I was supposed to have time to do this on Wednesday but ended up having an unusually long (and rainy) work day instead, so I’m writing this on Thursday night (Friday morning for many of you).
Best-laid plans of mice and A&M boosters, I suppose.
Recap of LSU/Florida and Rivalry
It wasn’t because there was nothing to write about. I’m happy to make fun of Texas A&M and Florida, who lost a fifth straight to LSU. No one else has a losing streak to LSU that goes back to the national championship season (unless Vanderbilt’s streak of two counts). Although the LSU/Florida series dates back to 1937 and has been played annually since 1971, this was the first time LSU won five straight. Florida had once won nine straight from 1988 to 1996, but LSU now has its first lead in the series since then. If LSU doesn’t win another game this season, I’ll still feel some measure of success from that fact.
While it is unlikely that the LSU/Florida series will continue annually beyond that, the Tigers will at least make the return trip to Gainesville next year. I will endeavor to update the key Rivalry Series in the next week or so.
Not to be bitter about it, but the damage is done anyway. Having to play Florida every year, which included going to the Swamp every even year (apart from 2016), at least more often than not placed the Tigers at a disadvantage in the SEC West as far back as 1996. I guess it did in years before that too, but LSU was so bad it didn’t really matter. LSU had also played Auburn, which was strong for roughly the same time period, on the road in even years. The combined influence of those two games prevented LSU from winning the West in an even year until last season. The other SEC Championship appearances had been 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011, and 2019. I acknowledge a certain crimson opponent played a role as well, but LSU’s unique struggles with them really only started in the 2012 calendar year.
LSU had to play Auburn every year by virtue of being in the West (that series will not be played next year), but had the Florida series not been made permanent, playing a different SEC East opponent could have made the difference in 1996 (when LSU would been one game better rather than losing a tie-breaker with Alabama) and 2006 (when LSU would have won a tie-breaker with Arkansas, but the additional loss made that irrelevant).
Given that the game was typically in early October though, it put the Tigers behind in 8-ball in several additional seasons. For example, LSU would have known going into the Arkansas game in 2000 that a win would have sent them to Atlanta (ironically, they went to Atlanta anyway to play in the Peach Bowl). Florida dealt LSU its first loss in 2008, and QB Jarrett Lee was never the same again. If it weren’t for his late-season penchant for throwing “pick sixes”, LSU could have easily won all but one other SEC game. LSU also nearly lost to Troy later in that season (seems like that would have taught the AD a lesson, but I digress). I doubt it affected the SEC championship games, but Florida also dealt LSU its first losses in 2012 and 2018, respectively.
Anyway, this was the largest win by either team since LSU’s 41-11 win in 2011. I’ll give the Gators credit for keeping it close for a while though. It didn’t help LSU that, as a result of a poorly-fielded kickoff, the Gators were able to score twice in just a couple of minutes to take a 28-24 lead in the third quarter. Jayden Daniels is a little bit more reliable for generating points than hoping for points off of turnovers and other miscues though, so the Tigers outscored the Gators 28-7 the rest of the way.
Jayden Daniels rushes against Florida on Saturday in Baton Rouge. He ran so well, I can’t even be certain which play this was; but I believe it was the 85-yard touchdown that was along the left side of the field. Daniels became the first person to pass for 200 yards and run for 200 yards in an SEC game at some point in the third quarter, but he finished with over 350 passing yards, which had never been done along with that many rushing yards. Johnny Manziel had thrown for 200 and rushed for 200 once; but that was in a bowl game, so we really hadn’t seen anything like this before.
The LSU defense and coordinator Matt House continue to get a lot of flak, but keeping Alabama within one possession at least until the fourth quarter (if not the entire rest of the game) and keeping Florida from getting a lead the whole game would have been something to be proud of. It’s just not helpful if you put them on the field with their backs close to the end zone seconds after the previous drive ends.
Response to College Football Playoff Top 25
I’ll start by saying there is nothing really new in terms of grievances with the College Football Playoff’s top 25. Oregon’s being ahead of Alabama and Texas continues to make no sense if you care about schedule strength.
At least Oregon St. is no longer the top 2-loss team, having been passed by Missouri. I don’t expect the Beavers will stay the one of the top 2-loss teams indefinitely anyway given games against Washington and Oregon coming up. If they win both, I’ll be happy for them to be the top 2-loss team though. More on them below.
I’d also like them to care more about the schedules of teams like Arizona and North Carolina, but those are far enough down that I’m not sure they really matter. The Arizona/Arizona St. game might actually be game though. It looked like it was going to be a pillow fight earlier in the year.
Comments about My Ratings
I had a bit of time to smooth out the rough edges this weekend and I still liked the results to add the original ratings back in as I described last week. It also makes sense for some of the teams lower in the ratings because there is a number I have to adjust to factor in the bad teams so one bad loss doesn’t swallow multiple wins. I can re-add the original ratings without that adjustment though, which I think is the fairer approach.
I was also able to do conference ratings and strength of schedule. I will wait another week to see if the strength of schedule is giving teams enough credit in the ratings. That might also be a further adjustment to the formula. The same basic numbers and computations are being used regardless, it’s just been a continuing balancing act over years between giving credit for wins and giving credit for quality of competition.
It’s amazing that LSU, Ole Miss, and Penn St. have only seven combined losses and are still in the top 7 of the strength of schedule. Duke is the only other team in the top 12 with a winning record. Others in the top 20 with winning records are Utah, Kansas St., Kansas, Notre Dame, Missouri, and USC. I did opt not to put Kansas in the top 25 below due to some of the losses they have though.
I think it’s fair that even though Michigan and Georgia still don’t have great schedules that this recognizes their schedules are now comparable enough that they should be ranked ahead of teams with losses like Texas and Alabama. I think barring any major upsets (based on rank, not necessarily based on betting line), most people would agree that the Top 4 should be Big Ten champion, SEC champion, undefeated Florida St., and undefeated Washington. If Alabama were to lose the SEC championship, the next beneficiary (for now) of a potential upset should be Texas if they win out. This recognizes that.
The conference ratings weren’t very surprising. The SEC and Big Ten are neck and neck, but I think the SEC will pull away slightly next week given the out-of-conference games. There are non-conference games the week after that, but I don’t like Kentucky’s, Florida’s, or South Carolina’s chances against ACC opponents (I’m not too worried about Georgia), so that might bring the SEC closer to the Big Ten again.
The SEC would still be ahead after adding the new programs to the Big Ten and the SEC. That’s not really proof of too much about next season anyway given that Washington, Oklahoma, etc., can’t get as many good wins without hurting someone else in their respective future conferences next season. It might mean that the Big Ten will be harder to beat in future seasons; but on the other hand, maybe Oregon and Washington fall back to the more mediocre status they occupied not too long ago.
Washington is very close to getting the top spot in the computer ratings. I definitely think the Huskies will have that spot with a win, but they might lose it the week after (Washington St. wouldn’t count for nearly as much as Michigan would) and reclaim it the week after that (Oregon would count for a lot more than Iowa would). I expect to keep Ohio St. #1 here however for the next couple of weeks absent a loss or something really concerning. I’ll be very interested in how the ratings shape up after the conference championships though.
The initial line I saw had Washington barely favored over Oregon St., and then I saw one in which the Beavers were favored. I definitely think that’s the big game this weekend. As I’ve mentioned, the Huskies have a couple of very narrow wins at home, so playing a team that’s been playing well on the road might be a challenge. They might gain more support in the polls and the CFP with the win also, but those are much more stubborn than my ratings are.
Another Heisman candidate now, Michael Penix, Jr., throws under pressure against Oregon St. in Seattle last November. The Huskies won at the last second, 24-21, so it makes sense that the Beavers are given a very good chance to win at home this time despite the Huskies’ undefeated record.
I feel bad for Oregon St. that they lost a close game in Pullman when Wazzu was playing well, but the Cougars have gone down like the Hindenburg since then.
Three of the Honorable Mentions got promoted last week, so keep an eye on those. This week, all but one is in a Power Five conference, so that’s a noticeable change. That one other team is Coastal Carolina, the only one that hasn’t been ranked at some point this season.
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.
Obviously the ideal is not to publish my rankings on Saturday morning, but I was so close to completing all the team records for the first round of my computer formula I had to finish.
I did a pretty good job of anticipating how this might look with my rankings last week; but I still didn’t want to abruptly transition to following the computer formula to a T, especially since I didn’t complete every component of the computer rating yet.
To be more specific about what I looked at (skip this paragraph if you don’t care for technical details), this is only the unweighted portion of the formula. I use the weighted formula more to differentiate the top teams at the end of the season. Also, I did not go through the records of the FCS/I-AA teams. I just gave them all a record of 1-1 unless they were completely winless. I wanted to make sure a completely winless FCS team didn’t count for more than a completely winless FBS team, although both winless FBS teams (Arizona and UNLV) lost to FCS opponents anyway. In this year more than other recent seasons, it seems the bottom of the FBS is worse than the top of the FCS. There are a few other FBS teams whose only wins were over FCS opponents. I think they rate similarly as opponents to the generic FCS opponent’s rating I gave.
Anyway, as a result of this being part of the transitional phase, I allowed some deviation from the computer formula. I did not move any team more than 4 spots from where the computer placed them. I didn’t move any of the top 6 more than one spot from where the computer had them. There was a little bit of subjectivity here and there, but mostly the changes to ranking were (1) to give deference to the teams with fewer losses, and (2) to avoid drastic swings from last week to this week without something that happened on the field to justify it.
For instance, congratulations to Texas-San Antonio for beating Memphis (which beat Mississippi St., which beat Texas A&M, which beat Alabama) earlier in the season, but nothing about beating Rice should catapult you from not being considered at all into the top 20. They were one of only a couple of teams that I moved down the maximum number of spots.
In the most decisive major upset of the season, Purdue put a stop to the Iowa offense in a 24-7 win in Iowa City last Saturday. In the above picture, Purdue DT Branson Deen brings down Iowa QB Spencer Petras. One of Purdue’s Twiter accounts said the Boilermakers beat the #2 out of the Hawkeyes.
Another was Iowa. The Hawkeyes are somewhat overrated by the system because they have not had a bye week and have not played an FCS opponent. I have a feeling the loss to Purdue may weigh them down more as the season goes on as well. I moved two undefeated teams (Cincinnati and Oklahoma) and one 1-loss team (Kentucky, whose only loss was to clear #1 Georgia on the road) ahead of Iowa. Even if Purdue is better than I think (and this isn’t just a somewhat bizarre outcome like when the Boilermakers beat Ohio St. a few years ago), it definitely makes sense to look more negatively at a loss to them than a loss to Georgia.
By the way, I wanted to mention that Georgia is such a “good loss”, that a team could lose to them twice and still not be penalized as many points as they would be for a loss to Mississippi St.
I decided not to put Michigan St. ahead of iowa since the Spartans have a bye week, which usually causes teams to drop in the ratings anyway. Also, all of the teams the Spartans have beaten so far have losing records, at least the way I calculate it. There is no strong reason to believe they would have a better record with Iowa’s schedule. They very well could have three losses against Iowa’s schedule, in fact. The Spartans have plenty of opportunity left to prove themselves. Four of their five remaining opponents are ranked in this list, and three of those are in the top 12. If they make it through that with no losses (or maybe one loss), there is a good chance they can settle their differences with Iowa on the field in the Big Ten Championship anyway.
Also, I kept Michigan St., Alabama, Penn St., and Notre Dame in the same order I had them last week. The computer did not have them in that order, but that’s part of the logical transition in my mind. Ohio St. was after Notre Dame; and the Buckeyes do have a loss to a lower team anyway, so I didn’t mind taking them out of order compared to last week.
I prefer not to put any new entrants above #15, so that required a couple of adjustments compared to the computer as well. Also, I didn’t want Oregon to fall from #15 all the way out. Stanford isn’t very good, but some shady things went on in that game. The computer doesn’t care of course, and ultimately the computer wins; but for now I think it’s accurate to keep Oregon in the top 25.
Overall, I’m satisfied that I was able to do this without either deviating a lot from the computer or from last week’s list. Often the first week where I’m this loyal to the computer as the most turnover by far, but five is a very reasonable number. I had six new teams two weeks ago, and five two weeks before that. Also, no team moved more than 10 spots on paper. I don’t know for sure who my #26 team was last week, but it could well have been Baylor.
I’m only using one picture because I want to get this up and take my morning nap before the games start. Hopefully the uninterrupted stretches of text aren’t too unpleasant to gaze upon.
Top 25
rank team last 1 Georgia 1 2 Michigan 3 3 Oklahoma St. 4 4 Oklahoma 5 5 Cincinnati 7 6 Kentucky 6 7 Iowa 2 8 Michigan St. 9 9 Alabama 10 10 Penn St. 11 11 Notre Dame 12 12 Ohio St. 8 13 Wake Forest 13 14 Ole Miss 17 15 Auburn 25 16 Baylor — 17 Air Force — 18 Pittsburgh — 19 B. Young 16 20 Purdue — 21 TX-San Antonio — 22 San Diego St. 22 23 Texas A&M 24 24 Oregon 15 25 Arkansas 19
Out of top 25: (14) Coastal Car., (18) Arizona St., (20) Texas, (21) Florida, (23) SMU
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to make much progress on my computer ratings. I didn’t want to just keep making case-by-case changes in the rankings though, so I followed a simpler process. For about the first 18 teams I looked at how many wins their FBS opponents had, and I subtracted the number of losses (if any) the teams who beat them suffered. In a few cases, I kept teams in the previous order if they weren’t too far apart (such as Kentucky being ranked after Oklahoma and Oklahoma St.). Michigan was too far ahead in my impromptu formula though, and I can already tell the Wolverines will have some good opponents’ opponents ratings.
After the best undefeated and one-loss teams, I added the best two-loss teams without following the same process. Texas A&M was not in my estimation one of the best two-loss teams because losses came to Arkansas (who has two losses themselves, albeit to good teams) and Mississippi St. (who lost to Memphis and LSU, two teams that are not even close to being ranked).
Likewise, Alabama fell farther than they did in other rankings because of how unimpressive the Aggies had been prior to the game. In mid-October, I don’t give teams like Alabama credit for the last decade or so. As much as possible, I try to restrict all considerations to what has happened on the field this season. See the stats cited in the caption below.
Texas A&M QB Zach Calzada isn’t normally a rushing threat but gained 11 yards on this play in College Station on Saturday. In two previous starts against SEC opponents, Calzada threw 46 passes for 286 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions. Against Alabama, he threw 31 passes for 285 yards with three touchdowns and one interception.
Don’t get me wrong: Alabama absolutely can come back and win the West if not the national championship. That doesn’t change the fact that their pass defense was just made to look worse than New Mexico’s (who Calzada threw fewer yards against; also, the Lobos sacked him three times while the Tide could not sack him at all), so it doesn’t bother me to drop them to #10 even subjectively.
The fact that I’m not giving credit for status is also part of the reason Ohio St. continued to fall. Another reason was that I’m no longer going to punish teams like Kentucky just because I happen to be more skeptical that the Wildcats can make the College Football Playoff than I am that the Buckeyes can.
Other teams went up as I’ve begun to attach less importance to margin of victory. This is why Notre Dame went up a spot while most one-loss teams went down. I can promise you it has nothing do with the history of the program.
rank team last 1 Georgia 2 2 Iowa 5 3 Michigan 14 4 Oklahoma St. 8 5 Oklahoma 12 6 Kentucky 18 7 Cincinnati 4 8 Ohio St. 6 9 Michigan St. 17 10 Alabama 1 11 Penn St. 3 12 Notre Dame 13 13 Wake Forest 23 14 Coastal Car. 10 15 Oregon 7 16 B. Young 9 17 Ole Miss 16 18 Arizona St. 20 19 Arkansas 11 20 Texas 15 21 Florida 19 22 San Diego St. 22 23 SMU — 24 Texas A&M — 25 Auburn 21 Out of rankings: (24) Texas Tech, (25) W. Michigan
As you might have noticed, I didn’t blog much last year. My main interest in writing about college football is to discuss methods of evaluating and ranking teams, especially my own system. I don’t think there is any good way to do that when some teams play 5 games and others play 12 games. I don’t think there is any good way to do that when several major conferences don’t play any (or at least not any meaningful) interconference games.
I was going to wait until after the College World Series for my next blog. In past years, I’ve done sort of a summary of the major sports for the academic year. I guess this year I’ll include the 2019 football season since that was the only major championship in the previous academic year.
Anyway, those plans changed when I saw the proposal to triple the size of the College Football Playoff. It so happens that at least LSU baseball is over for the season today, but I started writing this Friday.
The best argument for expanding the Playoff AT ALL (putting aside adding 8 teams) is that the current format doesn’t give access to teams from outside of the Power 5 (P5; SEC, Big XII, ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12) conferences.
I’ve criticized the committee for going out of its way to denigrate Group of 5 (G5; the other football conferences) teams, but nothing about even an undefeated G5 team like Central Florida made me question the legitimacy of the 2017 Playoff, for instance. The last two games the Knights played that year, they needed two overtimes to beat then-#20 Memphis in Orlando and won another close game over 3-loss Auburn, who was then ranked 7th.
Shaquem Griffin sacks Auburn Quarterback Jared Stidham during the Peach Bowl on New Year’s Day 2018.
The Knights had a great season, don’t get me wrong, but playing exciting games against teams like that doesn’t mean people need to you see playing for a national championship. Even if we assume the same result would have taken place had the game been at Auburn in early December, I don’t think being blown out by Alabama or Clemson in the quarterfinals would have made any team feel better or been enjoyable for the fans.
Regardless, if we went back to a more statistical model like the BCS (which was originally half objective and later reduced to 1/3), there would likely be G5 teams who finished in the top 4.
In 2010, for instance, TCU (which was then in the Mountain West) actually finished third in the BCS. All of the people who happily responded to the abolition of the BCS because they didn’t have to do math anymore should re-evaluate that decision rather than giving the committee control over the postseasons of 12 teams rather than 4. Let’s also remember that it wasn’t the objective criteria that put two teams from the same division in the championship in 2011: it was the voters.
Based on what we’ve seen from the committee, any G5 team will have to play on the road against a team the committee ranked #5-8. Then if they win that, they can then be one of 8 teams to play for the championship. Since it would require 4 wins, one on the road, that’s not an extremely realistic path to a national championship. It would be a much better path to have a neutral-site game between the #4 P5 team and the best G5 team every year for the last spot in a 4-team Playoff (meaning 3 total wins, all at neutral sites). In short, adding 8 teams to the equation rather than one isn’t the best way for a G5 team to have a chance, so let’s drop that pretext.
The quality of the arguments for this arrangement goes down from there.
One is the conference championship games (CCGs) should be for a spot in the Playoff. Unless all 10 conferences are sending teams, that just deepens the separation between the P5 and the G5.
Do people remember how bad some teams in major conference championships have been? In 2011, UCLA had to get a special exemption just to be bowl-eligible when the Bruins fell to 6-7 after losing to Oregon. Obviously, the Bruins didn’t win the game, but upsets between teams that shouldn’t be close on paper have happened in these games. One of the big CCG upsets was back in 2001 when LSU (with 3 conference losses) beat Tennessee. It was very exciting that the Tigers got back to the Sugar Bowl (or any major bowl) for the first time in 15 years, but it would have been silly (and potentially embarrassing) for them to play for a national championship. They also played another conference champion, Illinois. The Big Ten has been good lately, but that wasn’t always the case. Wisconsin won the Big Ten despite 5 losses in 2012. Having a shot at winning the Rose Bowl wasn’t reward enough?
LSU quarterback Matt Mauck, not to be confused with former Missouri quarterback Maty Mauk, evades pressure in the 2001 SEC Championship Game. Mauck ran for 50 yards and threw for 67 in relief of Rohan Davey before being named MVP of the game.
Those were entertaining bowl games, but Numbers 1 to 4 shouldn’t risk injury by having to beat such a team just to get into the semifinals. I think it’s actually one of the good things about college football that you can win a major post-season game and end your season on a high note without winning the whole thing. Winning the Rose Bowl or the Sugar Bowl in a non-championship year will be little more than a participation trophy for a top program if in order to even be in the game, you have to be outside of the top 12. I think both bowls have been cheapened enough by mediocre teams who finished second or worse in their conference but who made the game because the better conference teams were in the Playoff.
The last thing I want to mention isn’t really a rebuttal, but it’s an important argument against the expanded Playoff. It’s the fact that you take the importance out of the regular season.
If you do give the automatic bids to winners of conferences, non-conference games become even more like preseason games. If you want your team to last through a 9-game conference schedule (in most major conferences), a CCG, and 3 or 4 more post-season games, why take your chances with another major-conference opponent? As I mentioned earlier, this also takes away an important tool in comparing teams. I don’t actually want conferences like the SEC to get by on their reputation. We should try to figure out who the best teams are every year and not just guess that the SEC champion is automatically one of the top 4 teams.
I’ll give an even older example from my many years of following LSU. In 1988, the Tigers won the SEC despite 2 non-conference losses. This is completely unthinkable now, but the SEC evolved into the best conference from being rather mediocre back then. Even 16 years later, Auburn went undefeated and couldn’t play for the championship. Important context is when LSU shared the national title with USC the prior year, it was only the SEC’s fifth national title since 1980 (it would have only been 4 had the BCS been adopted in 1996). Another important aspect was that there were only three non-conference games in 2004. The Plainsmen played The Citadel, Louisiana-Monroe, and Louisiana Tech. But I think adding additional games to the end of the season will make such a selection of opponents commonplace, especially as compared to LSU intentionally playing teams like Ohio St. and U. Miami (which finished #2 in both polls) in 1988. So without something to show changes in conferences, evaluations will be more about prior years than the current year.
I’ve been told people will still insist on maintaining big rivals and will still prioritize them, but I don’t believe that. Think how many annual rivalries have been lost as conference schedules have grown and realignment has taken place. Texas doesn’t play Texas A&M, Pitt doesn’t play West Virginia (or Penn St., for that matter), Auburn doesn’t play Georgia Tech, Notre Dame doesn’t play Michigan, and Oklahoma doesn’t play Nebraska (although they will this year). I don’t have a dog in any of those fights really, but they were still games I would often look forward to and enjoy.
Even rivalry games that will continue won’t mean as much. I can assure you from my vivid memory of 10 years ago that it’s more important for LSU to finish ahead of Alabama during the post-season than during the regular season. That game would have been much less exciting if it were known that the loser was overwhelmingly likely to play for the national championship anyway. Michigan-Ohio St. in 2006 was another game that would have been much less exciting. People discussed the possibility that there could be a rematch (and that the loser could still win the national title), but it was far from a guarantee and didn’t happen.
#1 Ohio St.’s Beanie Wells breaks a tackle to get into the secondary in the second quarter against #2 Michigan in 2006. Wells would score on what would be a 52-yard run. The Buckeyes ultimately won, 42-39, to get into the BCS title game, which they would lose to Florida.
It might be difficult, but let’s imagine for a moment that Michigan isn’t as good as they were in 2006 and played Ohio St. after already being eliminated from conference and national contention. How exciting might it be to potentially keep Ohio St. out of the Playoff? The Buckeyes might still win the conference and a major bowl, but Michigan would still have that accomplishment if nothing else. If Ohio St. is guaranteed a spot in the Playoff by winning the Big Ten the next week anyway, it won’t mean much. There would even be an argument that Ohio St. should rest some of their key players. It wouldn’t even be very good bragging rights.
In some cases, it could be better to lose a regular-season game and not make the CCG. Alabama was in the top 2 in 2011 after not making the CCG, and then they were in the top 4 in 2017. So if the top 4 teams get a bye into the quarterfinal anyway, an Alabama would essentially get two byes.
If it’s a situation where a non-champion doesn’t get a bye, they could still have an advantage over whatever team they play in the first round if that other team had to play a CCG. I don’t think it would be four rounds of playoffs starting in late December. The first round would probably be at campus sites the week after CCGs. So let’s say Penn St. loses to Ohio St. and they don’t have a great strength of schedule since they don’t have to play the best two teams from the Big Ten West. Would it be really fair if they had a week off and then played Georgia, who just lost to Alabama the week before or Oklahoma, who just won the Big XII CCG?
The only reason I was for a top-2 or top-4 national championship was so we didn’t leave teams who may very well win national titles out of the process. In 1994, there was an undefeated Penn St. team who didn’t get a shot at Nebraska because they had to go to the Rose Bowl. That kind of thing happened many times. I mentioned the 2004 Auburn team who couldn’t get into the top 2. Maybe there is some team that will be a big sob story and cast a shadow over a winner of the 4-team playoff, but I haven’t seen anything like that yet. If such a scenario is at risk of happening, which I doubt, why is the solution to add 8 more teams instead of one or two?
The college football big-wigs should just admit this is just a cynical ploy for more money. Not likely, I know, but fans could at least not do their bidding by concocting weak arguments in favor of this proposal even if it means their team has a better shot to make the 12-team playoff than it does to make the 4-team playoff.
There have been a couple of major developments since my last blog. Apparently the Big Ten and Pac-12 have decided to play very shortened intra-conference seasons. It might slightly legitimize whichever team ends up as the national champion (provided it’s not from one of those conferences… no matter how dominant it may be, winning 7 or 8 games is no comparison to winning 15), but it really doesn’t help much in ranking teams. There is no objective means to evaluate two teams with a similar record in different conferences without inter-conference play, and many similar teams won’t have similar records anyway if they start the season six weeks apart.
Until those two conferences start play, I will still rank everyone but the SEC on one list and the SEC on another. I’m just going to do a top 10 for the other teams. There are only 12 teams in the AP poll that aren’t in the SEC or in a conference that hasn’t played, so everyone in my top 10 list deserves to be considered a ranked team. There may be one or two left out who’d normally be ranked, but so be it. It can be a challenge filling out the last couple of teams anyway.
SEC
Anyway, you probably noticed I’m an LSU fan, and the Tigers lost for the first time since that unholy abomination of a football game in College Station on November 24, 2018. So that was a pretty good 22 months. If you don’t count that as an LSU loss, I guess you can say it was more like 22 3/5 months, since there was no question about the rightful winner of the LSU-Alabama game on November 3, 2018 (the final was 29-0). For updated records of the LSU-Mississippi St. series (the most-played series in LSU’s history), see here.
Stanford transfer K.J. Costello threw for 623 yards against the depleted LSU defense in his and head coach Mike Leach’s SEC debut.
In other SEC news, Florida was EXPOSED by Ole Miss when the Rebels scored 35 points and gained 613 yards.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m making fun of everyone (paging Colin Cowherd) who said something similar about the LSU-Ole Miss game last year. Actually, I’m making Florida #2 after the first week. The Fighting Kiffins aren’t pushovers on offense. They weren’t under Rich Rod, so I don’t think that has changed.
The land plankton Ole Miss defense isn’t good, but no one else in the SEC scored 50. Mississippi St. was the only other one who even got to 40, and that was against an LSU team with like negative returning starters if you consider that the Tigers didn’t even have five of the players they expected to have on an already-depleted team a couple of months ago. I’m sure others will do better—there are a lot of smart defensive coaches with a lot more veteran players—but the Pirate (Mike Leach) can be hard to contain even when you have a good veteran defense.
Number 1 may be a surprise. I’m going with Auburn, who beat a ranked (albeit not by me) Kentucky team by 16 and probably would have won by over 20 without a pick-six being called back. Alabama may well beat Auburn easily, but a 19-point win over Missouri (although it was a 32-point lead in the third quarter) isn’t anything to get excited about.
Rankings—SEC only
Auburn
Florida
Alabama
Mississippi St.
Tennessee
Georgia
Texas A&M
Vanderbilt
LSU
Kentucky
Ole Miss
South Carolina
Missouri
Arkansas
Until I’m shown otherwise over the course of a full game, I’m going to assume Arkansas is terrible again and that it’s Georgia’s fault the game was close for a while.
I feel similarly about Tennessee-South Carolina. The Gamecocks kept it close until the end at least. I initially had Missouri ahead of South Carolina, but I changed my mind when I saw that 13 of the Tigers’ 19 points came after Alabama already had 35 on the board.
I’m also going to lean toward Florida having a good offense, so I’m not beating up on Ole Miss too much for the points the Rebels gave up.
LSU needed an ugly pick-six just to look like they were close to as good as Mississippi St. and still lost by twice as much as Vanderbilt lost to Texas A&M. I’ll be surprised if Vandy beats the Fighting Tigers, but I think they should be more encouraged by Week 1 than LSU should be.
I still think Kentucky will be a good team even though they looked out of their element against Auburn. Wildcats fans still should not be as pleasantly surprised as Commodore fans. LSU fans are on a completely different level as far as being spoiled, but they honestly shouldn’t be that upset with a team this inexperienced who had no kind of warm-up for the conference schedule.
Others
Top 10 Interconference-Schedule Teams, AP poll equivalent (meaning if the AP disqualified the same teams I’m disqualifying) in parentheses
Clemson (1)
U. Miami (3)
Pittsburgh (11)
Cincinnati (7)
Central Florida (5)
Notre Dame (2)
North Carolina (6)
Oklahoma St. (8)
Memphis (12)
BYU (10)
Trevor Lawrence (16) was at least partly responsible for three touchdowns in Clemson’s opener against Wake Forest.
Clemson has been competing for national championships every year, and I don’t see why they won’t this year.
U. Miami has beaten two credible opponents in conference, as does Pittsburgh, so I don’t see why I ‘d put Notre Dame ahead. The Irish struggled against Duke, and I don’t know why they played South Florida or why they should get much consideration for that game. I also thought Cincinnati’s win over Army by two touchdowns and Central Florida’s two easy wins merited more consideration.
Oklahoma St. and North Carolina haven’t done anything spectacular, but they each won a conference game against a team that might be OK.
Memphis beat Arkansas St., who beat Kansas St., who beat Oklahoma. That’s how desperate I am just to fill out a top 10, but it makes more sense than putting anyone else in that sentence in the top 10.
BYU blew out Navy and Troy. I couldn’t see a better argument for anyone else.
Unlike the major polls, I have no interest in 0-0 teams. It’s really a shame that teams like Cincinnati lost spots in the rankings due to the inclusion of such teams. ULL, which for some reason calls itself Louisiana, went from 19th to unranked after winning. How does that make sense?
Anyway, the only qualifying teams the AP poll has that I don’t have in my list are Oklahoma, which clearly doesn’t deserve a ranking unless it’s for something they did before Christmas, and Texas, which did only slightly better against Texas Tech than Houston Baptist did.
If you look at my ratings site, the ratings look a bit different. I noticed that the unweighted ratings were included multiple times in the weighted ratings, so previously it wasn’t really an average of the two systems. Without counting the unweighted system four extra times, it wasn’t as necessary to produce such large numbers to create an average.
Before I get to the resumes and arguments, I did update the LSU-Georgia series blog. It’s funny how the series is almost a perfectly even split in both Athens and Baton Rouge, but LSU has a 4-1 lead in Atlanta now.
I thought it was appropriate that LSU came out first given where the Tigers’ best wins are ranked. LSU beat #7 Georgia, #14 Florida, #15 Auburn, and #17 Alabama. Ohio St. beat #12 Penn St., #18 Cincinnati, #21 Wisconsin twice, #23 Michigan, and #25 Florida Atlantic. So only one win was better than Alabama, LSU’s fourth-best win in hindsight.
LSU struggled with a conventional rushing game at times against the Georgia defense in Atlanta on Saturday, but Joe Burrow was able to maintain the ground threat himself. He ran for 53 yards and also caught a deflected pass for 16 yards.
Utah St., Texas A&M, and Texas make seven top-50 wins for LSU; and Indiana makes seven top-50 wins for Ohio St., so it makes sense that the two teams ended up so close. Georgia Southern, another LSU win, is just outside of the top 50 at #52.
This doesn’t factor into my ratings directly; but for the sake of argument, I think it’s also noteworthy that Florida, Auburn, and Alabama only look worse because of subsequent losses to other teams LSU beat or would beat (Florida to Georgia, Auburn to Georgia, and Alabama to Auburn).
For Playoff purposes, I think it’s also important that LSU was the first team to beat Texas (which they did on the road), the first team to beat Florida, and the first team to beat Alabama (which they also did on the road). I know Texas isn’t a great team now, but entering the season with a quarterback who knows what he’s doing and with most of the team that had just won the Sugar Bowl made Texas a very good team relative to others in September. They didn’t do much with that from that point forward, whereas someone like Florida Atlantic is probably a much better team now than they were.
I know Ohio St. has a couple more top-25 wins, but as the teams get lower in the top 25 they don’t count as much. The cumulative victories are still enough for the Buckeyes to be a clear #1 in the unweighted system. The weighted system is triggered by certain targets that aren’t necessarily the same as the final top 10 or top 25, and LSU won that.
It so happened that LSU got to play the other five best teams in the SEC (the teams I mentioned and Texas A&M, who only lost to the higher-ranked SEC teams, all of whom LSU beat, and Clemson). Ohio St. did not get to play Iowa or Minnesota, who were two of the three best teams in the other division. If they had, there would have been no way for LSU to be ahead in my ratings, especially given that Cincinnati and Florida Atlantic turned out to be better on paper than LSU’s non-conference opponents. I don’t think either would have beaten Texas, but they have better resumes.
These wins explain LSU and Ohio St. being so far ahead of anyone else. Clemson didn’t beat anyone in the top 30, and Oklahoma only beat a single top 30 team (which they did narrowly twice).
Justin Fields runs for a long gain in the Buckeyes’ best win, 28-17, against Penn St. in Columbus on November 24. Fields had over 250 all-purpose yards in the game.
Speaking of Oklahoma, they were not able to pass up Memphis. I thought Cincinnati had to win for the Sooners to be #4. That doesn’t bother me though. Let’s look at the best wins. For Oklahoma: #11 Baylor twice, #33 Oklahoma St., #42 Iowa St. (by one point), and #43 Texas. For Memphis: #18 Cincinnati twice, #19 Navy, and #22 SMU.
Similar to Ohio St./LSU, Oklahoma has more quantity; but the quality isn’t as good. Two wins against the top 30 versus four. You have to go into the 60s for Memphis’s next win (Tulane), but I think there needs to be more focus on success versus the top teams. I didn’t even mention how Memphis got screwed out of a chance to beat #34 Temple. Even if it were a fair result, the Owls weren’t much worse than Oklahoma’s loss (#30 Kansas St.).
Clemson’s average win was worse than Oklahoma’s or Memphis’s average win, but Clemson got more credit for their wins because they had one more than Oklahoma or Memphis had. So they would have been #3 even if Memphis and Oklahoma had taken extra bye weeks instead of losing. If a team like Auburn or Florida had finished with one loss, they probably would have been #3 instead; but the schedules of the one-loss teams just weren’t strong enough to challenge for that third spot.
I’ll talk more about non-Power 5 teams at the end.
There were a few odd side effects of recalculating the averages such as the improvements in Minnesota’s and Appalachian St.’s rankings. I had Minnesota right ahead of Alabama going into rivalry week, which went poorly for both, so there wasn’t a great reason to put Alabama ahead in the first place. I’ll also discuss Appalachian St. in the section at the end.
Michigan and Wisconsin went down a good bit, even more than Wisconsin’s loss would have normally dictated. On the other hand, the Badgers went up the rankings dramatically fast after beating Minnesota. I think the most important aspect of the shuffling of the Big Ten teams is Penn St., who counts as a really quality win for the Gophers. Michigan couldn’t beat the Nittany Lions, and Wisconsin didn’t play them. There is sort of a preliminary rating I give each team, and Penn St. basically shows up as a top-ten team there. That’s important to the weighted ratings, which now have a bigger impact on the overall average. Also, in Wisconsin’s case, it’s easier to fall below teams when you lose and they either won or didn’t have to play anyone. The middle of the top 25 is always more crowded as well.
Auburn ended up passing Florida, but I’m OK with that. A team from their division won the SEC, and a team they beat out of conference won the Pac-12. Combine that with the fact that they had to play Alabama and Texas A&M (both of whom they beat) when Florida played easier opponents (such as Tennessee and Kentucky), I think it overcomes the fact that the Gators finished the game better at home against Auburn.
That said, Auburn and Florida were close enough that I can understand making a judgment call based on head to head. But if you’re going to do that to resolve Auburn vs. Florida, you need to follow the same logic when it comes to Auburn vs. Alabama. The Citrus Bowl is supposed to go to the best available SEC team, which was Auburn. Auburn should not be penalized for having to play Florida and Georgia. Auburn and Alabama both lost to LSU, they both beat the other mutual opponents, Auburn beat Alabama, and Auburn also beat Oregon. Also, if it were Alabama, they would be rewarding the team who finished stronger.
Antonio Gibson of Memphis fights for extra yards yesterday against Cincinnati in the Liberty Bowl. The Tigers beat the Bearcats twice in one week to win the AAC.
Degrading Teams from Outside the Major Conferences
It really bothers me how 12 years ago fans blindly accepted a #10 rank for a team like Hawaii, who played absolutely no one of consequence. Their main claim to fame was a last-minute win over a Pac-10 team with a losing record. Previous teams like Tulane (21 years ago) had been even higher when they were undefeated. 1984 was before my time (I was alive but not watching football), but BYU’s big bowl win was over a 5-loss Big Ten team, and they finished #1 in both polls.
I wasn’t in favor of any of those being so highly regarded, but you can go to the opposite extreme as well. Now we have this fancy committee, who I think exists for the purpose of excluding non-Power-5 teams, and fans (and even voters) just accept that no other team is even in the top 15 no matter what they do because the committee tells them so. The first year of the committee was 2014. Marshall was unranked that year by the committee despite reaching #18 in the polls after starting 10-0 (and playing a much worse schedule than Group-of-5 teams who are ranked in the middle of the top-25 at best now). It seems that since then the polls have learned to be more cautious about “outsider” teams. The TV usually uses the committee rankings, so I think the pollsters generally just know what the number next to the team on the digital scoreboard was.
I know the BCS never put a non-Power-5 team like that in the top 2, but they put them in the top 4 multiple times. (Given their schedule and history, Notre Dame is basically Power 5 although they don’t technically play in a conference.) Ten years ago, for instance, the BCS had three teams from outside of the Power 5 in the top six of the standings (Cincinnati, TCU, and Boise St.). TCU even returned to the top 4 the next season. Hold your breath for the Playoff committee to ever do that.
Boise St. even came close to Oklahoma this year. The Broncos had five wins over the top 41 to Oklahoma’s three. If they had played one additional good team from the other division (they avoided San Diego St.), they would have been ahead as well. Maybe the Mountain West should just kick out New Mexico and UNLV (which would have given them almost the same average as the Big XII) and play a schedule like the Big XII does. If they had, Boise St. would have gotten to play Air Force again.
That’s not to say Oklahoma isn’t capable of winning the championship, but there should be consequences for not scheduling decent opponents and even most of the good teams you beat not scheduling decent opponents out of conference. The Sooners’ best non-conference opponent was Houston, which finished with a losing record playing in Memphis’s division. Baylor’s best non-conference opponent was Texas-San Antonio, #114 of 130 teams. Oklahoma St. also didn’t play anyone out of conference who finished with a winning record. Tulsa also played in Memphis’s division unsuccessfully Oregon St. had a better season than expected, but I only have the Beavers #85. Houston and Tulsa were in the 90s, between UTSA and Oregon St. Some other Big XII teams scheduled all right, but I’m not sure it helps to say “At least the team we lost to beat 6-6 Mississippi St.!” It’s not worth bragging about at all to beat a team who lost to Iowa or who lost to LSU.
Appalachian St. only had one loss, and six wins against the top 70 isn’t bad given their conference. They’re a much more credible member of the top 10 than that Hawaii team I mentioned , for instance. I did think it was right for them to be behind Notre Dame, who only played a few teams who weren’t in the top 70. Boston College was actually the Irish’s eighth-best win at #71, but you get the idea. The Mountaineers scheduled well out of conference, but they still didn’t get as high-quality of a win as Navy. Their loss (to Georgia Southern) was not as forgivable as Michigan or Georgia. Given Baylor’s struggles against non-bowl teams, losses to the only top-30 team they played, and lack of any serious attempt to schedule anyone out of conference, I don’t mind Appalachian St. being ahead of the Bears.
I thought Mississippi St. would win. People will say they didn’t deserve it because of the stupid celebration penalty, but Ole Miss didn’t deserve to get a first and goal from a phantom pass interference call.
Mississippi St. is going to a bowl game for a 10th consecutive year for the first time, but they don’t mention that they made it one year without a winning record because there weren’t enough bowl-eligible teams by virtue of six wins (but you can’t have 7 losses, and at least five of the wins have to be over FBS opponents).
Mississippi St. RB Kylin Hill led the offense with 132 yards, which not only led all rushers but was more yards than any of the game’s three quarterbacks had passing. The Bulldogs won the Egg Bowl in Starkville on Thursday, their first home win in the series since 2013.
Congrats to Virginia for finally beating Virginia Tech. In the short term, that probably means a loss to Clemson, but that could also come with an Orange Bowl berth.
I’m somewhat shocked that TCU lost its chance at bowl eligibility in a home game against West Virginia. I guess they get up for the good teams and not so much for some of the others.
The combination of the TCU loss and the Missouri bowl ban being upheld apparently gives more room for G5 conferences. An Ole Miss win would have made yet another spot available. I don’t believe it will be necessary to make other teams eligible this year.
SEC Bowl Projections
If Missouri had been eligible, there would have been 10 SEC bowl teams. As it stands, the Independence, Birmingham, and one other bowl (possibly the Belk) will have to do without SEC teams.
It’s expected Georgia and Alabama will be in NY6 bowls. It’s possible Georgia could be in the Playoff along with LSU. The mostly likely candidate for the Citrus will be Florida. Cue the clips of Steve Spurrier mocking Tennessee for being in that game. Auburn would probably be good for the Outback. The Outback is officially even with the other bowls (apart from Independence and Birmingham), but it seems like in most years it gets the team that just barely misses the Citrus. Auburn has better wins but one more loss, including a loss to Florida.
Texas A&M would make the most sense for the Texas Bowl, and Tennessee would make the most sense for the Music City Bowl since they can make pretty easy respective bus rides. The Liberty Bowl (in Memphis) also might make a play for Tennessee. Kentucky will probably get whichever Tennessee bowl is left over. That would leave Mississippi St. for the Gator Bowl. I don’t see any cause for upset or massive controversy with any of those.
One more of those bowls mentioned in the last paragraph would be without an SEC team if a third SEC team ends up in a non-playoff NY6 bowl.
LSU-Texas A&M Game and Series
Speaking of the SEC, I’ve updated the blog for the LSU-Texas A&M Series. That series of blogs is written as neutrally as I can, but I’m going to have to break objectivity for the moment. I watched the game until the end hoping for more points by LSU’s second-team offense, but I don’t know if LSU will ever break the series margin of victory record that the Aggies set in 1914 (54 points). On the show Off the Bench, someone asked what final score it would take to get the bad taste out of ones mouth from last year. I said 75-0, but 50-7 will have to do.
Ja’Marr Chase runs for a 78-yard TD catch. Chase averaged over 28 yards per catch and had a total of 197 receiving yards against the Aggies yesterday in Baton Rouge.
I go into more detail in the blog of course, but I also wanted to mention it was LSU’s largest margin of victory in series history, which had been 37 (in 1971, Gene Stallings’ last season). That win had also followed a two-point upset loss in the previous year that ended a significant LSU unbeaten streak in the series (10 in that case; it had been 7 going into last year’s game).
Playoff Competition
In the top 25, Memphis and Cincinnati essentially switched places. The Tigers will have to beat Cincinnati again to win the American Conference.
I said that Oklahoma, Baylor, and Utah (the three possible one-loss major-conference teams) would move up relative to other teams, and two of the three (Oklahoma and Utah) passed up Notre Dame on the strength of their wins Saturday. None of them passed up Boise St., but those same two are a fraction of a point away from doing so. Oregon, Baylor, and Oklahoma would all count for more than Hawaii, whom Boise will be playing in the Mountain West championship game.
It would be tough to pass up Memphis if the Tigers win their championship game, but I honestly don’t see why Memphis shouldn’t be in the conversation other than the fact that the committee doesn’t like G5 teams.
The American right now isn’t really inferior to how the Big East used to be. In 2007, West Virginia would have played for a national championship had they not lost to a losing Pittsburgh team for the second loss on the final week. Virginia Tech did play Florida St. for the national title in 1999. In 2009, the top four of the final BCS standings included Cincinnati of the Big East and TCU of the Mountain West.
In those years, you had to be in the top two. So it’s not far-fetched that a team like Memphis could be in the top four when you’re going to have a winner of a conference with only a couple of ranked teams and a weak non-conference schedule as competition. I know the programs are mostly different now, but I think Memphis, SMU, Cincinnati, and Navy are better than West Virginia, Rutgers, and Louisville right now.
I also think it’s harder to go undefeated against Cincinnati, SMU, and Navy than it is to go undefeated against Baylor and whatever teams tied for third in the Big XII you want to pick to compare. The most direct point of comparison is that SMU beat TCU, who took Baylor to overtime and gave Oklahoma a scare before the referees bailed out the Sooners.
As for Utah, if they beat Oregon, that will be the only top-25 win. Second- and third-best wins would be BYU and Washington, who have 5 losses apiece. There is no reason to think the better American teams wouldn’t have a good chance against those two either. So even if I grant that Cincinnati is a lesser opponent than Baylor or Oregon (and I’m not convinced they are), I think we need to look past the best team you beat. South Carolina has the best win in college football this season (whether you ask me or the committee), but they didn’t even have a mildly successful season.
As for overall strength of schedule, I have Memphis 63rd, Utah 76th, Oklahoma 89th, and Baylor 105th. That is only an average of the FBS opponents, but I don’t think it’s very important to talk about who had the best FCS opponent (it was probably Memphis anyway since Southern beat Grambling to qualify for the SWAC championship game, and none of the others had successful conference campaigns).
Anyway, the point of all this is if Memphis comes out ahead of one of these conference champions, I don’t think that’s an indictment of my system. Just like it wasn’t an indictment of (what I now call) my unweighted system in 2009 when I agreed with the BCS about Cincinnati being #3. We just have a committee now that uses “the eye test” (which I think is mostly a prestige test in reality) instead. The point of computer ratings (at least for me) is to take out that kind of bias.
The loser of either (or both) the Big Ten or SEC championship could be ahead of the winners of the Big XII, Pac-12, and American conferences for that fourth spot here (and possibly with the committee) anyway.
Conference Comparisons
As far as conference strength, the SEC almost caught up with the Big Ten in best average team. I thought they would improve by going at least 3-1 against the ACC on the final weekend, but I wasn’t sure if they could overtake the Big Ten. The Big Ten also has a slight edge in top 25 teams on my list, 6 to 5.
One area where the SEC is better is against other Power 5 opponents. The SEC is 9-6 in such games, and the Big Ten is 5-5. So playing 50% more opponents in that category with the same number of teams says something for the SEC. On the other hand, the SEC has played a lot more FCS opponents, so I guess it balances out somewhat. The SEC has also played four games against potential champions of the six best conferences (A&M and South Carolina lost to Clemson, Ole Miss lost to Memphis, and Auburn beat Oregon), while the Big Ten has only played one (Ohio St. beat Cincinnati).
I’ve written so much about LSU/Alabama over the years, I have a whole page of links just for that. Yes, LSU hasn’t won since the 9-6 win in Tuscaloosa in 2011, although people forget the game came down to one possession in both 2012 and 2014. I also haven’t seen much mention that over about the last 50 years LSU does better on the road in this series. You’d think from the coverage that Albama hasn’t lost at home since they hired Bear Bryant and that every game was 20+ to 0.
I haven’t done a meaningful breakdown of what’s going on in my top 25 apart from the top 10 in a good while, so I thought now would be a good time to catch up with no LSU recap. I also don’t think we need to introduce Alabama and what they do well. I covered some of it here.
American Conference
The best Big Ten and SEC teams were idle, and the only ACC team that has much to offer played Wofford; so now seems like a good time to highlight the American conference.
SMU finally lost, so my whole top 10 is now Power Five teams. The American still has five teams in the top 25 though, which is tied with the SEC and the Big Ten for the best.
QB Brady White threw for over 10 yards per pass and three touchdowns in the 54-48 win over SMU.
The controversial loss to Temple is the
only reason Memphis isn’t undefeated (although to be fair they barely
escaped against Tulsa). Cincinnati’s only loss is to #1 Ohio St. I
don’t factor in margin of victory unless the home team wins a game
decided by less than a field goal in regulation, so 42 is the same as
4 in my formula. The average home advantage is about 3 points, and
obviously that happens to be a field goal. Whether you need a field
goal or a touchdown at the end of the game is often a big difference,
so it seems like a perfect place to draw the line. SMU’s first loss
was the one the Mustangs just suffered against Memphis, so I don’t
see anything wrong with their rank either.
Staying in the same conference but
skipping down a few spots, Navy and Central Florida have recovered
well from early losses. Navy suffered its only loss to Memphis, so
that gives even more context to that ranking. Navy beat Tulane,
which as I mentioned is in the top 40, and Air Force, which rose to
#21 after beating Army. Central Florida had a relatively ugly loss
to Pitt, so that’s why the Knights are last in the top 25. The loss
to Cincinnati wasn’t bad obviously. I doubt the American will have 5
ranked teams here at the end of the season, but they’ve seemed pretty
legitimate so far.
Top 10
I don’t have a specific reason Clemson fell below Penn St., but a number of the purple/orange Tigers’ opponents have been stagnant or losing value. I’m sure Florida St.’s loss to U. Miami, which Clemson does not play and will not play, didn’t help. It will generally hurt a team if a team in their own division loses to a team in the other division. It would hurt Ohio St. slightly if Minnesota beat Penn St., although the Buckeyes haven’t even played the Nittany Lions yet.
Alabama barely stayed in the computer top 10 since their schedule is bad. I’d still put the SEC top 5 up against anyone else’s, but Alabama hasn’t played anyone else in the top 5 of the conference (or any other conference except arguably CUSA). In previous years the worst team or two was around #90 and sometimes the rest were all in the top 75. The SEC does have 11 teams in the top 75, which is still very respectable; but Arkansas and Vanderbilt are among the dozen worst teams in FBS football (with losses to San Jose St. and UNLV, respectively), so they bring down the average significantly. Ole Miss isn’t too much better at #104; the Rebels’ only FBS wins have come over Arkansas and Vanderbilt.
Bama only fell one spot in the computer
formula, which isn’t unusual after a bye week, especially one in
which one of your best opponents lost and another played a team
outside of the top 100. They only fall three spots here because I
had moved them up extra spots last week.
Unlike LSU and Auburn, the Tide does
not have an annual cross-divisional game against one of the top teams
of the East. This year they drew South Carolina and Tennessee, two
of the worst teams in the East. The Tide’s best non-conference
opponents on the schedule are #67 Duke and #78 Southern Miss. By
contrast, LSU has beaten three teams in out-of-conference play alone
that rate at least 14 spots higher than Duke. Auburn has the best
non-conference win in the nation (over #5 Oregon), and their win over
#40 Tulane helps too. In conference play, the one advantage Alabama
has over LSU (but not Auburn) is having played Texas A&M already;
but the Aggies only rate 9 spots higher than Mississippi St., who has
played LSU (and Auburn) but not Alabama. LSU also has not yet taken
the hit to the strength of schedule that playing Ole Miss and
Arkansas will entail.
Hopefully that explains how a two-loss
team is ahead of an undefeated team in their own division (I couldn’t
let that stand in the list below though) and how the AP #1 and #2 are
nothing close in my formula.
Other than switching Alabama and Auburn (who only has about 1/10 of 1% more points than their rivals), I decided not to make any other changes. Whether Alabama beats LSU or not, it would cause a bigger disruption if I put all the top-10 undefeateds in the top 7. Someone will also lose between Minnesota and Penn St., and whoever wins it will look like the loser is being unduly punished. If it’s the lower team, they’ll have lost a few spots before the game even started. If it’s the higher team, it will look like they’re being dropped too far for losing to a top-7 team, who in turn isn’t being rewarded enough for the big win.
The Rest
Like a couple of the other teams I mentioned, Michigan seems to be clawing back from relatively early losses.
Likewise, Georgia’s win over Florida went some way in repairing the Bulldogs’ resume. Auburn would be another huge help.
Boise St. can only go so far with the loss to BYU and the best non-conference win being Florida St.. Another team that barely beat Florida St. was Wake Forest, who has a habit of barely beating opponents; but the Demon Deacons still have only one loss (to unranked Louisville).
Oklahoma’s one meaningful win (over
Texas, which has understandable losses but a lack of wins to be
excited about) only goes so far. Notre Dame, Florida, and Wisconsin
are two-loss teams capable of top-10 wins, but there are weak spots
on the schedule that put them significantly behind a team like
Auburn.
The only top-25 team I haven’t
mentioned is Appalachian St., who barely stayed in the top 25 after
losing to Georgia Southern. That’s been a fairly big rivalry going
back to the schools’ I-AA days, so these things happen. I’m still
going to be very interested in how the Mountaineers do against South
Carolina.
Outside of the top 25, things are looking good for other Louisiana schools. I mentioned LSU and Tulane, but I didn’t mention there are two other Louisiana teams between the two, Louisiana Tech and UL-Lafayette. Louisiana Tech looks like the best team in its conference right now. I wish LSU had played one of them instead of Northwestern St. The Tigers’ non-conference schedule would look even better.
I think my one-paragraph prediction about this game (last paragraph here) was exactly right. There were some things that were somewhat surprising though.
I’ve updated the records here. I had forgotten that other than Alabama, the only two teams that have beaten Auburn a majority of the time (with at least 10 games played) are from Louisiana: LSU and Tulane.
I advised taking Auburn and the points. I said that I wouldn’t have been surprised if
Auburn scored about what Florida did and actually thought Auburn might have scored
more. What I didn’t expect was that 24
would have been enough to win. The
visiting Tigers were still most of the way to Florida’s point total of 28.
I said that Auburn would probably stop LSU from
scoring a couple of times more than Florida did. LSU had four scoring drives
rather than six, so that was correct. I
didn’t expect LSU would get to what would have been field-goal range last year
about six times with no points to show for it though.
That’s the second game in a row in which LSU struggled to score touchdowns after driving deep in the opponent’s territory, especially early. I don’t know if that’s a long-term issue or those were just two pretty good defenses with a relatively short field. I know Mississippi St. has given up a lot of points over the course of the year, but some of that was the fault of their anemic offense. The Bulldog defense at least seemed fresh with home crowd behind it for 25 minutes against LSU before the Tigers scored two touchdowns late in the first half last week.
Clyde Edwards-Hellaire, with 136 yards, was the top rusher of the game as LSU was able to control time of possession for one of the only times this season.
I was surprised that LSU committed two turnovers,
one of which set up an Auburn touchdown.
There were also two officiating decisions that assisted in that score
(both the turnover and the touchdown itself), but I’ll talk about officiating
later. Anyway, that actually brings up
one unexpected positive for the Bayou Bengals.
I didn’t think Auburn would be incapable of a touchdown drive beyond 22
yards in the first 57 minutes of play.
The sacks and tackles for loss didn’t shock me. I knew
that was an area that Auburn was good at.
I still think LSU has a good offensive line, but it’s not going to stop
a really good front seven (possibly the best LSU will face) every time.
I did like how Burrow ran and threw across the
backfield to avert the pass rush. I knew
that would be necessary to avoid some of the rush. Having more quick,
short-yardage plays helped LSU win the time of possession. This was more of a traditional LSU win in
that way.
Another positive was the halftime adjustments. A good offensive coach like Dan Mullen or Gus
Malzahn can come up with a scoring drive to start the half, but Florida didn’t
score a second time in the whole half and Auburn didn’t score a second time until
about 24 minutes of play later.
Mississippi St.’s only score of the second half was in the closing
minute. Northwestern St. and Utah St.
were completely shut out in the respective second halves.
I hope that LSU is at least within a couple of scores of Alabama after the Tide’s opening drive of the second half. The Tigers could be ahead for all I know, but it really hurt their chances when Alabama scored a touchdown 75 seconds before the half last year to make it realistically a three-score game (two touchdowns and two two-point conversions isn’t necessarily realistic). Nine points instead of 16 would have mattered there. Nine points was the halftime deficit against Auburn two years ago, so I think that’s a good bare-minimum goal if we don’t have a good first half. I think the defense would give the offense a chance to catch up in the third and fourth quarters in that scenario.
Tua Tagovailoa ran for more yards on this play than LSU had rushing yards in the whole game last year in Baton Rouge. Alabama also had over 100 more passing yards.
Going back to the Auburn score to open the half, I
thought that even though Auburn scored, it was a moral victory of sorts for the
defense to come up with a stop inside the 10.
LSU has been good at that this season.
Auburn was good too, but hopefully Alabama isn’t as good at that if the
Tigers have such chances in Tuscaloosa. LSU responded by driving to the one-yard
line when they were stopped at fourth and goal, but the ball pretty much stayed
on the Auburn half of the field until LSU scored to take the lead for
good.
I’m not going to go into all the calls, but the
officiating was terrible, so I was glad LSU was able to withstand that.
The hit on Burrow looked bad. I thought helmet-to-helmet hits when a guy is
going out of bounds was against the rules.
The TV rules expert said Burrow wasn’t defenseless, but I’ve certainly
seen other players being tackled or going out of bounds ruled as defenseless. Those guys seem more like PR agents for the
refs than unbiased arbiters anyway.
There was also kind of a hip check by an LSU
defender that was called pass interference.
I didn’t think it denied the opportunity to catch the ball, and the
receiver wasn’t even looking for the ball.
Pass interference should only be called when it conceivably could have
been a catch without the interference, which was the case when there was a
non-call in the end zone at the end of the first half. I’m not saying everything they called or didn’t
call was in Auburn’s favor, but they definitely favored the visitors.
We had a couple of players, Tyrion Davis-Price and
Derrick Dillon, who reacted to what should have been penalties on other
players. That accounted for 30 of the
118 yards of penalties called on LSU. If
the ref doesn’t call something, a player doesn’t need to make it worse by
having them call a penalty on LSU. You also
can’t count on offsetting penalties even when they’re deserved (which was a big
part of the reason LSU lost to Alabama in 2014). The flags themselves were justified though.
Top-10 opponents
Anyway, LSU is now 8-2 against top-10 opponents over
the last three seasons. You can guess who the two exceptions were. Alabama is 6-2 (losses to Clemson and Auburn),
and Ohio St. is 6-1 (loss to Oklahoma). Those three teams happen to be in close to a
three-way tie atop the AP poll this week.
The Tide has not played a top-10 team this season, and LSU has played three top-10 teams. How is this possible when they’re in the same division of the same conference? Alabama has not played Auburn yet (obviously), their best out-of-conference opponent was Duke (LSU’s was Texas when the Longhorns were still undefeated), and their annual cross-divisional rival is Tennessee (LSU’s is Florida).
Before someone says I’m wrong about the top-10 opponents, I know there was an ESPN graphic posted after the Florida game about how Alabama and Ohio St. had more wins over top-10 teams; but that was going back to 2016, the year that Les Miles coached 4 games before giving way to Orgeron. LSU beat three ranked teams that year, but none were in the top 10. This gave the other programs a head start, and I don’t think it’s really fair to expect an interim coach to beat top-10 teams anyway.
Race for #1
Most teams have played 8 games. A couple have even played 9. I think we’ve progressed far enough into the
season to completely ignore last year from now on. That being the case, although Clemson is
still what I’d call a good undefeated team, I no longer consider them #1. LSU’s best two opponents (Auburn and Florida)
are better than Ohio St.’s best two opponents (Cincinnati and Wisconsin), but
the Buckeyes have had a better schedule week to week. Indiana rates higher than Texas (I don’t care
how they were ranked at the time of the game), Michigan St. rates higher than
Utah St., Florida Atlantic rates higher than Mississippi St., and Nebraska
rates higher than Georgia Southern. I
don’t think anyone lower is worth mentioning.
I don’t put much of a premium on margin of victory,
and it has nothing to do with why Ohio St. is #1 in my computer formula; but
the way the games have played out also indicates to me that there are fewer
teams that Ohio St. would struggle against than teams that LSU would struggle
against.
Ohio St. is the clear #1 in both the weighted and
unweighted versions of my formula as well.
For instance, in the unweighted system, only 0.007 separates Penn St.
from Clemson. In the weighted system,
0.24 separates the two. Ohio St’s
respective leads over LSU are 0.093 (over 13 times the difference between
Clemson and Penn St.) and 1.911 (about 8 times the difference between Clemson
and Penn St.).
My educated guess is that if LSU and Ohio St. both win in two weeks, LSU will finally have enough points to go ahead, but it matters how prior opponents of the respective teams do and how opponents of those teams do over the next two weeks as well. Also, there is more reason to be skeptical that LSU will beat Alabama than there is that Ohio St. will beat Maryland.
I mention two weeks instead of next week because #1
Ohio St., #2 LSU, #4 Penn St., #6 Alabama, and #7 Minnesota all have byes next
week. #3 Clemson plays Wofford, so I don’t
think there is any concern of a major change among the top teams next week. If #5
SMU beats Memphis, the Mustangs may move up a spot or two; but that will
probably be temporary given that SMU will not stand to gain many computer
points by being East Carolina on November 9.
Kansas and the Big XII
Baylor, an undefeated team I haven’t mentioned much
and possibly the last good hope for the Big XII (at least unless a series of
losses by others puts one-loss Oklahoma back in the top 4), starts a
challenging three-game stretch on November 9 as well. Unfortunately, they won’t be playing SMU
since the Southwest Conference disbanded in 1995; but they travel to Forth
Worth on that day before hosting Oklahoma and Texas in the subsequent two
weeks. November 23, which is the day
Baylor plays the last of those teams, is also a big day for currently-undefeated
teams since Ohio St. plays Penn St. on that day.
I don’t know whose idea it was for Baylor to travel
to Lawrence, Kansas, on Rivalry Week unless they thought it was basketball; but
Les Miles’ Jayhawks have been looking good the past couple of weeks under new
offensive coordinator Brent Dearmon. It might seem far-fetched for a team with only
3 wins right now to beat a team who’s currently undefeated, but something
similar happened during Rivalry Week in 2001.
Les Miles’ first Oklahoma St. team entered the game against #4 Oklahoma
with only 3 wins and yet beat the Sooners. Games like that can be tough when it’s
the closest thing the opponent will get to a bowl game.
KU would need some luck, but they certainly had that last night. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a team have the potential winning field goal blocked only to simply try again from a closer distance on the next play. Combined with the game in Austin I mentioned here, it was the second consecutive week that a field goal on the final play decided the winner in a Kansas game. Also, although Texas and Oklahoma may have seen better years, I don’t know how many teams can beat the two in consecutive weeks and still be ready to ward off a potential upset on the road. Maybe Baylor is just that special, but I have my doubts.
The ball peaks just a few yards downfield from where it was kicked by Kansas after being blocked on the second-to-last play by Texas Tech. The Red Raiders would fumble the ball; and Kansas would recover, allowing the Jayhawks to win on the last play.
Top 25
NOTE: I only gave myself leeway of two spots from the computer ranking. This was only done for a handful of teams though.
The Bayou Blogger 
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Auburn, Big Ten, College Football, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Memphis, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio St., Ole Miss, Oregon, Oregon St., Penn St., SEC, Texas, Texas A&M, Toledo, Troy, Tulane, Washington, Washington St.
Week 11 Top 25 2023
In College Football, College Football Playoff, General LSU, History, Post-game, Preview, Rankings, Rankings Commentary on November 17, 2023 at 9:00 AMI was supposed to have time to do this on Wednesday but ended up having an unusually long (and rainy) work day instead, so I’m writing this on Thursday night (Friday morning for many of you).
Best-laid plans of mice and A&M boosters, I suppose.
Recap of LSU/Florida and Rivalry
It wasn’t because there was nothing to write about. I’m happy to make fun of Texas A&M and Florida, who lost a fifth straight to LSU. No one else has a losing streak to LSU that goes back to the national championship season (unless Vanderbilt’s streak of two counts). Although the LSU/Florida series dates back to 1937 and has been played annually since 1971, this was the first time LSU won five straight. Florida had once won nine straight from 1988 to 1996, but LSU now has its first lead in the series since then. If LSU doesn’t win another game this season, I’ll still feel some measure of success from that fact.
While it is unlikely that the LSU/Florida series will continue annually beyond that, the Tigers will at least make the return trip to Gainesville next year. I will endeavor to update the key Rivalry Series in the next week or so.
Not to be bitter about it, but the damage is done anyway. Having to play Florida every year, which included going to the Swamp every even year (apart from 2016), at least more often than not placed the Tigers at a disadvantage in the SEC West as far back as 1996. I guess it did in years before that too, but LSU was so bad it didn’t really matter. LSU had also played Auburn, which was strong for roughly the same time period, on the road in even years. The combined influence of those two games prevented LSU from winning the West in an even year until last season. The other SEC Championship appearances had been 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011, and 2019. I acknowledge a certain crimson opponent played a role as well, but LSU’s unique struggles with them really only started in the 2012 calendar year.
LSU had to play Auburn every year by virtue of being in the West (that series will not be played next year), but had the Florida series not been made permanent, playing a different SEC East opponent could have made the difference in 1996 (when LSU would been one game better rather than losing a tie-breaker with Alabama) and 2006 (when LSU would have won a tie-breaker with Arkansas, but the additional loss made that irrelevant).
Given that the game was typically in early October though, it put the Tigers behind in 8-ball in several additional seasons. For example, LSU would have known going into the Arkansas game in 2000 that a win would have sent them to Atlanta (ironically, they went to Atlanta anyway to play in the Peach Bowl). Florida dealt LSU its first loss in 2008, and QB Jarrett Lee was never the same again. If it weren’t for his late-season penchant for throwing “pick sixes”, LSU could have easily won all but one other SEC game. LSU also nearly lost to Troy later in that season (seems like that would have taught the AD a lesson, but I digress). I doubt it affected the SEC championship games, but Florida also dealt LSU its first losses in 2012 and 2018, respectively.
Anyway, this was the largest win by either team since LSU’s 41-11 win in 2011. I’ll give the Gators credit for keeping it close for a while though. It didn’t help LSU that, as a result of a poorly-fielded kickoff, the Gators were able to score twice in just a couple of minutes to take a 28-24 lead in the third quarter. Jayden Daniels is a little bit more reliable for generating points than hoping for points off of turnovers and other miscues though, so the Tigers outscored the Gators 28-7 the rest of the way.
The LSU defense and coordinator Matt House continue to get a lot of flak, but keeping Alabama within one possession at least until the fourth quarter (if not the entire rest of the game) and keeping Florida from getting a lead the whole game would have been something to be proud of. It’s just not helpful if you put them on the field with their backs close to the end zone seconds after the previous drive ends.
Response to College Football Playoff Top 25
I’ll start by saying there is nothing really new in terms of grievances with the College Football Playoff’s top 25. Oregon’s being ahead of Alabama and Texas continues to make no sense if you care about schedule strength.
At least Oregon St. is no longer the top 2-loss team, having been passed by Missouri. I don’t expect the Beavers will stay the one of the top 2-loss teams indefinitely anyway given games against Washington and Oregon coming up. If they win both, I’ll be happy for them to be the top 2-loss team though. More on them below.
I’d also like them to care more about the schedules of teams like Arizona and North Carolina, but those are far enough down that I’m not sure they really matter. The Arizona/Arizona St. game might actually be game though. It looked like it was going to be a pillow fight earlier in the year.
Comments about My Ratings
I had a bit of time to smooth out the rough edges this weekend and I still liked the results to add the original ratings back in as I described last week. It also makes sense for some of the teams lower in the ratings because there is a number I have to adjust to factor in the bad teams so one bad loss doesn’t swallow multiple wins. I can re-add the original ratings without that adjustment though, which I think is the fairer approach.
I was also able to do conference ratings and strength of schedule. I will wait another week to see if the strength of schedule is giving teams enough credit in the ratings. That might also be a further adjustment to the formula. The same basic numbers and computations are being used regardless, it’s just been a continuing balancing act over years between giving credit for wins and giving credit for quality of competition.
It’s amazing that LSU, Ole Miss, and Penn St. have only seven combined losses and are still in the top 7 of the strength of schedule. Duke is the only other team in the top 12 with a winning record. Others in the top 20 with winning records are Utah, Kansas St., Kansas, Notre Dame, Missouri, and USC. I did opt not to put Kansas in the top 25 below due to some of the losses they have though.
I think it’s fair that even though Michigan and Georgia still don’t have great schedules that this recognizes their schedules are now comparable enough that they should be ranked ahead of teams with losses like Texas and Alabama. I think barring any major upsets (based on rank, not necessarily based on betting line), most people would agree that the Top 4 should be Big Ten champion, SEC champion, undefeated Florida St., and undefeated Washington. If Alabama were to lose the SEC championship, the next beneficiary (for now) of a potential upset should be Texas if they win out. This recognizes that.
The conference ratings weren’t very surprising. The SEC and Big Ten are neck and neck, but I think the SEC will pull away slightly next week given the out-of-conference games. There are non-conference games the week after that, but I don’t like Kentucky’s, Florida’s, or South Carolina’s chances against ACC opponents (I’m not too worried about Georgia), so that might bring the SEC closer to the Big Ten again.
The SEC would still be ahead after adding the new programs to the Big Ten and the SEC. That’s not really proof of too much about next season anyway given that Washington, Oklahoma, etc., can’t get as many good wins without hurting someone else in their respective future conferences next season. It might mean that the Big Ten will be harder to beat in future seasons; but on the other hand, maybe Oregon and Washington fall back to the more mediocre status they occupied not too long ago.
Washington is very close to getting the top spot in the computer ratings. I definitely think the Huskies will have that spot with a win, but they might lose it the week after (Washington St. wouldn’t count for nearly as much as Michigan would) and reclaim it the week after that (Oregon would count for a lot more than Iowa would). I expect to keep Ohio St. #1 here however for the next couple of weeks absent a loss or something really concerning. I’ll be very interested in how the ratings shape up after the conference championships though.
The initial line I saw had Washington barely favored over Oregon St., and then I saw one in which the Beavers were favored. I definitely think that’s the big game this weekend. As I’ve mentioned, the Huskies have a couple of very narrow wins at home, so playing a team that’s been playing well on the road might be a challenge. They might gain more support in the polls and the CFP with the win also, but those are much more stubborn than my ratings are.
I feel bad for Oregon St. that they lost a close game in Pullman when Wazzu was playing well, but the Cougars have gone down like the Hindenburg since then.
Three of the Honorable Mentions got promoted last week, so keep an eye on those. This week, all but one is in a Power Five conference, so that’s a noticeable change. That one other team is Coastal Carolina, the only one that hasn’t been ranked at some point this season.
My Top 25
Honorable mention: Kansas, Oklahoma St., Coastal Carolina, North Carolina, Southern CA