I started writing this at a reasonable time, but I had some distractions and decided to add an extra section. I settled on just one picture to get it published faster. Even my cat is wondering what’s taking so long.
CFP Reaction and Playoff Considerations
The committee has had last-second changes of heart before, but I think they’re still telegraphing pretty clearly that the Pac-12 championship game is for a playoff spot. They don’t care if Oregon only has the 52nd toughest schedule, compared to Alabama having the #5 schedule (vs. FBS), Ohio St. having the #25 schedule, and Texas having the #31 schedule. (Texas did not play an FCS opponent, so I’d argue for the Longhorns ahead of the Buckeyes assuming a win this weekend.) They just love Bo Nix and his passes that travel all of five yards in the air regardless of the competition. I’m usually for undefeated teams that keep getting lucky (like Washington) to lose but not in this case. I don’t dislike Oregon or Bo Nix, I’ve talked about him and his family positively on this blog. I just hate these hype campaigns and biased “eye tests” that ignore facts.
Anyway, a secondary issue is that Ohio St. is too high as the #2 one-loss team according to the committee, but I highly doubt Alabama stays behind the idle Buckeyes if the Tide beat Georgia. I’d be more worried if I were Texas. I’ve talked about how if it came down to Texas and Alabama, Texas would go ahead due to head-to-head; but there is no such issue if the last spot were to come down to Ohio St. and Alabama. Just keep that in mind if you’re counting on Saban not being in the Playoff.
I did notice something that I believe helps a potential argument for an SEC team to either be in the playoff with one loss or be #1 even if there are multiple undefeated teams. It’s that the top 5 teams in the SEC (Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss, Missouri, and LSU) have only lost to each other or to a team in the CFP top 7 (or in my top 7).
The only two home losses by the top 5 of the SEC were Alabama to Texas and Missouri to LSU. I mention that because it generally took a hostile environment combined with a very good team to bring these teams down. I think given that Ole Miss had to play both championship contenders (both on the road) and beat LSU, they belong ahead of Missouri, but that’s another mystery of the committee. Maybe they just don’t like Lane Kiffin’s tweets.
So if Alabama wins, they will have beaten three of the four other teams in the top 5 (all but Missouri). If Georgia wins, they will also have beaten three of the four other teams (all but LSU).
Anyway, you obviously don’t get that kind of quality anywhere else. I have been an advocate for Oregon St., but they have four losses now and even this committee who loves the Pac-12 only has them 20th. That’s a big drop off. They lost to a Washington St. team who finished with a losing record. Arizona, who’s become the darling Pac-12 team lately, lost to a mediocre USC team and lost to Mississippi St., who like Wazzu finishes with a losing record.
You can go three teams deep in the Big Ten, but Big Ten #4 Iowa has that ugly loss to Minnesota, who also finished with a losing record. It wasn’t necessarily a fair loss, but maybe if the Golden Gophers had needed another score to win, it would have changed the way the game ended. The point is the top of the SEC isn’t nearly as threatened with mediocrity as the top of these other conferences has been.
I shouldn’t even have to mention the Big XII. The team that made the title game (they don’t have divisions, so they’re not #4 and lucked into the title game like Iowa did, they actually finished second overall in the conference {winning a tie-breaker over Oklahoma}) lost to South Alabama by 26, to Iowa St. by 7, and to Central Florida by 42! Those three teams each barely qualified for a bowl, and South Alabama is 6-6 despite playing in the Sun Belt. Losing to Oklahoma, a team who lost to Oklahoma St., should count against Texas even if the Longhorns will have beaten the Cowboys. And it shouldn’t be brushed off as, “Texas only lost a team who tied for second in their conference, no big deal.”
I took some criticism this week in one of the discussion groups I’m in for not thinking head-to-head tie-breakers are always fair. The Big XII is a perfect example. Texas was the #1 team. I think if two teams are tied for second, the first question should be “did you play the #1 team?” If the answer for one is yes and the other is no, the team who answered yes should win the tie-breaker. You don’t reward the team who answered no and lost to worst teams (Oklahoma St. and Kansas went a combined 12-6 in the Big XII; Iowa St. and Central Florida went a combined 9-9).
So let’s say undefeated Florida St., undefeated Michigan, 1-loss Oregon, 1-loss Georgia, 1-loss Washington, 1-loss Ohio St., 1-loss Texas, and 1-loss Alabama. We can put the undefeated teams aside, but I think when you rank the one-loss teams by resume, the first thing you should ask is “was the one loss to one of the teams in this pool of playoff candidates”. If it was, those teams should get a leg up. In this case, that would be all the 1-loss teams except Texas. Then we’d talk about wins. Texas and Alabama will have had the two best wins in my opinion, but then who’s #2 and #3? Texas’s would be borderline top-25 teams Kansas St. and Oklahoma St. Alabama’s would be solid top-15 teams Ole Miss and LSU. I don’t think you ignore that because Texas was the better team on a given Saturday in September.
I’m not saying how you sort out the rest of that mess if it happens, but I am saying I think in that scenario I’d like to see Alabama with a higher ranking than Texas. I like a fair national championship system more than I like to see Nick Saban upset, but it’s a close call, so I won’t be all that angry if Texas goes ahead. This isn’t SEC homerism either. I mentioned Georgia. I’d have to see how the numbers shake out, but right now I have Georgia 81st in schedule strength vs. FBS and Texas 31st. They’ll get closer this weekend but not that much closer; and as mentioned, I’d give Texas an edge for not having played an FCS opponent also. In addition, I’m also in favor of resolving doubts in favor of conference champions, at least while we still have a 4-team playoff. So I’d want a 1-loss Texas ahead of a 1-loss Georgia.
LSU’s Defense Going Forward
The drumbeats about LSU needing a new defensive coordinator continue despite the results over the weekend seemingly casting down on that necessity.
Texas A&M recently scored 51 points against Mississippi St., a team against which Ole Miss only managed 17 points on Thanksgiving. The Aggies managed less than 60% of that total against LSU on Saturday.
Are they really sure LSU’s defense hasn’t improved from giving up 55 to Ole Miss?
Also, they keep repeating the idea that the LSU coaching staff was not able to make defensive adjustments. That’s interesting given that Texas A&M scored 24 points in the first 39 minutes (0.62 points per minute) and only 6 in the remaining 21 minutes (0.29 points per minute).
Texas A&M is the second-beat team LSU beat. Against the best team, the Tigers were also improved in the second half. Missouri had scored 25 in the first half against LSU and only 14 in the second half. Then the anti-House activists say weird things like, “if LSU doesn’t get a pick-6, they might have lost that game.” Is that not a good defensive play? It’s just bizarre. They also say that about Greg Penn’s interception against Texas A&M, by the way, even though if you add 7 points to A&M’s total, LSU still wins comfortably. Remember, LSU went into victory formation on first and goal.
Alabama did score 21 in each half; but in the second half, the Tide was aided by an interception of their own deep in LSU territory. Alabama was scoreless over the last 13 minutes. Obviously, they had no urgency to score with Jayden Daniels sidelined and a 14-point lead, but Alabama does not fail to score points at the end of games just to be nice. And that’s a close enough margin not to put all the bench warmers in to see what happens.
Speaking of Alabama, they gave up 6 more points to Auburn last weekend than LSU did. Maybe Saban doesn’t know what he’s doing, right? I know he’s not the coordinator, but I think every knows the buck stops with him on defense at least.
The game before Texas A&M was against Georgia St., a Sun Belt team roughly equivalent to the South Alabama team I mentioned in the previous section (so not the type of team completely incapable of an upset of a top 25 opponent). They scored 14 points in the first 17:15 of the game, but they didn’t score again after that. Are we sure no adjustment was made to ensure that?
I’m not saying Matt House is the best defensive coordinator LSU can get or that he’s worth the salary he’s being paid. But like I was saying about the playoff committee, I really don’t like when facts and a fair evaluation of those facts is pushed aside to push a narrative. It’s the worst defense ever. There were never any improvements at any point during a given game or during the season. Every time they held someone below 20, it’s because the opposing offense was trash and really should have been shut out. This is what the LSU radio shows and podcasts say almost every day.
Before the Alabama game, some of these same commentators admitted that since halftime of the Missouri game, the LSU defense had gotten better. This is when they were pushing the narrative that LSU had a good chance in that game.
Now that they’re pushing the narrative that Jayden Daniels was perfect even in the losses (to be fair, he was pretty close to perfect in the loss to Ole Miss), it’s back to pretending there was functionally no defense at all at any point in any SEC game. I’d like to see Jayden Daniels win the Heisman as much as anyone, but you can just say (accurately) there were a lot of defensive struggles without which he would have had more possessions and a better record. You don’t have to ignore every modicum of success the defense had.
It seems that LSU is not doing all that great in getting defense recruits even though they need them. The media hosts I’m talking about think that’s proof of what they’re saying. I think it’s more proof that the things they’re saying are being believed, not that they’re all true. So the lies and exaggerations that might be made with the idea of helping Jayden Daniels (and that’s my attempt to be charitable about the motivations) might be doing some harm in other areas.
Comments About My Top 25
Michigan had 99.92% as many points (if we set #133 Kent St. at 0 points) as Washington, so it was an extremely close call for #1. I think this is the first time I’ve ever personally ranked Washington #1. I did think they were better than U. Miami in 1991 though. Georgia, who was only playing Georgia Tech, was not surprisingly passed up by Michigan. That does not mean the Bulldogs won’t be in the running for #1 with a win over Alabama though.
I think most of the other teams moved up in a logical and predictable way. You still get a fair amount of credit for beating teams that aren’t in the top 25, and there are a few that are that don’t cause too much damage. That’s why you see a big jump by North Carolina St. Similarly, Louisville only fell a few spots for losing to Kentucky. Oregon St. has lost three out of five games, but they were all to teams ranked higher, so I don’t mind them being #25. The alternative was Kansas St., who just lost to #39 Iowa St.
The Wildcats lead my honorable mentions list though, trading places with Oklahoma St. North Carolina and UNLV lost and were replaced by Kansas and Utah, who were still hanging around after recently falling out of the top 25. Clemson and Memphis remained on the list from last week.
My Top 25
Rank | Team | Last |
1 | Washington | 2 |
2 | Michigan | 4 |
3 | Georgia | 3 |
4 | Texas | 5 |
5 | Alabama | 6 |
6 | Florida St. | 7 |
7 | Ohio St. | 1 |
8 | Oregon | 9 |
9 | Penn St. | 8 |
10 | Ole Miss | 10 |
11 | Oklahoma | 11 |
12 | Iowa | 15 |
13 | Missouri | 12 |
14 | James Madison | 18 |
15 | LSU | 17 |
16 | Louisville | 13 |
17 | Liberty | 14 |
18 | N Carolina St. | 24 |
19 | Tulane | 22 |
20 | Toledo | 20 |
21 | Notre Dame | 19 |
22 | Troy | 21 |
23 | Oklahoma St. | — |
24 | Arizona | 25 |
25 | Oregon St. | 23 |
Honorable mention: Kansas St., Clemson, Memphis, Kansas, Utah
Alabama, Arizona, Auburn, College Football, College Football Playoff, Florida, Florida St., Georgia, Iowa, Kansas St., Kentucky, Louisville, LSU, Michigan, Ohio St., Oklahoma St., Ole Miss, Oregon St., Penn St., SEC, Texas, Texas A&M, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming
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.