LSU’s 2024 Schedule : Historical and Competitive Ramifications
I’ve sat down to this blog a few times, and each time some other news item comes out. The most recent event was the release of LSU’s schedule with the actual dates.
I decided to just cover that and the top 25 for now. Interesting bowl games (to me anyway) are still about two weeks away, so the rest can wait.
We’ve known all the teams on LSU’s 2024 schedule for a while but not who LSU was playing on what date. The one constant going back as long as I remember is Alabama after a bye week and between about November 3 and 12, this time on the 9th. Alabama seems to keep roughly the same order from year to year, but no one else does that I’ve noticed.
Given the addition of the second bye, I like that it was added before Ole Miss. That’s been a tough contest lately. LSU has a three-game losing streak in College Station, but I’m still less worried about that game than about Ole Miss.
Texas A&M was scheduled on the traditional late October date for Ole Miss though. LSU will play the Rebels two weeks earlier, with Arkansas sandwiched in between.
LSU WR Chris Hilton and the Tigers came up short in the final seconds in Oxford in September. LSU won four “Magnolia Bowls” in a row from 2016 to 2019, but since then the winner has always been the home team.
Florida was traditionally around the date the Ole Miss game is scheduled, but this might be the last year of what has been an annual series since 1971 anyway. It was also after Alabama this year, so it was easy to leave it where it was. At least they weren’t both road games in either year.
LSU doesn’t have a long ongoing annual tradition with anyone else on the 2024 schedule.
They had only played Texas A&M once (in a bowl) between 1995 and 2012, the year the Aggies joined the SEC. LSU had previously played the Aggies in early September, but it’s different when it’s not a conference game.
I wouldn’t be opposed to making it an early game in the future though, especially since LSU won’t play Auburn annually anymore. Mississippi St. was a typical September fixture for a while also, although on the traditional schedule they were after Alabama. I’m still annoyed LSU plays neither Auburn nor Mississippi St. next year.
Since the annual series with Tulane ended in 1994, LSU has played whatever somewhat proximate SEC is left without a good end-of-year rival. Arkansas was not particularly close to and had no longstanding recent rivalry with anyone in the SEC when it entered, so that was fine for about 20 years. Then after Missouri and Texas A&M joined (and two “transitional” years elapsed), it made sense to split that up when it became clear that the Aggies weren’t playing Texas anytime soon.
Now that the Thanksgiving/rivalry-week Longhorns-Aggies series is rekindled and Bedlam is on hiatus, it wasn’t a huge shock that LSU finishes with Oklahoma in Baton Rouge. We are used to playing a team with a reddish color from a neighboring conference to the west.
The SEC could have mixed things up in some other ways in 2024, but it was easier not to, especially since next year is just a one-off and not part of any dedicated rotation. Just as a neutral fan of college football and historical rivalries, my hope is that Oklahoma either can manage to schedule Oklahoma St. again or that they play Missouri on rivalry week. I would be OK with LSU going back to Arkansas or having some type of rotation (perhaps switching between Oklahoma and Arkansas or between Vanderbilt and Kentucky). There was some history with Kentucky. LSU played the Wildcats 51 years in a row at one point (ending with the 2002 season).
Ollie Gordon II rushes for one of two touchdowns in the 27-24 win in Stillwater, OK, on November 4. Although Bedlam has typically been a close game in recent years, Oklahoma had beaten Oklahoma St. eight of nine seasons going into 2021. The Cowboys ended on a high note though, winning two of the last three.
As far as I’m concerned, LSU could even go back to playing Tulane if the two sides could come anywhere close to a mutually agreeable deal; but since that hasn’t happened in nearly 30 years, I’m not optimistic. There was a home-and-home in 2006 and 2007, but LSU felt like they gave up revenue from a potential home game to enrich Tulane. Since then, LSU has played every other Louisiana Division I program, all of whom seem content with being paid money to travel to Tiger Stadium occasionally rather than expecting a home-and-home exchange.
Anyway, putting tradition aside, I like that there aren’t brutal back-to-back weeks. Going to Florida after hosting Alabama isn’t ideal, but there is only one instance of LSU playing 2023 bowl teams two weeks in a row, and that’s UCLA and South Alabama (both were barely eligible and both will be home games).
USC and UCLA are separated by Nicholls St. and South Carolina. The Bruins or Gamecocks could have a good year, but I doubt both will. I don’t see much risk of looking past an SEC road game or coming down from an emotional high for the first home game that is against a Power 5 opponent.
There were years when I’ve been glad LSU got an apparently tough opponent from what we used to call the SEC East, but we didn’t need one given the out-of-conference slate. Also, I’m not even sure if you need a good non-annual schedule, especially if the SEC eventually adds a ninth game, in the playoff system. I guess we will see how lines get drawn between 4 and 5, 8 and 9, and 12 and 13 in playoff selection
Top 25
Other than their effects upon the Playoff resumes as mentioned in the previous blog, I didn’t have much to say about the conference championship games because they weren’t very surprising. I don’t know why Oregon was favored by so much; but as I kept telling everyone, they didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t a big believer in Georgia since the only SEC West teams they faced were Auburn and Ole Miss and they didn’t do anything out of conference until beating an average Georgia Tech team a couple of weeks ago. Very good Alabama teams have struggled with Auburn before, so I didn’t attach much importance to that. In lieu of Georgia, I admittedly picked the “wrong” Big Ten team as #1, but it wasn’t my fault Ohio St. had a better schedule than Michigan. As expected, the Wolverines had no problem with Iowa.
I’m listing my top 25 teams below, but I think they all fairly logically proceed from the results of those games and what I had written about the Playoff teams last week.
My top 4 agrees with the committee’s, and I would even have the same matchups. I would have had Washington and Texas in the Rose Bowl though, which makes more sense geographically; and I wouldn’t have made the Longhorns (who are supposedly the worse seed) close being at home.
My top 4 is based on the best teams. I’m not saying that I don’t think a team like Florida St., which went undefeated and even played two programs with multiple championships in the last 20 years out of conference, should be included in the top 4; but I think Alabama and Texas both have strengths of schedule that cancel out the additional loss and then some.
Florida St.’s Exclusion
The committee’s instructions do not include something that says, “an undefeated conference champion should be given priority over a conference champion who is not undefeated.”
I would be OK with adding such a stipulation, especially if it also added language that said an exception could be made if the non-conference schedule is particularly weak, which would certainly not be the case here.
My point is the committee did its job. If I were a one-man committee with the same instructions, I would have put aside my preference for including Florida St. and given the same list of best 4 teams.
There is also language that the committee can consider injuries to major players. I don’t consider anything like that in my formula, and I can’t think of any consistent way you could apply that to any formula. There are no strict standards for injury reporting in college football like there is in the NFL. Even if there were, it would be difficult to enforce that and provide consistent oversight for injury reports of all 133 teams and then add those reports to a formula. I don’t like the idea of using that as an argument because every team has a mix of players who are hurt or otherwise unavailable from game to game that can affect any outcome. Others are playing hurt or playing with some other type of stress or distraction.
In the only touchdown drive of the game by either team, Lawrance Toafili (#9) rushed for 75 yards in two plays. Florida St. won the ACC championship, 16-6, over Louisville in Charlotte last night. It was the Seminoles’ first conference championship (and first 13-0 start) since Jimbo Fisher and Jameis Winston led the team in 2014.
What I do think is fair, and what I think the committee did, is to look at how they played at the end of the year. They did not look like a top-4 team against Florida or Louisville. I don’t think they looked like a top-20 team in either game. I have Louisville in the top 20; but if I considered the trajectory of their season, I wouldn’t have them anywhere close. I have Kentucky #47 right now, and the Wildcats won at Louisville 8 days ago.
I don’t include that in my formula, but I’ve never had a problem with the basketball or baseball committee’s giving more weight to recent results, and I don’t fault the football committee for doing so. If there were no SEC championship and Alabama beat Georgia earlier in the year, I wouldn’t want them to be given less credit for that, but obviously the committee isn’t being unfair about when you any played a given game. If anything, I think they’re being charitable to Texas for not considering how long ago the Alabama game was (or any game against a top-20 opponent was) in ranking Texas #3. But the point is that’s why I don’t include it in my formula. It could yield unfair results that way, but a person can avoid such outcomes.
So I have Florida St. fifth without considering margin of victory, how the Seminoles looked in those games, or the Jordan Travis injury. I also didn’t consider how Florida and Louisville were playing, just their respective seasons as a whole. So I think there are more than enough factors not to consider Florida St. to be a top-4 team. It’s not just one thing. But as I said, I’m very sympathetic if you ask me who should get to play for the championship instead of who the four best teams are.
Some people are coping by saying, “at least it’s an expanded playoff next year”; but that doesn’t give me any consolation personally. None of the major-conference championship games would have been for a spot in the top 12 this year. I might not even watch next year if LSU isn’t in it. There is a good chance the committee will already know exactly who the top 12 is by championship weekend, and the games will solely be for seeding. I’ll have my opinions again, but it will lose a lot of the excitement.
Alabama vs. Texas
To go back to the Alabama-Texas discussion I began in previous blogs (especially the last rankings blog) and touched on a couple of paragraphs ago, I think too much attention is being paid to a head-to-head game in September and not enough attention is being paid to all the games since then. I have Alabama #2 in strength of schedule vs. FBS teams and Texas 21st. Texas does get a little more credit for playing all FBS teams though. If I ignore Chattanooga from Alabama’s schedule and drop Baylor from Texas’s schedule, Alabama still ends up stronger. The average of the best 12 teams Alabama faced is about equal to that of #39 Iowa St. The average of the best 12 teams Texas faced is about equal to that of #51 Northwestern.
So now I’m going to get to arguments from outside of looking at the computers. Alabama has a better loss from longer ago. The #1 wins by each team are roughly even (Alabama vs. Georgia), but I would give Alabama more credit for getting the win in December versus September. Even if you still give Texas a point from there to make the two teams even, I don’t know how you argue LSU and Ole Miss aren’t better wins than Oklahoma St. and Kansas St.
I think Texas would have to have a far superior list of the more middle-of-the-road wins to overcome that, and I don’t think they do. Texas beat Wyoming, Iowa St., and Texas Tech. Alabama beat Kentucky, Texas A&M, and Auburn. Those are pretty similar lists of three. Although it did fall a little short, I do think the Longhorns made a very good attempt at playing the necessary type of schedule to prepare them for an SEC season. If you’re one of those people who says, “sorry, that win over Auburn was ugly and if they’re that close, I’m going with head to head,” that’s a reasonable point of view. It’s just not how I see it. I would have been perfectly happy to have joined you in laughing at Alabama if Texas and Florida St. had made it ahead of the Tide though.
Alabama WR Isaiah Bond (who may have pushed off first) catches the go-ahead touchdown pass on fourth and 31 in Auburn 8 days ago. The need for a miracle finish in this situation is one argument against Alabama’s inclusion in the top 4.
As I mentioned, what I don’t like is when someone says, “I don’t care what else they did, they each have a loss and Alabama’s is to Texas. End of story.” That’s just wanting to rush to a conclusion and not consider the season as a whole. Word keeps telling me not to use the phrase “season as a whole,” but I don’t know a better way to distinguish my more holistic approach from the approach of just cherry-picking a couple of factoids and stopping there.
Washington vs. Michigan
I don’t have strong feelings about Washington ahead of Michigan, but I’ll lay out the arguments. I have Michigan about 99% as good as Washington, so there isn’t a huge separation. I like that Washington had a much tougher game this weekend, but obviously Michigan had a much tougher rivalry-week opponent. Maybe some of the narrow margins of victory (both Oregon games, Arizona, Arizona St., Utah, Oregon St., and Washington St. were all within one possession) hurt the Huskies. Michigan had a robust list of top-three wins: Ohio St., Penn St., and Iowa. I think Oregon would beat Ohio St. and Penn St. but it was just unfortunate for the Ducks that they had to play a top-2 team twice instead of Ohio St.’s once. Iowa is a better third win than Washington’s third, which might be Arizona. But then Michigan’s fourth- and fifth-best wins are UNLV and Bowling Green (they didn’t play Northwestern or Wisconsin, which are my two highest Big Ten teams after Iowa). I strongly believe both would lose to both Oregon St. and Utah and probably USC as well.
LSU Bowl Selection Reaction
D’Cota Dixon celebrates the game-clinching interception of LSU QB Brandon Harris in 2016 in Green Bay, Wisc., as LSU was driving with just under a minute left in the game. This was one of the final nails in the coffin for LSU head coach Les Miles, who was fired three weeks later.
I’m sure I’ll go more into bowl match-ups later, but I’m disappointed that LSU will be playing Wisconsin. I was hoping for either Notre Dame, which would give the Tigers a chance to get revenge for some foolishness in bowl losses over the last 10 years (as well as being the Brian Kelly bowl), or Iowa. The contrast in styles for Iowa/LSU would have been worth getting up early for. Wisconsin isn’t an offensive juggernaut – they haven’t scored more than 30 points in a game since September – but they’re not Iowa. Wisconsin isn’t even in my top 50. I think either LSU won’t get up for the game and it will be ugly regardless of the winner or we could get another blowout like last season. Neither would be a very satisfying end to the year. It’s one of six bowl games between the SEC and the Big Ten.
Top 25 Later This Week
I have my top 25 ready. Of course it’s mostly based on my ratings with a few adjustments, but I don’t want to overshadow it with all of the discussion of the top 4, so look for that later in the week.
I started writing this at a reasonable time, but I had some distractions and decided to add an extra section. I settled on just one picture to get it published faster. Even my cat is wondering what’s taking so long.
CFP Reaction and Playoff Considerations
The committee has had last-second changes of heart before, but I think they’re still telegraphing pretty clearly that the Pac-12 championship game is for a playoff spot. They don’t care if Oregon only has the 52nd toughest schedule, compared to Alabama having the #5 schedule (vs. FBS), Ohio St. having the #25 schedule, and Texas having the #31 schedule. (Texas did not play an FCS opponent, so I’d argue for the Longhorns ahead of the Buckeyes assuming a win this weekend.) They just love Bo Nix and his passes that travel all of five yards in the air regardless of the competition. I’m usually for undefeated teams that keep getting lucky (like Washington) to lose but not in this case. I don’t dislike Oregon or Bo Nix, I’ve talked about him and his family positively on this blog. I just hate these hype campaigns and biased “eye tests” that ignore facts.
Anyway, a secondary issue is that Ohio St. is too high as the #2 one-loss team according to the committee, but I highly doubt Alabama stays behind the idle Buckeyes if the Tide beat Georgia. I’d be more worried if I were Texas. I’ve talked about how if it came down to Texas and Alabama, Texas would go ahead due to head-to-head; but there is no such issue if the last spot were to come down to Ohio St. and Alabama. Just keep that in mind if you’re counting on Saban not being in the Playoff.
I did notice something that I believe helps a potential argument for an SEC team to either be in the playoff with one loss or be #1 even if there are multiple undefeated teams. It’s that the top 5 teams in the SEC (Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss, Missouri, and LSU) have only lost to each other or to a team in the CFP top 7 (or in my top 7).
The only two home losses by the top 5 of the SEC were Alabama to Texas and Missouri to LSU. I mention that because it generally took a hostile environment combined with a very good team to bring these teams down. I think given that Ole Miss had to play both championship contenders (both on the road) and beat LSU, they belong ahead of Missouri, but that’s another mystery of the committee. Maybe they just don’t like Lane Kiffin’s tweets.
So if Alabama wins, they will have beaten three of the four other teams in the top 5 (all but Missouri). If Georgia wins, they will also have beaten three of the four other teams (all but LSU).
Anyway, you obviously don’t get that kind of quality anywhere else. I have been an advocate for Oregon St., but they have four losses now and even this committee who loves the Pac-12 only has them 20th. That’s a big drop off. They lost to a Washington St. team who finished with a losing record. Arizona, who’s become the darling Pac-12 team lately, lost to a mediocre USC team and lost to Mississippi St., who like Wazzu finishes with a losing record.
You can go three teams deep in the Big Ten, but Big Ten #4 Iowa has that ugly loss to Minnesota, who also finished with a losing record. It wasn’t necessarily a fair loss, but maybe if the Golden Gophers had needed another score to win, it would have changed the way the game ended. The point is the top of the SEC isn’t nearly as threatened with mediocrity as the top of these other conferences has been.
I shouldn’t even have to mention the Big XII. The team that made the title game (they don’t have divisions, so they’re not #4 and lucked into the title game like Iowa did, they actually finished second overall in the conference {winning a tie-breaker over Oklahoma}) lost to South Alabama by 26, to Iowa St. by 7, and to Central Florida by 42! Those three teams each barely qualified for a bowl, and South Alabama is 6-6 despite playing in the Sun Belt. Losing to Oklahoma, a team who lost to Oklahoma St., should count against Texas even if the Longhorns will have beaten the Cowboys. And it shouldn’t be brushed off as, “Texas only lost a team who tied for second in their conference, no big deal.”
I took some criticism this week in one of the discussion groups I’m in for not thinking head-to-head tie-breakers are always fair. The Big XII is a perfect example. Texas was the #1 team. I think if two teams are tied for second, the first question should be “did you play the #1 team?” If the answer for one is yes and the other is no, the team who answered yes should win the tie-breaker. You don’t reward the team who answered no and lost to worst teams (Oklahoma St. and Kansas went a combined 12-6 in the Big XII; Iowa St. and Central Florida went a combined 9-9).
So let’s say undefeated Florida St., undefeated Michigan, 1-loss Oregon, 1-loss Georgia, 1-loss Washington, 1-loss Ohio St., 1-loss Texas, and 1-loss Alabama. We can put the undefeated teams aside, but I think when you rank the one-loss teams by resume, the first thing you should ask is “was the one loss to one of the teams in this pool of playoff candidates”. If it was, those teams should get a leg up. In this case, that would be all the 1-loss teams except Texas. Then we’d talk about wins. Texas and Alabama will have had the two best wins in my opinion, but then who’s #2 and #3? Texas’s would be borderline top-25 teams Kansas St. and Oklahoma St. Alabama’s would be solid top-15 teams Ole Miss and LSU. I don’t think you ignore that because Texas was the better team on a given Saturday in September.
I’m not saying how you sort out the rest of that mess if it happens, but I am saying I think in that scenario I’d like to see Alabama with a higher ranking than Texas. I like a fair national championship system more than I like to see Nick Saban upset, but it’s a close call, so I won’t be all that angry if Texas goes ahead. This isn’t SEC homerism either. I mentioned Georgia. I’d have to see how the numbers shake out, but right now I have Georgia 81st in schedule strength vs. FBS and Texas 31st. They’ll get closer this weekend but not that much closer; and as mentioned, I’d give Texas an edge for not having played an FCS opponent also. In addition, I’m also in favor of resolving doubts in favor of conference champions, at least while we still have a 4-team playoff. So I’d want a 1-loss Texas ahead of a 1-loss Georgia.
LSU’s Defense Going Forward
The drumbeats about LSU needing a new defensive coordinator continue despite the results over the weekend seemingly casting down on that necessity.
Texas A&M recently scored 51 points against Mississippi St., a team against which Ole Miss only managed 17 points on Thanksgiving. The Aggies managed less than 60% of that total against LSU on Saturday.
Are they really sure LSU’s defense hasn’t improved from giving up 55 to Ole Miss?
Also, they keep repeating the idea that the LSU coaching staff was not able to make defensive adjustments. That’s interesting given that Texas A&M scored 24 points in the first 39 minutes (0.62 points per minute) and only 6 in the remaining 21 minutes (0.29 points per minute).
Jayden Daniels breaks free of the Texas A&M front seven in the first half in Baton Rouge on Saturday. Although two of the touchdowns were 1-yard runs by running backs, Daniels led the Tigers to six touchdown drives versus just three punts against the best defense the Tigers have faced all season. Daniels accounted for 235 yards passing and 120 yards rushing. LSU runs its record to 9-3 against the Aggies since the latter joined the SEC in 2012. Texas A&M has not won in Baton Rouge since 1994.
Texas A&M is the second-beat team LSU beat. Against the best team, the Tigers were also improved in the second half. Missouri had scored 25 in the first half against LSU and only 14 in the second half. Then the anti-House activists say weird things like, “if LSU doesn’t get a pick-6, they might have lost that game.” Is that not a good defensive play? It’s just bizarre. They also say that about Greg Penn’s interception against Texas A&M, by the way, even though if you add 7 points to A&M’s total, LSU still wins comfortably. Remember, LSU went into victory formation on first and goal.
Alabama did score 21 in each half; but in the second half, the Tide was aided by an interception of their own deep in LSU territory. Alabama was scoreless over the last 13 minutes. Obviously, they had no urgency to score with Jayden Daniels sidelined and a 14-point lead, but Alabama does not fail to score points at the end of games just to be nice. And that’s a close enough margin not to put all the bench warmers in to see what happens.
Speaking of Alabama, they gave up 6 more points to Auburn last weekend than LSU did. Maybe Saban doesn’t know what he’s doing, right? I know he’s not the coordinator, but I think every knows the buck stops with him on defense at least.
The game before Texas A&M was against Georgia St., a Sun Belt team roughly equivalent to the South Alabama team I mentioned in the previous section (so not the type of team completely incapable of an upset of a top 25 opponent). They scored 14 points in the first 17:15 of the game, but they didn’t score again after that. Are we sure no adjustment was made to ensure that?
I’m not saying Matt House is the best defensive coordinator LSU can get or that he’s worth the salary he’s being paid. But like I was saying about the playoff committee, I really don’t like when facts and a fair evaluation of those facts is pushed aside to push a narrative. It’s the worst defense ever. There were never any improvements at any point during a given game or during the season. Every time they held someone below 20, it’s because the opposing offense was trash and really should have been shut out. This is what the LSU radio shows and podcasts say almost every day.
Before the Alabama game, some of these same commentators admitted that since halftime of the Missouri game, the LSU defense had gotten better. This is when they were pushing the narrative that LSU had a good chance in that game.
Now that they’re pushing the narrative that Jayden Daniels was perfect even in the losses (to be fair, he was pretty close to perfect in the loss to Ole Miss), it’s back to pretending there was functionally no defense at all at any point in any SEC game. I’d like to see Jayden Daniels win the Heisman as much as anyone, but you can just say (accurately) there were a lot of defensive struggles without which he would have had more possessions and a better record. You don’t have to ignore every modicum of success the defense had.
It seems that LSU is not doing all that great in getting defense recruits even though they need them. The media hosts I’m talking about think that’s proof of what they’re saying. I think it’s more proof that the things they’re saying are being believed, not that they’re all true. So the lies and exaggerations that might be made with the idea of helping Jayden Daniels (and that’s my attempt to be charitable about the motivations) might be doing some harm in other areas.
Comments About My Top 25
Michigan had 99.92% as many points (if we set #133 Kent St. at 0 points) as Washington, so it was an extremely close call for #1. I think this is the first time I’ve ever personally ranked Washington #1. I did think they were better than U. Miami in 1991 though. Georgia, who was only playing Georgia Tech, was not surprisingly passed up by Michigan. That does not mean the Bulldogs won’t be in the running for #1 with a win over Alabama though.
I think most of the other teams moved up in a logical and predictable way. You still get a fair amount of credit for beating teams that aren’t in the top 25, and there are a few that are that don’t cause too much damage. That’s why you see a big jump by North Carolina St. Similarly, Louisville only fell a few spots for losing to Kentucky. Oregon St. has lost three out of five games, but they were all to teams ranked higher, so I don’t mind them being #25. The alternative was Kansas St., who just lost to #39 Iowa St.
The Wildcats lead my honorable mentions list though, trading places with Oklahoma St. North Carolina and UNLV lost and were replaced by Kansas and Utah, who were still hanging around after recently falling out of the top 25. Clemson and Memphis remained on the list from last week.
Ratings and College Football Playoff Response/Prediction
The first four teams are all undefeated now, just in time to lose at least one undefeated team this weekend. It happens to be the same top four as the CFP top 25. I can argue until I’m blue in the face about Oregon, but I guess people like flashy offenses and uniforms (not to mention years of a hype and a nationwide ad campaign for the quarterback) more than they like a good strength of schedule. It seems like they’re setting up the possibility of Oregon going to the Playoff in the event of revenge wins over Oregon St. (for last year) and Washington (for both last year and earlier this season).
Putting aside the CFP ramifications, I think Oregon might have some motivation to win this next game.
I don’t think Washington, Georgia, or Florida St. (another undefeated not in the top four) have much chance of a loss this coming weekend, but losses by none of them (except maybe Georgia) would be much stranger than the time 4-7 Pitt beat 10-1 West Virginia in 2007 to help LSU make the championship game.
Florida and Washington St. have five wins apiece and are playing for bowl eligibility as well as in-state bragging rights, while Georgia Tech is already bowl-eligible. A late pick-six is likely the only reason Washington beat Arizona St., who is only 3-8. Despite one fewer win, Florida is a better team than Boston College, whom Florida St. only beat by 2. Georgia hasn’t really come close to a loss though.
Alabama and Florida St. both lost ground compared to higher teams as a result of playing FCS opponents. Alabama probably lost a bit less since the SEC gained strength with out-of-conference wins and because Chattanooga is an FCS playoff team.
I suspect that unless Washington and Georgia remain undefeated, removing Oregon and Alabama from the running in the process, the plan is that Florida St. will be excluded from the Playoff. I don’t know if this was the plan before their QB Jordan Travis was hurt or not.
I don’t think the CFP standings after Alabama matter too much for the national championship, but LSU fans (ironically) should cheer for Missouri and Ole Miss to lose for a better chance at a selection committee (or NY6) bowl or at the CapitalOne Bowl. It’s ironic because normally it would be a good thing if no one outside of the top 12 beat you and you had a top-10 win, but that’s not how the logic of bowl placement works.
It would be more logical for LSU fans to cheer for Alabama to beat Georgia (whom LSU did not play, if you haven’t noticed) in the SEC Championship game because that would retain the possibility of there being two SEC playoff teams. This might not be the year for that to happen though given the possibility of four undefeated teams going into championship weekend. There are also a couple of other teams (I mentioned Oregon; there is also Texas) who could be good one-loss candidates as conference champions. I think one-loss Texas will go ahead of one-loss Alabama even if they shouldn’t.
Anyway, the rest of this is just about my ratings, not the CFP rankings or what I think they will do.
The Big Ten is now much closer to the Pac-12, which is now #3, as they can look forward to taking the Pac-12’s two best teams (as well as UCLA and USC, which are more in the middle). They would still be behind the SEC, which will add the Big XII’s two best teams.
I mentioned Arizona St. earlier. Oregon’s win over the Sun Devils allowed them to get past Ole Miss, who beat an inferior UL-Monroe squad. Other relatively small differences in quality of opponents accounted for the movement in the rest of the top 20, apart from James Madison, who lost to Appalachian St. Oregon St. fell a smaller number of spots for losing to Washington, which was a close game as expected.
I had a little bit of trouble figuring out the last two. I strongly considered Oklahoma St. and Clemson, but they each had three losses that were all big negatives. Arizona had only one bad loss and one that was mediocre. Oregon St. and North Carolina St. only had one mediocre-to-bad loss apiece. Oklahoma St. had the best list of wins, but the others had comparable good wins. I didn’t hold the fourth loss (to Florida St.) against Clemson, but there weren’t really strong wins to counterbalance the other losses.
It might seem a little weird that North Carolina still has honorable mention status, but the four teams directly below them (Kansas, Utah, Tennessee, and USC) all lost also. Another interesting one is UNLV, whom I have never ranked in the top 25.
Since I’ve been on WordPress, I’ve always gotten a big boost in readers for the LSU-Alabama weekend, but the last couple of weeks have been the best non-Alabama weeks over the past two seasons. I wasn’t able to look at weekly stats from before that, but given that I wasn’t really committed to this in 2020 and 2021 and LSU was pretty irrelevant anyway (I didn’t even bother to say much about the respective Alabama games, although 2021 was close), I doubt any weeks in those years were better.
It’s quite possible 2019 had better weeks, but I’m sure that was more Joe Burrow’s doing than mine. I’ve also done a lot less to garner views than I did in prior years. I guess I’ve gotten more serious about work and health and things like that, and I also spend more time just relaxing.
At any rate, I wanted to welcome anyone who is new to my page. I’ve been a pretty avid LSU football blogger (during the season anyway) since the 2005 season, which happened to be when Les Miles came to Baton Rouge. My ranking system was developed from 2003 to 2005 and improved in a couple of ways since then, but I only have an online archive going back to my 2008 rankings. I don’t mind that because they became a little more sophisticated that year (qualifying for Massey’s comparison site) anyway. I’ve done a personal ranking since 1995, but to my knowledge I haven’t published anything I wrote before 2006.
Although I am an LSU fan, I’m very strict about not letting my personal views affect my computer ratings. In fact, at this moment, on my list LSU is as lower as or lower than they are on any other ratings list that Massey indices. This is not to be confused with top 25 rankings blogs like the one below that deviate less and less from the computer ratings as the season progresses.
Comments about CFP Rankings
I made an unexpected trip to the dentist on Tuesday, so I didn’t have the time to post this that I originally thought I would have. The delay does give me the occasion to comment on the first College Football Playoff rankings. Obviously, I agree with #1; but if you’re disregarding last year and basing the order of the top four solely based on quality of this year’s wins, there is no logical way to place Florida St. below Michigan and Georgia. If you are basing it on prior years and think Georgia is close to #1, why not keep them #1 until they lose, especially since that could be any week as the Bulldogs get into the difficult portion of their schedule (following the win over Florida with games against Missouri, Ole Miss, Tennessee, and Georgia Tech in consecutive weeks).
What if I told you there is an SEC game this weekend that will likely decide the division wherein the one-loss team is trying to avenge last season’s close loss (which took place after giving up two late touchdowns) and that I’m not talking about the SEC West?
I don’t see the argument for Michigan to be ahead of the Seminoles at all. The last time we saw them before this season they were losing to TCU in the semifinal. I don’t think that gives you the right to rest on your semifinal-loser laurels for the next 10 months. Is it purely a prediction of where they think the teams will end up? When did we ask this committee to prognosticate like that? I thought they were supposed to evaluate how good the respective teams are currently this year.
Comments about My Top 25
I was not surprised by too much that happened over the weekend, although I wouldn’t have bet on both Arizona teams winning. They had both been on the wrong side of some close games before, so it’s not like I thought either team was incapable. Perhaps Oregon St. and Washington St. just don’t have the depth and talent (and possibly not the coaching either) to keep their early-season success going. I would have laughed if USC had lost again, but one win and one loss in the last two weeks is probably the deserved outcome.
I feel somewhat vindicated that Ohio St. nearly became the computer #1 after I had to assist them the past few weeks. Ohio St. has a much better remaining schedule. Florida St. still plays Pittsburgh, who only has one FBS win, and North Alabama, a subpar FCS team. Of course, Ohio St. still plays Michigan, who is much better than anyone the Seminoles will play.
I didn’t predict Kansas to beat Oklahoma per se, but I didn’t think the Sooners would finish undefeated, and a road game against a team that I had ranked a couple of weeks ago isn’t the most surprising one for the Sooners to have lost. Oklahoma may also struggle to beat Kansas St. and/or Oklahoma St., both of whom have re-entered the top 25.
I know some people think if Texas and Oklahoma each have exactly one loss, Oklahoma should automatically be higher; but I strongly disagree. Texas has a much better strength of schedule given the game against Alabama (Rice and Wyoming aren’t terrible either), and the Longhorns also beat Kansas
Another interesting side effect of the upset is that now there are five former Big 8 teams (Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Kansas St., and Oklahoma St.) in the top 25. One of the others, Colorado, was ranked earlier in the year and is still in the top 60. The other two, Nebraska and Iowa St., are both in the top 45. When Oklahoma plays Missouri next year, it will be the first SEC game between two former Big 8 teams. Colorado will rejoin the Big XII, where four other former Big 8 teams will play next season. Nebraska will remain in the Big Ten.
Kansas RB Devin Neal dives for a touchdown against old Big 8 (and Big 6 and Big 7) rivals Oklahoma on Saturday in Lawrence, Kan. The Big 8 conference broke up in 1996, and it had almost been that long since Kansas had beaten Oklahoma. Neal ran for 112 yards in the Jayhawks’ 38-33 upset win.
As I anticipated last week, I didn’t do any subjective ranking to factor in. I did move teams up to three spots. I was a little bit liberal about what that means though. For instance, Troy, Oregon St., LSU, and UCLA were all between 0.350 and 0.360, so I considered that a tie for 25th. (0.01 is a typical gap between consecutive teams after the top 10, where many gaps are even larger.) That’s how I got LSU as high as they are. I’m going to elaborate just for illustrative purposes, but if you’re not interested in a detailed breakdown, skip the next three paragraphs.
I am more lenient toward teams who play in more difficult conferences and who have more understandable losses anyway. Part of the reason is I’m less concerned about such teams getting away with anything. LSU will either lose to Alabama and likely fall out (continuing the current trajectory anyway), or they’ll beat Alabama and this will avoid the volatility of being 16th one week, unranked the next, and being back in the top 20 (or maybe even in the top 15) the week after that.
One of LSU’s losses was two months ago to a team that is still undefeated in relatively hostile territory (not a true road game but close), and the other was on the road and was just a matter of which team was able to score last in the last two minutes.
I think it was right to have the gap between Oregon St. and LSU since the two teams who beat the Beavers have seven combined losses to the one combined loss by the two teams who beat LSU. LSU’s best win Missouri and Oregon St.’s best win Utah are similar, but I give the edge to Missouri (who still only has one loss…for now).
Falling 11 spots for a loss to a team with a winning record seems harsh enough though, so I was not inclined to let Oregon St. fall out of the top 25 completely. Also, teams like Troy and Tulane (the other candidates for top 25 other than UCLA, whom the Beavers beat and who is lacking in quality wins) aren’t going to be seriously tested in the future like Oregon St. will be. Three of the four remaining opponents for the Beavers (Colorado, Washington and Oregon) are more highly rated than any team that remains on Tulane’s schedule, for instance. Only one of Troy’s upcoming opponents (Louisiana-Lafayette) is higher-rated than Colorado, and it’s not by much. (All of LSU’s remaining opponents are better than all of the remaining opponents for either Troy {who already played Georgia St.} or Tulane.)
I mentioned UCLA in the last paragraph. It was a little weird to take them out after getting their second-best win, but every previous Pac-12 opponent (Utah, Washington St., Oregon St., and Stanford) lost. Also, they were 28th, so the only way to rank them would have been to remove Oregon St., which did not make sense.
Wisconsin and Minnesota were in a virtual tie in the computer, so I included them both in the “honorable mention” list. That list is usually only five teams, but I made an exception. I believe Toledo is the first MAC team on the list this season.
I don’t know what the rankings will be yet with all the upheaval, but I couldn’t help but be amused by some of the results over the weekend. It was a bad day to be a fan of a ranked team from Texas (I’ll mention the two big ones, but Houston and Baylor also lost), and it was a good day for Sun Belt teams to notch some historical road wins. (I only recently realized Marshall had joined the Sun Belt after previous stints in the MAC and CUSA.)
Bryce Young of Alabama miraculously avoids a safety against Texas in Austin on Saturday. He should have been flagged for intentional grounding, but he was not. The Tide eventually defeated the Longhorns 20-19
The grass was really looking greener to LSU fans who wanted Jimbo Fisher or Billy Napier, for instance. I think Notre Dame fans (even if they are genuine about having grown tired of Kelly) were insecure about their choice of Marcus Freeman, who had never been a head coach before; but their way of expressing it in most cases was to attack Brian Kelly any way they could and pretend to be overjoyed that he had been replaced.
Last week (last two sections in the link below), I wrote about reminding myself as an LSU fan not to take anything for granted. Wearing the jersey and helmet and playing in Tiger Stadium might all but guarantee you beat Southern, but it doesn’t guarantee you anything against an SEC schedule.
I also mentioned in a separate blog how unless you were Oklahoma, Nebraska was pretty much untouchable for most of the 1970s and 1980s. I think there is a lesson here for some of the LSU fans who are always unhappy with whomever the coach is.
I didn’t mention it because they didn’t play LSU after that, but the Huskers kept it going through the 90s (I found out they had the second-best record among FBS teams in the decade after Florida St.) and had some good teams in the early 2000s. After having two losing records (both on the recent end) from 1961 to 2014, the Huskers have only finished with a winning record once since then.
To get to their current situation, they just lost to Georgia Southern, who was playing in the Southern Conference of FCS 10 years ago. It wasn’t just one fluke loss either. The Huskers have now lost eight consecutive games against FBS opponents. The last such game that was a win was over Northwestern, 56-7. You would have thought that at least the Huskers could stay better than that team, but they lost to the Wildcats at a neutral site just a couple of weeks ago.
After I wrote the above, Nebraska decided to part ways with head coach Scott Frost. Mickey Joseph, who for whatever reason stayed loyal to Ed Orgeron and LSU from 2017 to 2021 as the wide receivers coach, will step in as the interim head coach. He was obviously not retained by Brian Kelly but was classy all the way. I wish him the absolute best of luck in that position. If he doesn’t end up being a head coach, I wouldn’t be surprised if he returned at some point.
Joseph is the sixth man to coach Nebraska (including interims) since Frank Solich was fired in 2003. Solich was the last coach to leave Nebraska after successfully avoiding a losing season for his tenure. Only two men (Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne) coached Nebraska over the 36 seasons before Solich was hired. There was another LSU connection as former Tigers defensive coordinator Bo Pelini was hired from Les Miles’s staff after the 2007 season. Let’s just say he experienced mixed reviews, but he has had far and away the best winning percentage and longest tenure since Solich left.
Another more indirect LSU connection: Solich employed Joe Burrow’s father Jimmy (whom he first hired as a graduate assistant at Nebraska) as defensive coordinator at Ohio from 2005 to 2018. Solich himself retired after the 2020 season.
Recent Comments by LSU and Notre Dame Fans
Speaking of Joe Burrow, 2018 and 2019 (which his father had retired to witness) had the best combined winning percentage (89.3) of any two back-to-back seasons in LSU history. Even though I think an average Power 5 head coach could have managed to go over .500 the next two seasons and Orgeron didn’t, it still looks bad that those great seasons only bought him two additional years. I don’t know who they think is coming to the rescue if they run Kelly out of town without a fair shot at building the program back up.
At least one of the notions they had got knocked down a peg this weekend when Jimbo and Texas A&M lost at home to Appalachian St., a program Les Miles beat easily (with probably his worst team) the year after they upset Michigan in 2007.
Freeman, we were told, had already begun to correct for Kelly’s various misdeeds in recruiting and game strategy even though he started 0-2. Well, Oklahoma St. (in the bowl last season) and Ohio St. (who beat the Irish in the opener) were certainly much better teams than Florida St. at least. That last sentence is true enough, but I’m not so sure you could say the same about Marshall.
Marcus Freeman with his players after the home loss to Marshall on Saturday. After Notre Dame led 28-7 a minute before halftime of the Fiesta Bowl last season–Freeman’s first game as head coach–the Irish have been outscored 70-38.
The Jimbo crowd started going nuts last year when the Aggies knocked off Alabama (and LSU struggled in some early games) and then pretended the losses didn’t matter. I think I prefer the way things have been at LSU. When we beat Alabama, we’re going places that season. These are the wins over Alabama since Saban was hired and the season results:
2007, National Championship (12-2)
2010, won Cotton Bowl to finish 11-2
2011, National Runners-up (to Alabama, 13-1)
2019, National Championship (15-0)
Texas A&M did go 11-2 in 2012, also winning the Cotton Bowl, but didn’t even keep the Tide from winning the SEC West as LSU at least helped to do all four years above. Alabama finished fourth in the West in 2010, but they were still very much alive for a berth in the SEC title game (with wins over LSU and Auburn, to whom they would later lose by only a single point) when they visited Tiger Stadium that year.
Though I would take 8-4 before the bowl any kind of way this season, finishing 8-4 despite beating Alabama seems like a waste in your fourth year somewhere like A&M.
Kevin Sumlin, Jimbo’s predecessor, beat Alabama exactly once too. He had a slightly better record in his first 50 games than what Jimbo has after 50 games with the Aggies. This is despite the fact that Texas A&M has increased the head coach’s salary by about 50% since Sumlin left. Almost two years of additional salary was paid to Sumlin to go away. Jimbo’s most-recent extension takes him through 2031. This makes his contract very similar to the one Kelly has. Kelly makes $1 million more in base salary, but I’m not sure how the overall compensation compares. Regardless, I’ll be interested to see which head coach has more success over the next 10 seasons despite Jimbo’s four-year head start.
Jimbo Fisher, with former Texas A&M QB Zach Calzada (who is now third string at Auburn), during a similarly disappointing offensive performance in Denver last season
Good and Bad News from the SEC
Anyway, while in a way I’m disappointed that the SEC didn’t look nearly as good this week as it did in Week 1, I am somewhat encouraged by seeing some vulnerability in a few of the teams on LSU’s schedule in addition to Alabama (more on them later in the week) and Texas A&M:
Tennessee needed overtime to beat Pitt, and that was against a backup QB who seemed like he was playing hurt after the starter had to leave the game.
Kentucky beat Florida by 10 in the Swamp after the Gators failed to score an offensive point in the last 35 ½ minutes of the game. (Tennessee and Florida are LSU’s only two SEC East opponents.). Oh by the way, yet another contingent of LSU fans (they may overlap with some of the others) was angry that the Tigers didn’t hire Billy Napier, the former coach at UL-Lafayette and new coach at Florida.
Auburn only beat San Jose St. by 8 points at home after trailing at halftime.
Interestingly, those five teams all had the same home/away status last week as they will against LSU. So hopefully Alabama and Tennessee continue to have trouble on the road and the others continue to struggle at home.
I’ll have more to say when I post the rankings later in the week.
I wanted to start by saying that I know I’m behind as far as things I’ve been planning on.
I saw a joke online recently that said. “Hobbies? I am thirty-xx years old. I do not have hobbies. When I have any free time at all, I will go lie down.”
Sadly, that has been my pattern at times lately; although I do still have some hobbies. I still haven’t gotten my normal pattern back since the lockdowns and whatnot. I have gotten to travel a few times over the last couple of years, so I guess that counts as a hobby; but the way my work schedule works is I just have more to do before I leave and after I get back. So if I’m gone for a week, I can’t even think about blogging for two weeks, sometimes longer.
I still need to update the rivalry blogs. Since we are almost at the end of the academic sports calendar (schools are done, but baseball is still going), I’m going to wait until then to give an update as to what conference has been doing what in the major sports as far as top-four finishes.
I’ll wait until the football preseason to recap the last football year. I didn’t really wrap that up after the championship game. I was glad that four teams were able to vie for the championship rather than two; but due to the whole holiday situation I mentioned earlier (also, even if I wanted to, it’s hard to schedule a lot of things in December), I rarely have time to say much after the actual champion is crowned. I’m more interested in who goes to what bowl and who makes the Playoff now anyway since championship controversies are basically over with, but it was still nice to bring things to a nice conclusion when the season ended with the big bowls right around New Years before work was full-speed again.
Anyway, about a month ago, the SEC meetings in Destin, Florida, took place. Thankfully no final decision was made or there would have been no point to blogging about it at this point.
Two options were presented regarding scheduling once Texas and Oklahoma enter the SEC.
There are so many considerations and things to be aware of, so I’m just going to write one big long article. Maybe I’m not enough of a marketer, but I don’t have the time and the energy to split it up into small segments to tease where I’m going with this. I’d rather spent time catching up on the other things, so everything I think is worth noting on the topic will be here.
Option 1: Eight Games with One Permanent Opponent
The first is easy to dispense with, so I’ll start there. That would be an 8-game schedule with one permanent opponent. Among the established SEC teams, there are three two-team states [Alabama-Auburn, Ole Miss-Mississippi St., and Tennessee-Vandy], so that knocks out 6 of the 16 teams. Going forward there will be two annual neutral-site games. I’m not calling them the PC names—The Cocktail Party between Georgia and Florida and the Red River Shootout between Texas and Oklahoma. I know Texas A&M-Texas would be in-state, but I think both Oklahoma and Texas would insist on playing each other annually instead. Anyway, that takes out 4 more, leaving 6 teams to match up. I think they’re fairly common-sense:
I don’t think this is very controversial
LSU-Texas A&M (long-term occasional rivals before the Aggies joined the SEC, they’re in neighboring states and battle over many of the same recruiting prospects)
Arkansas-Missouri (existing annual rivals; and apart from Oklahoma, who’s obviously taken, they’re in a geographic area all to themselves while being close to one another)
Kentucky-South Carolina (annual rivals since the Gamecocks joined the SEC for the 1992 season, and frankly they’re the only leftovers on the eastern side of the map.)
I will acknowledge a few small arguments that might come up. I’ve seen some suggest Arkansas-Kentucky and Missouri-South Carolina, but that’s silly, especially if you’re only picking one matchup per team. Missouri and South Carolina were illogically forced into the SEC East together and made the best of it by creating a trophy; but that doesn’t mean the series must continue annually. Other than in years where Arkansas has a good basketball team, I don’t think anyone would be excited about Arkansas-Kentucky.
I think both Arkansas and LSU fans would acknowledge that they’re not that geographically close to each other [despite the two states sharing a border, Baton Rouge is in the Southeastern part of Louisiana, and Fayetteville is in the Northwestern corner of Arkansas; Little Rock and Shreveport are no longer suitable venues for major SEC games as they were in the 1930s and 1990s, respectively], and the trophy they pass back and forth was also kind of forced.
Texas A&M played Missouri a few times when both were in the Big XII, but they were never annual opponents except briefly in the couple of years after the Aggies joined the SEC, and that didn’t evolve into any kind of meaningful rivalry. Geographically, there is a lot of Texas to the North and East of College Station; and Texas and Missouri aren’t neighboring states.
Intro to Option 2: Nine Games with Three Permanent Opponents
It’s the other option that’s liable to cause a bar fight somewhere in SEC country. That would be 9 games with three permanent opponents.
First of all, why a 7/1 and 6/3 format? Why isn’t 7/2 or 6/2 an option? It’s simple. This would allow you to play the OTHER teams exactly twice every four years, one home and one away. So if there are 16 teams with an 8-game schedule, you subtract the team in question and the annual opponent (16-1-1=14). That leaves 7 spots for 14 teams. You play half of them the first year and the other half the second year. In the third year, you repeat the same schedule as the first year except it’s in the opposite respective stadiums. In the fourth year, you swap stadiums but otherwise with the same schedule as the second year.
With the 6/3 format, you subtract the team in question and three annual opponents (16-1-3=12). That way you have an even number and can play exactly half of the teams one year and the other half the next along the same lines as the 7/1 format I explained.
This is the option favored by the big wigs who have gone undefeated and/or have won national championships despite a loss.
I can definitely see a capable program like Ole Miss (with no national-championship team in 60 years and no consensus national championship ever) or Tennessee (with one in the last 70 years) worried they might get just one shot and blow it by losing the extra SEC game or that they might finish second in the SEC rather than first as a result of the extra game and not get the same forgiveness that Alabama might get when they finish second.
Even more marginal programs like Vanderbilt would probably prefer 8 games. If they can only manage to win three or four, they still have a shot at a bowl game. If they went 3-6, they would have to be perfect in the other games to make a bowl. If they went 2-7, they wouldn’t be allowed to play in a bowl. At 2-6, they might still have a shot if they can run the table out of conference. At 3-5, they can afford to lose one out of conference.
Also, an extra home game in Nashville every other year isn’t going to yield a program-changing amount of money regardless of the opponent. An extra Alabama-Florida or LSU-Georgia game by contrast is a huge sum of money and probably gets a prime TV spot. You can bet it’s not going to be at 11 a.m. on the SEC Network.
The other issue is with one more conference game, that’s one less spot for a meaningful non-conference game. Some argue that all 16 teams will just play one more easy opponent, but that hasn’t historically been the case. There have been many instances of an SEC team scheduling two quality opponents out of conference. I think if there are 9 SEC games, any team would be crazy to have more than one ever, at least not without a major expansion of the Playoff.
Rivalry Week
I didn’t think of this until I almost completed writing this blog, but the 9-game series would also make Rivalry Week weird for LSU.
If there is only one permanent opponent (as above), Texas A&M stays available for LSU in Rivalry Week since the Aggies won’t be playing Texas that week every year, assuming Texas-Oklahoma is the annual game instead. There isn’t an obvious team for Texas to play that week, but I imagine they could keep at least sporadic series going with former Big XII and Southwest Conference foes. Texas-Oklahoma is earlier in the year, and I hope Oklahoma would keep playing Oklahoma St. An alternative arrangement would be for LSU to play A&M earlier in the schedule in years where the Aggies are playing Texas and during Rivalry Week in other years, but then both LSU and Texas would have to find alternatives every other year. I would prefer if LSU/A&M kept the same date.
It gets trickier for LSU if A&M is playing Texas during Rivalry Week every year, which would most likely be the case in the 9-game schedule. These are the obvious Rivalry Week games in that scenario, assuming Oklahoma keeps playing Oklahoma St.:
Non-SEC teams are added as abbreviations with a transparent background. I’ll explain below why Louisville isn’t included.
If the annual series between Texas and Texas A&M is once again played during Rivalry Week (as was the tradition before the Aggies left the Big XII for the SEC), for the third time in 30 years the Tigers would be losing an annual “Rivalry Week” opponent. I’ll elaborate in the next two paragraphs for anyone who wants that explained.
With only a handful of exceptions from the 1930s through 1991 (a couple of rescheduled games and a couple of series against non-major Western teams), LSU completed its regular season against Tulane. Starting in 1992, LSU began to complete the season against Arkansas, which had just joined the SEC and needed to start (or re-start if you take a long enough view) a semblance of a rivalry with someone. Starting a few years after that, LSU decided it wasn’t worth it to play annual home and home series against Texas A&M (which usually started the year) or Tulane (which was second-to-last for a few seasons) in addition to the various SEC series.
A couple of years after Missouri and Texas A&M joined the SEC in 2012, it made sense that rather than playing each other they would play Arkansas and LSU, respectively. So since 2014, LSU has played Texas A&M (in part to replace Texas and in part because that was a “historical” series still in most fans’ memory) during Rivalry Week.
There would be no obvious SEC team to fill the gap for LSU. Traditionally (before 2014), Tennessee ended its season with Vanderbilt and Kentucky (for a long time Vanderbilt was last, but then they switched), but obviously the Volunteers can’t play both on the same weekend. Maybe if Tennessee ends with Vandy one year and ends with Kentucky the next, whoever isn’t playing Tennessee during Rivalry Week can play LSU. Kentucky has been playing Louisville that week of late, but traditionally the Kentucky-Louisville game was earlier in the season anyway. Surely the Cardinals could go back to playing someone else that weekend. I don’t want to get into ACC scheduling politics, but there are teams in the ACC without obvious traditional opponents for that week.
Suggested Permanent Opponents under Option 2
My Preferred Permanent Opponents
Alabama: Auburn, Ole Miss, Tennessee
Arkansas: Missouri, Texas, Vanderbilt
Auburn: Alabama, Florida, Georgia
Florida: Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina
Georgia: Auburn, Florida, South Carolina
Kentucky: Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee
LSU: Arkansas, Mississippi St., Texas A&M
Mississippi St.: LSU, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt
Missouri: Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma
Oklahoma: Missouri, Texas, Texas A&M
Ole Miss: Auburn, Mississippi St., Vanderbilt
South Carolina: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky
Tennessee: Alabama, Kentucky, Vanderbilt
Texas: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M
Texas A&M: LSU, Oklahoma, Texas
Vanderbilt: Arkansas, Ole Miss, Tennessee
If the competitive balance isn’t right or one of your favorites is missing, keep reading.
Hopefully, you can understand the basics of how the map works and I don’t have to provide the information in list format for every map I saw fit to mention in this blog.
Most of these should be obvious why I chose them on the map or based on a passing familiarity with the historical rivalries, but I’ll explain a few that I chose over others I could have chosen.
Oklahoma and Texas A&M were both in the Big XII South, and Oklahoma was in both the Big XII (albeit in another division) and Big 8 with Missouri. There isn’t a similar tie between Oklahoma and Arkansas even though they’re both in the Northwestern part of the map. Also, Arkansas and Texas were annual rivals in the Southwest Conference before the Razorbacks joined the SEC and have renewed the rivalry several times since. I mentioned that when that happened, the LSU-Arkansas rivalry was kind of forced and therefore not one that had to take place every year. However, being the #3 rivalry for both schools is reasonable.
Vanderbilt could have been matched with Arkansas or Missouri, but the only logical opponent to drop would have been Mississippi St., which has a really forced annual series with Kentucky that doesn’t make a lot of geographic sense. Why make longer trips for both if there isn’t a compelling reason to do so? Mississippi St. could have also been replaced with Kentucky, which would be slightly better for Vanderbilt but would make even less sense for Mississippi St.
Since I ruled out Missouri playing Vanderbilt annually, the only real option to Missouri’s east was Kentucky. Kentucky and Missouri are the two northernmost teams in the SEC, and neither had another strong competitor for the #3 slot.
While not quite as unnatural, hence Florida joining the SEC many decades before, the Gators have a similar issue to Missouri being that they’re in an extreme position on the map somewhat alone. In the last 10 years or so, they were probably happy to play Tennessee rather than Auburn most of the time; but I’m not sure Auburn is going to be a better program going forward.
Younger fans may not understand why other than geography Florida should play Auburn at all. Unlike some of the others I discussed there is nothing artificial about this rivalry. I know they’ve only played once since 2011, but bear with me. Until 2002, each team had two cross-divisional opponents. Florida-Auburn was important enough to be annual until then. It wasn’t quite as prominent as Auburn-Georgia though (and Florida was a more interesting and logical opponent for LSU than Kentucky was), so it had to go. In the 58 seasons between the end of World War II and the revamping of SEC schedules in 2003, Auburn played Florida 59 times. (They played in a rematch in the SEC Championship in 2000.)
So by now, you’ve probably figured out why Auburn might be perturbed with this map. They’re paired with three opponents who are among the most successful programs in the conference over the past several years in terms of championships and championship game appearances. No one else has three opponents all of whom have at least one national championship in the last 15 years. But a lot has changed with Florida since that Gators national championship in 2008. Other than 2020, when there were two extra SEC games (and the winning percentage in a typical year probably would have resulted in six wins), the Gators have only won 7 or 8 conference games three times since that championship season. One of those was the year after. By contrast, the Gators won four SEC games or fewer (that’s .500 or below) six times. Since 2008, Georgia and Florida have only combined for 13 wins twice. They combined for 10 or fewer wins seven times. Georgia has been a rock-solid program the past five years, don’t get me wrong; but the point is Georgia and Florida are rarely top teams at the same time.
As for Alabama, it’s possible Saban has peaked or at least will have in two or three years (or longer… they could start with 8 and go to 9 later) before this would go into effect. I don’t know if 2011 to 2017 Alabama would have lost to LSU in 2019 or to Georgia last year. I’m not saying he’s on his way out or that he might not have a more national championships in him, but I am saying we shouldn’t assume Alabama is going to be dominant for the foreseeable future. I know it was a long time ago, but in 7 of the 10 years before Saban was hired, the Tide won four games or fewer in the SEC.
If Saban retired tomorrow, Alabama could still win a national championship in January, but ask Auburn what happened after the last time they won one in 2010 or even LSU what happened in the last two years. Things can go downhill in a hurry. Malzahn nearly won one at Auburn in his first year in 2013, and it was pretty much downhill from there. Even that 10-year period at Alabama before Saban I mentioned… the first of those was only five years after Gene Stallings’ national championship season. As I mentioned, Florida has had just a few really good seasons since winning two national championships in three years under Urban Meyer. It’s not going to be three national-championship-caliber opponents every year.
It could be that Texas A&M would have more of a gripe with their schedule, but that depends how well Oklahoma is able to withstand its latest coaching change, how quickly Brian Kelly can get acclimated in Baton Rouge, and how soon Texas returns to national prominence. For Texas, it’s been “any season now” since 2009. Oklahoma has been a reliable standard-bearer in the Big XII and a regular participant in Playoffs and championships. Texas played for two national championships in the first decade of this century. I don’t like to brag about LSU this way, but obviously the Tigers have won three national titles and played for another in the last 20 years.
Speaking of Texas A&M, as I touched on at the end of the last section, it occurred to me that if they do start playing Texas every year once again (and almost everyone thinks they should if there are three permanent opponents), there would be some turmoil regarding who plays whom on Rivalry Week. Even if Bedlam stops being an annual series (I for one hope it doesn’t), Oklahoma and Texas probably wouldn’t want to move their traditional matchup in the Dallas area at the time of the Texas state fair to the end of the season and probably would want to (assuming they were playing A&M annually anyway) go back to playing the Aggies that week.
I do think no matter what arguments I make (or someone more notable makes) there is a high chance that people will reject a schedule that doesn’t pay more attention to perceived competitive balance than I did, but that’s unfortunate. Most teams are going to be luck of the draw anyway since every team in the SEC would be on your schedule at least once in a two-year period. Even if you get the annual opponents that seem easier, you might get the best Georgia team one year, the best A&M team the next, the best LSU team the year after that (and maybe another great Georgia team), and so on.
I’m not pretending these things don’t matter at all. Even when Vanderbilt is having a good run and Alabama is relatively mediocre, you’d still rather have Vanderbilt on the schedule. A mediocre Alabama team will have better athletes. Even in the 10 pre-Saban years you still would have had about a 1 in 3 chance of Alabama winning 75% or more of its conference games. Vanderbilt hasn’t won over 75% of its conference games since it was in the Southern Conference in 1929. The Commodores have only had two winning SEC records since 1959.
So there would be a percentage advantage or disadvantage in the big picture for some schools, but as long as it’s mostly beneficial to the schools who haven’t won, I think that’s OK. A given team playing South Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri has an easier route, but Kentucky has never played for a conference title and hasn’t even gotten particularly close to a divisional title that I know of. I’m OK with that. Vanderbilt could have three easy opponents if Tennessee and the Mississippi schools are having off years. I’m OK with that too.
Part of the reason I’m not in favor of the nine-game schedule is it makes the competitive balance more difficult. It’s much more likely that a team comes ahead or behind based on strength of schedule whether it’s due to the luck of the draw, annual opponent, or unequal number of conference home/away games. The big schools are the ones asking for this, so if whoever is near your team that makes sense historically and geographically is too good, join the smaller football schools in pushing to keep the eight-game schedule.
My Strongest Alternative Suggestion
I’m willing to be nice and show a willingness to compromise based on those last few paragraphs. I would also be extremely happy with this second option, which I think avoids a lot of potential gripes from Auburn and Texas A&M fan bases in particular.
I’m not only going to show you these two, but the other two that I made myself are variations on things other commentators are suggesting, so this is the only other one that’s purely based on what I want and believe in.
Someone might have read what I said about Alabama and thought I was only saying that because I wasn’t pairing LSU with Alabama. Although I prefer Texas A&M (and not just because of LSU’s record against them), my alternative plan is to put my money where my mouth is and keep LSU-Alabama an annual event.
This pays less attention to the newer rivalries even if they make sense.
You can just by looking at the map that I did a good job keeping the far western teams together, keeping the central teams together, and keeping the Eastern teams together. It lacks some series I like such as LSU-Arkansas, Florida-Auburn, and Alabama-Ole Miss, but it adds some good ones.
Arkansas would play both of its old Southwest Conference rivals (Texas and Texas A&M) annually. Florida would continue to play three of the five SEC East teams it has played every year since 1992. Florida-Kentucky has been a reliably good game lately even though until recently the Gators had a decades-long winning streak over the Wildcats. Auburn-Mississippi St. isn’t going to be the Game of the Century anytime soon, but it’s better than Auburn or Mississippi St. versus Vanderbilt. Also, I think given that Missouri has had a killer travel schedule and will continue to have one regardless, it’s only fair to give them the closest three teams as permanent opponents.
LSU would also play its closest conference rivals, in that case the ones with whom they share the most history. In recognition of the importance, LSU completed its conference season for almost 30 years in a row with those three, ending when Arkansas joined as mentioned previously. Before that stretch (when Tulane was still in the SEC), they were almost always three of the final four conference opponents.
Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee would play the same teams as the previous map. Vanderbilt would have a slightly longer trip to play Missouri than they would have to play Mississippi St., but I don’t think that’s a big deal.
LSU vs. A&M, Ole Miss, and Mississippi St.
This is a blend of my two suggestions as far as LSU is concerned. I don’t mind it. I think it’s good to promote the LSU/A&M rivalry again, and I think it’s worse to lose the LSU/Ole Miss rivalry than Alabama. I would say that even if this were the late 1990s or early ’00s.
It’s the one that Matt Moscona thought was likely, but as far as I know he didn’t opine about which other teams should play which.
This is similar to my first suggestion, but i connected Missouri and Arkansas with the roughly parallel traditional SEC East teams.
There are the same Auburn and Texas A&M issues as in the first suggestion here, so of course I did an alternate keeping these opponents for LSU.
More similar to my second map, this keeps the western teams who weren’t in the SEC before 1992 playing each other along with maintaining more SEC East rivalries. It’s too easy on Alabama in my opinion though.
LSU vs. A&M, Ole Miss, and Alabama
I usually respect what Ross Dellenger has to say, but what he laid out in Sports Illustrated is terrible. I don’t know if it was just a joke, but when I used to follow him on Twitter, he used to post about drinking whiskey on the rocks whenever he was stressed about something. Maybe he fell off the wagon while writing his article.
With all the long and overlapping lines, it almost looks like there are more permanent games here.
I already talked about how I don’t think Missouri-South Carolina or Kentucky-Arkansas make a lot of sense. Kentucky wouldn’t really play any games to be excited about. I mention that I don’t think they really care about Mississippi St. Those were just two of the teams without obvious cross-division rivals. It’s not something anyone is going to be heartbroken to end now. That would leave Georgia as the only annual SEC East series for the Wildcats. I know they would give the Bulldogs their best shot, but even their biggest fan would probably dread the game more than they would be excited about it. At least they’ve held their own against Tennessee, and that’s much more natural rival geographically as well as historically. Even Kentucky-Florida has been a better series of late even though Florida dominated for decades.
Dellenger added some extra, even more contrived rivalries that make even less sense. I’m sure everyone will be talking about their plans for the big Auburn-Vandy game every year. Florida-Oklahoma sounds like a good Orange Bowl or Sugar Bowl when Florida has a good year, but annual rival? What? If you’re going to make Florida play a second heavyweight program in addition to Georgia, Oklahoma should be last on the list.
Mississippi St. is another school that wouldn’t have any rivals to be invested in except for the obvious. State and A&M played in a snowy Independence Bowl in 2000 as Jackie Sherrill got to sneak out a victory against his old program, but that was the only time they faced one another between 1937 and 2012, the year the Aggies started SEC play. The only time one team had visited the other school’s campus was 1913. It was a good matchup for the Independence Bowl organizers in that one year, but I don’t think it’s something “the 12th man” would be excited about on an annual basis.
Anyway, I felt it necessary to find a scenario that I think makes sense assuming he’s correct about LSU at least.
This is the only one I’ve done where Florida still plays Tennessee, but I think it’s wrong not to have Kentucky play Tennessee.
I kept his plans for LSU in tact, but I made some trades to try to rehabilitate his list to make it more palatable. I can understand what he was trying to do with balancing the schedule, but you don’t just do that and ignore everything else. I did keep Kentucky-Mississippi St., but I gave the Wildcats Vanderbilt and South Carolina, both of which make more geographic sense. I don’t know the history before 1992, but they have played every year since. At least I eliminated several of the matchups that made absolutely no sense.
In the last blog, I decided not to speculate on some aspects of how the deal that brought Kelly to LSU materialized (through his agent) when and how it did. I’m glad that I didn’t because more information has come out. It’s not completely different from what I thought, but the picture is more complete now.
Brian Kelly made an interesting comment to Rece Davis in an interview on GameDay. He said that his agent Trace Armstrong told him about several inquiries that he had received; but he only discussed this at the end of the season. Unless his agent called his wife and cleared it with her first, I don’t think he meant the very end of the season. I suspect that he wasn’t so overwhelmed with the stress of Notre Dame’s looming game against 3-8 Stanford that he took a little bit of time to have conversations with his agent and his family during the week prior to that game. It is plausible that the only direct conversation with Woodward was after the Stanford game though, and it makes sense that everything had to become settled relatively quickly. My conclusion about Kelly having some prior conversations is also supported by LSU grad Booger McFarland, who said the deal with Kelly (or at least the formal offer) was already on the verge of being finalized on Saturday.
Rece Davis interviewed Brian Kelly in a meeting room on the LSU campus. The interview aired on GameDay yesterday.
I think Armstrong knew Kelly and Woodward were keeping quiet, so he had the opportunity to fill the void by suggesting the job was actually going to Riley. Riley was probably going to USC at that point anyway, but Armstrong was able to get a more favorable contract approved more quickly than he would have otherwise. It didn’t hurt Kelly that he was able to stay under the radar as long as he did. Whether Riley’s name floating around helped Woodward to secure the funding I’m not sure. Some have speculated that Woodward knew a long time ago, perhaps before even taking the job or at least before the Orgeron announcement, the money was going to be in place.
I imagine someone at LSU other than Scott Woodward had to be apprised of the situation to finalize the deal even though Woodward was given broad latitude. At that point a leak was inevitable. Any major news about LSU football gets all over town very quickly. I’m not saying the leak was out of malice. It might have just been to calm down some of the hysteria regarding Riley going to another team. Some worried that Riley was the guy Woodward was counting on all this time and that he didn’t have a backup plan.
There was an article by former LSU beat writer Ross Dellenger, who now works for Sports Illustrated. It says that Woodward made one last phone call to Jimbo Fisher prior to the weekend before proceeding with hiring Kelly. I hope that isn’t true; but if it is, I’m glad Jimbo said no. I know Woodward likes to hire champions, but Fisher left Florida St. as it was going down the tubes in the years after his national title there. I certainly think his is an improvement over the previous coaching staff in College Station, but you don’t pay someone a salary like that to go 8-4. I’m not certain Kelly will do better, but I’d rather have the uncertainty than the knowledge of what Jimbo has done in recent years. If he were available, I think it would have cost a lot more than the Kelly deal did anyway.
Ratings and Playoff Commentary
I mentioned last week that Alabama did not schedule well out of conference; but the Tide played 6 games against SEC West opponents, all of whom were bowl-eligible and which included #9 Ole Miss, as well as otherwise-undefeated Georgia and 7-5 Tennessee.
I explained last week that Oklahoma St. had a very good schedule, and it was even better than Alabama’s. This is why the Cowboys are ranked higher than Notre Dame despite the additional loss. To illustrate this point, Virginia and West Virginia are both 6-6 with almost identical strengths of schedule. Notre Dame beat Virginia, while Oklahoma St. beat West Virginia. Notre Dame only beat two teams that were better: Purdue and Wisconsin. Oklahoma St. beat four teams that were better: Boise St., Kansas St., Baylor, and Oklahoma. Both teams won 2/3 of their games against better teams, but being tested more often should give Oklahoma St. the edge. Even if we expand it to the top 80 (we are still talking about risky opponents here—#76 TCU beat Baylor, #77 Illinois beat two ranked teams on the road, and #70 Florida was a field goal away from beating Alabama), Oklahoma St. still played almost twice as many in that range.
Baylor does belong lower than Notre Dame though. Although BYU was a good non-conference opponent, the Bears scheduled Texas St. (who went 4-8 and is my #111) and Texas Southern (who only beat two other FCS opponents). Although they essentially played the game conference schedule as Oklahoma St. did, losing to bad teams is punished a little more harshly. As mentioned, TCU is #76. Iowa St., who beat Oklahoma St., is #49.
All three are relatively close though. There is more than twice as much separation between #4 Cincinnati and #5 Oklahoma St. than there is between #5 Oklahoma St. and #7 Baylor. There is just under twice as much space between #7 Baylor and #8 Ohio St.
There is a consensus about who the four semifinal teams should be and since the focus of my ratings is creating a fair objective top four, I could not be more satisfied. You can quibble about how high UL-Lafayette and UT-San Antonio are—I think teams like Michigan St., Oklahoma, and Utah would beat both easily—but I don’t mind giving credit to successful seasons. Even with an expanded playoff, I wouldn’t want teams with more than one or two losses this season in it, so I don’t mind if 1-loss ULL or 1-loss UTSA are higher than teams who would be highly favored to beat them.
I also think if Cincinnati played number 5 through 10 they’d be lucky to win one or two. On the other hand, the Bearcats are 1-0 against that group; and a lot of people would have told you out of 10 tries Oregon would beat Utah 9 or 10 of them. If you missed it, the Ducks had two shots at the Utes and fell far short both times. Anyway, I also don’t think a two-loss non-champion would be more deserving of a slot in the top 4 even if they look better to me. Oklahoma St. and others had their chances and fell short. About a foot short in the case of Oklahoma St. against Baylor. The best Cowboy teams always lose to Iowa St. though. This also happened 10 years ago when the Cowboys missed the top two in favor of the Tide.
Houston stayed close with Cincinnati for a while, so I don’t love the fact that they fell out of the top 25; but Utah St. deserved to move back into it after their solid win over San Diego St. for the Mountain West title. I like seeing some stability as far as which teams are in the top 25. In the last three weeks, only four teams have fallen out. Utah St. was one of those four, so there are only three different teams than there were three weeks ago.
Championship losers San Diego St., Appalachian St., and Wake Forest all managed to stay in the top 25. There needs to be a penalty for losing; but just like I’m glad Oklahoma St. didn’t fall out of the top 5 in favor of Notre Dame, I like that it’s not so harsh that any of the three fell below enough idle teams to fall out of the top 25.
Alabama QB Bryce Young drops back to pass in the SEC Championship Game against Georgia in Atlanta on Saturday. Alabama is now the consensus Number 1 team going into the bowls. The Tide will play Cincinnati in the Cotton Bowl on December 31.
I wrote everything above last night, but I just wanted to respond briefly to Michigan being placed ahead of Georgia. It doesn’t really matter who #2 and #3 are, but it’s the only difference between the respective top fours, so I wanted to address it.
Georgia Tech isn’t even in that top 80 group I was talking about, but the Bulldogs are in luck because that’s the third-best team they scheduled out of conference. I have Clemson just outside of the top 25 and UAB at #50. Of course they avoided Alabama and Ole Miss in the regular season. Imagine the arguments if they had played Alabama. Anyway, Arkansas and Auburn as the non-divisional games still aren’t bad. Michigan’s Big Ten schedule did include some bad teams though. Rutgers, Nebraska, Northwestern, and Indiana all have losing records compared to just one in-conference opponent for Georgia that had a losing record. Michigan’s one Power Five opponent rates worse than Georgia Tech. MAC champion Northern Illinois was a help and Western Michigan rated similarly to UAB, but it should not be enough to put them ahead.
That said, if the committee made the decision based on the team that will take the field at the end of the month being harder to beat rather than resume, I do agree with Michigan being ahead. They finished very strong. If they play the way they played against Ohio St. and Iowa, they can beat anyone. If Georgia plays the way they played against Alabama, especially with the turnovers, they won’t have much of a chance.
I haven’t had time to go into much detail with LSU. Now that there won’t be a full slate of games again, I can update the various rivalry blogs and talk about the new coach when there is one.
I want to say a few things about Coach Orgeron. First, I should acknowledge that I did think it was appropriate to go a different direction with the head coach, so don’t read my praises of the good things he did as criticism of the decision. Coach O admitted and seemingly understands that the last couple of seasons were not up to the LSU standard of performance. I don’t think he has had enough personal interest and enthusiasm in maintaining the 2019 success as he had in getting there, but I will always appreciate what he did in getting there.
There were some ups and downs in the first 54 weeks between Les Miles being relieved of his duties and the day LSU went to Gainesville in 2017; but from that point on, there was a clear upward trajectory. The only losses from that point until 2020 were two games against Alabama (one by 14 and one by 29), one game against Florida (by 8 the next season), and two rigged debacles (against Notre Dame and Texas A&M, respectively) that were decided in the final seconds, neither of which ultimately counted for much. There wouldn’t have been much excitement about a second consecutive Citrus Bowl win anyway, and the A&M loss didn’t deter the Fiesta Bowl from selecting the Tigers. Getting to that bowl, not to mention winning it, was the more important byproduct of the success of the 2018 team.
So unlike what some will tell you now, it wasn’t just one fluke year. Coach O did some serious heavy lifting to get from the team he took over in 2016 to the top of the mountain in 2019, but LSU started with a loss in 2020 and never showed that winning edge again. The Tigers didn’t even win consecutive games until December of 2020 (that season was all conference games) and didn’t win consecutive conference games at any point in 2021.
2021 also marked the second consecutive season in which the Tigers opened with a loss. The one time Les Miles did that in 12 seasons, he was gone within a month. LSU didn’t typically open with weak opponents either. Since 2005, LSU has started with 12 Power-Five opponents, 7 of them ranked in the top 25 at the time of the game.
Jimbo Fisher, former LSU offensive coordinator under Nick Saban and Les Miles who has been mentioned in various LSU coaching searches, exchanges pleasantries with outgoing LSU head coach Ed Orgeron in Baton Rouge on Saturday.
The point is we went from consistently starting on solid ground to only doing so a couple of times under Coach O. In hindsight, UCLA was the beginning of the end. The rumor was that Kentucky was a must-win, and I’m not sure that’s true; but it was definitely not acceptable to lose by 21 after letting Auburn sneak out a win (their first in Baton Rouge since 1999) the week before. That’s when I understand the decision was made. In the excitement yesterday, Coach O said the decision was made after Kansas; but it’s another basketball school that mostly wears blue and starts with a K, so I’m pretty sure he meant Kentucky.
Speaking of Kentucky, there are some LSU fans only who seem upset that the Tigers may hire Wildcat coach Mark Stoops, but they could do much worse. There may be a better coach for the amount they’re willing to spend, but it wouldn’t bother me at all. These are probably the same LSU fans who were heartbroken the Tigers didn’t get Tom Herman, who did much worse at Texas than Coach O did at LSU overall.
Playoff Race
That’s enough about a 6-6 team for now. I’ll move on to the top teams.
Some may be surprised that Oklahoma St. is so high, but that’s mostly a function of the Cowboys not being a team the media wants to hype. They’re not going to drive high TV ratings. It might also be partly because no matter how good they are, they typically lose to Oklahoma. Of course that didn’t happen this year; but the media isn’t going to admit they overlooked someone in the playoff conversation until the end of November, so they’ll pretend they’re fifth or sixth.
The media also forgets that this thing called non-conference scheduling exists. Of course the 8 teams Alabama has played in the SEC are better on average than the 9 teams Oklahoma St. has played in the Big XII, but those other teams matter too. Boise St. is very good team, better than U. Miami, but the low-IQ take is the Hurricanes were ranked when Alabama played them so they must have been good!
Whether you think U. Miami was better or not, one should also acknowledge that the Tide also scheduled Southern Miss and New Mexico St. (as well as an FCS opponent, but Oklahoma St. did the same, so I’m no using that against them for the purposes of the comparison). Southern Miss has had good seasons in the past, but they’ve been mediocre on a good day lately; and NMSU has only made one bowl game in 50 years. The two won a combined three games against FBS opponents for the season. Two of those wins were Saturday, over two teams who themselves have a combined one win over other FBS opponents.
Oklahoma St. wide receiver Tay Martin reaches out for the end zone in the win over the Sooners on Saturday in Stillwater. The Cowboys play Baylor for the Big XII Championship next week.
Alabama will be ahead if they beat Georgia, don’t get me wrong; but don’t fall for the idea of Oklahoma St. being undeserving just because Kirk Herbstreit or whoever doesn’t have them in the top four. I’m also not saying the Pokes are a lock against Baylor, especially since rematches are tough. By the way, they also don’t get nearly enough credit for beating the Bears the first time, just because Baylor hadn’t gotten a high ranking yet. Kansas is almost as bad as USM and NMSU, but obviously that’s a conference game.
As for Michigan, the only reason they’re even close is that they didn’t schedule an FCS opponent. Their average FBS opponent is about #60 whereas the average FBS opponent for Alabama or Oklahoma St. is about #52. The Wolverines scheduled a couple of respectable MAC opponents as well as Washington (who unfortunately had a bad year), but there are a number of mediocre teams in the Big Ten that dragged down their average. The best few teams in the Big Ten may be as good as or better than the best teams in the SEC or the Big XII, but more than one or two are clearly part of the bottom half of college football.
I think Michigan will also deserve to play for a national championship with a win. If the Wolverines play as they did Saturday, they will be hard for anyone to stop; but I like to reward the teams who play more of the types of opponents who are likely to beat a top a team.
Speaking of which, Cincinnati and Notre Dame is a split decision as far as weighted and unweighted; but the Bearcats will be ahead in both with a win on Saturday. I don’t have any qualms about them potentially losing out to four one-loss teams though. If Alabama beats Georgia, I would actually be annoyed if Cincinnati made it in ahead of a winning Oklahoma St. team. Terrific that they won their early-season Super Bowl over Notre Dame, but the results simply do not indicate to me that they could play a Big Ten, SEC, or Big XII schedule including the title game and finish with one loss or fewer.
If it’s undefeated Cincinnati versus two-loss Alabama, who was a field goal away from losing to Florida and who went to four overtimes with Auburn, I’d be on the other side of the argument though. I doubt the Bearcats could play Alabama’s schedule with only two losses either, but I’m willing to resolve that doubt in their favor. Also, Notre Dame, who began the season with narrow wins over Florida St. and Toledo, hasn’t played a ranked team (either currently or at the time) since Cincinnati. I would have no problem leaving the Irish out. In short, I’m not close-minded about teams from lesser conferences; but it should only be considered when multiple other options fall short.
I tried to change something at the last minute last week, and that messed things up for this week. I don’t like when there are dramatic shifts from one week to the next. According to the original top 25 last week, I created some unnecessary changes and then in a few cases there were dramatic changes back this week. I shouldn’t have tried to intervene and temporarily alter my formula last week, so I took the unusual step of changing the rankings for last week.
Redoing the previous final rankings is why I couldn’t get this out sooner, but it’s here now.
Michigan did not lose last week, but the Wolverines got relatively few points for beating Maryland. This allowed other teams to pass them up.
Oklahoma St. beat Texas Tech, which is a good but not great opponent. I think it was more helpful that Baylor has now won five of six since losing to the Cowboys and that Boise St. has won four games in a row.
Also, Cincinnati is still feeling a negative effect from their games against Indiana, Notre Dame, and Navy. Although when the Bearcats play East Carolina next week, the Navy/East Carolina game won’t really matter, for now it hurts Cincinnati that the Pirates won. Notre Dame didn’t slip enough in points to fall a spot (especially without Michigan gaining very much), but their value as a win went down and will go down again. Indiana still only has a single win against an FBS opponent.
Although Alabama beat a decent team in Arkansas, many SEC teams took a hit to their respective strengths of schedule this past week, so the win was not quite enough to put the Tide ahead of the Bearcats. Auburn is slightly better than East Carolina, so I do expect the Tide to move up with a win.
C.J. Stroud threw for 6 touchdowns (all in the first half) and 432 yards with and only 3 incompletions in 35 attempts for the game. Three different receivers had over 100 receiving yards. Ohio St. also had over 200 rushing yards.
Ohio St. shot up in many rankings because of their margin of victory over Michigan St., but as much as that helped, don’t forget that they lost to Oregon. So it hurt the Buckeyes in my rankings that the Ducks lost. It will probably help the playoff ranking though, because they intentionally lowered Ohio St. for losing to Oregon given that Oregon had the same number of losses. With this logic (not mine), it’s better to lose to 2-loss Oregon than 1-loss Oregon. None of this really matters if they beat Michigan and Wisconsin. I don’t see any scenario where that wouldn’t be enough to put Ohio St. in the top 4. Same thing if Michigan beats Ohio St. and Wisconsin.
I didn’t investigate why Appalachian St. went up so much, but I believe it’s because of prior opponents such as U. Miami and Coastal Carolina. The Mountaineers have a much better strength of schedule than UL-Lafayette. The reason the “weighted” ratings are so named is they provide extra points as the scores of the best opponents improve, so it’s harder to see the direct correlation between what happened last week and the new ratings. Also, the loss to Texas hurts UL-Lafayette (who didn’t play Coastal Carolina) more every week. The Ragin’ Cajuns play the Mountaineers on Championship Saturday anyway, so they can confirm if they really are better.
The only other movement that may seem a little strange is San Diego St. dropping three spots. The Aztecs played UNLV, so they didn’t get many points from that, and other teams were able to pass them. There was a similar logic to Texas A&M falling two spots.
Anyway, this is basically the formula I’m going to follow the rest of the year. The only slight tweak is that it’s not a perfect average between the weighted and unweighted ratings, the latter of which make up maybe 55% of the overall rating. I could change the weighted formula so the bonus points aren’t so high, but it’s just easier to do it this way.
I noticed based on the Massey comparison site that I give the majority of the MAC better ratings than the other ratings represented on Massey’s site (at least as of Sunday evening). I double-checked every team to see if there was any problem and couldn’t find one.
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The Bayou Blogger 
Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, College Football, Florida, football, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi St., Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St., Ole Miss, SEC, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Tulane, USC, Vanderbilt
Pre-Bowl Top 25 and LSU 2024 Schedule
In College Football, General LSU, History, Rankings, Rankings Commentary, Rivalry on December 15, 2023 at 4:04 PMLSU’s 2024 Schedule : Historical and Competitive Ramifications
I’ve sat down to this blog a few times, and each time some other news item comes out. The most recent event was the release of LSU’s schedule with the actual dates.
I decided to just cover that and the top 25 for now. Interesting bowl games (to me anyway) are still about two weeks away, so the rest can wait.
We’ve known all the teams on LSU’s 2024 schedule for a while but not who LSU was playing on what date. The one constant going back as long as I remember is Alabama after a bye week and between about November 3 and 12, this time on the 9th. Alabama seems to keep roughly the same order from year to year, but no one else does that I’ve noticed.
Given the addition of the second bye, I like that it was added before Ole Miss. That’s been a tough contest lately. LSU has a three-game losing streak in College Station, but I’m still less worried about that game than about Ole Miss.
Texas A&M was scheduled on the traditional late October date for Ole Miss though. LSU will play the Rebels two weeks earlier, with Arkansas sandwiched in between.
Florida was traditionally around the date the Ole Miss game is scheduled, but this might be the last year of what has been an annual series since 1971 anyway. It was also after Alabama this year, so it was easy to leave it where it was. At least they weren’t both road games in either year.
LSU doesn’t have a long ongoing annual tradition with anyone else on the 2024 schedule.
They had only played Texas A&M once (in a bowl) between 1995 and 2012, the year the Aggies joined the SEC. LSU had previously played the Aggies in early September, but it’s different when it’s not a conference game.
I wouldn’t be opposed to making it an early game in the future though, especially since LSU won’t play Auburn annually anymore. Mississippi St. was a typical September fixture for a while also, although on the traditional schedule they were after Alabama. I’m still annoyed LSU plays neither Auburn nor Mississippi St. next year.
Since the annual series with Tulane ended in 1994, LSU has played whatever somewhat proximate SEC is left without a good end-of-year rival. Arkansas was not particularly close to and had no longstanding recent rivalry with anyone in the SEC when it entered, so that was fine for about 20 years. Then after Missouri and Texas A&M joined (and two “transitional” years elapsed), it made sense to split that up when it became clear that the Aggies weren’t playing Texas anytime soon.
Now that the Thanksgiving/rivalry-week Longhorns-Aggies series is rekindled and Bedlam is on hiatus, it wasn’t a huge shock that LSU finishes with Oklahoma in Baton Rouge. We are used to playing a team with a reddish color from a neighboring conference to the west.
The SEC could have mixed things up in some other ways in 2024, but it was easier not to, especially since next year is just a one-off and not part of any dedicated rotation. Just as a neutral fan of college football and historical rivalries, my hope is that Oklahoma either can manage to schedule Oklahoma St. again or that they play Missouri on rivalry week. I would be OK with LSU going back to Arkansas or having some type of rotation (perhaps switching between Oklahoma and Arkansas or between Vanderbilt and Kentucky). There was some history with Kentucky. LSU played the Wildcats 51 years in a row at one point (ending with the 2002 season).
As far as I’m concerned, LSU could even go back to playing Tulane if the two sides could come anywhere close to a mutually agreeable deal; but since that hasn’t happened in nearly 30 years, I’m not optimistic. There was a home-and-home in 2006 and 2007, but LSU felt like they gave up revenue from a potential home game to enrich Tulane. Since then, LSU has played every other Louisiana Division I program, all of whom seem content with being paid money to travel to Tiger Stadium occasionally rather than expecting a home-and-home exchange.
Anyway, putting tradition aside, I like that there aren’t brutal back-to-back weeks. Going to Florida after hosting Alabama isn’t ideal, but there is only one instance of LSU playing 2023 bowl teams two weeks in a row, and that’s UCLA and South Alabama (both were barely eligible and both will be home games).
USC and UCLA are separated by Nicholls St. and South Carolina. The Bruins or Gamecocks could have a good year, but I doubt both will. I don’t see much risk of looking past an SEC road game or coming down from an emotional high for the first home game that is against a Power 5 opponent.
There were years when I’ve been glad LSU got an apparently tough opponent from what we used to call the SEC East, but we didn’t need one given the out-of-conference slate. Also, I’m not even sure if you need a good non-annual schedule, especially if the SEC eventually adds a ninth game, in the playoff system. I guess we will see how lines get drawn between 4 and 5, 8 and 9, and 12 and 13 in playoff selection
Top 25
Other than their effects upon the Playoff resumes as mentioned in the previous blog, I didn’t have much to say about the conference championship games because they weren’t very surprising. I don’t know why Oregon was favored by so much; but as I kept telling everyone, they didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t a big believer in Georgia since the only SEC West teams they faced were Auburn and Ole Miss and they didn’t do anything out of conference until beating an average Georgia Tech team a couple of weeks ago. Very good Alabama teams have struggled with Auburn before, so I didn’t attach much importance to that. In lieu of Georgia, I admittedly picked the “wrong” Big Ten team as #1, but it wasn’t my fault Ohio St. had a better schedule than Michigan. As expected, the Wolverines had no problem with Iowa.
I’m listing my top 25 teams below, but I think they all fairly logically proceed from the results of those games and what I had written about the Playoff teams last week.
Honorable mention: Kansas St., Oklahoma St., Oregon St., Clemson, Memphis