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.
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.
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 think this is the last week that I’ll add a subjective component. I might still move some teams a few spots, but it will be starting with the list the computer ratings give me instead of making some sort of ranking average first.
As for this week, after adding three parts computer rankings to one part subjective rankings, I then moved teams up to three spots.
Ohio St. was one of the few teams that I moved the full three spots. The Buckeyes play computer #17 Wisconsin next week while the Seminoles play Wake Forest (#74) and the Sooners play Kansas (#46). If the Badgers win, there will be a new #1 regardless. The other team Ohio St. skipped over was Michigan, who’s off next week. So there was really no other good option to select as #1 when considering the next opponent.
The Ohio St. defense forces a quick pass from Penn St. quarterback Drew Allar, who only completed 18 of 42 passes for 191 yards. The Nittany Lions arguably fared even worse in rushing, with an average of less than 2 yards per rush.
For future reference, Michigan does not play Wisconsin or Iowa this season (and also didn’t have an opponent like Notre Dame out of conference), so I would be strongly disinclined to move them ahead of Ohio St. without a loss by the Buckeyes. Ohio St. already beat the other three teams remaining on the Wolverines’ schedule (Purdue, Penn St., and Maryland).
The computer so happened to follow the following win chain. Oklahoma beat Texas, who beat Alabama, who beat Ole Miss, who beat LSU. I’m not promising to keep the teams in that order in the future; but for now it still fits the parameters I set out above, so I don’t see why not.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t similarly put Oregon St. ahead of Utah for beating the Utes, consider that Utah’s only loss is to a 1-loss top-10 team and Oregon St.’s loss is to a 3-loss team who is no longer in my top 30. Also consider that Utah beat a top-40 team out of conference and none of Oregon St.’s non-conference opponents are in the top 90.
Missouri’s going back ahead of LSU is simpler to boil down. Mizzou has one fewer loss and a couple of decent non-conference wins (Kansas St. and Memphis). LSU may end up with one decent non-conference win in Georgia St., but that’s not for a few weeks.
Despite having lost to Washington in the same stadium where Arizona St. should have beaten the Huskies, I actually was kinder to Oregon than the computer was. My kindness just doesn’t go as far as it did last week. The Ducks are still in need of some quality wins though. Colorado isn’t as good of a win as it appeared to be a month ago; and Oregon was the third team to beat Washington St., so that’s hardly a noteworthy achievement either. The Ducks still play Utah, USC, Oregon St., and a potential Pac-12 title game, which would probably be a rematch with either one of those or with Washington.
Speaking of which, the computer doesn’t factor in how ugly a win is, but ugly wins over bad opponents don’t get rewarded much by me. The computer put the Huskies #8, and I just let that be their final spot. UW had zero offensive touchdowns and took the lead when Arizona St. threw a “pick 6” on fourth down from the Washington 12. Had the Sun Devils kicked the field goal to take a 10-6 lead, I have little doubt that they would have won since the Huskies only managed a field goal the rest of the way and were still very much motivated to put the game away with a touchdown. Arizona St. still has no wins over FBS opponents.
I had no choice under the rules at the beginning but to rank Liberty and Air Force. The Flames have a weak remaining schedule though. They may get passed up by Air Force eventually even if they don’t lose.
Watch the “honorable mention” list. All three of the newly-ranked teams were on that list last week, which indicates the ratings are becoming a little less volatile.
LSU-specific Updates
You can expect LSU to fall further next week given the bye, similarly to how Georgia fell this week. Alabama is actually the computer #4 right now, so their bye will help the computers to make more sense. Obviously if LSU were to win, they could expect a pretty good move upward, but a loss following Army and a bye could see the Tigers fall out of the top 25 altogether.
This has no bearing on the rankings, but to give a couple of thoughts about the game… Given some of the mistakes Army made, LSU got some extra possessions, so the high point total by the LSU offense doesn’t mean much to me.
The defense is graded more on a curb, so I do give them some credit for the shutout. I’m still not sure they would have shut out a better-run option attack, particularly under the old rules that allowed such schemes to utilize more effective blocking downfield blocking, but I’ll take it.
This is after having a good second half against Missouri and a good game against Auburn. LSU only held Auburn to a few points less than Georgia and Ole Miss did, but 8 of the 18 points were given up after LSU led 34-10 going into the fourth quarter. Neither the Georgia nor the Ole Miss defenses had time to relax against Auburn since both finished as one-score games.
To elaborate on the Missouri game, LSU’s best win so far, the average Power-5 opponent who’s played Missouri gives up 17.5 points per half and LSU gave up only 14 in the second half. The first half (25 points) was bad, but Kelly sort of indicated it may have been related to play calls more than preparation. You can’t implement and practice an entire new game plan at halftime, so that makes some sense. It seemed like before that point the defense was scared to death a receiver might get behind them (even though it happened sometimes anyway); but now that fear is reduced, and the aim is more to hassle and distract the quarterback enough that he might not be able to get the ball to such a receiver anyway.
While I’m more excited by the recent progress by the defense, I wanted to give Brian Thomas, Jr., credit for making his three receptions count. He accounted for 122 yards and two touchdowns against Army, all in the first half. LSU had its 7th consecutive game with over 500 yards of total offense (a first in school history; second-best was the 2019 team with 5 in a row), while the Black Knights were held to fewer than 200 total yards. LSU also won the turnover battle, 4-0.
If the defense continues to hold teams below their average and the offense keeps scoring like this (not against Army per se, but it’s been consistent across a variety of defenses), LSU will be hard to beat. As Kelly referenced in one of the press conferences, no one is confusing them with the 1985 Bears; but that’s not remotely necessary. It’s not like 2012 when we scored 24 points or fewer in 40% of our wins. (It would have been 50% if it weren’t for an Alabama screen pass and a Clemson field goal in the final moments of those respective games.)
I actually have two blogs of material this week since I didn’t have time to post the other one last week. I finally did get around to entering all the FBS results into the spreadsheet for my computer formula.
I thought posting the rankings blog was more important to get more back on schedule. I haven’t even promoted them like I usually do because most people aren’t really interested on Thursday and Friday.
LSU QB Jayden Daniels keeps the play alive in the first quarter in Columbia on Saturday. Daniels was responsible for 389 total yards and four touchdowns (with no turnovers). It should have been more scores, but we don’t need to get into why he didn’t get credit for more.
LSU/Missouri Recap and Reaction
I wanted to include a couple of comments about LSU’s win over Missouri even though my next blog will in part be about the game before.
It was nice to get Mizzou back for the first game after Covid, when LSU’s rising star quarterback Myles Brennan played a great game in Columbia but got hurt and was never seen in meaningful action again. I’m torn between saying LSU deserved to win that game and that LSU was lucky they competed in any games in 2020 and 2021.
Anyway, that was also the only season I know of when the LSU defense was nearly as bad as it is this year. I have barely even watched LSU play defense the last two games, by the way. Auburn’s offense isn’t as good as that of Mizzou or Ole Miss, so I’m hoping it might be more tolerable next game.
The second half of the Mizzou game was not bad though, to be fair. Six of the home Tigers’ 8 possessions did not result in points. Ideally LSU would like to force the other team to punt more, but missed field goals and interceptions result in the same number of points that “three and outs” do.
Preface of Rankings
For the rankings this week, it’s still mostly subjective; but there is an objective element now. I gave each team a score that was a combination of my subjective and objective ratings, and then I allowed myself to move teams a maximum of five spots from the order the improvised formula put them in. For most teams, it was only one or two spots though. The objective ratings aren’t as thorough as they will be (for instance, no credit was given for quality of FCS opponents), but they’re complete enough to give a strong idea of who the most accomplished teams are.
Oklahoma was the best team in my formula, but it’s partly because they beat 6 FBS opponents (none of which were very good before last week). So I felt the need to move them up considerably. I haven’t been impressed with them in “the eye test” since Caleb Williams transferred to USC, which is partly why they weren’t higher going into the week; but I couldn’t move Georgia any higher given the rules I made above. Florida St. has had two lucky wins, so I didn’t want to put them in the top 3 either.
Oklahoma’s Nic Anderson catches the winning touchdown pass from Dillon Gabriel in Dallas on Saturday. Gabriel did not complete as many passes or throw for as many yards as Texas’s Quinn Ewers, but he threw no interceptions and Ewers threw two as Oklahoma got revenge for a 49-0 loss to the Longhorns last season.
Speaking of USC, I’m not impressed with them much at all once I sat down and looked at who they’ve beaten and the records of those opponents. They just went to triple overtime against Arizona, who lost to Mississippi St., possibly the worst team in the SEC West. The Trojans are undefeated though, so I thought I would put them ahead of the best two-loss team, Notre Dame. I would not be surprised to see USC lose to the Irish or any of the ranked Pac-12 teams though.
There were a couple of other large movements in the rankings. Louisville is another undefeated team who had a big, somewhat unexpected win over the weekend. North Carolina also made a big jump, but I am still concerned by the narrow home win over Appalachian St. One of the things I do when I move to more objective rankings is to de-emphasize margin of victory though. I added a couple of Big Ten teams with understandable losses, as well as adding LSU back.
Even though I understand it can look bad to move teams too dramatically, I still think it was the right choice to take LSU out when they fell to 2-2 against FBS opponents (which included a 3-point home win over Arkansas) going into the Missouri game. I also still think I was right to put Mizzou ahead of the four teams who fell out (as I’ll explain, formerly #21 Kansas didn’t fall far), but at any rate it makes sense for LSU to be a bit higher than those other Tigers now.
I can defend most of the choices I made last week, but the idea is to be as accurate as possible now, not to put last week on a pedestal and see who deserves to move up or down a set number of spots based on a preconceived idea of how good last week’s respective opponents were. I continue to think it’s the right thing to start evaluating teams differently around this time of year. Preseason, knee-jerk reactions to one or two early results, and margin of victory should count for very little going forward.
I’ve hardly had any teams from the G5 (those outside of the Power 5 conferences) ranked this season, but four of the best five unranked teams by both the computer and the overall formula are G5. They are as follows: James Madison, Kansas, Liberty, Memphis, and Wyoming.
I was going to leave it at that, but since I mentioned Liberty, it will be interesting to see how former Liberty and Ole Miss head coach and current Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze does in his first trip to Tiger Stadium since 2016. He was winless in three contests there as the head coach of Ole Miss, most notably in 2014 when his undefeated #3 Rebels were upset 10-7 in one of those Les Miles defensive and ball-control classics. When I get a chance, I’ll try to get caught up on the rivalry blogs.
This was another vacation week, but I’ll start getting things back to normal in the coming week. This is still all in my mind and not based on my formula at all, but it’s meant to be at least somewhat of an estimate. If you didn’t play a good team last week and someone lower than you did, you might fall. Just to make up numbers, let’s say you had 20 points and the team after you had 19 last week. If that team got a quality win worth 3 and you got a mediocre win worth 1, you fall below that team. I don’t care how good you looked beating a winless team or an FCS team or whatever, you’re not entitled to keep your spot. I’m also allowed to change my mind about how good an opponent earlier in the year was. I know these are things most pollsters don’t do; but if I thought most did a good job, I wouldn’t have started doing my own top 25 28 years ago. However, since this was slightly rushed, there probably were a couple of cases where I just left teams about where they were by default and wouldn’t have with closer analysis.
Also, if you lose a game I fully expected you to lose to a higher-ranked team, I’m not inclined to lower you too much. An exception to that is if it’s a 2-loss team. A team that has two losses right now could end up being one of the best teams, but it’s going to take a while to recover a rating, so I don’t put teams like that in the top 25 right now.
Alabama looked a little more like what we expect from a Nick Saban Tide team against Ole Miss in Tuscaloosa on Saturday. Above, Rebel QB Jaxson Dart was pressured into a bad throw by DL Justin Eboigbe. Ole Miss was held to 10 points or fewer for only the second time since 2018 (the other being against Baylor in the Sugar Bowl two seasons ago).
Rank
Team
Last
1
Ohio St.
1
2
Georgia
2
3
Michigan
3
4
Texas
5
5
Southern CA
6
6
Penn St.
7
7
Florida St.
5
8
Oregon
10
9
Utah
9
10
Notre Dame
8
11
Alabama
12
12
LSU
11
13
Washington
14
14
Duke
15
15
Florida
16
16
Ole Miss
13
17
UCLA
17
18
Washington St.
—
19
Tennessee
19
20
Kansas
—
21
Missouri
20
22
Kansas St.
24
23
N Carolina
23
24
Oklahoma
—
25
Oregon St.
21
Out of Top 25: (18) Clemson, (22) Central Fla., (25) Colorado
I’ve been accused of being an SEC homer in the past, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it. There were two more disappointing results to add to the LSU loss in Week 1. Neither was as bad as Utah, the defending and eventual Pac-12 champions, losing to a Florida team that wouldn’t even finish with a winning record last season. By SEC standards though, losing to a similarly-placed team in another conference as Alabama and Texas A&M did is still bad news.
Texas A&M and Alabama
It was a doubly good weekend for Longhorns fans. I guess it will be OK in hindsight if Texas A&M finishes last in the SEC West and U. Miami is in the top half of the ACC, but chances are the Aggies will beat at least one competitive team this year (as they beat divisional champions LSU last season). I think there is a limit to how low Alabama can fall, but if they’re third and Texas goes undefeated in the Big XII, maybe that loss will also be understandable in hindsight by the end of the year. Alabama could still win the national championship, but I’m just giving one scenario.
In Tuscaloosa, Ala., Saturday, Texas QB Quinn Ewers threw for 349 yards and 3 touchdowns, including the one above to Xavier Worthy in the second quarter.
Early Big Games Are Not Always Determinative
Like I discussed last week, sometimes a team just gets off to a rocky start and fixes the problems before getting exposed by a conference opponent. This happened to Ohio St. in 2014 before winning the first College Football Playoff. An SEC example happened in 2006, when Arkansas was embarrassed against USC, 50-14, before winning the SEC West. 2006 was when the 7-year run of SEC national titles began, so it wasn’t a sign of a weak league then. USC went on to win the Rose Bowl, but not before losing as many Pac-10 games (2) as the Trojans had lost in the previous four seasons combined.
Putting A&M aside since I don’t think a lot of people picked them first or second in the SEC West, the fact that it happened to both LSU and Alabama is somewhat concerning. As far as I can recall, there wasn’t a second such game in 2006 or the few years after by one of the top SEC teams.
I also want to say I don’t agree with some people saying that this means Texas will be a top contender for SEC titles right away. One game isn’t an 8- or 9-game SEC slate; and even though Texas should be an easy place to recruit, they probably will have less experience in key positions next season. Also, without the divisional format, it isn’t likely they can make a championship game almost by default like Missouri did a couple of times. Texas A&M, which joined at the same time as Mizzou, still has never made an SEC championship game despite typically having much better teams.
Ole Miss and LSU
Neither of the next two SEC West teams I’ll mention have gotten much of the flak for last week, but I’ll also be fair and say I wasn’t impressed by them either.
Also, Ole Miss should have appeared vastly superior to a Tulane team that is missing a lot of its talent from last season (when they still lost to Southern Mississippi and Central Florida despite the positive season overall) and was also playing without its starting quarterback. The starting quarterback might not have made a difference of 17 points (the final margin of victory), but it easily could have made a 7-point difference. That game would have been a lot different if Ole Miss had made a field goal to go up three points instead of ten with just under two minutes left. If Tulane didn’t have the urgency of being down two possessions on the ensuing drive, the turnover that resulted in the final Ole Miss touchdown would have been less likely.
LSU was expected to beat Grambling by a big score and did so, but I still think it was a bad sign that it was 14-10 LSU at the end of the first quarter. If Grambling hadn’t deferred after winning the toss, they would have had two different leads. It’s not like the field goal was from 50 yards either. It was a 23-yard field goal, so Grambling was close to scoring before stagnating in the red zone. It shows you don’t even have to be an FBS talent to catch passes against LSU, you just have to be tall. I’m sure there are some tall receivers in the SEC. A few players got out of the backfield too easily too.
Nonetheless, if LSU manages to go to Starkville and get a win (more on that below), the other teams in the division could be beatable. I think the Tigers also have a fairly favorable cross-divisional schedule with Florida (at home) and Missouri (on the road).
Mississippi St. and Auburn
I mentioned last week that the Pac-12 had not lost any games against other conferences in Week 1. The one bit of good news from the SEC West is Mississippi St. and Auburn became the first two teams from other conferences to defeat Pac-12 opponents. Cal and Arizona only had a combined five conference wins last season, but it’s not like Auburn was terrific either (2 conference wins by a combined 6 points). Yes, I know LSU struggled on the Plains last year anyway; but LSU has struggled there in the past against weak Auburn teams (even in 2012).
It will also be interesting to see how hosting Arizona compares to hosting LSU from Mississippi St.’s perspective.
Mississippi St. QB Will Rogers, who has thrown the most completions in SEC history, runs the ball against Arizona in Starkville, Miss. He only threw 13 of those 1192 completions on Saturday despite the game going into overtime.
LSU/Mississippi St. Series
Even if LSU wins, it’s going to be bittersweet, to me at least. 2024 will be the first year that Mississippi St. will participate in an SEC season and not play LSU. The first SEC season was in 1933, and the last regular season Mississippi St. played without playing LSU was 1925. The only Tigers’ schedule that didn’t have the Bulldogs on it over that time was 1943, when Mississippi St. didn’t field a team.
I don’t understand why they couldn’t keep the series going next season while they figure out what the permanent rotation will be, but of course no one asked me. Next season, LSU will play Vanderbilt for the 33rd time, South Carolina for the 23rd time, and Oklahoma for only the fourth time. I think somehow one of those (or even Florida or Arkansas) could have found someone else to play while LSU played Mississippi St. again.
I will have more to say about this whenever I get around to updating the rivalry blog, but I want people to appreciate that much while the game is taking played.
LSU/Mississippi St. Preview
About the game itself, it might be a good thing for LSU that Mississippi St. has moved away from the air raid since I’ve made no secret of my lack of admiration for the LSU secondary so far. By the way, I had to laugh during the week when LSU commentators who acted like the Tigers could somewhat easily handle the Seminoles and were good bets for the top 10 (if not top 5) acted like they agreed when Brian Kelly told the media that he knew it would be an area of concern. I understand why he didn’t tell us, but why didn’t the LSU media tell us if they knew? LSU has a well-paid PR department. They don’t need volunteers masquerading as journalists.
I hope I’m wrong, but I think I’d take the Bulldogs and the points at home anyway. Based on what State did last week, I do give LSU the edge but not by much. Just because Miss. St. didn’t throw it much last week doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t if they feel like that’s what LSU is giving them. The LSU defensive backs can’t get taller in the next couple of days, but I’m hoping they do a better job at breaking up passes on throwing downs and that there is more of a rush to assist the pass defense than there was against Florida St.
if Mississippi St. is not able to generate much offense without the help of the turnovers which they relied on to win the last game, then it might be relatively easy to outscore them. In that case, this might result in LSU being conservative to try to preserve the lead. Something like 23-14 or 27-19 would still fail to beat the spread. If LSU has to try to go score for score, then it’s also unlikely the Tigers win by double digits.
General Blog and Rankings Comments
Before I post the Top 25, I did want to mention that I’m not completely confident about my posting schedule for the next couple of weeks since I have some traveling planned. It will be done by the time I usually post my first computer ratings in early October though. It’s also more difficult to post blogs of my usual quality while traveling. Enjoy the pretty rankings chart below since you might not see it again for a little while.
This is already long, so I won’t explain any particular ranking decisions. I’m still giving some credence to preseason rankings at this point; but when I transition into a purely computer-based system, all preseason bias will be removed. This does not take place in major polls or committee rankings.
This is not to complain or make excuses, but the college football landscape has changed a good bit since 2019. Some of it was due to COVID, but a lot of it is just due to the changing business of college football. I might not have even used the phrase “business of college football” a few years ago, but the bottom line definitely comes first even for most of the well-known players now.
I can’t do what I used to do (most recently in the lead-up to the 2019 season) and just look at how good a team was last year and the returning starters. Not that that was ever ALL I did, but it was a very good place to start. After the top 10 or so, you didn’t really have to go into much detail about who those players were.
One of the things that fundamentally changed how to do this is the transfer portal. A player might transfer out of a school at one position and a player who’s just as good or better (or at least has the same status as returning starter) might transfer in. A change at a position isn’t necessarily a negative. Sometimes it’s an upgrade. That was rarely true in the past. If you brought in a new quarterback, that guy had probably never started a game before. Even if he was a better recruit, he wasn’t ready to be a starter at the beginning of the season like a veteran would be.
The disappointment of his NFL career notwithstanding, a good example of this was JaMarcus Russell, who started his first game at Florida in 2004, Nick Saban’s last year. LSU had a veteran quarterback on the sidelines named Marcus Randall (confusing, I know). It looked like LSU was going to lose the game after the first few series with JaMarcus in the game (it’s less confusing to me if I call him that). In contrast to JaMarcus (who as you may recall was the #1 draft pick over the great Brady Quinn), Randall would go undrafted and ended up being a defensive player. His only official NFL stat was three tackles with the Tennessee Titans in 2005. Anyway, Randall came in to salvage the game and helped lead the Tigers to a respectable season. (They were a botched final play away from going 10-2.) With all the potential JaMarcus had compared to Randall, it was still better to have a veteran in that situation.
Marcus Randall (owner of the yellow helmet you can barely see in the back) was best known for throwing the “Bluegrass Miracle” winning touchdown pass as Kentucky fans began to storm the field and take the goalposts down.
In a more recent era, there might have been a graduate transfer or transfer portal player who stepped in for that year. If he were eligible for two seasons, JaMarcus might have transferred out in light of losing the job that day.
I also don’t know which QBs (the most important position to have a returning starter) even count. Is Max Johnson a “returning” starter albeit on another team (I heard today he’s not even a starter, but he would have counted if he’d stayed at LSU even if he ended up not starting)? Haynes King started last season for the Aggies but only played in two games (completing fewer passes than LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier), does he count? Bo Nix? TJ Finley? Jayden Daniels? That’s just talking about QBs who went to LSU or competed against a one-time LSU player, so you could have this conversation about every team at some position.
Philosophy of Preseason Ranking
I guess I’ve also gotten more mature and learned to relax better. Part of that means I’m not going to invest time into reinventing the wheel when there are knowledgeable people who do this stuff for a living. I’ve also grown accustomed to the idea that that will probably never be me.
In light of that, I’ve decided to just rely on a third party to calculate how much returning production there is per team. This is even more important than in pre-COVID years because the final team ratings last year were still thrown off by canceled bowl games and other COVID-related events. Anyway, I don’t have any objection to their formula. I’m just assuming they’re not made-up numbers.
The Top 15 is only partially based on last year and this formula anyway. Given what Georgia has done in recent years, I wasn’t comfortable dropping the Bulldogs out of the top five despite not having that much talent back by this measure. I also didn’t want to drop Baylor and Oklahoma State any more spots until they lose to someone.
I could have been a homer and snuck LSU in there, but I didn’t. Brian Kelly is a much more proven head coach than Lincoln Riley and Brent Venables, so I’m also not bending over backwards to put USC and Oklahoma very high (Oklahoma is in the heart of the top 25, but it’s low for them). USC could have returned 100% of its production from last year, and that wouldn’t be enough for me to put them in the top 25. Maybe USC or LSU will be knocking on the door of the top 10 by the end of the year, but I don’t just wipe the slate clean because you got a new coach and some transfers. Either could also be highly mediocre. You have to show everyone gelled and things are working out for a period of time to rehabilitate the respective losing records of last year (when USC was much worse than LSU, for the record).
I also want to make clear that (although I do think it’s relevant what a team’s overall ability to achieve is), this isn’t a prediction for the rankings at the end of the season. It’s more which teams I think are likely to have their act together in the next month. Otherwise I wouldn’t have put the Big XII teams as high as they are.
Even though it’s not an end-of-year prediction, I sort of pre-screened the top 15 for teams that might do well for a long period of time, I just happened to run out of teams that I could see competing for the playoff right when I got to #15. I do think those Big XII teams might get blown out in a playoff, but I could see any of the three going undefeated (or certainly finishing with only one loss) in the Big XII. Arkansas and Ole Miss are long shots, but only because they play in the SEC West. If they were in the Big XII, they would be in the same boat, maybe even a little bit ahead of that group.
After #15, I just calculated the most usable version of my computer rating system and multiplied it by returning production converted into a percentage. I tried a few different ways of multiplying it out, and there wasn’t a difference in the order for most teams. I did prefer the outcome where they were two fewer Group of Five teams. Houston and Boise St. were left out in lieu of Utah and Oregon. The Power Five teams had slightly more returning production, and Power Five teams almost invariably have deeper benches. I didn’t move anyone in numbers 16 through 25 even one spot once I settled on the final formula.
Comments about Selected Teams
Alabama was the runaway #1 in the formula. Obviously they’ve been the best team in the long run. The Tide have only failed to win 13 games or more once since (and including) 2015. They didn’t reach that mark in 2013 or 2014; but in 2013 (before there was a Playoff) the Tide started 11-0 before the Kick Six game, and in 2014 the Tide lost only one regular-season game before falling to Ohio St. in the national semifinal.
There is a strong chance Alabama will face Georgia in the postseason yet again.
By the way, even though obviously it did nothing for LSU, I am glad that Alabama fans got to feel the frustration of losing a national championship to a team you had already beaten. It’s not fair to have to beat them twice. One thing that doesn’t make it quite as bad is Alabama at least has one more loss than Georgia does. In 2011, LSU finished 13-1 (against a better schedule) and Alabama 12-1.
Speaking of Ohio St. (two paragraphs up), the Buckeyes had the best returning production on the list after BYU and Mississippi St. I couldn’t see a strong argument to make anyone else #2.
Clemson is still the most-recent national champion who doesn’t play in the SEC and also had good returning production, so I thought they deserved the nod for #3.
Cincinnati was #4 8 months ago and has a decent number of players coming back. Like the Georgia Bulldogs I mentioned, I wanted to keep Cincinnati in the top 5 until someone else earned their way in. I put the Bearcats higher because they have a good bit more coming back. Georgia probably still has a better team, but I’ll wait until the new players prove themselves.
I am a little more skeptical of Michigan. There was a big gap between Michigan and Georgia in the bowl. I think the Wolverines got up to this point more quickly and have a larger propensity to fall back down. I was proven wrong about them in the Big Ten (which might be the most exciting conference race) last year though. Maybe I will be again. If a team who loses a semifinal game was in my top 8, I won’t consider myself that wrong though.
Nine to 11 might seem strange, but I didn’t know where else to put them. The cupboard isn’t looking bare for them like it is for 12 to 14. They’re all credible up-and-coming major-conference programs. I guess I could have put them after Texas A&M, but I’m less comfortable with the teams I would have had to put higher. I did decide to keep Arkansas out of the top 10 given that I’d think there have to be some lingering effects from only winning 7 games from 2018 through 2020. Also, it’s hard to be any higher when you had a 3-game losing streak (that included a loss to Auburn) the season before. The Razorbacks played down to Mississippi St. and LSU (beating each by a single field goal) down the stretch as well before a good showing against Alabama.
As for Ole Miss, they finished 10 spots ahead of Iowa last year in my ratings, so I’ll give them a slight edge despite not having quite the same returning group. I don’t fault Iowa for the losses to Michigan and Kentucky to end the year, but like Arkansas, the Hawkeyes had an ugly stretch toward the middle (barely beat Penn St., whom the Razorbacks beat somewhat comfortably, at home, lost by a few possessions apiece to Purdue and Wisconsin, and only beat Northwestern by 5). I don’t think the downside risk is as bad for the Hawkeyes (who have only lost 9 games in the past three years and have not had a losing record since 2012) as it is for the Razorbacks though.
That’s about three pages of writing on my Word document. I’ll have to leave it there.
Top 25
Alabama
Ohio St.
Clemson
Cincinnati
Georgia
Michigan St.
Notre Dame
Michigan
Ole Miss
Iowa
Arkansas
Oklahoma St.
Oklahoma
Baylor
Texas A&M
North Carolina St.
Brigham Young
Kentucky
Mississippi St.
Texas Christian
U. Miami
Wake Forest
Pittsburgh
Utah
Oregon
Honorable mention: Houston, Maryland, LSU, Boise St., SMU, San Diego St.
Maryland went 7-2 last year against teams outside of the top ten, including a 54-10 win over Virginia Tech in the Pinstripe Bowl late last year.
I wanted to start by saying that I know I’m behind as far as things I’ve been planning on.
I saw a joke online recently that said. “Hobbies? I am thirty-xx years old. I do not have hobbies. When I have any free time at all, I will go lie down.”
Sadly, that has been my pattern at times lately; although I do still have some hobbies. I still haven’t gotten my normal pattern back since the lockdowns and whatnot. I have gotten to travel a few times over the last couple of years, so I guess that counts as a hobby; but the way my work schedule works is I just have more to do before I leave and after I get back. So if I’m gone for a week, I can’t even think about blogging for two weeks, sometimes longer.
I still need to update the rivalry blogs. Since we are almost at the end of the academic sports calendar (schools are done, but baseball is still going), I’m going to wait until then to give an update as to what conference has been doing what in the major sports as far as top-four finishes.
I’ll wait until the football preseason to recap the last football year. I didn’t really wrap that up after the championship game. I was glad that four teams were able to vie for the championship rather than two; but due to the whole holiday situation I mentioned earlier (also, even if I wanted to, it’s hard to schedule a lot of things in December), I rarely have time to say much after the actual champion is crowned. I’m more interested in who goes to what bowl and who makes the Playoff now anyway since championship controversies are basically over with, but it was still nice to bring things to a nice conclusion when the season ended with the big bowls right around New Years before work was full-speed again.
Anyway, about a month ago, the SEC meetings in Destin, Florida, took place. Thankfully no final decision was made or there would have been no point to blogging about it at this point.
Two options were presented regarding scheduling once Texas and Oklahoma enter the SEC.
There are so many considerations and things to be aware of, so I’m just going to write one big long article. Maybe I’m not enough of a marketer, but I don’t have the time and the energy to split it up into small segments to tease where I’m going with this. I’d rather spent time catching up on the other things, so everything I think is worth noting on the topic will be here.
Option 1: Eight Games with One Permanent Opponent
The first is easy to dispense with, so I’ll start there. That would be an 8-game schedule with one permanent opponent. Among the established SEC teams, there are three two-team states [Alabama-Auburn, Ole Miss-Mississippi St., and Tennessee-Vandy], so that knocks out 6 of the 16 teams. Going forward there will be two annual neutral-site games. I’m not calling them the PC names—The Cocktail Party between Georgia and Florida and the Red River Shootout between Texas and Oklahoma. I know Texas A&M-Texas would be in-state, but I think both Oklahoma and Texas would insist on playing each other annually instead. Anyway, that takes out 4 more, leaving 6 teams to match up. I think they’re fairly common-sense:
I don’t think this is very controversial
LSU-Texas A&M (long-term occasional rivals before the Aggies joined the SEC, they’re in neighboring states and battle over many of the same recruiting prospects)
Arkansas-Missouri (existing annual rivals; and apart from Oklahoma, who’s obviously taken, they’re in a geographic area all to themselves while being close to one another)
Kentucky-South Carolina (annual rivals since the Gamecocks joined the SEC for the 1992 season, and frankly they’re the only leftovers on the eastern side of the map.)
I will acknowledge a few small arguments that might come up. I’ve seen some suggest Arkansas-Kentucky and Missouri-South Carolina, but that’s silly, especially if you’re only picking one matchup per team. Missouri and South Carolina were illogically forced into the SEC East together and made the best of it by creating a trophy; but that doesn’t mean the series must continue annually. Other than in years where Arkansas has a good basketball team, I don’t think anyone would be excited about Arkansas-Kentucky.
I think both Arkansas and LSU fans would acknowledge that they’re not that geographically close to each other [despite the two states sharing a border, Baton Rouge is in the Southeastern part of Louisiana, and Fayetteville is in the Northwestern corner of Arkansas; Little Rock and Shreveport are no longer suitable venues for major SEC games as they were in the 1930s and 1990s, respectively], and the trophy they pass back and forth was also kind of forced.
Texas A&M played Missouri a few times when both were in the Big XII, but they were never annual opponents except briefly in the couple of years after the Aggies joined the SEC, and that didn’t evolve into any kind of meaningful rivalry. Geographically, there is a lot of Texas to the North and East of College Station; and Texas and Missouri aren’t neighboring states.
Intro to Option 2: Nine Games with Three Permanent Opponents
It’s the other option that’s liable to cause a bar fight somewhere in SEC country. That would be 9 games with three permanent opponents.
First of all, why a 7/1 and 6/3 format? Why isn’t 7/2 or 6/2 an option? It’s simple. This would allow you to play the OTHER teams exactly twice every four years, one home and one away. So if there are 16 teams with an 8-game schedule, you subtract the team in question and the annual opponent (16-1-1=14). That leaves 7 spots for 14 teams. You play half of them the first year and the other half the second year. In the third year, you repeat the same schedule as the first year except it’s in the opposite respective stadiums. In the fourth year, you swap stadiums but otherwise with the same schedule as the second year.
With the 6/3 format, you subtract the team in question and three annual opponents (16-1-3=12). That way you have an even number and can play exactly half of the teams one year and the other half the next along the same lines as the 7/1 format I explained.
This is the option favored by the big wigs who have gone undefeated and/or have won national championships despite a loss.
I can definitely see a capable program like Ole Miss (with no national-championship team in 60 years and no consensus national championship ever) or Tennessee (with one in the last 70 years) worried they might get just one shot and blow it by losing the extra SEC game or that they might finish second in the SEC rather than first as a result of the extra game and not get the same forgiveness that Alabama might get when they finish second.
Even more marginal programs like Vanderbilt would probably prefer 8 games. If they can only manage to win three or four, they still have a shot at a bowl game. If they went 3-6, they would have to be perfect in the other games to make a bowl. If they went 2-7, they wouldn’t be allowed to play in a bowl. At 2-6, they might still have a shot if they can run the table out of conference. At 3-5, they can afford to lose one out of conference.
Also, an extra home game in Nashville every other year isn’t going to yield a program-changing amount of money regardless of the opponent. An extra Alabama-Florida or LSU-Georgia game by contrast is a huge sum of money and probably gets a prime TV spot. You can bet it’s not going to be at 11 a.m. on the SEC Network.
The other issue is with one more conference game, that’s one less spot for a meaningful non-conference game. Some argue that all 16 teams will just play one more easy opponent, but that hasn’t historically been the case. There have been many instances of an SEC team scheduling two quality opponents out of conference. I think if there are 9 SEC games, any team would be crazy to have more than one ever, at least not without a major expansion of the Playoff.
Rivalry Week
I didn’t think of this until I almost completed writing this blog, but the 9-game series would also make Rivalry Week weird for LSU.
If there is only one permanent opponent (as above), Texas A&M stays available for LSU in Rivalry Week since the Aggies won’t be playing Texas that week every year, assuming Texas-Oklahoma is the annual game instead. There isn’t an obvious team for Texas to play that week, but I imagine they could keep at least sporadic series going with former Big XII and Southwest Conference foes. Texas-Oklahoma is earlier in the year, and I hope Oklahoma would keep playing Oklahoma St. An alternative arrangement would be for LSU to play A&M earlier in the schedule in years where the Aggies are playing Texas and during Rivalry Week in other years, but then both LSU and Texas would have to find alternatives every other year. I would prefer if LSU/A&M kept the same date.
It gets trickier for LSU if A&M is playing Texas during Rivalry Week every year, which would most likely be the case in the 9-game schedule. These are the obvious Rivalry Week games in that scenario, assuming Oklahoma keeps playing Oklahoma St.:
Non-SEC teams are added as abbreviations with a transparent background. I’ll explain below why Louisville isn’t included.
If the annual series between Texas and Texas A&M is once again played during Rivalry Week (as was the tradition before the Aggies left the Big XII for the SEC), for the third time in 30 years the Tigers would be losing an annual “Rivalry Week” opponent. I’ll elaborate in the next two paragraphs for anyone who wants that explained.
With only a handful of exceptions from the 1930s through 1991 (a couple of rescheduled games and a couple of series against non-major Western teams), LSU completed its regular season against Tulane. Starting in 1992, LSU began to complete the season against Arkansas, which had just joined the SEC and needed to start (or re-start if you take a long enough view) a semblance of a rivalry with someone. Starting a few years after that, LSU decided it wasn’t worth it to play annual home and home series against Texas A&M (which usually started the year) or Tulane (which was second-to-last for a few seasons) in addition to the various SEC series.
A couple of years after Missouri and Texas A&M joined the SEC in 2012, it made sense that rather than playing each other they would play Arkansas and LSU, respectively. So since 2014, LSU has played Texas A&M (in part to replace Texas and in part because that was a “historical” series still in most fans’ memory) during Rivalry Week.
There would be no obvious SEC team to fill the gap for LSU. Traditionally (before 2014), Tennessee ended its season with Vanderbilt and Kentucky (for a long time Vanderbilt was last, but then they switched), but obviously the Volunteers can’t play both on the same weekend. Maybe if Tennessee ends with Vandy one year and ends with Kentucky the next, whoever isn’t playing Tennessee during Rivalry Week can play LSU. Kentucky has been playing Louisville that week of late, but traditionally the Kentucky-Louisville game was earlier in the season anyway. Surely the Cardinals could go back to playing someone else that weekend. I don’t want to get into ACC scheduling politics, but there are teams in the ACC without obvious traditional opponents for that week.
Suggested Permanent Opponents under Option 2
My Preferred Permanent Opponents
Alabama: Auburn, Ole Miss, Tennessee
Arkansas: Missouri, Texas, Vanderbilt
Auburn: Alabama, Florida, Georgia
Florida: Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina
Georgia: Auburn, Florida, South Carolina
Kentucky: Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee
LSU: Arkansas, Mississippi St., Texas A&M
Mississippi St.: LSU, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt
Missouri: Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma
Oklahoma: Missouri, Texas, Texas A&M
Ole Miss: Auburn, Mississippi St., Vanderbilt
South Carolina: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky
Tennessee: Alabama, Kentucky, Vanderbilt
Texas: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M
Texas A&M: LSU, Oklahoma, Texas
Vanderbilt: Arkansas, Ole Miss, Tennessee
If the competitive balance isn’t right or one of your favorites is missing, keep reading.
Hopefully, you can understand the basics of how the map works and I don’t have to provide the information in list format for every map I saw fit to mention in this blog.
Most of these should be obvious why I chose them on the map or based on a passing familiarity with the historical rivalries, but I’ll explain a few that I chose over others I could have chosen.
Oklahoma and Texas A&M were both in the Big XII South, and Oklahoma was in both the Big XII (albeit in another division) and Big 8 with Missouri. There isn’t a similar tie between Oklahoma and Arkansas even though they’re both in the Northwestern part of the map. Also, Arkansas and Texas were annual rivals in the Southwest Conference before the Razorbacks joined the SEC and have renewed the rivalry several times since. I mentioned that when that happened, the LSU-Arkansas rivalry was kind of forced and therefore not one that had to take place every year. However, being the #3 rivalry for both schools is reasonable.
Vanderbilt could have been matched with Arkansas or Missouri, but the only logical opponent to drop would have been Mississippi St., which has a really forced annual series with Kentucky that doesn’t make a lot of geographic sense. Why make longer trips for both if there isn’t a compelling reason to do so? Mississippi St. could have also been replaced with Kentucky, which would be slightly better for Vanderbilt but would make even less sense for Mississippi St.
Since I ruled out Missouri playing Vanderbilt annually, the only real option to Missouri’s east was Kentucky. Kentucky and Missouri are the two northernmost teams in the SEC, and neither had another strong competitor for the #3 slot.
While not quite as unnatural, hence Florida joining the SEC many decades before, the Gators have a similar issue to Missouri being that they’re in an extreme position on the map somewhat alone. In the last 10 years or so, they were probably happy to play Tennessee rather than Auburn most of the time; but I’m not sure Auburn is going to be a better program going forward.
Younger fans may not understand why other than geography Florida should play Auburn at all. Unlike some of the others I discussed there is nothing artificial about this rivalry. I know they’ve only played once since 2011, but bear with me. Until 2002, each team had two cross-divisional opponents. Florida-Auburn was important enough to be annual until then. It wasn’t quite as prominent as Auburn-Georgia though (and Florida was a more interesting and logical opponent for LSU than Kentucky was), so it had to go. In the 58 seasons between the end of World War II and the revamping of SEC schedules in 2003, Auburn played Florida 59 times. (They played in a rematch in the SEC Championship in 2000.)
So by now, you’ve probably figured out why Auburn might be perturbed with this map. They’re paired with three opponents who are among the most successful programs in the conference over the past several years in terms of championships and championship game appearances. No one else has three opponents all of whom have at least one national championship in the last 15 years. But a lot has changed with Florida since that Gators national championship in 2008. Other than 2020, when there were two extra SEC games (and the winning percentage in a typical year probably would have resulted in six wins), the Gators have only won 7 or 8 conference games three times since that championship season. One of those was the year after. By contrast, the Gators won four SEC games or fewer (that’s .500 or below) six times. Since 2008, Georgia and Florida have only combined for 13 wins twice. They combined for 10 or fewer wins seven times. Georgia has been a rock-solid program the past five years, don’t get me wrong; but the point is Georgia and Florida are rarely top teams at the same time.
As for Alabama, it’s possible Saban has peaked or at least will have in two or three years (or longer… they could start with 8 and go to 9 later) before this would go into effect. I don’t know if 2011 to 2017 Alabama would have lost to LSU in 2019 or to Georgia last year. I’m not saying he’s on his way out or that he might not have a more national championships in him, but I am saying we shouldn’t assume Alabama is going to be dominant for the foreseeable future. I know it was a long time ago, but in 7 of the 10 years before Saban was hired, the Tide won four games or fewer in the SEC.
If Saban retired tomorrow, Alabama could still win a national championship in January, but ask Auburn what happened after the last time they won one in 2010 or even LSU what happened in the last two years. Things can go downhill in a hurry. Malzahn nearly won one at Auburn in his first year in 2013, and it was pretty much downhill from there. Even that 10-year period at Alabama before Saban I mentioned… the first of those was only five years after Gene Stallings’ national championship season. As I mentioned, Florida has had just a few really good seasons since winning two national championships in three years under Urban Meyer. It’s not going to be three national-championship-caliber opponents every year.
It could be that Texas A&M would have more of a gripe with their schedule, but that depends how well Oklahoma is able to withstand its latest coaching change, how quickly Brian Kelly can get acclimated in Baton Rouge, and how soon Texas returns to national prominence. For Texas, it’s been “any season now” since 2009. Oklahoma has been a reliable standard-bearer in the Big XII and a regular participant in Playoffs and championships. Texas played for two national championships in the first decade of this century. I don’t like to brag about LSU this way, but obviously the Tigers have won three national titles and played for another in the last 20 years.
Speaking of Texas A&M, as I touched on at the end of the last section, it occurred to me that if they do start playing Texas every year once again (and almost everyone thinks they should if there are three permanent opponents), there would be some turmoil regarding who plays whom on Rivalry Week. Even if Bedlam stops being an annual series (I for one hope it doesn’t), Oklahoma and Texas probably wouldn’t want to move their traditional matchup in the Dallas area at the time of the Texas state fair to the end of the season and probably would want to (assuming they were playing A&M annually anyway) go back to playing the Aggies that week.
I do think no matter what arguments I make (or someone more notable makes) there is a high chance that people will reject a schedule that doesn’t pay more attention to perceived competitive balance than I did, but that’s unfortunate. Most teams are going to be luck of the draw anyway since every team in the SEC would be on your schedule at least once in a two-year period. Even if you get the annual opponents that seem easier, you might get the best Georgia team one year, the best A&M team the next, the best LSU team the year after that (and maybe another great Georgia team), and so on.
I’m not pretending these things don’t matter at all. Even when Vanderbilt is having a good run and Alabama is relatively mediocre, you’d still rather have Vanderbilt on the schedule. A mediocre Alabama team will have better athletes. Even in the 10 pre-Saban years you still would have had about a 1 in 3 chance of Alabama winning 75% or more of its conference games. Vanderbilt hasn’t won over 75% of its conference games since it was in the Southern Conference in 1929. The Commodores have only had two winning SEC records since 1959.
So there would be a percentage advantage or disadvantage in the big picture for some schools, but as long as it’s mostly beneficial to the schools who haven’t won, I think that’s OK. A given team playing South Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri has an easier route, but Kentucky has never played for a conference title and hasn’t even gotten particularly close to a divisional title that I know of. I’m OK with that. Vanderbilt could have three easy opponents if Tennessee and the Mississippi schools are having off years. I’m OK with that too.
Part of the reason I’m not in favor of the nine-game schedule is it makes the competitive balance more difficult. It’s much more likely that a team comes ahead or behind based on strength of schedule whether it’s due to the luck of the draw, annual opponent, or unequal number of conference home/away games. The big schools are the ones asking for this, so if whoever is near your team that makes sense historically and geographically is too good, join the smaller football schools in pushing to keep the eight-game schedule.
My Strongest Alternative Suggestion
I’m willing to be nice and show a willingness to compromise based on those last few paragraphs. I would also be extremely happy with this second option, which I think avoids a lot of potential gripes from Auburn and Texas A&M fan bases in particular.
I’m not only going to show you these two, but the other two that I made myself are variations on things other commentators are suggesting, so this is the only other one that’s purely based on what I want and believe in.
Someone might have read what I said about Alabama and thought I was only saying that because I wasn’t pairing LSU with Alabama. Although I prefer Texas A&M (and not just because of LSU’s record against them), my alternative plan is to put my money where my mouth is and keep LSU-Alabama an annual event.
This pays less attention to the newer rivalries even if they make sense.
You can just by looking at the map that I did a good job keeping the far western teams together, keeping the central teams together, and keeping the Eastern teams together. It lacks some series I like such as LSU-Arkansas, Florida-Auburn, and Alabama-Ole Miss, but it adds some good ones.
Arkansas would play both of its old Southwest Conference rivals (Texas and Texas A&M) annually. Florida would continue to play three of the five SEC East teams it has played every year since 1992. Florida-Kentucky has been a reliably good game lately even though until recently the Gators had a decades-long winning streak over the Wildcats. Auburn-Mississippi St. isn’t going to be the Game of the Century anytime soon, but it’s better than Auburn or Mississippi St. versus Vanderbilt. Also, I think given that Missouri has had a killer travel schedule and will continue to have one regardless, it’s only fair to give them the closest three teams as permanent opponents.
LSU would also play its closest conference rivals, in that case the ones with whom they share the most history. In recognition of the importance, LSU completed its conference season for almost 30 years in a row with those three, ending when Arkansas joined as mentioned previously. Before that stretch (when Tulane was still in the SEC), they were almost always three of the final four conference opponents.
Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee would play the same teams as the previous map. Vanderbilt would have a slightly longer trip to play Missouri than they would have to play Mississippi St., but I don’t think that’s a big deal.
LSU vs. A&M, Ole Miss, and Mississippi St.
This is a blend of my two suggestions as far as LSU is concerned. I don’t mind it. I think it’s good to promote the LSU/A&M rivalry again, and I think it’s worse to lose the LSU/Ole Miss rivalry than Alabama. I would say that even if this were the late 1990s or early ’00s.
It’s the one that Matt Moscona thought was likely, but as far as I know he didn’t opine about which other teams should play which.
This is similar to my first suggestion, but i connected Missouri and Arkansas with the roughly parallel traditional SEC East teams.
There are the same Auburn and Texas A&M issues as in the first suggestion here, so of course I did an alternate keeping these opponents for LSU.
More similar to my second map, this keeps the western teams who weren’t in the SEC before 1992 playing each other along with maintaining more SEC East rivalries. It’s too easy on Alabama in my opinion though.
LSU vs. A&M, Ole Miss, and Alabama
I usually respect what Ross Dellenger has to say, but what he laid out in Sports Illustrated is terrible. I don’t know if it was just a joke, but when I used to follow him on Twitter, he used to post about drinking whiskey on the rocks whenever he was stressed about something. Maybe he fell off the wagon while writing his article.
With all the long and overlapping lines, it almost looks like there are more permanent games here.
I already talked about how I don’t think Missouri-South Carolina or Kentucky-Arkansas make a lot of sense. Kentucky wouldn’t really play any games to be excited about. I mention that I don’t think they really care about Mississippi St. Those were just two of the teams without obvious cross-division rivals. It’s not something anyone is going to be heartbroken to end now. That would leave Georgia as the only annual SEC East series for the Wildcats. I know they would give the Bulldogs their best shot, but even their biggest fan would probably dread the game more than they would be excited about it. At least they’ve held their own against Tennessee, and that’s much more natural rival geographically as well as historically. Even Kentucky-Florida has been a better series of late even though Florida dominated for decades.
Dellenger added some extra, even more contrived rivalries that make even less sense. I’m sure everyone will be talking about their plans for the big Auburn-Vandy game every year. Florida-Oklahoma sounds like a good Orange Bowl or Sugar Bowl when Florida has a good year, but annual rival? What? If you’re going to make Florida play a second heavyweight program in addition to Georgia, Oklahoma should be last on the list.
Mississippi St. is another school that wouldn’t have any rivals to be invested in except for the obvious. State and A&M played in a snowy Independence Bowl in 2000 as Jackie Sherrill got to sneak out a victory against his old program, but that was the only time they faced one another between 1937 and 2012, the year the Aggies started SEC play. The only time one team had visited the other school’s campus was 1913. It was a good matchup for the Independence Bowl organizers in that one year, but I don’t think it’s something “the 12th man” would be excited about on an annual basis.
Anyway, I felt it necessary to find a scenario that I think makes sense assuming he’s correct about LSU at least.
This is the only one I’ve done where Florida still plays Tennessee, but I think it’s wrong not to have Kentucky play Tennessee.
I kept his plans for LSU in tact, but I made some trades to try to rehabilitate his list to make it more palatable. I can understand what he was trying to do with balancing the schedule, but you don’t just do that and ignore everything else. I did keep Kentucky-Mississippi St., but I gave the Wildcats Vanderbilt and South Carolina, both of which make more geographic sense. I don’t know the history before 1992, but they have played every year since. At least I eliminated several of the matchups that made absolutely no sense.
Before I begin, I wanted to note I’ve updated my ratings in light of the Army-Navy game and recent FCS results.
I have gone into detail about how I understand the Brian Kelly hiring came about and why Notre Dame isn’t some horribly aggrieved party, but I haven’t really gone into what I think of the hire.
A lot of LSU fans were dismayed that we didn’t hire a 30-something offensive-minded coach who throws the ball around. Everyone wants the next Sean McVay even though he’s only won three NFL playoff games in his life, and one was the controversial NFC championship game against the Saints. Hunt Palmer, one of the LSU commentators I actually respect and listen to, said he’s “infatuated” with young coaches like that. You can imagine what the people I hold in less esteem have been saying. Basically, they think if you have a modern passing game, it doesn’t matter what kind of defense or line or player development or organization you have.
Are Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban really similar to McVay? Dabo was a young offensive-minded coach when he started, but he joined Clemson’s staff when McVay was 16 and became Clemson’s head coach when McVay was 22. He was not some cutting-edge offensive wizard teaching all the old fogeys the error of their ways. He was hired by Tommy Bowden after all. Even if you still think Dabo is along the same lines as McVay, why aren’t Saban and Belichick, two older defensive coaches, better examples to follow? Kelly was a defensive coach before was an offensive coach, by the way. I’m not an NFL expert, but I’d also argue there are some possible analogies between Kelly and Andy Reid, who hadn’t won a Super Bowl as head coach before going to Kansas City.
For reasons I don’t quite understand, Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay has been seen as the prototype hire in both college and professional football since being hired shortly before his 31st birthday in 2017.
I do accept that a national championship is an item missing from Kelly’s resume (McVay doesn’t have a Super Bowl title either), but let’s look at the other national championship coaches of the last 20 years and see if they’re better. Larry Coker (2001) kept U. Miami going strong for two years but ran it into the ground after that. Jim Tressel (2002) has been out of coaching since 2010 and won on another controversial interference call. You know who Nick Saban (2003, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017, and 2020) and Pete Carroll (2004) are, but they’re obviously not available, not to mention both being over 70. Mack Brown (2005) has had mediocre results (and a six-year hiatus) since losing the BCS national championship to Alabama in 2009.
As mentioned, I think being 30-40 is overrated, but that doesn’t mean we should hire someone over 70. Urban Meyer (2006, 2008, and 2014) is coaching in Jacksonville and didn’t seem interested in any college job. We gave Les Miles (2007) enough chances to try to bring back the magic of 2007 and 2011. Not too unlike Brown, Chizik (2010), Fisher (2013), and Orgeron (2019) became mediocre fairly quickly after their respective championships, costing Chizik and Orgeron (respectively) their jobs within two years. Fisher made a lateral move to Texas A&M, where, except for the COVID-shortened year, the mediocrity has continued. More on Fisher in a moment.
Dabo (2016 and 2018) would have been the best choice among prior champions in my opinion, but he wasn’t coming either. Obviously he’s still second to Saban among active college coaches, but I think rebuilding a program and seeing it through is the task of someone younger.
That brings up another issue. Some LSU fans apparently think we can just apply a couple of band-aids and 2019 will just emerge again. You can’t win recruits over Alabama and Texas A&M and other regional rivals when you go .500 and can’t find a coordinator on either side. Dave Aranda came to coach for Les Miles in 2016, but Orgeron showed no ability to find someone similar on either side of the ball (the defensive coordinator he hired in the offseason showed some promise in November but was either unready or over-supervised before). Steve Ensminger did a good job with a field full of talent (and with the help of analyst Joe Brady in 2019); but again, he came from Miles’s staff, and there was no indication Orgeron could find someone similar. Ensminger demoted himself to analyst going into this season.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it was fortunate that Orgeron took over when he did and that as many Miles holdovers and Miles recruits stayed on as they did. If it weren’t for the recruits that came after 2018 and 2019, there would be very little of value to hold onto. It would be a rebuild similar to Saban’s rebuild of LSU in 2000. Maybe someone like Mel Tucker would have been the next Saban (LSU hired Saban from the same school where Tucker works), but that would have been a gamble. Tucker was paid very well to stay anyway. It seems Notre Dame had no intention of paying Kelly anything similar to what the top coaches make now.
New LSU head coach Brian Kelly acknowledges the crowd at his welcoming festivities on November 30 in Baton Rouge.
I just really don’t see how LSU could have done any better. I mentioned how I feel about Jimbo. While I covered how I feel about coaches of similar background, I didn’t mention Lincoln Riley specifically. Riley didn’t have to rebuild anything at Oklahoma. He continued what Bob Stoops was already doing, and he even had Stoops there for support. Imagine Saban had been at LSU since 2000, retired, and stayed on to help with the next coach. His advice could have helped someone like Orgeron have a long, successful career with LSU. Riley might do well at USC, but it’s really uncertain how he can do on his own when inheriting a 4-8 team rather than an 11-2 team as he did at Oklahoma. He’s part of a series of young offensive-minded Trojan head coaches. Even if he is successful, it won’t be proof that that’s a great model to follow.
Riley did make the national semifinals in each of his first three seasons, but the fourth year is when it fully becomes your team. There are still some players recruited by the previous staff, but at that point the old staff did little to develop those players, and they’re usually a small minority of those who are playing. The Sooners started 1-2 last year and then went 1-2 against ranked teams this year. The only reason they got the one win was due to how vastly overrated Texas was, and the Sooners needed a big comeback to even win that game. They also struggled against Tulane, West Virginia, Kansas St., and Kansas. Obviously, struggling to a 10-2 record is much better than what LSU has done for the last two years, so I wouldn’t have been upset with a Riley hire; but I would have deeper concerns than I do with Kelly. Also, given the struggles with teams who were ranked, I don’t even know if Riley would have done better than Orgeron’s 2-5 record against ranked teams this year. I also don’t know how he would handle facing six ranked teams in a row as LSU did.
Riley’s performance doesn’t compare to Kelly’s taking over a program that went 15-23 over its last 38 games and then winning 74% of his games over 12 seasons as Kelly did. Even within his time there, Kelly was also on the upswing. Rather than becoming less competitive, Notre Dame was becoming more competitive. The Irish finished in top five of the College Football Playoff for the third time in four years and finished with double-digit wins for the fifth year in a row. By contrast, Kelly had only had double-digit wins twice in his first seven years.
In the 16 years before Kelly, there were only 2 seasons with double-digit wins (both with exactly 10 wins), by the way. So I’m not saying we have to wait seven years before LSU is going to be nationally competitive on a regular basis. In the last 16 years, by contrast, LSU has had 8 seasons with 10 or more wins and 5 seasons with 11 or more wins.
Another line of thinking that bothered me was Kelly just not being a “good fit” with the “culture”. That could mean a couple of different things, but neither one checks out. If I were a USC fan, being consistent with the recent football culture would be a bad thing, and I feel the same way as an LSU fan. I enjoyed some of the cartoonish aspects of Les Miles and Coach O, but it’s time for something a little more serious. Kelly does seem a little warmer than Saban or Urban Meyer, but that isn’t saying much. I think Fisher and Dabo are more likeable from the press conferences, but I don’t know how they compare behind the scenes. Regardless of personality, I’d rather wins result from an organized plan than be a result of almost haphazard luck that Orgeron and Miles seemed to tap into.
Let’s not pretend Les Miles or Nick Saban were comparing notes on gumbo and boudin recipes when they arrived at LSU either. Les was from Ohio and had coached college only in the Big Ten, Big 8, and Big XII. A coastal person might think Saban being from West Virginia places him somewhere close to Louisiana culture, but I can assure you it does not. Also, Saban (like Kelly) had spent nearly his whole coaching career in the Midwest before going to LSU (even the exceptions of West Virginia and Syracuse are both pretty close to Pennsylvania and Ohio). Saban had also played college ball in the Midwest.
LSU athletic director Scott Woodward (pictured at his first press conference in April 2019) has not been afraid to make waves in his first 20 months on the job.
Another weird reaction was that based on age he’s not a typical Scott Woodward hire. Woodward did hire baseball coach Jay Johnson, who is 44; but the first candidate he submitted to the board was Kevin O’Sullivan, who is almost 10 years older. Another candidate who was widely reported as under consideration was Pat Casey, who is 62. Men’s basketball coach Will Wade is young, but he was not hired by Woodward. First-year women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey is 59. Mulkey comes off as more intense and less conservative than Kelly, but there is no reason to believe age limits either one. At Texas A&M, Woodward hired Fisher, who was then 52 (reportedly, 4 years later, Fisher was Woodward’s first choice as LSU head coach).
I think Woodward is more about extensive championship-level experience than age. Fisher’s teams only played for one national championship (which the Seminoles won) as head coach, but he coached in the 2003 championship as offensive coordinator at LSU and contributed in both recruiting and development to the Tigers’ championship in 2007, which took place his first year away from Baton Rouge after he had been there seven years. The Seminoles had also lost in the semifinals in 2014. O’Sullivan coached in two national championships, winning one; and Casey and Mulkey had multiple national championships. Woodward ultimately couldn’t get a championship baseball coach, but Johnson was the head coach of the National Runners-up in 2016 and returned to the College World Series last year.
I do agree with some criticisms that it would be better if Kelly were a bit younger; but when Saban was hired at Alabama, he was only about 4 years younger than Kelly is now. That was one of the best college football hires anyone has ever made. I don’t expect Kelly to be one of the best hires ever made if we review the decision in 15 years (Alabama hired Saban after the 2006 season), but expecting anything better on paper is ridiculous. It was also a good decision when LSU hired Saban 22 years ago, but he was young enough to be tempted into an NFL head coaching job 5 years later. I think when you hire someone around 60, they’re less likely to go that direction and less likely to leave to embark on another big project before retirement.
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