa struggled against an opponent Vanderbilt beat, so I had to knock them down a bit. Plus Iowa St. lost again. I did give Baylor credit for the win over the Cyclones, but again I don’t think it’s appropriate to rank a two-loss team at this point in the season.
Louisville LB Jaylin Alderman made his only snap of the game count when he returned an interception for a touchdown to break the tie in the final 30 seconds against Central Florida.
I’m giving some delayed credit to Louisville, who beat Central Florida two weeks ago. I took the Knights out but didn’t put the Cardinals in. Some other teams fell below Central Florida and Louisville last week more than either adding anything significant to their respective resumes. Reminder that the Knights beat Boise St., who had a strong win over Utah St. last week. The Broncos did suffer one other loss, but it was to Oklahoma St., so they may be ranked in the coming weeks if they continue to do well in the Mountain West.
Speaking of which, I decided to take Wyoming out (Ball St. isn’t as good as i thought they were previously; also, the Cowboys barely beat Connecticut) and replace them with another Mountain West team, San Diego St. The Aztecs are 2-0 against the Pac-12, although Arizona barely counts. Utah is a respectable win though, at least based on information available so far.
I never thought LSU would win all the major men’s sports for an entire academic year, but I guess there are a lot of things going on I thought I’d never see.
I wasn’t going to write this since it’s based on a season that ended two months ago, but I have the time now, and I thought someone might want to read about the last full season we had. I am writing this on Friday, a day I originally took off in order to enjoy the first round of the basketball tournament. My last day of work for a while was Tuesday, so I may write something else in the coming days.
Anyway, I used to do conference reports more often. I would do them weekly after each of the first four weeks and then again at the end of the regular season with a final one at the end of bowl season. I thought I had done more than one, but the only one I could find was after Week 2. One reason I haven’t done them as much is I’ve been rating the conferences statistically on my ratings site. Another reason is time of course.
SEC Regular Season
The SEC did not start particularly strong. In the first two weeks, Tennessee lost twice (to Georgia St. and to BYU), Missouri lost to Wyoming, Ole Miss lost to Memphis (which turned out to be not so bad), and South Carolina lost to North Carolina. So after two weeks, I had the Big Ten higher in the conference standings.
Week 3 didn’t really change anything. Mississippi St.’s loss to Kansas St. on the road wasn’t really a shock. Arkansas beating anyone in FBS was a good thing (they beat Colorado St.). The other wins that week would have been complete surprises had they not been blowouts.
Week 4 was a little bit more encouraging with Georgia’s win over Notre Dame. Ole Miss and Arkansas lost, but those were not unexpected; both games could have gone either way.
Georgia WR George Pickens jumps for a reception against Notre Dame in Week 4 in Athens.
There was nothing else of note out-of-conference until Week 11, when Appalachian St. beat South Carolina. In the mean time, Vanderbilt went 1-1 against two weak teams and Arkansas lost out of conference yet again, a blowout at the hands of Western Kentucky. At that point things were looking even worse for the SEC than at the time of my conference report.
Apart from South Carolina’s expected big loss to Clemson (the actual margin of 35 would have been a modest estimate), the SEC won the other major rivalry-week games (Florida-Florida St., Kentucky-Louisville, and Georgia-Georgia Tech) to at least put itself back in contention for best conference.
SEC Bowls
Almost every year, I talk about how the SEC is often held to unfair standards in bowl games. For instance, in 2018, LSU was in a four-way tie for third and had to play a team on a 25-game winning streak in the Fiesta Bowl. The major bowls’ going deep into the SEC leaves relatively mediocre teams in big games like the Citrus and Outback Bowls. Also, the best SEC team not in the Playoff (Georgia in 2018, almost every Alabama team that hasn’t been competing for a national championship) often has a lackluster performance based on disappointment from elimination from championship contention.
None of those seemed to be problems in this bowl season though. There were two losses that were both understandable. Auburn was in a tie for fifth and lost to a team who tied for second in a good conference in a competitive game. The only other loss was by Mississippi St., who only barely made a bowl game and had some intra-squad drama (to put it mildly) in bowl prep.
Obviously, LSU beat two conference champions. Florida, which was the runner-up in the East, beat Virginia, which was the runner-up in the entire ACC. Georgia beat Baylor in a matchup of conference runners-up. Alabama capitalized on a rare favorable matchup for the SEC when the Tide played fifth-place Michigan of the Big Ten.
Lamical Perine breaks through the Virginia defense in the 2019 Orange Bowl in Miami Gardens, Fla. Perine averaged over 10 yards per carry in the game.
In another SEC-Big Ten matchup, Tennessee beat seventh-place Indiana. In record, the Volunteers were tied for fifth in the SEC, but I think when you consider that the Vols played in the (weaker) SEC East while the Hoosiers played in the (stronger) Big Ten East, it was a fair fight.
Texas A&M beat Oklahoma St. to complete the sweep of the Big XII, and Kentucky beat Virginia Tech to make the SEC 3-1 against the ACC in bowl games.
SEC vs. Big Ten and Pac-12
The fact that the SEC had as many wins over the Big Ten as they had total losses in bowl games was a good start. The Big Ten lost four of its last five bowl games including both “New Years Six” bowls against major-conference opponents.
The Pac-12, who won one of those NY6 games against the Big Ten, had a good bowl showing, but they have a really weak collection of bowl games and did not have a strong enough showing against other conferences during the season.
So the SEC, despite all the bumps in the road early on, ended up the clear winner. By my count, the SEC went 17-8 against games against the major conferences (and Notre Dame). No one else finished more than one game over .500 in such games (and that was the Pac-12, which went 8-7).
Other than the Rose Bowl game I mentioned, the Pac-12 didn’t really beat anyone to write home about. These are the seven other wins: Florida St., Northwestern, Nebraska, Michigan St., Illinois, Texas Tech, and Ole Miss.
The Big Ten beat USC, Auburn, and Notre Dame and has such excusable losses as Alabama, Oregon, and Clemson. So despite the bowl record, I’m still going with the Big Ten as #2 over #3 Pac-12.
Other Major Conferences and the American Conference
The Big XII had a similar record to the Pac-12 but with an even less impressive list of wins, so that was an easy choice for #4.
The American conference is next. The AAC only suffered two losses that were not against a top conference or Notre Dame. Only two of the losses that were to teams in major conferences (Georgia Tech and North Carolina St.) were to teams that did not make bowl games. There wasn’t a list of great wins, but American teams did beat two major-conference bowl teams despite not having much chance at such wins in the bowl games themselves.
The ACC had a bad record (6-19) against other major conferences and only went .500 against the FBS. Other than Clemson’s major wins, the only others are the ones I mentioned by North Carolina and Louisville.
Remaining Conferences and Independents
That’s still more than #7 Mountain West has to brag about. The Mountain West had a better record against major conferences but only beat two major-conference teams who made bowl games (Washington St. and Florida St.). The MWC also lost ten games against other conferences to the ACC’s six.
The Sun Belt, which went 4-9 against the major conferences, is next. Those wins include North Carolina and Tennessee, which both made bowl games. Only two of the losses to the major conferences were to non-bowl teams. The Sun Belt also lost to ten teams in other conferences, but two of those were to Memphis, which made a NY6 bowl.
Obviously, independents aren’t officially a conference, but I’d count them next. Notre Dame got a lot more decent wins than all the other teams combined, but there were BYU’s wins over Tennessee and USC. Those were the only wins not by Notre Dame over major-conference teams though. It also didn’t really help the Irish that five of its wins were against the ACC. Other wins were over Stanford, Bowling Green, and New Mexico. Virginia and USC were good wins though.
The bottom of the barrel are the CUSA and MAC. I have to go with the MAC last given its single win against a major-conference team (albeit a bowl team, Illinois). Ten games There were nine wins against others, including a couple of bowl teams, so it wasn’t all bad. The CUSA had three wins against the major teams, two against U. Miami, which made a bowl game. It had 12 wins against other teams, including multiple additional bowl teams.
I found it interesting that the Sun Belt was 2-0 against the MAC this weekend. ULL beat Ohio U., and Troy beat Akron. This is in addition to Georgia St.’s win at Tennessee and Coastal Carolina’s win at Kansas (more about Kansas below). I’ll also mention another big win below (App St. over UNC). Maybe the SBC isn’t the doormat of conferences anymore.
LB Dylan Tonkery sacks Carter Stanley as CB Keith Washington closes in. Washington would catch the key interception in the Mountaineers’ win in Lawrence, Kansas, on Saturday.
2. Another victim of a Sun Belt team (in Week 2) was Les Miles’ Kansas. Jayhawk QB Carter Stanley had a good game (11 ypa, 3 TD) except for having some trouble with the pass rush and throwing a pick in the fourth quarter that led to a WVU touchdown. That probably made the difference as the Mountaineers won 29-24. Next up for the Jayhawks is TCU, who lost to SMU at home Saturday. Maybe KU can win their first conference road game since 2008 in that contest. If not then, it may be a while. Their other road games are Texas, Oklahoma St., and Iowa St., who each have one loss apiece but to good teams. Les going back to Stillwater will be interesting. Speaking of Les in Stillwater, his first Oklahoma St. team only went 4-7, so I think there is still reason to be hopeful things will turn around in Lawrence even if the Jayhawks don’t have more than a couple more wins coming this season.
3. I did want to comment about the targeting calls late in the LSU game. I don’t understand how blocking a guy (who could otherwise make a tackle) face to face is a foul at all not to mention targeting. It wasn’t “blindside” like the ref said, and it wasn’t a defenseless player unless everyone on the field is defenseless now and I didn’t get the memo. Like when you’re on offense and you block the defense so they don’t tackle someone trying to go downfield, why aren’t they defenseless? I guess we should only play third string players in the fourth quarter going forward, even the third string special teams. At least the guy flagged was like the 5th receiver we have and the next game is Utah St. Not to insult Utah St., but I’m more afraid of the SEC teams left (with the exception of Arkansas; we don’t play Tennessee).
Then the LSU backup QB Myles Brennan was hit helmet to helmet, not with the crown of the head; but the defender launched (in my understanding of the word) and his head was moving in an upward motion toward Brennan’s head. How was that not targeting when what was called against LSU is targeting? Even if Brennan had been attempting to tackle the defender who caught the interception, that would be targeting if you want to be consistent. And how does an illegal hit (even if it wasn’t targeting, the referee called it roughing) during the play not invalidate the defensive touchdown? I hope there is some clarity on the rules so players and coaches can know all the normal football plays that are not allowed now and all the things that used to be personal fouls that somehow became legal at the same time.
Anyway, there needs to be an NCAA office that issues suspensions and ensures some type of uniformity. One awful officiating team should not be able to affect a future game. If it’s a borderline judgment call, even if it’s not clearly wrong, they should be able to say there will be no further suspension, especially if it happened at the beginning of the third quarter, for instance.. If there is a targeting that is found later or was incorrectly waived off, maybe they can get a full game suspension. Maybe that way some players can just admit to targeting and it doesn’t have to be reviewed. Vanderbilt probably wouldn’t have done this because a touchdown was on the line, but if it were a roughing after an incompletion with borderline targeting, the player would have preferred to give up the rest of the meaningless half rather than an entire future game.
Eastern Michigan’s Matthew Sexton blocked a punt and returned it for a touchdown after Central Connecticut St. faced a 4th down with 10 seconds left and a 1-point lead.
4. The escape of the week goes to Eastern Michigan, who blocked a punt and returned it for a touchdown with 10 seconds left. It would have been a big upset by FCS Central Connecticut State had the Blue Devils managed to run out the clock.
5. Florida St. blew another big lead (21 points to Louisville), but the difference this time was the Seminoles regrouped, took the lead back, and ended up winning by 11. FSU may finally be heading in the right direction to vindicate my preaseason ranking of the Noles.
6. I don’t have anything good to say about my preseason #25 South Carolina. They just lost to Missouri by 20 Saturday. The Gamecocks (who also lost to UNC) may end up losing to Appalachian St. as well. South Carolina almost certainly will be unranked when they play Clemson as well. Will Muschamp said this was his best team since he’s been there. Maybe his next job should be defensive coordinator. At least I picked Appalachian St. higher in my preseason top 25.
Boston College kicker David Gordon follows through on the winning field goal in the November 20, 1993, game against #1 Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.
7. In addition to what I said about Georgia in the rankings comments, I’ve never liked Notre Dame even though I’m from a Catholic area and upbringing. I preferred Boston College among the Catholic sports programs and sort of resented the favoritism in the media that Notre Dame got. There was a time when the SEC programs were seen as second rate, and you would hear 10x as much about Notre Dame as any SEC team. Alabama (which was never disregarded as much as other southern teams going back to their Rose Bowl invites) won in 1992, but that was the first SEC national champion since 1980 (which was before my time), and then it was right back to hearing about how great Notre Dame was in 1993.
I thought when the Irish lost to Boston College, who was not a major national team, that was the end of that, but someone forgot to tell the Irish fans. Auburn went undefeated that year, but no one even talked about them being the best team. Maybe Florida St. and Nebraska (who played each other in the Bowl Alliance championship) were better, but it still bothered me. I nonetheless accepted that since Auburn couldn’t play in a bowl game (due to probation), the winner of the Florida St./Nebraska gams was the rightful champion. The Notre Dame fans wouldn’t.
I also liked Florida St. back then, partly because of the fact that they played Florida (that was the LSU rival I disliked the most in the 1990s), partly because I didn’t like Miami either (though I preferred Miami to Notre Dame), partly because they were the closest major team to the Florida panhandle where my family used to vacation, partly because I at least indirectly knew people affiliated with the program, and partly because I liked Bobby Bowden.
I still remember my response to the “but Notre Dame beat Florida St.” argument: “Florida St. beat Miami, who beat Boston College, who beat Notre Dame. Florida St. also beat Florida, who beat West Virginia, who beat Boston College, who beat Notre Dame.” I especially liked the second one (even though it was more complicated) since it was a reminder that the best SEC team wasn’t even in the Sugar Bowl and the SEC team still beat an undefeated Big East team easily.
I’ve mentioned in other blogs there were some close games against LSU that I wasn’t very happy with since then (LSU and Notre Dame are 2-2 against one another in bowl games since 1997 with a couple of regular-season games in the late 1990s as well), but I already didn’t like Notre Dame before all of that.
Remaining opponents against ranked teams going into Week 4
8. I wanted to post this graphic, but I didn’t want to detract from the good pictures I got for the main blog. You can cross out TCU for the reason mentioned in Section 2, although I suspect another Big XII team will end up ranked. Michigan is still ranked for the moment.
To be fair, A&M could fall out by losing to Alabama; but they won’t deserve it nearly as much as Michigan would with a loss in the upcoming weeks. I have a feeling the CFP committee will treat the Aggies more leniently than the polls have. If Auburn really is the 7th-best team, A&M could conceivably be one of the top eight teams even with five losses (since they also play LSU and Georgia). The 7 wins they would have in that scenario wouldn’t justify a high ranking, but I’m just saying they could in reality be better than all but the teams they lost to and just two or three others.
If Maryland plays anything like how they played against Syracuse, Penn St. could have trouble staying in the top 25 after tonight as well. The Terrapins also lost to Temple though.
Out of top 25: (22) Florida St., (25) South Carolina
Top 25 Comments
I know it’s late for many of you, so I only used one picture. I usually try to avoid walls of text, but it couldn’t be helped.
I covered most of what I had to say about the games over the weekend on Sunday.
I thought Michigan struggled too much to stay ahead
of Ohio St., who dominated.
I think Auburn barely beat a much better team than
Florida barely beat, so I switched the two.
I dropped Oregon close to the bottom just because
they’re 0-1, but they can bounce back pretty quickly.
Boise St. was a late cut from my list of potentials,
so it was easy to put them in.
As for the other new team, I’m not in love with
Stanford being that they only scored 17 points and will probably rely on the
backup quarterback in the next game, but sometimes that helps teams.
Florida St. and South Carolina deserved to fall out for obvious reasons. It may be a while before I consider South Carolina again, but Florida St. showed some good things.
If you need three overtimes to beat a FCS team like Iowa St. did (although it’s worth noting Northern Iowa has had a lot of success in recent history), that’s almost like a loss to a top-10 team. A win is a win for the most-part (giving credit for strength of schedule of course); but with only one game to consider, you have to look at how easily the win came.
Oklahoma and Notre Dame, who played since my last
blog, took care of business.
Notre Dame probably let Louisville hang around too
long, but the Irish don’t typically have an offense that leaves the opposition
in the dust right away anyway
Oklahoma let Houston score a couple of touchdowns to get within two possessions late, but I don’t hold it against them. I’m still skeptical about how the Sooners will do against Power 5 competition though. It could be that the Big XII will make them look good even if they aren’t. Texas looked all right, but nobody looked great. Speaking of the Longhorns…
LSU @ Texas
Texas QB Sam Ehlinger looks to throw against TCU last season. LSU HC Ed Orgeron said preparing for Ehlinger was similar to preparing for Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow.
All-time series: Texas leads, 9-8-1 (updated after the game)
The first game of the series was way back in 1896, LSU’s 11th official game as a program (and 10th intercollegiate game), but 10 of the 17 games in the series were clustered between 1935 and 1954, the last regular-season matchup (Texas won 20-6 in Austin).
The (January) 2003 Cotton Bowl (Texas 35, LSU 20) was the only matchup since 1963 (also the Cotton Bowl, which LSU won 13-0), so LSU fans shouldn’t despair too much about these facts. The more-recent Cotton Bowl was the highest-scoring game of the series, beating out the 35-14 Texas win in 1952. In the 2003 game, Texas entered at 10-2, and LSU entered at 8-4. LSU would win the BCS national championship in the following January though.
The third-largest point total and largest margin of victory is also owned by Texas, 34-0 in 1941. Other than the tie in 1936, the closest game was the 5-0 LSU win in San Antonio in 1902.
Texas leads the series in Austin, 7-2-1, the other LSU win coming in 1938. (updated after the game).
The Tigers lead 2-1 at “neutral” sites (two in Dallas, one in San Antonio) and 4-1 at home.
Added after the game: Both teams scored more in 2019 (45 to 38 final in favor of LSU) than either had in this series before. LSU more than doubled its previous high of 20 (in the loss in Jan. 2003 and in wins in 1938 and 1953).
After Saturday, the next game is scheduled for Tiger Stadium on September 12 of next season with no future plans thereafter; although LSU plans to return to Big XII country (if the Big XII is still a thing) in 2027 to face Oklahoma.
Preview
Speaking of the Longhorns, there was a debate on the College Football Nerds YouTube channel (formerly known as SEC Fans) about whether Texas will beat LSU.
They absolutely can… I’m not going to suggest for a moment it’s going to be as easy to stop Texas’s mobile quarterback as it was to stop the Georgia Southern quarterbacks. I’m not a big fan of the Texas defense even before the loss of all but two or three starters, but I’m reasonably sure LSU will go scoreless on more than one drive with the first-team offense in the game. I also don’t discount the degree of difficulty in playing in Austin. I don’t know if it’s the same as the best SEC stadiums, but we’ve had some of our best teams lose at home (like in the 2003 season) or lose at less-intimidating SEC places like Commonwealth Stadium (the sponsor isn’t paying me) in Lexington (like in the 2007 season).
.. But I don’t think they will. LSU has a clear advantage in returning starters; but even if they didn’t, I think last year’s LSU team would have beaten last year’s Texas team even in Austin. Oklahoma played terribly on defense and only lost by a field goal, and that was Texas’s best game. The Longhorns only won the Sugar because Georgia was going to be the team that blew the lead to Alabama in the SECCG whether they beat Texas or not. A month of relatively little motivation can make a big difference. LSU in their worst game wouldn’t have lost to Maryland like Texas did.
Anyway, in the video, I don’t know if the guy
arguing for Texas was advancing weak arguments on purpose or he was just trying
hard to sell the only arguments he could come up with; but they weren’t very
persuasive. One was “we’ve heard it
before that the offense is different.”
There were changes when Cameron was fired, there were changes when
Canada came in, and there were changes last year; but there weren’t wholesale changes
like this. Neither Etling in 2015 and
2016 nor Burrow last year were ready for anything crazy anyway.
Shea Dixon had some good stats on differences from
last year. In all of last season 14
players caught passes, four of them running backs. On Saturday, 14 players caught passes, 5 of
them running backs. He also included a
special teams stat: LSU had 52 yards in punt returns Saturday compared with 99
in all of last season.
Another one is “Texas doesn’t rebuilt, they reload.” Charlie Strong (who still recruited a lot of
the players) would be surprised to know that.
They’re not Alabama or Clemson all of a sudden because of one year with
double-digit wins (which with 14 games isn’t what it used to be). LSU has done a bit of reloading over the
years as well. It’s still an advantage
to have more players back, especially from a successful year. Speaking of Alabama and Clemson, they both
had successful years in 2017; but Clemson had a lot more players back in
2018. I think that helped the Tigers win
the championship as easily as they did. Even
if Texas “reloads” an exact replica of last season on defense (though I’m not
sure Louisiana Tech gets 340 passing yards last year), that’s probably a good
sign for the LSU offense. To be fair, the
La. Tech scoring was all in the fourth quarter, but they had several earlier
opportunities. In short, I’m not
convinced.
Another point I’m not buying is that Texas can
handle the SEC based on the Georgia game.
If LSU played Georgia and that was LSU’s only SEC game last year, that
wouldn’t mean LSU would beat every SEC team this year with. LSU played a Georgia team that still had a
potential national championship run in front of it too. Also, bowl games are a lot different. You don’t get the same players. LSU had a patchwork team in the bowl game
last season and looked pretty good, which is part of the reason I rank them so
highly now; but I don’t know how different the Texas-Georgia game would have
been if it had been a playoff game.
There was another point that might have been good
had Texas had its defense back from last year, and that was that LSU’s new
offense is more similar to what Big XII teams run. Being used to scrimmaging against the Texas
offense isn’t the same thing as a season of Big XII opponents. When you’re up 42-3 at the half and take most
of your starters out shortly thereafter, you’re not going to show everything
anyway. So we can’t be sure this would
be so easy for an experienced Big XII defense anyway. Also, let’s not forget even in the best team
game for the Longhorns they allowed 45 points.
Do I think LSU will score 45?
No. Do I think they’ll allow 48
like Oklahoma did? That’s not even a
serious question in my mind.
My final thoughts: I don’t want to discount the fact that Texas has a chance to win at home. It just seems less likely. Maybe 60-40 odds in LSU’s favor. If you point a gun to my head and make me bet, I’d take Texas and the points (5.5 according to ESPN), but it’s a close call. If someone wins the turnover battle 4-0 (as was the case when LSU beat Georgia last year), that team could win by 20+ though. I don’t think feel like I know enough about either team under pressure to even venture a guess as to over/under.
Last topic, speaking of turnovers, both teams were
+2 in turnovers in the first game, but stats from last year indicate LSU might
do better. LSU was tied for 7th
in turnover margin last year (with an advantage of 0.8 per game). Georgia Southern’s turnover margin was more
than twice as much though (1.7, 1st), so that makes the first game
more impressive for the Tigers. Texas
was close behind LSU last year (0.6, tied for 18th), but Louisiana
Tech was barely positive (0.2, tied for 43rd).
The Bayou Blogger 
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Reaction to CFP and LSU’s Bowl Selection
In College Football, College Football Playoff, General LSU, Post-game, Rankings, Rankings Commentary on December 3, 2023 at 4:47 PMMy 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.
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.
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
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.