Preseason/Week 0 Top 25 2023

I know Georgia is the defending champion,  but I need more continuity if I’m going to consider them the #1 team going into next season. Amost everyone knows the quarterback will be different, but the offensive coordinator is gone and so are most of the targets and running backs.  They might gel by the end of the season, but I think preseason rankings shouldn’t just be guesses as to which programs have been good enough in recent years to probably finish near the top.

Georgia and Ohio St. were arguably the two best teams last season and provided the historic moment above, where the deciding kick in the semifinal was kicked by Ohio St.’s Noah Ruggles in 2022 and landed in 2023. If you have amnesia, it missed and Georgia won, 42-41, before defeating TCU in a blowout for the national championship.

Ryan Day is still at Ohio St. though.  The Buckeyes will also have a new quarterback, but I trust Day to have whoever it is ready right away more than I trust (old and) new Georgia OC Mike Bobo.  Day might even have backups who can win Heismans at other schools.  I also think the Buckeyes have better continuity in the roster.  I hope for their sake they have a kicker who’s a little better from 50 yards, but that’s what separated them from a relatively easy pick to stay #1 going into the season.

I’ll stay in the Big Ten for #3 Michigan.  It’s a weird situation where the Wolverines were top five the last two seasons and Alabama was not.

Michigan’s resurgence is mostly based on defense, and the good thing about that is it’s not centered around one player.  They seem to be solid everywhere but linebacker.

On offense, Big Blue does have a returning QB and players to block for him, so expect another quality game against the Buckeyes.  I have been a little less impressed with Michigan’s consistency though, so this is why I couldn’t justify putting them higher.

While I’m pretty confident the winner of Michigan and Ohio St. will be the team to beat in the Big Ten (no offense to Penn St., who has a habit of being really good one year but mediocre the next) if not the entirety of college football, I don’t feel the same way about the SEC.  Of course I’d be surprised if anyone other than Georgia won the East, but I don’t have a strong feeling about the West.  

LSU certainly has the talent to do so.  Somehow the Tigers managed to pull it off last year even though Brian Kelly basically took over a JV team that was embarrassed in the bowl in January 2022.  I don’t think LSU was actually the better team overall last season though.  They were the day of the Alabama game, but they definitely were not in the first week  against Florida St. or the last (regularly-scheduled) week against Texas A&M.  

I don’t think this was the actual play, but Alabama LB Henry To’o To’o was not able to contain QB Jayden Daniels in Baton Rouge last season. Daniels scored in overtime in this fashion before completing a pass to Mason Taylor to the same corner of the field for the two-point conversion in the 32-31 LSU win.

Like the change of fortune I expect for Ohio St. and Georgia, my instinct is to reverse the order here and give the nod to the Tide.  I am skeptical this will be the first time that there will be back-to-back failures by Alabama to either win the SEC West or the national championship under Saban or the first back-to-back divisional wins by LSU ever.  LSU also hasn’t won three of five against Alabama since 2007-2011.  

I think Kelly has things headed in the right direction, but I still think there will be growing pains before the Tigers are in a playoff position.  Of course I hope I’m wrong.  

I’m not saying that the playoff will be only two conferences, but I think these will at least be the best 4 teams before the Ohio St.-Michigan game (and including LSU, the best 5 before the LSU-Bama game).  I don’t feel strongly about any candidate outside of those two conferences.  There are several teams that could be this year’s TCU (maybe not as big of a surprise, but someone from outside the SEC and Big Ten whose record is too good to pass up), but it’s hard to be confident in any one of them.

A lot of people have USC as the top team outside of those two conferences, but I think the main reason (other than hype) the Trojans were so high at points last season was the overall lack of competition.  I recognize they lost to Tulane in flukey circumstances, but it was about time for someone other than Utah to expose their weaknesses.  I don’t see USC beating any of the five teams I’ve mentioned.  

One that I could see as more likely to win the necessary big games to make a Playoff is Clemson.   If another one-point game had gone differently, they probably would have done so last season.  

On offense, all the skill players should be improved, and it seems the OC position will be upgraded.  Broyles Award winner Garrett Riley of the aforementioned Horned Frogs takes over that job.  There may be some issues with depth, but the Tigers also have a talented defense.  It might not be enough to contain a playoff offense, but it may be enough to get them there.  Most playoff games are won by the more efficient offense anyway.

The USC defense has a lot to prove, but I apply a similar analysis to the Trojans.  If things go well, it may be hard to turn them down for a Playoff spot.  I think Dabo has shown more ability to do something once there than Lincoln Riley has.  Like with Brian Kelly, I’m a little skeptical that all of the cultural problems will be gone in Riley’s second season.

Clemson RB Phil Mafah did not get around the end (Jordan Burch, in this case) quite as easily against South Carolina in Clemson last season. In hindsight, this game is probably what kept the Tigers from a playoff position. South Carolina won, 31-30, ending a 7-game losing streak in the series.

So I think those are the main Playoff contenders at the moment. 

I did want to note that Washington will probably be lower on the list than they are in some other places since they had a major injury to Cam Davis, who would probably have been the star running back in the Pac-12.

Speaking of the Pac-12, Utah is another team to watch, but my concern would be they peaked last year and may not have the staying power of my top 7.  

I think it makes some sense in preseason to give the benefit of the doubt to programs that have been the most successful of late, but I don’t agree with treating teams that way just for being good last year.

There could be a team out of left field again that makes or at least competes for a playoff spot, but I’m not going to go into detail about any of the others on the list below.  It’s just going to be snap judgments based on last year’s results and known quantities who are returning.  

Ole Miss (who entered the bowls at #26) ended up being the worst team on my list going into the bowls last season that did not win its bowl game, so that gives you an idea of how seriously I tend to take predictions of miraculous transformations from December of one year to September of the next.

Pitt and Texas Tech were too far out to make the final top 25 last season (see below) despite quality bowl wins, but they were impressive enough and seem to have enough coming back to make the top 25 now. The only teams I dropped out to make room for them and Ole Miss were the Group of 5 teams who all happened to start with T. Boise St. seemed most likely to maintain its success, so I did leave the Broncos in.

I did complete my top 25 before the Florida/Utah game, but I didn’t want to just rush out a low-quality blog.  I didn’t complete it before Notre Dame/Navy or USC/San Jose St., but those did not affect my rankings.  I didn’t consider Florida because they didn’t finish in the top 50 of my last ratings anyway.  That was my cutoff to be considered.

I never did a final top 25 for last year, but you can figure out what it was below. The teams I had as #26 to #31 and #33 to #35 going into the bowls all lost their bowl games, so there weren’t any changes to the teams that made up the top 25 after the bowls, just the order.

Rank	Team	Last
1	Ohio St.	2
2	Georgia	1
3	Michigan	3
4	Alabama	6
5	LSU	10
6	Clemson	8
7	Southern CA	11
8	Penn St.	7
9	Utah	13
10	Texas	18
11	Florida St.	19
12	Tennessee	5
13	Notre Dame	22
14	Ole Miss	—
15	Oregon	14
16	UCLA	25
17	TCU	4
18	Kansas St.	12
19	S Carolina	24
20	Oregon St.	16
21	Washington	17
22	Boise St.	21
23	Mississippi St.	23
24	Pittsburgh	—
25	Texas Tech	—

Out of Top 25: (9) Tulane, (15) Troy, (20) TX San Antonio

Final Pre-Bowl Ratings and Reaction to Major Bowl Selections

I don’t have that much to say about the LSU game itself.  I thought they would lose by single digits if they had a good day, and they basically would have lost by three if you take out two disastrous plays (and leave everything else the same): a blocked field goal from fairly close range that was returned for a touchdown, at least partly because all but a couple of players on the field forgot the rules (a 10-point swing), and an interception deep in LSU territory that resulted from a ball that was falling to the ground that hit an LSU helmet instead (this set up a fairly easy touchdown drive).

I’m not surprised that Alabama and Tennessee went ahead of LSU in bowl consideration given that they each only have two losses. I would argue if LSU had beaten Texas A&M, but my guess is that didn’t matter either. Rightly or wrongly (obviously wrongly in my view), Alabama was seen as the best SEC team after Georgia; and Tennessee’s win over LSU would have been a tie-breaker for a New Year’s Six bowl even if one didn’t punish LSU for the extra loss.

LSU is a superior team to Purdue, but sometimes it can be hard to be enthusiastic about playing such a game. I think the Boilermakers will be relatively excited to play in the game and probably would be to play in any bowl.

I do think Tennessee should have gone to the Sugar Bowl, but I guess we didn’t need another game between Alabama and Clemson to take place in the Orange Bowl. All the other New Year’s Six Bowls were fairly obvious match-ups according to the guidelines. USC vs. Tulane in the Cotton especially made sense as the two westernmost teams not bound to the Rose Bowl. They will play one another in a bowl for the first time since the Trojans won the Rose Bowl after the 1931 season. That game might have helped inspire the creation of the Sugar Bowl a few years later. USC and Tulane also split a home-and-home in the 1940s.

I had said Friday that Ohio St. should move up if another team fell out of the top four.  I didn’t realize that TCU and USC were far enough ahead of Tennessee and Alabama that they could afford a loss and stay in the top five.  Actually, my first draft of the ratings had USC ahead of Ohio St.; but then I realized that somehow Utah was being counted as a better opponent than they were. Not to bore the reader with the details, but I try not to penalize teams as much for losing a close game on the road, but that wasn’t meant to treat the winner as one of the top teams in the country as the weighted ratings do if not corrected.

The Trojans did beat one more top-25 team than Tennessee did.  It hurt the Vols that LSU lost in a way because now the Tigers are not in the highest classification of the weighted ratings.  Had LSU won, Georgia would not have fallen out of that classification (which right now is the top 8 teams).  In the bigger picture, USC beat 8 Pac-12 teams and Notre Dame whereas Tennessee only beat 6 SEC teams and Pitt. You can think the former is more impressive while still having the SEC as the best conference.

I’ve written about Clemson playing a deceptive number of quality opponents, so that’s why they’re ahead of Alabama.  The Tigers only beat one top 25 team (the same number Alabama has beaten), but they’ve beaten five other teams in the top 42 to Alabama’s one.  Illinois is #39 and was a missed field goal from beating Michigan, and #37 Pitt took Tennessee to overtime, so I’m not talking about opponents that anyone can take for granted.  (For an even better example, Florida is #51 and beat Utah.).  Alabama does have better losses, but that doesn’t make up for that volume of decent wins.

Florida LB Amari Burney intercepts a pass to win the game against Utah in Gainesville on September 3. In hindsight, it’s another reminder that there are a lot of teams (including those who fall well outside of the top 25) who are threats to some of the best teams, even eventual Power-5 conference champions. On Friday, the Utes beat USC to claim the Pac-12 title and eliminate the Trojans from Playoff consideration.

I think it’s appropriate that the respective Big XII and Pac-12 champions round out the top 10.  I don’t think Tulane, Troy, and UTSA would beat many of the 5 to 10 teams immediately below them, but I don’t mind that in my system teams like that are in the top 20 as long as they’re not in position for the Playoff.  I’m glad not to be in New Orleans to hear from the Tulane fans who don’t know anything about national college football listing all the SEC teams they’d beat with their one good team in a generation though. I have mixed feelings about Troy playing UTSA in the Cure Bowl. On the one hand, it’s good that they’re both playing a ranked team; but on the other hand, I wonder how they would do against one of the lower Power-5 bowl teams.

I know the Playoff is going to expand to 12 teams, but one or two of those teams being non-Power-5 champions is fine with me.  I will want most Power 5 teams to be eliminated with three or four losses.  This isn’t the NFL; I’m not willing to take a team seriously as the potential national champion if they lost 1/3 or more of their regular-season games.

I don’t like Oregon being ahead of Oregon St. even though I do think the Ducks have been the better team overall this year.  USC didn’t beat Oregon (both “civil war” teams played Utah), so it doesn’t hurt Oregon for the Trojans to lose.  USC did beat Oregon St.  It also helps that Oregon’s best non-conference opponent solidified its claim as the best team in the country.  Oregon St. played Boise and Fresno, and neither is as good as LSU anyway, so there wasn’t as much of a gain there (there was a slight improvement to strength of schedule though).

My formula did put the Egg Bowl rivalry in the “correct” order (according to head-to-head results) though, with Mississippi St. at #25 and Ole Miss at #26.  Of course, it helps that Mississippi St. played Georgia instead of Vanderbilt (all the other conference opponents were the same, and the two teams have the same record).

Some teams moved up or down more than they normally would given how many teams didn’t play.  I hadn’t worked on the weighted formula in a few years and it was still new before COVID, so there were still some kinks to iron out.  Given that most of the changes still made sense given the results and there was no turnover in the top 25, I don’t think I changed anything too abruptly.

I’ve updated the ratings after the Army-Navy game before, but this year I’ll just treat is as a bowl game since neither will play an actual bowl game.

Rank	Team	Last
1	Georgia	1
2	Michigan	2
3	Texas Christian	3
4	Ohio St.	5
5	USC	4
6	Tennessee	6
7	Clemson	9
8	Alabama	7
9	Kansas St.	15
10	Utah	14
11	Penn St.	8
12	Tulane	17
13	LSU	10
14	Troy	22
15	Texas	12
16	Oregon	13
17	Oregon St.	11
18	TX-San Antonio	25
19	Florida St.	18
20	Washington	20
21	UCLA	16
22	Boise St.	19
23	S Carolina	23
24	Notre Dame	21
25	Mississippi St.	24

For the ratings of all 131 teams and all FBS conferences (and independents), see here or click “Knights’ Ratings” above at any time while browsing this site.

Week 7 Top 25 & Ole Miss @ LSU Preview

Rankings

As this becomes more computerized, I’m probably going to spend more time addressing what seems to be inadequate or excessive rises and falls.  Ordinal rankings don’t really tell you how far teams are apart.  For instance, #10 could be 10 points ahead of #13 going into the week and then fall behind while #11 and nos. 14 through #17 all lose.  This would mean that #10 only loses two spots even though they lost a lot of points.  The same week, #18 might only be two points ahead of #25. If #18 loses to a better team than #10 lost to, they could fall out of the top 25 as a result of the teams behind them being closer to begin with and winning that week.  But that won’t stop people from saying, “it’s unfair that #10 didn’t fall more spots for a worse loss.”

No one does that in baseball.  No one asks, “Why didn’t the team that got swept over the weekend not fall behind the team they started 5 games ahead of?  I’ve seen other teams fall two spots in one night.”  The rankings below are still partly subjective, but if you want to know how far teams are really apart, you’ll get a better idea by going to the ratings page than you will by looking at the rank.

Specific Teams

One team that seems out of place here is Mississippi St.  They just lost to a team that was barely ranked and they only fell two spots.  The loss just canceled out their rise from the week before.  Three teams who were behind them are no longer behind them, one team who was ahead of them (Kansas) lost to a worse opponent and several teams who might have otherwise passed them up lost.  Last week’s #19, #20, and #24 all lost.  #22 and $25 were idle.  So if Kansas and the 5 other teams had all won instead, people might be asking me why I “punished” the Bulldogs so much for a loss to a ranked team.

Mississippi St. is ahead of two teams who beat them, but I believe that this is better than losing to a team who isn’t even being considered for a ranking right now. 

This is the case with Kentucky (who lost to South Carolina) and LSU (who lost to Florida St.).  Kentucky only had three FBS wins going into the week.  Two of the three lost (Florida to LSU and also Miami U. to Bowling Green), while the other had a very weak win (Northern Illinois over Eastern Michigan; the Eagles don’t have a bad record, but trust me).  As I mentioned, the computer is becoming a more important part of this, and the Wildcats were 40^th in the computer last week, so I guess a better argument is I shouldn’t have ranked them last week in the first place.  I think I didn’t realize just how underwhelming South Carolina’s resume was apart from the win over Kentucky.  I’ll pretend it was because I was just that confident the Wildcats were going to beat Mississippi St. though.

The other team who beat Mississippi St. is of course LSU.  While LSU’s best win (Mississippi St.) and best loss (Tennessee) are better than Mississippi St.’s best win (Arkansas) and best loss (LSU), respectively, LSU’s worse loss (Florida St.) was to a team who isn’t even close to being ranked while Mississippi St.’s worse loss was to Kentucky.   Also, two of LSU’s wins (Southern and New Mexico) rate much worse than Mississippi St.’s worst win (Arizona).  By the way, New Mexico lost to New Mexico St. (possibly the worst team in college football entering the game) on Saturday, so that hurt their rating even more. LSU did get a fair number of points for beating Florida, and Mississippi St. did lose a fair number of points for losing to Kentucky.  That and the week the Tigers played the Bulldogs are only two weeks out of seven though.  Going into last week, Mississippi St. was 14 spots ahead of LSU in the computer.

Tennessee QB Hendon Hooker looks to throw downfield against Alabama in Knoxville on Saturday. Despite leading the Vols to the win, his streak of pass attempts without an interception ended at 262, the third-longest such streak in SEC history.

Speaking of Tennessee, I did rank the Volunteers #1 in my subjective rankings.  I don’t think any other team would have beaten LSU handily on the road and then been able to beat Alabama the next week.  But again, that’s only 2/7 of the season.  Two weeks ago, Clemson was 16 spots ahead in the computer.  The Tigers haven’t lost over that time, so it was even harder to catch up.  I mentioned Florida St. isn’t close to being ranked, but they are still in the top 40.  Of course, Tennessee gets a ton more credit for beating Alabama, but it just doesn’t make up for the whole season up until that point. 

You might laugh since Alabama is exponentially more likely to stay that way, but both Clemson and Tennessee have wins over otherwise-undefeated teams.   Clemson’s was over Wake Forest, and as of right now you don’t get a whole lot more points for beating Alabama.  Clemson’s second-best win was over North Carolina St., who rates a little better than LSU does.  Clemson’s third-best win was over Florida St., who rates a little better than Florida does.  It continues like this down to Clemson’s worst win, which was Boston College.  The Eagles have seen better days, but that’s a pretty respectable WORST win.  Much better than Akron, Tennessee’s worst.  The Zips have no wins over FBS opponents and barely beat St. Francis, which sounds like an elementary school.

Clemson and Tennessee were close enough that I thought about overriding the outcome of my mix of subjective and objective, but Clemson and possibly some other teams could pass up the Volunteers after this weekend anyway.  A win over Tennessee-Martin will not give the Volunteers many points, and I don’t like to switch up #1 teams that often without a loss.  The only team other than Alabama I have ranked #1 this seasonwas Georgia, but the Bulldogs have a bye week coming up, followed by Florida.  Michigan was the only other team that even had 90% of Clemson’s overall point total (in the overall rating), but the Wolverines’ next three opponents are Michigan St., Rutgers, and Nebraska.  I think picking anyone other than Clemson (whose next game is against undefeated Syracuse) right now would be a higher risk of instability anyway.

Top 25

Rank	Team	Last
1	Clemson	3
2	Tennessee	7
3	Georgia	2
4	Michigan	6
5	Ole Miss	5
6	Texas Christian	8
7	Ohio St.	4
8	Alabama	1
9	UCLA	13
10	Syracuse	17
11	USC	9
12	Illinois	21
13	Oregon	12
14	Wake Forest	11
15	Utah	—
16	Penn St.	10
17	Mississippi St.	15
18	North Carolina St.	14
19	LSU	—
20	Oklahoma St.	18
21	Texas	—
22	Purdue	—
23	Kentucky	23
24	Oregon St.	—
25	Maryland	—
—	Kansas	16
—	James Madison	19
—	Coastal Carolina	20
—	Kansas St.	22
—	Florida St.	24
—	Cincinnati	25

Ole Miss @ LSU Preview

If you wanted to see the updated Ole Miss Rivalry blog, see here .  I didn’t have much to say about the game last year.

I don’t normally do this; but since an undefeated top 10 team is coming to town and I feel much more confident in LSU at least playing a competitive game than I did against Tennessee, I’ll do a bit of a preview/prediction.

The best argument against LSU other than atrocious special teams play is that Tennessee ran up and down the field against LSU a couple of weeks ago, and this year the ground game is Ole Miss’s strength.  I do think the Tennessee stats are a big skewed though.  Tennessee got out to an early lead, and the last thing they wanted to do was let LSU get some confidence (or give the crowd some encouragement) before halftime (like what LSU got in the first two SEC games, at home against Mississippi St. and on the road against Auburn).  So at the end of the first half, the Vols had incentive to limit the LSU scoring opportunities as well as limiting the risk of a turnover. 

LSU also needed to respect the pass though, because Tennessee could have scored 60+ if they hadn’t.  Alabama has some players who can defend the pass (both in rushing the QB and in the secondary), and they allowed 52 to the Vols. I mentioned there was a throw late in the first half they barely missed.  That could have made it 59 points.  Ole Miss can make a good play in the air sometimes, but they’re much less successful than Tennessee is.  I don’t imagine Ole Miss would give Alabama the same kind of fits Tennessee did when they play them in a few weeks.

Ole Miss’s stats are also somewhat skewed.  Auburn may be the worst SEC team apart from Vanderbilt, and LSU managed to beat them despite a general lack of a passing game. Speaking of Vanderbilt, that’s another game that adds to the Rebels’ 3-0 conference record (and was a game in which Ole Miss trailed much of the time).  Ole Miss also barely held on against Tulsa and beat some other less-impressive programs: Central Arkansas, Troy, and Georgia Tech.

The only team I’d call good that they played is Kentucky, and the Wildcats had some success against the running game.  They did allow one 48-yarder, but apart from that there were 35 carries for 138 yards.  That’s similar to Florida’s stats against LSU minus the longest run.  It’s not necessarily enough to sustain drives, which is why the Rebels only scored two touchdowns the whole game.  Kentucky has played well defensively, but even Northern Illinois had that many touchdowns in the first half against Kentucky.

In the game in Oxford a few weeks ago, Kentucky lost two fumbles, including the one above on first and goal in the final minute. Ole Miss held on to win, 22-19.

Don’t just take my word for it.  Despite having played Kentucky, Lane Kiffin said about LSU, “This is the most talented opponent by far that we’ve played.”  About the location of the game, he said Tiger Stadium is “one of the hardest places in the country to play,” and, “We’ve been on the road a few times but nothing like this.”

The fact that Ole Miss relies more on a methodical ground game is part of the reason I think LSU has a better chance even if the Tigers start poorly (which, to be fair, they have done more often than not).  Given that Ole Miss only scored 22 the whole game against Kentucky, it’s much less likely they will lead 23-7 at halftime as Tennessee did.  Even if a halftime score like that does happen, the LSU defense has previously caused scoring droughts to give the offense a chance (it was just too hard to do that against a quick-strike offense like that of the Vols; no one other than Alabama has brought about a scoring drought of any consequence against Tennessee, and even the Tide defense gave up 52 points in the game). 

LSU outscored Mississippi St. 24-3 in the second half, they outscored Florida St. 20-7 in the last 15 minutes and 8 seconds of the game, they outscored Florida 28-0 in the 21 minutes of game play before the fourth quarter started, and they scored the last 21 points against Auburn (the scoring was in 18:01 of game play, but Auburn’s drought was over the last 39:38).  So I think LSU will be able to take advantage of the seemingly inevitable scoring droughts by the Rebels.

By the way, Auburn scored twice as many points last week at Ole Miss than they had scored at home against LSU.  Auburn had a stretch (lasting about a quarter toward the middle of the game) where they outscored the Rebels 24-7.  If Auburn can do it, so can LSU.  LSU has obviously shown better ability to close out games than Auburn has though, so I wouldn’t expect Ole Miss to then win the fourth quarter by 7 as they did last week.  Ole Miss did score much more easily against Auburn than LSU did, but it being the first competitive road game for LSU (and this will be the first competitive road game for Ole Miss) overcomes that counterpoint.

If things do go well early for LSU offensively (as they did last week), we haven’t seen the Rebels have to adjust to being behind this season.  LSU had a clear advantage when they forced Florida QB Anthony Richardson into a role where he had to win the game in the second half.  The LSU defense did look pretty silly when they gave up an 81-yard touchdown run to him, but I don’t think Jaxson Dart of Ole Miss is quite that difficult to take down.  He can run for a first down like Jayden Daniels can, but I don’t think he can break all those tackles against an SEC defense.  I’m sure tackling technique will be a point of emphasis for LSU at practice this week too. 

Dart also doesn’t seem likely to do what Richardson did against Tennessee and go 24/44 for 453 if the Rebels get behind.  As I mentioned, Auburn kept it competitive until late in the game, and Dart only completed 9 passes on 19 attempts.  If that’s what he does when he’s throwing the ball sparingly with time to waste and the defense isn’t sure whether Ole Miss is going to run or pass (and leaning toward the run), how is he going to do if everyone knows he has to pass?  Dart only has an 11:6 touchdown/interception ratio and only 61.7% completion rate.  Again, that would seemingly get worse if he had more pressure on him against better competition. 

By the way, Daniels has a 10:1 touchdown/interception ratio and 69.2% completion rate.  Daniels has thrown for about 80 more yards, so they’re similar in that department.  I think it also helps that Daniels played a lot better last week.  I haven’t seen huge improvement in Dart, and I even watched him play for USC last year. For what it’s worth (not much), Arizona St. (Daniels’s team at the time) beat USC 31-16 last year; but neither quarterback played very well.  Nor did then-Trojan Kedon Slovis, who now plays for Pitt (when he’s not injured).

I could be wrong – Dart could have some hidden talents he’s just waiting to unveil – but I’m going to be really confident if LSU gets a meaningful lead (or like last week they score the first few offensive possessions even without a lead).  I won’t feel great if Ole Miss has a lead instead, but I’m not going to stress about it either unless it’s 20+ points early or they’re still ahead multiple scores late in the game and LSU can’t seem to stop the run.

LSU is favored by about a point and a half; and I think that’s based on some intelligent projections and understanding of the respective teams that I’ve seen, so I’m not pretending it’s a slam dunk by any means.  I just see an easier road to a win for LSU than I see for Ole Miss.  I would expect a final score around 35-31.  So that’s just one disaster on special teams away from Ole Miss having the edge.

Weeks 4 and 5 & Return to Objectivity

Top 25s

I apologize for the long period of time between posts.  I haven’t stopped working on and thinking about the blog.

I was on vacation for about 10 days.  My return was somewhat well-timed because this is when I like to begin transitioning into my computer ratings anyway.  I meant to post a new top 25 while I was away.  I made the new list but never got around to posting it.  I prefer to look at an objective rating at the end of September, but I tried something a little different.  I looked at the very early version of a computer rating that I did before that week; but I had no way to update it with the results from two Saturdays ago, so it was just my best estimation of what the rankings would have been if I’d had that ability.

Since the ratings are the most overdue and urgent part, I’ll start with those.  Two weeks ago first and then the one from earlier this week.

My new rankings are about 50/50 between objective and subjective.  What I did was take the computer top 40 and then rank them 1 to 40 myself.  So they each got a value between 1 point and 40 points.  I divided that number by about 40 and also got a percentage of the best computer rating, which belongs to Ohio St.  The final rating is a percentage of those two smaller amounts added together.  I only made a few small changes if teams where within 1%.  It so happened that LSU’s next opponent and two best prior opponents were nearly tied.  So I decided to put the undefeated team the Tigers haven’t played first, followed by the one who beat them by a point, followed by the one LSU beat by 15.

I just combined them into one chart. People get confused or distracted otherwise.

Rank	Team	Last	Prev.
1	Alabama	2	2
2	Ohio St.	3	3
3	Georgia	1	1
4	Clemson	4	4
5	Ole Miss	6	6
6	Michigan	5	5
7	Wake Forest	19	20
8	N. Carolina St.	8	10
9	Oregon	9	11
10	Kansas	25	—
11	Penn St.	22	25
12	Kentucky	7	8
13	USC	14	18
14	Texas Christian	18	19
15	Tennessee	21	23
16	Florida St.	—	—
17	Mississippi St.	—	—
18	Oklahoma St.	11	13
19	Washington	10	12
20	Cincinnati	12	15
21	LSU	—	—
22	B. Young	15	16
23	Maryland	20	17
24	UCLA	—	—
25	Syracuse	—	—
—	Arkansas	13	9
—	Baylor	16	21
—	Oklahoma	17	7
—	Texas A&M	23	—
—	Texas Tech	24	—
—	Michigan St.	—	14
—	Oregon St.	—	22
—	Iowa St.	—	24

Kansas safety O.J. Burroughs (5) breaks up a pass to Iowa State wide receiver Xavier Hutchinson (8) during the first half In Lawrence on Saturday.

Kansas was the biggest jump, but I don’t consider just inside the top 25 to just inside the top 10 unreasonable for a transition week such as this one.  I prefer to give undefeated teams who have faced major-conference opposition the benefit of the doubt at this point anyway.  In the Jayhawks’ case, that’s three of five games against Power 5 opponents and a fifth against Houston of the AAC.  This is not unrelated to why they are rated so highly at this point. All three Power 5 games were within one possession, so I don’t expect them to continue this.  They may not even win another game.  My ratings aren’t meant to be predictive though: they’re meant to give credit to accomplishments to this point.

I don’t have an “others receiving votes section,” but this is the remainder of the Top 40 in order: Kansas St., James Madison, Illinois, Texas Tech, Washington St., Liberty, Arkansas, Coastal Carolina, Tulane, Memphis, North Carolina, Utah, Duke, Appalachian St., and UNLV.

There may be some other teams I would subjectively put in the top 40, but I didn’t even apply a subjective rank to teams that weren’t in the computer top 40. Air Force, Minnesota, Purdue, and Notre Dame come to mind as additional possibilities in the coming weeks. Although a couple of them are on the list above, it’s difficult for two-loss teams to have much of a shot at this point in the season.

I wasn’t sure where to mention this, but this isn’t penalizing Georgia for a close win. Although Oregon has looked good, Georgia’s average opponent isn’t as good as Alabama’s average opponent. Even if Georgia-Missouri and Alabama-Arkansas were identical final scores, I think Arkansas is a much better team both on paper and in reality. Notre Dame is slowly rehabilitating itself to make Ohio St.’s schedule thus far look stronger than Georgia’s as well. It helps the Buckeyes that they have not faced an FCS opponent or had a bye week yet.

It’s unusual that my top 10 is this consistent during a transition week. The top 6 remained in tact with just a few minor changes to the order, and numbers 8 and 9 stayed exactly the same.

LSU, Tennessee, Auburn, and Objectivity

Back to LSU, with the win over Mississippi St. a couple of weeks ago, Brian Kelly became the first LSU head coach since 1995 to win his first conference game in his first full season.  Now he’s won his first two.  1987 was the last time a new head coach started 3-0 or better in SEC play.  Three different head coaches (Stovall, Arnsparger, and Archer) started their inaugural seasons with 4-game SEC winning streaks in the 1980s.

Given the inconsistencies of both sides, I’m not making a prediction regarding the game tomorrow; but I do think Tennessee is appropriately placed outside the top 10.  Unlike the major polls, I constantly revisit earlier games.  The major polls continue to give the Vols credit for a shaky win (prevailing in overtime against a backup quarterback) over a Pitt team that did not lose to Georgia Tech, for instance, while I think the fact that the Yellowjackets beat the Panthers without overtime is a big negative against Tennessee. The Vols also beat the team (Florida) who beat Utah, but I still don’t see why Utah was as highly rated as they were going into the season.  As it stands, the Utes don’t even make my top 35.

As badly as LSU played in the win over Auburn (and at times against the other two Power 5 opponents) though, Tennessee could win easily.  I would note that the Vols are favored by about as much as Mississippi St. was when the Bulldogs visited Baton Rouge though.  Regardless of LSU’s shortcomings, I think Las Vegas is well aware of Tennessee’s.  So while as I said, I don’t have a predictive model, I think I do have some commonalities with bettors in that I try to be objective and take into account the big picture and all aspects of a team.  In addition to amnesia about why they moved teams up (or down) in the first place, I think the polls are more impressed by how historical a program is and flashy highlights. Good team defense on third down or good blocking on special teams or a long hang time aren’t likely to make SportsCenter countdowns.

I guess if LSU’s wins I’ll be happy for any undeserved credit for beating a top-10 opponent.

One of the most bizarre football games I’ve ever witnessed (even though I turned it off before it was over) took place the last time Tennessee went to Baton Rouge, in 2010.  That also featured a top-10 team, but in that case it was the home team.  For the overall series against Tennessee, see here.  If you follow the second link, you’ll see the same discussion regarding 2010 but not the videos.  I still can’t believe that 10 turned into a 16.

LSU RB Stevan Ridley (you can only see the side of his pants and the bottom of his leg) scores the winning touchdown against Tennessee at Tiger Stadium on October 2, 2010.

Another thing I did while you didn’t hear from me was update the Auburn series.  I added a detailed summary of the game that took place while I was gone.

Week 2 Top 25 and LSU (P)review

LSU Recap and Preview

I will not be giving any details about the Bulldogs, just about what is going on with LSU. I have updated my Rivalry Series blog in light of the upcoming game though.

LSU has either lost to or barely beat the Bulldogs in every game recently except for the two years in which Joe Burrow was the starting quarterback.  If we win at all, I’ll be satisfied.  If we win somewhat comfortably, I’ll be very encouraged.  A loss won’t necessarily be devastating, but LSU should beat unranked SEC opponents at home (even though I think the Bulldogs should be ranked) even in a mediocre year.  I know it’s easier said than done, but it should be an expectation.  

Malik Nabers carries the ball in the fourth quarter last year in Starkville. Nabers was the leading wide receiver in the game against Southern on Saturday.

One of the LSU shows found the biggest LSU naysayer they could.  Even he picked LSU to win this game (and lose all the other SEC games).  So while I do think the Bulldogs are underrated, I won’t be resting easy if LSU loses. 

Usually I’d barely mention an FCS opponent, but I hope it gave the coaches more data to make better decisions in the future.  What was done in the Southern game may also be a bit of a preview of what they’ll try to do against Mississippi St.  I’m not going to preview the Bulldogs though.

LSU did shore up some concerns in the game against Southern even though obviously what works against Southern may not work in ANY future games.  I think we can compare it to an NFL preseason game.  Cuts to an NFL roster and to some extent decisions about plays and the depth chart are made based on performances against opposition players who themselves often aren’t going to be playing a whole lot in the NFL.  Similarly, most Southern players could not get meaningful playing time at an SEC school (though a couple of former FCS players play for Florida St. and at least one plays for LSU).  But I think going through the motions of a game against at least some competitive athletic talent can tell you a little bit. 

It certainly gives you a basis for comparison of one player to another.  It provides some data points by which to determine who plays where in future games.  Coaches have a better idea of whom they can trust during the game.  You can’t always know that from practices and scrimmages alone.

I don’t know if the new center Charles Turner will be better than Garrett Dellinger, the center in the Florida St. game; but I didn’t notice any problems with snaps, and the coaches seem to like how he communicated.  Dellinger will still get a lot of playing time, but it will just be at guard instead.  I don’t think anyone is pretending we know how well Turner will block an SEC defensive lineman at center because he did an adequate job against Southern, but they could see how he handled the game environment and worked with his teammates.

Jayden Daniels did leave the game early enough that I think we were able to get some information about where he is compared to the backup Nussmeier.  Kelly said before the Florida St. game that they were 1-A and 1-B rather than 1 and 2 on the depth chart.  I’m pretty sure that was a lie.  We didn’t see Nussmeier at all in the Florida St. game even after the Tigers.

LSU only came up with 3 points in the first half; and although Nussmeier ended up throwing for more yards against Southern, he completed only 59% of his passes compared to Daniels’s 91%.  Daniels did not commit a turnover in either game, and Nussmeier threw two interceptions. Daniels threw three touchdowns, and Nussmeier threw none.  I don’t always think QBR is that great of a stat, but when one guy is near 100 and the other is under 20, I think that sums it up pretty well.

Again, I’m not banking on this counting for anything; but the starters did absolutely all they could.  It has been 129 years since LSU first played intercollegiate football, and the Tigers had never scored 37 points in a quarter before.  It only took 40 seconds of the second quarter to get to 44 points.  As for the defense, Southern didn’t score until one of those Nussmeier interceptions was returned late in the third quarter.  The LSU defense didn’t give up points until about 8 minutes remained in the game.  That was probably the third or fourth team by then. 

Micah Baskerville (23) blocks a punt late in the first quarter against Southern in Baton Rouge on Saturday.

Some players who weren’t even starters in the first game played great.  For instance, the game ball went to Micah Baskerville, who blocked a punt (which resulted in a safety) and returned an interception for a touchdown.  I’m told he was only in about a dozen plays against Florida St.  I don’t care if it was against easy competition, doing both of those things in the same season is hard to do, not to mention the same quarter.  Freshman 5-star recruit Harold Perkins, Jr., whom LSU just barely kept from going to Texas A&M, had a good game too with 7 tackles.

Malik Nabors was relieved of punt-return duties after two turnovers in that role against Florida St., but it was nice to see him score a touchdown on one pass and go for 60 yards on another.  Even if the latter were his only catch, Nabors would have led both teams in receiving yards.  It’s good that the ball was spread around by both quarterbacks too.  Hopefully it will keep the receivers more engaged and facilitate better communication and trust than we saw against Florida St.

Also, importantly, LSU had no major injuries and a couple of key players are actually available against Mississippi St. when they were not against Southern.  This includes RB Jon Emery, Jr., and DE BJ Ojulari.  DE Ali Gaye was suspended for a half for targeting, so he will be back as well.

Top 3

This first section ties into last week about certain SEC opponents looking more like winnable games than they did at first blush, but it’s also relevant as to why I’ve made a change at #1.  I did think it was a little unfair that Alabama had to play Georgia in a rematch, but maybe it was the SEC championship game that was the aberration last year.

Alabama has rebounded from looking vulnerable and even losing in September before; but even if by some miracle LSU had been able to convince Saban to come back (there is a contingent of LSU fans who had been trying to orchestrate that for 15 years… I think they finally gave up now that Kelly has a 9-figure contract and Saban is 70 years old), we probably would have had to start thinking about the future by now anyway.  Alabama may still win the national title, but the close win over Texas can be added to the following somewhat concerning close games last season (with final record of opponent and margin of victory):

7-6 Florida, 2 points

8-4 Texas A&M, LOST by 3 points

6-7 LSU, 6 points

9-4 Arkansas, 7 points

6-7 Auburn, 2 points

I haven’t changed my mind about Oregon (Georgia’s big win) being overrated in preseason.  I would have liked to have seen more Georgia Bulldog offense against Samford, but the defense can’t do anything better than a shutout. 

The reason I made the change is that Alabama won by a single point (and as I mentioned probably deserved to lose), and obviously the shine is taken off of Ohio St.’s win over Notre Dame given the Marshall game.  A team can win by one possession in a fluke, but the Irish had to score in the final moments of the game just to make it close.  So that’s really a similar type of game to what the Irish did in Columbus.

Remainder of Top 25

The rest of the top 10 remained intact.  Kentucky had a decisive road win against Florida, so that’s why the Wildcats moved up so much.  BYU’s win over Baylor was at home in overtime, and Baylor was one of the teams I was doubtful about (along with Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma St.).  The Cougars still got credit for beating a ranked team but not as much as what Kentucky did.

Apart from Baylor (whom I didn’t want to drop double digits for an understandable close loss), the rest of the top 20 is made up of teams who moved up by default.

Marshall is obvious.  Oregon St. may not be, but I had Boise St. as one of the top unranked teams going into the season, and the Beavers beat the Broncos handily in Week 1.  Last week, Oregon St. went on the road to Fresno St. (who won 10 games last year) and won, albeit in a close contest.

Oregon St. WR Silas Bolden escapes a Fresno St. defender during a touchdown play in the first half in Fresno on Saturday.

Tennessee wasn’t great against Pittsburgh, but it’s still a Power 5 road win, so I gave the Vols the Panthers’ former spot.

Houston was also on my waiting list in preseason, so I went ahead and gave Texas Tech a spot for beating the Cougars.

Iowa St. didn’t look a whole lot better than South Dakota St. had against Iowa (both games in Iowa City); but the Jackrabbits were one of the best FCS teams last year.  As for the Cyclones, while they had needed the Hawkeyes to miss a field goal to escape with the win, I was still impressed by the defense.  Iowa’s one score was on a very short field.

I give Texas A&M some credit for their defense against Appalachian St. (who put up 40 points in one quarter against North Carolina after all) as well and considered leaving the Aggies in the Top 25 instead.  Although I do think the Aggies would likely beat the Cylones, 2-0 beats 1-1.  Texas A&M will go ahead of the Cyclones with a win this weekend anyway, so I also don’t mind giving Iowa St. the benefit of the doubt for now.

Speaking of the Aggies, I learned a couple of facts I wanted to share. (1) Jimbo Fisher makes more than 20 times as much per year as Appalachian St. head coach Shawn Clark. (2) Texas A&M has 56 players who were either 4- or 5-star recruits out of high school, but Appalachian St. has just 1.

Rank	Team	Last
1	Georgia	3
2	Alabama	1
3	Ohio St.	2
4	Clemson	4
5	Michigan St.	5
6	Michigan	6
7	Ole Miss	7
8	Arkansas	8
9	Oklahoma St.	9
10	Oklahoma	10
11	Kentucky	20
12	B. Young	17
13	Cincinnati	13
14	Miss. St.	16
15	TX Christian	18
16	N. Carolina St.	19
17	U. Miami	21
18	Wake Forest	22
19	Baylor	11
20	Maryland	25
21	Marshall	—
22	Oregon St.	—
23	Tennessee	—
24	Texas Tech	—
25	Iowa St.	—
—	Texas A&M	12
—	Notre Dame	14
—	Iowa	15
—	Pittsburgh	23
—	Florida	24

Maybe the Grass Isn’t Greener After All

I don’t know what the rankings will be yet with all the upheaval, but I couldn’t help but be amused by some of the results over the weekend.  It was a bad day to be a fan of a ranked team from Texas (I’ll mention the two big ones, but Houston and Baylor also lost), and it was a good day for Sun Belt teams to notch some historical road wins.  (I only recently realized Marshall had joined the Sun Belt after previous stints in the MAC and CUSA.)

Bryce Young of Alabama miraculously avoids a safety against Texas in Austin on Saturday.  He should have been flagged for intentional grounding, but he was not.  The Tide eventually defeated the Longhorns 20-19

The grass was really looking greener to LSU fans who wanted Jimbo Fisher or Billy Napier, for instance.  I think Notre Dame fans (even if they are genuine about having grown tired of Kelly) were insecure about their choice of Marcus Freeman, who had never been a head coach before; but their way of expressing it in most cases was to attack Brian Kelly any way they could and pretend to be overjoyed that he had been replaced.

Last week (last two sections in the link below), I wrote about reminding myself as an LSU fan not to take anything for granted.  Wearing the jersey and helmet and playing in Tiger Stadium might all but guarantee you beat Southern, but it doesn’t guarantee you anything against an SEC schedule. 

LSU/FSU Reactions and Season Outlook

More on Nebraska

I also mentioned in a separate blog how unless you were Oklahoma, Nebraska was pretty much untouchable for most of the 1970s and 1980s.  I think there is a lesson here for some of the LSU fans who are always unhappy with whomever the coach is. 

Rivalry Series: LSU vs. Florida St.

I didn’t mention it because they didn’t play LSU after that, but the Huskers kept it going through the 90s (I found out they had the second-best record among FBS teams in the decade after Florida St.) and had some good teams in the early 2000s.  After having two losing records (both on the recent end) from 1961 to 2014, the Huskers have only finished with a winning record once since then. 

To get to their current situation, they just lost to Georgia Southern, who was playing in the Southern Conference of FCS 10 years ago.  It wasn’t just one fluke loss either.  The Huskers have now lost eight consecutive games against FBS opponents.  The last such game that was a win was over Northwestern, 56-7.  You would have thought that at least the Huskers could stay better than that team, but they lost to the Wildcats at a neutral site just a couple of weeks ago.

After I wrote the above, Nebraska decided to part ways with head coach Scott Frost.  Mickey Joseph, who for whatever reason stayed loyal to Ed Orgeron and LSU from 2017 to 2021 as the wide receivers coach, will step in as the interim head coach.  He was obviously not retained by Brian Kelly but was classy all the way.  I wish him the absolute best of luck in that position.  If he doesn’t end up being a head coach, I wouldn’t be surprised if he returned at some point.

Joseph is the sixth man to coach Nebraska (including interims) since Frank Solich was fired in 2003.  Solich was the last coach to leave Nebraska after successfully avoiding a losing season for his tenure.  Only two men (Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne) coached Nebraska over the 36 seasons before Solich was hired.  There was another LSU connection as former Tigers defensive coordinator Bo Pelini was hired from Les Miles’s staff after the 2007 season.  Let’s just say he experienced mixed reviews, but he has had far and away the best winning percentage and longest tenure since Solich left. 

Another more indirect LSU connection: Solich employed Joe Burrow’s father Jimmy (whom he first hired as a graduate assistant at Nebraska) as defensive coordinator at Ohio from 2005 to 2018.  Solich himself retired after the 2020 season.

Recent Comments by LSU and Notre Dame Fans

Speaking of Joe Burrow, 2018 and 2019 (which his father had retired to witness) had the best combined winning percentage (89.3) of any two back-to-back seasons in LSU history.  Even though I think an average Power 5 head coach could have managed to go over .500 the next two seasons and Orgeron didn’t, it still looks bad that those great seasons only bought him two additional years.  I don’t know who they think is coming to the rescue if they run Kelly out of town without a fair shot at building the program back up.

At least one of the notions they had got knocked down a peg this weekend when Jimbo and Texas A&M lost at home to Appalachian St., a program Les Miles beat easily (with probably his worst team) the year after they upset Michigan in 2007.

Freeman, we were told, had already begun to correct for Kelly’s various misdeeds in recruiting and game strategy even though he started 0-2.  Well, Oklahoma St. (in the bowl last season) and Ohio St. (who beat the Irish in the opener) were certainly much better teams than Florida St. at least.  That last sentence is true enough, but I’m not so sure you could say the same about Marshall.

Marcus Freeman with his players after the home loss to Marshall on Saturday. After Notre Dame led 28-7 a minute before halftime of the Fiesta Bowl last season–Freeman’s first game as head coach–the Irish have been outscored 70-38.

The Jimbo crowd started going nuts last year when the Aggies knocked off Alabama (and LSU struggled in some early games) and then pretended the losses didn’t matter.  I think I prefer the way things have been at LSU.  When we beat Alabama, we’re going places that season.  These are the wins over Alabama since Saban was hired and the season results:

• 2007, National Championship (12-2)
• 2010, won Cotton Bowl to finish 11-2
• 2011, National Runners-up (to Alabama, 13-1)
• 2019, National Championship (15-0)

Texas A&M did go 11-2 in 2012, also winning the Cotton Bowl, but didn’t even keep the Tide from winning the SEC West as LSU at least helped to do all four years above.  Alabama finished fourth in the West in 2010, but they were still very much alive for a berth in the SEC title game (with wins over LSU and Auburn, to whom they would later lose by only a single point) when they visited Tiger Stadium that year.

Though I would take 8-4 before the bowl any kind of way this season, finishing 8-4 despite beating Alabama seems like a waste in your fourth year somewhere like A&M.

Kevin Sumlin, Jimbo’s predecessor, beat Alabama exactly once too.  He had a slightly better record in his first 50 games than what Jimbo has after 50 games with the Aggies.  This is despite the fact that Texas A&M has increased the head coach’s salary by about 50% since Sumlin left.  Almost two years of additional salary was paid to Sumlin to go away.  Jimbo’s most-recent extension takes him through 2031.  This makes his contract very similar to the one Kelly has.  Kelly makes $1 million more in base salary, but I’m not sure how the overall compensation compares.  Regardless, I’ll be interested to see which head coach has more success over the next 10 seasons despite Jimbo’s four-year head start. 

Jimbo Fisher, with former Texas A&M QB Zach Calzada (who is now third string at Auburn), during a similarly disappointing offensive performance in Denver last season

Good and Bad News from the SEC

Anyway, while in a way I’m disappointed that the SEC didn’t look nearly as good this week as it did in Week 1, I am somewhat encouraged by seeing some vulnerability in a few of the teams on LSU’s schedule in addition to Alabama (more on them later in the week) and Texas A&M:

• Tennessee needed overtime to beat Pitt, and that was against a backup QB who seemed like he was playing hurt after the starter had to leave the game.
• Kentucky beat Florida by 10 in the Swamp after the Gators failed to score an offensive point in the last 35 ½ minutes of the game. (Tennessee and Florida are LSU’s only two SEC East opponents.). Oh by the way, yet another contingent of LSU fans (they may overlap with some of the others) was angry that the Tigers didn’t hire Billy Napier, the former coach at UL-Lafayette and new coach at Florida.
• Auburn only beat San Jose St. by 8 points at home after trailing at halftime.

Interestingly, those five teams all had the same home/away status last week as they will against LSU.  So hopefully Alabama and Tennessee continue to have trouble on the road and the others continue to struggle at home.

I’ll have more to say when I post the rankings later in the week.

Why It Wasn’t Wrong for Kelly to Leave Notre Dame

There was no way to encapsulate all of my thoughts about the events of the last 5 or 6 days into a single blog. For now, I’m going to focus on Kelly leaving Notre Dame and how I understand that happened. I’ve decided to start with a collection of often misrepresented or misunderstood facts and then use those facts to come to reasonable conclusions. Some of the facts may seem a little sarcastic, but it’s not my fault how many people fail to acknowledge such obvious facts in their reaction to this situation. I will discuss Kelly’s fit with LSU and other matters in other blogs.

Facts

Kelly had recently said that for him to leave there needed to be a fairy godmother with a check for a quarter billion dollars OR he had to talk to his wife.

• The only confirmed conversation between Woodward and Kelly was some point between the Notre Dame-Stanford game and the news broke on Monday. 

• Kelly stayed on the West Coast after the game for recruiting for Notre Dame.

• Leaked text of contract was dated Sunday.

• There were widespread reports of a conversation in October, but Kelly said he didn’t engage in any and he can’t speak to what conversations his agent did and didn’t have.

• Kelly said after meeting with a recruit’s family he found out news broke.

• There is no known ability that Brian Kelly has to shut down social media or sports reporters nationwide.

• There have been no documented cases of time travel.

• I’m not sure where he was recruiting, but Stanford plays just south of San Francisco and he said he picked up his lawyer and they left from Orange County, which is South of Los Angeles.

• Kelly probably did not check his phone while with a recruit and also was not available by phone while in the air.  This apparently led some to believe he was deliberately ignoring his assistants.

• Kelly and Lincoln Riley share the same agent.

• When LSU fans were largely under the impression the coach would be Riley, there was a report that a press conference was expected Wednesday or Thursday.

• After texting Monday night while preparing to return, Kelly met with Notre Dame players on Tuesday morning.

• On Tuesday evening, Notre Dame was ranked #6 in the College Football Playoff rankings.

• Kelly would not say whether a higher ranking would have affected his decision.

• The early signing period begins two weeks from the introductory press conference that was on Wednesday.

• Unlike many other successful teams this season, Notre Dame is idle until the bowl games.

• The Notre Dame AD did not ask assistant coaches to return since they were also busy recruiting.

• Brian Kelly was at Notre Dame for 12 years and is the all-time winningest coach in Irish history.

• It is very common for coaching changes to take place after regular-season games but before bowl games, and this has been the case going back decades.

• Games that take place after the regular season are called the post-season, not the mid-season, so leaving after those games is not accurately characterized as “leaving in the middle of the season”.

Inferences and Conclusions

Obviously, I don’t think his agent had meaningful conversations without apprising him or that his wife and family were first given the opportunity to think about it late Saturday night.  I think he kept it vague enough that while he might not know of every conversation, he knew of the conversations that he had with the agent.  My guess is the contract in its final form was drafted on Sunday but not finalized and agreed to until Monday.

In an increasingly rare sight, two coaches each with over 10 years of experience as head coach of their respective schools (Stanford’s David Shaw, left, and Brian Kelly, then of Notre Dame, to the right) exchange pleasantries after a Power-5 football game, which in this case had taken place Saturday night in Stanford, Calif. Approximately 48 hours later, it was revealed in no uncertain terms that Kelly would be leaving the Irish with his last stop in South Bend being early Tuesday morning.

Kelly didn’t want to miss any time recruiting in the event he were to stay at Notre Dame. Although it may hurt in the committee, it makes sense for Notre Dame to take advantage of not having a game coming up to get an edge on the many good teams who do have a game coming up this weekend.  The Notre Dame AD said he didn’t ask any of his coaches to come back to South Bend, so it was busy for them too.  Kelly denied and I heard no reports that Kelly had negotiated with any other teams.

I can understand the frustration of an assistant who just had a meeting with a recruit and sees or hears on his phone somehow that the head coach is leaving and then can’t get in touch with the head coach.  Rather than taking a deep breath and thinking about logistical issues that can arise, apparently this assistant assumed the worst and got on the phone with a reporter to vent his frustrations.  That does not mean Kelly screwed anyone over or left anyone high and dry.  That’s just melodrama the media tried to sell.

Since that was about the worst possible ranking the Irish could have realistically had this week, it’s safe to say that waiting a couple of days wouldn’t have mattered even if the news hadn’t come out.  I don’t think waiting until this coming Sunday was an option though. There may have been a revolution in Baton Rouge if people waited that long without further clarity as to the coaching situation there, and anyone who did know would not have been able to keep quiet that long.

Some people say that he should only have even entertained an offer if they were eliminated, but remember that LSU finished #2 in the BCS rankings in 2007 with two losses.  The Tigers had jumped from #7 to #2 on championship weekend. With that in mind, when are you really out of contention for #4? #10 maybe? So everyone can leave but the coaches with the 9 most successful teams of the year after the regular season? In other words, you can have anyone except the coaches you probably want at that moment. After Brian Kelly’s last game in Cincinnati, the Bearcats were ranked #4. After Nick Saban’s last game at Michigan St., the Spartans were ranked #9. Maybe Saban never coaches in the SEC if such a rule were put in place. Certainly, Notre Dame wouldn’t have hired Brian Kelly the year they did in the first place. So don’t listen to these appeals to principle by Notre Dame fans. They’re fine with taking coaches from the best teams, in their case while an undefeated campaign was ongoing. They just never thought the shoe would be on the other foot.

Also, even if he were 40, you don’t get your best offers after an off year.  Saban didn’t say, “We finally have a good bowl game this year, call me back another year if we go back to the Independence Bowl.” No one at Notre Dame had a problem bringing Kelly in after he had an undefeated season at Cincinnati and they were going to the Sugar Bowl.   I know they’re not national championships, but Michigan St. and Cincinnati aren’t Notre Dame.  Notre Dame had some down years in recent memory, but they didn’t go winless like Michigan St. did before Saban took over.  Michigan St. was a big program at some point, but Cincinnati never was.

Brian Kelly celebrates a dramatic comeback win in the final regular-season game against Pittsburgh in 2009. Cincinnati clinched the Big East championship with the win. Two days later, the New York Times reported Kelly would interview with the Irish. Kelly was selected and negotiations were completed by the following Thursday.

If Kelly had ended up staying at Notre Dame, he wouldn’t have wanted to endanger that by not using this opportunity to recruit.  He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to let on that he was talking to other programs about their job.  That could have left him with neither job.  If LSU didn’t work out and Notre Dame had let him stay, that could have strained a lot of relationships and cost him a chance to win at least one playoff game.  If Georgia beats Alabama comfortably, they’ll be a clear #1 and I wouldn’t give Notre Dame a chance; but if Alabama wins, I don’t know who #1 is.  I guess it would be Michigan, but if Michigan St. beat them Notre Dame can.  This might have been the only really good chance Notre Dame had, and time is not on your side at 60.

I also want to mention that it’s very unlikely that Kelly was offered more than a very brief speech.  The Notre Dame administration would not have wanted him to have conversations with players that could have led to transfers to LSU, nor would they want more than a brief distraction even if that were not a risk.

I know it’s unfortunate that his departure could be used against Notre Dame, but NCAA/CFP college football made this mess, not Lincoln Riley and not Brian Kelly.  They shouldn’t penalize any team for their coach making a rational decision based on the recruiting schedule.

Some say if they’re really harsh it will teach schools a lesson not to fire coaches.  How would punishing Notre Dame teach LSU a lesson?  What?

Others who pretend to take the players’ side say coaches shouldn’t be able to actually leave at this time.  So coaches can make plans to leave, but they’re stuck.  How hard are they going to recruit if they know they’re not getting the player?  For the players the school gets despite the coach potentially blowing it, they’re going to be signing up to play for a coach who won’t even be the coach when they arrive on campus.  Whatever university hires that coach will have a whole recruiting class who didn’t sign up to have that coach.  I’m for the escape valve of the transfer portal (although I think there should be certain date ranges), but you could end up with almost as many players in it as out of it.  I don’t think it would stop coaches from moving if all the other rules stay in place.

The only real solution in my opinion is (1) to not have an early signing day, (2) to make rules about tampering during the season (which for all teams would be through the national title game), and (3) allow six weeks between the allowable period to hire another team’s coach and the one and only national signing day.  The teams who lose a coach and opt not hire a current head coach should still have times to find a replacement and get their new staffs organized in time for recruits to make really good decisions knowing the head coach, coordinator, and school.  Only knowing the school isn’t good enough if you really care about players and you’re not just trying to get clicks from angry Notre Dame fans.

Another person who tried to add fuel to the fire was Lou Holtz, who tried to act like leaving Notre Dame was a huge insult to Notre Dame.  If you don’t remember, Lou Holtz was the guy who left Notre Dame at the age of 59 after 11 seasons, a stark contrast from Kelly’s age of 60 and his departure after 12 seasons.  Holtz then decided he wanted a new challenge of coaching in the SEC, which is also completely different because of reasons. He may claim it was OK because he didn’t go to another team immediately. To me, it’s more selfish to leave to have months for yourself than it is to immediately begin to devote your energies to another group of young men.

I could make fun of bad takes all day long, but I don’t want to be mean and I don’t want to promote their stupidity. I’m not worried about Holtz’s media presence going forward. Although I can’t stand the whole Notre Dame football scene, I have some sympathy for how players and fans may feel right now. I know when they go on about how mediocre or morally deficient Kelly is or how great first time head coach Marcus Freeman is (he may be, but no one really knows yet), they’re really overcompensating for a sudden feeling of insecurity.

Anyway, for a more rational analysis, I recommend this Fox Sports clip of Doug Gottleib. I also thought Rich Eisen, Marcellus Wiley, and Stephen A. Smith (of all people) had reactions worth hearing. I intentionally mention people without any loyalties toward LSU.

I’ve even seen some comments from LSU fans saying we were disappointed when Saban left.  After Katrina, the Saints played the Dolphins in Tiger Stadium.  The biggest cheer all day was when Nick Saban was announced. 

On October 30, 2005, Nick Saban walks the sidelines at Tiger Stadium less than 10 months after his last game with the Tigers. Saban would return again just over three years later as the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide. Saban won both the game above over the Saints and the 2008 game over the Tigers. 2010 is still the only instance of Saban losing in Tiger Stadium since he left LSU. His next scheduled trip to Baton Rouge is November 5. He also defeated Kelly’s Irish in the 2012 and 2020 seasons.

LSU fans were sad that Christmas 2004 (which I think was the day Saban decided) and New Year’s 2005 (not to mention the way LSU lost the game that day), but it wasn’t this kind of anger.  Saban probably would have had to stay 15 years to become the all-time winningest coach.  I don’t think many would have begrudged him leaving after that.  Even given that he left after 5 years, people only got angry and hateful toward Saban when he went to Alabama.  If Kelly had gone to USC, then I would relate.  I think the real reason we see the anger from Notre Dame fans is it kind of rubs their noses in it that they’re not this great college program that people will sacrifice tens of millions of dollars just for the privilege of being there. 

I will talk about why the common agent might matter in other blogs.

Anyway, this says absolutely nothing negative about Kelly’s character.  Unless it’s proven that he lied about a large number of things or a large number of conclusions about reported facts are not as they appear, I don’t see any legitimate reason for the negative attention.  I think Notre Dame hopes with the favorable media they get, they can unfairly poison recruits against Kelly.  LSU fans might not have cared about Kelly a week ago, but we shouldn’t let them.

2021 Week 7 Top 25

Obviously the ideal is not to publish my rankings on Saturday morning, but I was so close to completing all the team records for the first round of my computer formula I had to finish. 

I did a pretty good job of anticipating how this might look with my rankings last week; but I still didn’t want to abruptly transition to following the computer formula to a T, especially since I didn’t complete every component of the computer rating yet.

To be more specific about what I looked at (skip this paragraph if you don’t care for technical details), this is only the unweighted portion of the formula.  I use the weighted formula more to differentiate the top teams at the end of the season.  Also, I did not go through the records of the FCS/I-AA teams.  I just gave them all a record of 1-1 unless they were completely winless. I wanted to make sure a completely winless FCS team didn’t count for more than a completely winless FBS team, although both winless FBS teams (Arizona and UNLV) lost to FCS opponents anyway.  In this year more than other recent seasons, it seems the bottom of the FBS is worse than the top of the FCS.  There are a few other FBS teams whose only wins were over FCS opponents.  I think they rate similarly as opponents to the generic FCS opponent’s rating I gave.

Anyway, as a result of this being part of the transitional phase, I allowed some deviation from the computer formula.  I did not move any team more than 4 spots from where the computer placed them.  I didn’t move any of the top 6 more than one spot from where the computer had them.  There was a little bit of subjectivity here and there, but mostly the changes to ranking were (1) to give deference to the teams with fewer losses, and (2) to avoid drastic swings from last week to this week without something that happened on the field to justify it. 

For instance, congratulations to Texas-San Antonio for beating Memphis (which beat Mississippi St., which beat Texas A&M, which beat Alabama) earlier in the season, but nothing about beating Rice should catapult you from not being considered at all into the top 20.  They were one of only a couple of teams that I moved down the maximum number of spots. 

In the most decisive major upset of the season, Purdue put a stop to the Iowa offense in a 24-7 win in Iowa City last Saturday. In the above picture, Purdue DT Branson Deen brings down Iowa QB Spencer Petras. One of Purdue’s Twiter accounts said the Boilermakers beat the #2 out of the Hawkeyes.

Another was Iowa.  The Hawkeyes are somewhat overrated by the system because they have not had a bye week and have not played an FCS opponent.  I have a feeling the loss to Purdue may weigh them down more as the season goes on as well.  I moved two undefeated teams (Cincinnati and Oklahoma) and one 1-loss team (Kentucky, whose only loss was to clear #1 Georgia on the road) ahead of Iowa.  Even if Purdue is better than I think (and this isn’t just a somewhat bizarre outcome like when the Boilermakers beat Ohio St. a few years ago), it definitely makes sense to look more negatively at a loss to them than a loss to Georgia.

By the way, I wanted to mention that Georgia is such a “good loss”, that a team could lose to them twice and still not be penalized as many points as they would be for a loss to Mississippi St.

I decided not to put Michigan St. ahead of iowa since the Spartans have a bye week, which usually causes teams to drop in the ratings anyway.  Also, all of the teams the Spartans have beaten so far have losing records, at least the way I calculate it.  There is no strong reason to believe they would have a better record with Iowa’s schedule.  They very well could have three losses against Iowa’s schedule, in fact.  The Spartans have plenty of opportunity left to prove themselves.  Four of their five remaining opponents are ranked in this list, and three of those are in the top 12. If they make it through that with no losses (or maybe one loss), there is a good chance they can settle their differences with Iowa on the field in the Big Ten Championship anyway.

Also, I kept Michigan St., Alabama, Penn St., and Notre Dame in the same order I had them last week.  The computer did not have them in that order, but that’s part of the logical transition in my mind.  Ohio St. was after Notre Dame; and the Buckeyes do have a loss to a lower team anyway, so I didn’t mind taking them out of order compared to last week. 

I prefer not to put any new entrants above #15, so that required a couple of adjustments compared to the computer as well.  Also, I didn’t want Oregon to fall from #15 all the way out. Stanford isn’t very good, but some shady things went on in that game.  The computer doesn’t care of course, and ultimately the computer wins; but for now I think it’s accurate to keep Oregon in the top 25.

Overall, I’m satisfied that I was able to do this without either deviating a lot from the computer or from last week’s list.  Often the first week where I’m this loyal to the computer as the most turnover by far, but five is a very reasonable number.  I had six new teams two weeks ago, and five two weeks before that.  Also, no team moved more than 10 spots on paper.  I don’t know for sure who my #26 team was last week, but it could well have been Baylor. 

I’m only using one picture because I want to get this up and take my morning nap before the games start.  Hopefully the uninterrupted stretches of text aren’t too unpleasant to gaze upon.

Top 25

rank team last
1 Georgia 1
2 Michigan 3
3 Oklahoma St. 4
4 Oklahoma 5
5 Cincinnati 7
6 Kentucky 6
7 Iowa 2
8 Michigan St. 9
9 Alabama 10
10 Penn St. 11
11 Notre Dame 12
12 Ohio St. 8
13 Wake Forest 13
14 Ole Miss 17
15 Auburn 25
16 Baylor —
17 Air Force —
18 Pittsburgh —
19 B. Young 16
20 Purdue —
21 TX-San Antonio —
22 San Diego St. 22
23 Texas A&M 24
24 Oregon 15
25 Arkansas 19

Out of top 25: (14) Coastal Car., (18) Arizona St., (20) Texas, (21) Florida, (23) SMU

Week 1 Review and Rankings

There have been a couple of major developments since my last blog.  Apparently the Big Ten and Pac-12 have decided to play very shortened intra-conference seasons.  It might slightly legitimize whichever team ends up as the national champion (provided it’s not from one of those conferences… no matter how dominant it may be, winning 7 or 8 games is no comparison to winning 15), but it really doesn’t help much in ranking teams.  There is no objective means to evaluate two teams with a similar record in different conferences without inter-conference play, and many similar teams won’t have similar records anyway if they start the season six weeks apart.

Until those two conferences start play, I will still rank everyone but the SEC on one list and the SEC on another.  I’m just going to do a top 10 for the other teams.  There are only 12 teams in the AP poll that aren’t in the SEC or in a conference that hasn’t played, so everyone in my top 10 list deserves to be considered a ranked team. There may be one or two left out who’d normally be ranked, but so be it. It can be a challenge filling out the last couple of teams anyway.

SEC

Anyway, you probably noticed I’m an LSU fan, and the Tigers lost for the first time since that unholy abomination of a football game in College Station on November 24, 2018.  So that was a pretty good 22 months.  If you don’t count that as an LSU loss, I guess you can say it was more like 22 3/5 months, since there was no question about the rightful winner of the LSU-Alabama game on November 3, 2018 (the final was 29-0).  For updated records of the LSU-Mississippi St. series (the most-played series in LSU’s history), see here.

Stanford transfer K.J. Costello threw for 623 yards against the depleted LSU defense in his and head coach Mike Leach’s SEC debut.

In other SEC news, Florida was EXPOSED by Ole Miss when the Rebels scored 35 points and gained 613 yards. 

If you couldn’t tell, I’m making fun of everyone (paging Colin Cowherd) who said something similar about the LSU-Ole Miss game last year.  Actually, I’m making Florida #2 after the first week.  The Fighting Kiffins aren’t pushovers on offense.  They weren’t under Rich Rod, so I don’t think that has changed.

The land plankton Ole Miss defense isn’t good, but no one else in the SEC scored 50.  Mississippi St. was the only other one who even got to 40, and that was against an LSU team with like negative returning starters if you consider that the Tigers didn’t even have five of the players they expected to have on an already-depleted team a couple of months ago.  I’m sure others will do better—there are a lot of smart defensive coaches with a lot more veteran players—but the Pirate (Mike Leach) can be hard to contain even when you have a good veteran defense.

Number 1 may be a surprise.  I’m going with Auburn, who beat a ranked (albeit not by me) Kentucky team by 16 and probably would have won by over 20 without a pick-six being called back.    Alabama may well beat Auburn easily, but a 19-point win over Missouri (although it was a 32-point lead in the third quarter) isn’t anything to get excited about.

Rankings—SEC only

1. Auburn
2. Florida
3. Alabama
4. Mississippi St.
5. Tennessee
6. Georgia
7. Texas A&M
8. Vanderbilt
9. LSU
10. Kentucky
11. Ole Miss
12. South Carolina
13. Missouri
14. Arkansas

Until I’m shown otherwise over the course of a full game, I’m going to assume Arkansas is terrible again and that it’s Georgia’s fault the game was close for a while. 

I feel similarly about Tennessee-South Carolina.  The Gamecocks kept it close until the end at least.  I initially had Missouri ahead of South Carolina, but I changed my mind when I saw that 13 of the Tigers’ 19 points came after Alabama already had 35 on the board.

I’m also going to lean toward Florida having a good offense, so I’m not beating up on Ole Miss too much for the points the Rebels gave up.

LSU needed an ugly pick-six just to look like they were close to as good as Mississippi St. and still lost by twice as much as Vanderbilt lost to Texas A&M.  I’ll be surprised if Vandy beats the Fighting Tigers, but I think they should be more encouraged by Week 1 than LSU should be.

I still think Kentucky will be a good team even though they looked out of their element against Auburn.  Wildcats fans still should not be as pleasantly surprised as Commodore fans.  LSU fans are on a completely different level as far as being spoiled, but they honestly shouldn’t be that upset with a team this inexperienced who had no kind of warm-up for the conference schedule.

Others

Top 10 Interconference-Schedule Teams, AP poll equivalent (meaning if the AP disqualified the same teams I’m disqualifying) in parentheses

1. Clemson (1)
2. U. Miami (3)
3. Pittsburgh (11)
4. Cincinnati (7)
5. Central Florida (5)
6. Notre Dame (2)
7. North Carolina (6)
8. Oklahoma St. (8)
9. Memphis (12)
10. BYU (10)

Trevor Lawrence (16) was at least partly responsible for three touchdowns in Clemson’s opener against Wake Forest.

Clemson has been competing for national championships every year, and I don’t see why they won’t this year.

U. Miami has beaten two credible opponents in conference, as does Pittsburgh, so I don’t see why I ‘d put Notre Dame ahead.  The Irish struggled against Duke, and I don’t know why they played South Florida or why they should get much consideration for that game.  I also thought Cincinnati’s win over Army by two touchdowns and Central Florida’s two easy wins merited more consideration.

Oklahoma St. and North Carolina haven’t done anything spectacular, but they each won a conference game against a team that might be OK.

Memphis beat Arkansas St., who beat Kansas St., who beat Oklahoma.  That’s how desperate I am just to fill out a top 10, but it makes more sense than putting anyone else in that sentence in the top 10.

BYU blew out Navy and Troy.  I couldn’t see a better argument for anyone else.

Unlike the major polls, I have no interest in 0-0 teams.  It’s really a shame that teams like Cincinnati lost spots in the rankings due to the inclusion of such teams.  ULL, which for some reason calls itself Louisiana, went from 19^th to unranked after winning.  How does that make sense? 

Anyway, the only qualifying teams the AP poll has that I don’t have in my list are Oklahoma, which clearly doesn’t deserve a ranking unless it’s for something they did before Christmas, and Texas, which did only slightly better against Texas Tech than Houston Baptist did.

Championship Saturday Viewing Guide & Bowl Speculation

I was trying to get something out timely earlier in the week without being too convoluted, but I may have lost some people in the discussion of some of the various outcomes, so that’s what I want to focus on here.  Except for a few comments toward the end, I’m not talking about how things should be or who’s going to win, but I want to let people know teams to support depending on cheering interest.

BASICS

The top 4 teams will play in the Cotton and Orange Bowls.  The semifinal bowls and the other bowls that are part of the rotation and affiliated with the CFP committee are called the NY6 for New Year’s Six. Don’t get fixated on that name either though.  There are New Years Day bowls that are not those bowls, and all of those bowls won’t be on New Years Day.  The name just refers to the six bowls that are part of the CFP process and therefore part of the semifinal rotation. 

Champions of the SEC, ACC, Big XII, Pac-12, and Big Ten MUST be in NY6 bowls as must the best team from some other conference(most likely Central Florida).

The Sugar Bowl will be Big XII vs. SEC, and the Rose will be Pac-12 vs. Big Ten.  It appears that the Pac-12 representative will be the champion in the Rose Bowl and not anyone else in the other bowls, although there may be a route for Washington St. as discussed in the last blog.

Why does this matter?  The most likely visible result would be that even if they lose and even if they’re ranked well below other candidates for at-large spots, Texas is most likely going to the Sugar Bowl (I think the only way this won’t happen is if Georgia, Clemson, and Oklahoma all win).  Champions take precedence though.  So even if Michigan and Ohio St. are both higher-ranked Big Ten teams, Northwestern would be in the Rose Bowl by winning.  Likewise, even if Oklahoma is ranked higher than Texas, the Longhorns will be in the Sugar Bowl if they win the championship over the Sooners.  The SEC champion will be in the top 4 no matter what though and therefore not in the Sugar Bowl.

When it comes to following the games, the first thing to note is the games on Friday don’t really matter to anyone but fans of those playing.  Whether it’s Utah or Washington, the winner of the Pac-12 championship will go to the Rose Bowl and the loser will go to a non-NY6 bowl. Whether it’s Buffalo or Northern Illinois, both the winner and the loser of the MAC championship will be in non-NY6 bowls.

One other thing to note: since I wrote this,Central Florida has emerged as the popular pick to play in the Fiesta.  I don’t know if the media is responding to some inside tip with that, but basically the Fiesta and Peach Bowl teams are interchangeable anyway.

WHAT TO HOPE FOR BY CHEERING INTEREST

Most fans who will be affected at all by this weekend want their school to win and their conference to make the top 4 if that’s relevant, but there are a couple of fan bases worth elaborating upon. 

SEC/LSU fans

I touched on this in the last blog, but basically if you’re in the SEC and not an Alabama fan or don’t have some weird regional interest (such as you’re a Florida fan who lives in Atlanta and don’t want to travel), you want Georgia to upset Alabama and you DON’T want Clemson or Ohio St. to be upset (possibly wanting Urban Meyer to lose notwithstanding).  This would free up the Sugar Bowl for a third SEC team and allow other SEC teams to compete for other open slots. If Alabama wins, the Bulldogs will most likely take the SEC Sugar Bowl spot, but without another upset, there could still be third and fourth SEC teams in NY6 bowls.

The Oklahoma/Texas outcome probably (I’ll explain the situations below) won’t affect the SEC teams, so feel free to cheer for whichever you dislike less, although the outcome may influence for whom to cheer later.

No matter what happens, teams that are 9^th and 10^th with 3 losses (LSU and Florida) aren’t going to end up in the top 4, so even a series of upsets like in 2007 won’t put a team other than Alabama and Georgia in the top 4.

Georgia is currently in the top 4, but there is a strong likelihood that Oklahoma and/or Ohio St. winning this weekend would displace them after a Bulldog loss to Alabama.

I’ll explain why the upsets would hurt SEC teams.  The teams other than Alabama and Georgia are hoping to be in the “New Years 6 (NY6) but not top 4”category.  The SEC wants as few other teams to be in this category as possible. An upset by Pittsburgh, for instance, would put Pittsburgh in this category.  Same thing for Northwestern.  As I already explained, a potential Texas upset by itself is not going to change anything for the SEC (though it would take the Sooners out of consideration for the top 4).

So let’s say Alabama beats Georgia, Oklahoma beats Texas, Clemson beats Pitt, and Northwestern beats Ohio St. 

The following teams would all be in NY6 bowls:Central Florida, Clemson, Ohio St., Northwestern, Washington, Texas, Georgia and Michigan.  There would only be room for one other SEC team (probably Florida) in the Sugar, Fiesta, Rose, and Peach Bowls. 

Don’t quote me on these bowl picks (the Fiesta Bowl teams are interchangeable under the rules with the Peach Bowl teams, but the Sugar and Rose have fixed conference match-ups), but just to show why there would be no room for a second team…

Cotton: Alabama vs. Oklahoma

Orange: Notre Dame vs. Clemson

Sugar: Georgia vs. Texas

Peach: Florida vs. Ohio St.

Rose: Washington vs. Northwestern

Fiesta: Michigan vs. Central Florida

If the one upset is Texas over Oklahoma, it wouldn’t hurt the SEC since Texas would stay in place and no additional teams would be added to the mix:

Cotton: Alabama vs. Ohio St.

Orange: Notre Dame vs. Clemson

Sugar: Georgia vs. Texas

Peach: Florida vs. Central Florida

Rose: Washington vs. Michigan

Fiesta: LSU vs. Oklahoma

If Northwestern beats Ohio St. and other favorites win, something like this would happen, removing LSU’s chance:

Cotton: Alabama vs. Georgia

Orange: Notre Dame vs. Clemson

Sugar: Florida vs. Texas

Rose: Washington vs. Northwestern

Fiesta: Michigan vs. Oklahoma

Peach: Ohio St. vs. Central Florida

If Pittsburgh beats Clemson and other favorites win, something like this would happen, removing LSU’s chance:

Cotton: Alabama vs. Ohio St.

Orange: Notre Dame vs. Oklahoma

Sugar: Georgia vs. Texas

Rose: Washington vs. Michigan

Fiesta: Michigan vs. Pittsburgh

Peach: Clemson vs. Central Florida

If both Pitt upsets Clemson and Northwestern upsets Ohio St.:

Cotton: Alabama vs. Georgia

Orange: Notre Dame vs. Oklahoma

Sugar: Florida vs. Texas

Rose: Washington vs. Northwestern

Fiesta: Pitt vs. Ohio St.

Peach: Clemson vs. Central Florida

The takeaway is that any of these would eliminate the second SEC team (most likely LSU) outside of the top 4.

Big Ten/Michigan

It’s more nuanced what Michigan fans should before. As shown above, on the one hand, the right combination of upsets could put the Wolverines in the Rose Bowl. On the other hand, the wrong combination of upsets could see the Wolverines in the Citrus Bowl or similar.

Michigan fans could also be cheering for the long-shot chance of making the top 4, which would involve Ohio St., Clemson, and Oklahoma all getting upset.  Clemson with one loss could be ahead of the Wolverines with two losses, but one loss to an unranked team is arguably worse than two losses to top 10 teams (Notre Dame and Ohio St.).  Since Oklahoma plays first inthat group, those who support Michigan should consult the scenarios above for beneficial upsets.

Michigan in the top 4 would look like this:

Cotton: Alabama vs. Michigan

Orange: Notre Dame vs. Georgia

Sugar: Florida vs. Texas

Rose: Washington vs. Northwestern

Fiesta: Pitt vs. Oklahoma

Peach: Clemson vs. Central Florida

For generic Big Ten fans, it’s a lot simpler.  If Oklahoma beats Texas in the early game on Saturday, the best thing for the Big Ten is for Northwestern to win.  I believe Ohio St. will be in an NY6 bowl regardless, so if I’m right there will likely be three Big Ten teams in the NY6 bowls this way. 

If Texas wins, it may be more important to cheer for Ohio St. in the hopes the Buckeyes make the semifinal than it is to hope for three Big Ten teams to be in NY6 bowls, but that would be personal preference.

LSU ADVOCACY AND OTHER NOTES

Some fans of other schools seem upset that if LSUis apparently in line for an NY6 bowl, the Tigers aren’t really being punished for the loss. LSU was going to be in the Sugar Bowl provided Georgia made the top 4, but that doesn’t seem to be the case now.  The next in line for the Sugar seems to be Florida.  I’ve covered a few scenarios above where LSU doesn’t get any NY6 bowl. 

In a much less dramatic and controversial Rivalry Week contest, Washington RM Myles Gaskin scores a first-half touchdown in the snow in Pullman.

A number of bowl projections have LSU being left out of the NY6 bowls even if nothing weird happens, and some even have the Tigers falling all the way to the Outback Bowl (since I imagine the Citrus doesn’t want LSU for the third year in a row).

I don’t know how other than geography you would justify Washington St. going ahead of LSU, but maybe the rankings will be ignored.  Other than the questionable A&M loss (the Aggies are now #19 in the CFP rankings), the Tigers’ other two losses have come to top-10 teams. LSU also has a win over Georgia, better than any team the Cougars have played much less beaten.  Washington St.has beaten three of the four other teams in the Pac-12 North with winning records (none with a better record than 8-4), but Wazzu has a loss to 5-7 USC.  Washington St. has 4 wins against teams with winning records, while LSU has 5.  The Cougars also lost to in-state rival Washington. Although the Huskies may be the Pac-12 champions, it’s important to remember they lost to Auburn, who’s in the middle of the SEC on a good day (and who lost at home to LSU).

If Boise St. wins the Mountain West and Central Florida loses the American championship, it’s possible Boise St. could make it ahead of Central Florida.  In that case,the Broncos would probably play in the Fiesta Bowl; but as I explained earlier,Central Florida might be slotted for the Fiesta Bowl anyway, so in that case no other team would be affected.

I already talked about the potential impact of Georgia beating Alabama, so I didn’t include that here.  I think it would create a Big XII-champions. Florida Sugar Bowl, a Big Ten champion vs. Pac-12 champion Rose Bowl, and the other teams would depend upon who else wins. 

CONCLUSION

The simplest way to sum all of this up that I can think of is as follows.  The following teams are in NY6 bowls almost no matter what: Alabama, Notre Dame,Clemson, Georgia, Oklahoma, Ohio St., Michigan, and Florida.  Washington, Utah, Pittsburgh, Northwestern,Texas, and Central Florida are in with wins. LSU and possibly Washington St. or Penn St. could get in (Penn St. being the least likely of the three); but since none are playing, they’re dependent on the right combination of other teams to win.