Week 2 Top 25 and SEC Thoughts

I’ve been accused of being an SEC homer in the past, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it.  There were two more disappointing results to add to the LSU loss in Week 1.  Neither was as bad as Utah, the defending and eventual Pac-12 champions, losing to a Florida team that wouldn’t even finish with a winning record last season. By SEC standards though, losing to a similarly-placed team in another conference as Alabama and Texas A&M did is still bad news. 

Texas A&M and Alabama

It was a doubly good weekend for Longhorns fans. I guess it will be OK in hindsight if Texas A&M finishes last in the SEC West and U. Miami is in the top half of the ACC, but chances are the Aggies will beat at least one competitive team this year (as they beat divisional champions LSU last season).  I think there is a limit to how low Alabama can fall, but if they’re third and Texas goes undefeated in the Big XII, maybe that loss will also be understandable in hindsight by the end of the year. Alabama could still win the national championship, but I’m just giving one scenario.

In Tuscaloosa, Ala., Saturday, Texas QB Quinn Ewers threw for 349 yards and 3 touchdowns, including the one above to Xavier Worthy in the second quarter.

Early Big Games Are Not Always Determinative

Like I discussed last week, sometimes a team just gets off to a rocky start and fixes the problems before getting exposed by a conference opponent.  This happened to Ohio St. in 2014 before winning the first College Football Playoff.  An SEC example happened in 2006, when Arkansas was embarrassed against USC, 50-14, before winning the SEC West.  2006 was when the 7-year run of SEC national titles began, so it wasn’t a sign of a weak league then.  USC went on to win the Rose Bowl, but not before losing as many Pac-10 games (2) as the Trojans had lost in the previous four seasons combined.

Putting A&M aside since I don’t think a lot of people picked them first or second in the SEC West, the fact that it happened to both LSU and Alabama is somewhat concerning.  As far as I can recall, there wasn’t a second such game in 2006 or the few years after by one of the top SEC teams. 

I also want to say I don’t agree with some people saying that this means Texas will be a top contender for SEC titles right away.  One game isn’t an 8- or 9-game SEC slate; and even though Texas should be an easy place to recruit, they probably will have less experience in key positions next season.  Also, without the divisional format, it isn’t likely they can make a championship game almost by default like Missouri did a couple of times.  Texas A&M, which joined at the same time as Mizzou, still has never made an SEC championship game despite typically having much better teams.

Ole Miss and LSU

Neither of the next two SEC West teams I’ll mention have gotten much of the flak for last week, but I’ll also be fair and say I wasn’t impressed by them either.

Also, Ole Miss should have appeared vastly superior to a Tulane team that is missing a lot of its talent from last season (when they still lost to Southern Mississippi and Central Florida despite the positive season overall) and was also playing without its starting quarterback.  The starting quarterback might not have made a difference of 17 points (the final margin of victory), but it easily could have made a 7-point difference.  That game would have been a lot different if Ole Miss had made a field goal to go up three points instead of ten with just under two minutes left.  If Tulane didn’t have the urgency of being down two possessions on the ensuing drive, the turnover that resulted in the final Ole Miss touchdown would have been less likely.

LSU was expected to beat Grambling by a big score and did so, but I still think it was a bad sign that it was 14-10 LSU at the end of the first quarter.  If Grambling hadn’t deferred after winning the toss, they would have had two different leads.  It’s not like the field goal was from 50 yards either.  It was a 23-yard field goal, so Grambling was close to scoring before stagnating in the red zone.  It shows you don’t even have to be an FBS talent to catch passes against LSU, you just have to be tall.  I’m sure there are some tall receivers in the SEC.  A few players got out of the backfield too easily too.

Nonetheless, if LSU manages to go to Starkville and get a win (more on that below), the other teams in the division could be beatable.  I think the Tigers also have a fairly favorable cross-divisional schedule with Florida (at home) and Missouri (on the road).

Mississippi St. and Auburn

I mentioned last week that the Pac-12 had not lost any games against other conferences in Week 1.  The one bit of good news from the SEC West is Mississippi St. and Auburn became the first two teams from other conferences to defeat Pac-12 opponents.  Cal and Arizona only had a combined five conference wins last season, but it’s not like Auburn was terrific either (2 conference wins by a combined 6 points).  Yes, I know LSU struggled on the Plains last year anyway; but LSU has struggled there in the past against weak Auburn teams (even in 2012).

It will also be interesting to see how hosting Arizona compares to hosting LSU from Mississippi St.’s perspective.

Mississippi St. QB Will Rogers, who has thrown the most completions in SEC history, runs the ball against Arizona in Starkville, Miss. He only threw 13 of those 1192 completions on Saturday despite the game going into overtime.

LSU/Mississippi St. Series

Even if LSU wins, it’s going to be bittersweet, to me at least.  2024 will be the first year that Mississippi St. will participate in an SEC season and not play LSU.  The first SEC season was in 1933, and the last regular season Mississippi St. played without playing LSU was 1925.  The only Tigers’ schedule that didn’t have the Bulldogs on it over that time was 1943, when Mississippi St. didn’t field a team. 

I don’t understand why they couldn’t keep the series going next season while they figure out what the permanent rotation will be, but of course no one asked me.  Next season, LSU will play Vanderbilt for the 33^rd time, South Carolina for the 23^rd time, and Oklahoma for only the fourth time.  I think somehow one of those (or even Florida or Arkansas) could have found someone else to play while LSU played Mississippi St. again. 

I will have more to say about this whenever I get around to updating the rivalry blog, but I want people to appreciate that much while the game is taking played.

LSU/Mississippi St. Preview

About the game itself, it might be a good thing for LSU that Mississippi St. has moved away from the air raid since I’ve made no secret of my lack of admiration for the LSU secondary so far.  By the way, I had to laugh during the week when LSU commentators who acted like the Tigers could somewhat easily handle the Seminoles and were good bets for the top 10 (if not top 5) acted like they agreed when Brian Kelly told the media that he knew it would be an area of concern.  I understand why he didn’t tell us, but why didn’t the LSU media tell us if they knew?  LSU has a well-paid PR department.  They don’t need volunteers masquerading as journalists. 

I hope I’m wrong, but I think I’d take the Bulldogs and the points at home anyway.  Based on what State did last week, I do give LSU the edge but not by much.  Just because Miss. St. didn’t throw it much last week doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t if they feel like that’s what LSU is giving them.  The LSU defensive backs can’t get taller in the next couple of days, but I’m hoping they do a better job at breaking up passes on throwing downs and that there is more of a rush to assist the pass defense than there was against Florida St.

if Mississippi St. is not able to generate much offense without the help of the turnovers which they relied on to win the last game, then it might be relatively easy to outscore them. In that case, this might result in LSU being conservative to try to preserve the lead. Something like 23-14 or 27-19 would still fail to beat the spread. If LSU has to try to go score for score, then it’s also unlikely the Tigers win by double digits.

General Blog and Rankings Comments

Before I post the Top 25, I did want to mention that I’m not completely confident about my posting schedule for the next couple of weeks since I have some traveling planned.  It will be done by the time I usually post my first computer ratings in early October though.  It’s also more difficult to post blogs of my usual quality while traveling.  Enjoy the pretty rankings chart below since you might not see it again for a little while.

This is already long, so I won’t explain any particular ranking decisions.  I’m still giving some credence to preseason rankings at this point; but when I transition into a purely computer-based system, all preseason bias will be removed.  This does not take place in major polls or committee rankings.

Top 25

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

Out of Top 25: (23) Pittsburgh, (24) Fresno St.

Week 1 Reaction and Top 25 2023

Since the last blog…

Sometimes long weekends are the worst scenario.  It was basically Wednesday by the time I was able to review some of the things that went wrong during the LSU game. If I had waited to review all of them, I might have never written another blog.  Obviously I’m not a beat reporter in Baton Rouge, so I rely on public statements and coverage from the people who are based around the program.  That process was delayed by a day or more given that the game took place on Sunday night.  I did have Friday the 1st off, but nothing had happened yet.  I had decided to go out of town to a baseball game on Saturday, so I couldn’t write live reactions about the teams who played on Saturday. 

On Sunday, I barely made it back in time for the game, and then Mondays are workdays for me whether I go into work or not.  My bosses check to make sure I’ve made enough progress on Tuesday mornings, and I have the type of job where I always have to spend time preparing for the next day the night before anyway.  Unfortunately, I don’t just clock in and clock out without having to think about it until I clock in again.

LSU-Florida St. Reaction and Historical Comparisons

Anyway, I do feel a little good right now that at least I didn’t pick LSU to win the SEC West or make the playoff.  I’m not throwing in the towel though.  There have been teams with rough starts who ended up doing well in the SEC, but it’s pretty rare to be one of the top teams nationally.  Ohio St. got run out of their own stadium against Virginia Tech in the first week of September 2014 before winning the first College Football Playoff, but that’s kind of the exception that proves the rule.  

Also, the Buckeyes had two months before they had to play a major-conference opponent who would finish with 9 wins or more.  That was a long time to fix the issues in the Virginia Tech game, and there was even a close call against a Penn St. team (which would finish 7-6) in the interim.  I think LSU has a lot less time.  Mississippi St., LSU’s opponent a week from today, will win 9 games or more.

In Columbia on October 6, 2012, Marcus Lattimore gained as many yards on the ground (109) as Georgia QB Aaron Murray gained in the air. LSU handed South Carolina its first loss the following week. The Bulldogs would win the SEC East over the Gamecocks and the Gators.

A couple of years before that, Georgia got blown out by South Carolina, 35-7. in early October but came just a couple of yards short of beating Alabama to win the SEC and make the BCS championship game (which they most likely would have won given how easily the Tide handled Notre Dame).  I think that’s a more realistic example for LSU to hope to follow (possibly making the SEC title game and playing better than last year).  Georgia of course had to overcome that game to win the East whereas LSU’s loss to Florida St. does not count in the SEC standings.  Unlike the Ohio St. example, the Bulldogs’ next big game (in hindsight and at the time) was just a couple of games later against Florida, who would finish 11-2.  The only bad thing about following that Georgia example would be having to wait another 10 years to actually win a national championship. 

I’ll update the Florida St. rivalry blog another time, but it’s just crazy how cursed LSU seems to be in the series.  Of course, I still think LSU would have done quite well if they had played the Seminoles annually from about 2001 to 2019 (minus a couple of losses to Jameis, I suppose).

Thoughts on Brian Kelly

I said I’m not throwing in the towel on this season.  I’m also not throwing in the towel on Brian Kelly.  This was Kelly’s 15^th game.  Ed Orgeron lost to Troy in his 13^th game in charge (two weeks after a 30-point loss at Mississippi St. that I still argue was worse).  Les Miles lost his 12^th game by 20 to a Georgia team that finished 10-3.  Say what you will about Miles and Orgeron after the respective national championships, but no one was whining about it taking too long to get there at the end of 2007 (Miles’ third year) or 2019 (Orgeron’s third full year) seasons.  By the way, 2014 was Urban Meyer’s third year at Ohio St., and Nick Saban didn’t win his first at Alabama until his third year (he had taken four years to win one at LSU).  So even if it’s safe to assume a national championship is off the table already, I never thought it was a highly realistic goal for this year anyway.

LSU Head Coach Brian Kelly went on a bit of a rant at the end of his press conference on Tuesday.

Kelly can be a smooth talker, so I don’t always hold too much stock in his press conferences and whatnot, but I liked his rant at the end of his week-opening press conference.  I disagree somewhat with faulting the enthusiasm gap, but I think it was a good message to put out there, and it showed he took onboard many of the issues fans and media pointed out.

“I could go through a number of different situations.  We don’t get to the chains on third and 5… We’ve got a drop on third and 6 trying to get upfield… We’re 4^th and 1 and we’re trying to make a play instead of reading what the defender is giving you.  I could elaborate on defense.  We’re spinning down a safety[, and] he’s watching the quarterback.  We could have been more creative with play-calling.  We could have been better defensively and [made fewer] spy calls and [brought] more pressure.  I could attack the whole thing.  The bottom line is I’ve got to get our football team thinking the right way and play[ing] with a competitive edge.” 

I tried to clean up some of the grammar.  He usually speaks better than that, but I’ll forgive it.  I’ll accept some grammatical hiccups in exchange for his not sounding like a politician sometimes.

Other Results and Reactions

At least Kelly has been overshadowed somewhat by the hysterics about Dabo after Clemson’s loss to Duke.  My prediction of those Tigers being the team to beat in the ACC isn’t looking too good right now.  But that 2014 Virginia Tech team was in the ACC and ended up losing 6 games, 5 of them in conference, so we shouldn’t rush to any conclusions about that conference either.  Even if Clemson continues to disappoint, I might still be right that the ACC champion will have a good shot at the Playoff though.

If I were a betting man (sports betting is still illegal where I live anyway), I would have taken Colorado +20.5.  Although I did leave TCU ranked, I wasn’t very convinced they were going to be a competitive team this year.  Deion performed better than many more experienced coaches in getting a bunch of transfers and other new players to support each other and have the needed enthusiasm.  Whatever happens this season, he definitely did something right in preparing for Week 1.

Colorado head coach Deion Sanders confers with his son, S Shiloh Sanders, on Saturday in Ft. Worth. Sanders’ other son, Shadeur, threw for 510 yards in the upset win.

I don’t believe in making drastic changes after one week unless necessary, so I’m not dropping LSU and Clemson from the top 25.  TCU was low enough that they will drop out though.  I don’t really have the time and energy to re-work the whole thing even if I wanted to.  I don’t really have a long list of teams that were just outside of the top 25 either. 

I also wanted to put some of the conference talk into perspective.  South Carolina has a much lower status in the SEC than North Carolina has in the ACC.  The Tar Heels were the ACC runners-up in 2015 and 2022 and represented the conference in the post-2020 Orange Bowl.  They would have been #2 in the conference had Notre Dame not temporarily joined.  The Gamecocks have only made one SEC championship game, and that was back in 2010.  They have only won 8 games or more twice since the 2013 season.

Florida is obviously a more successful program in the big picture than Utah is, but the Gators lost 5 SEC games (and two other games) last season and 6 the season before, going 6-7 overall both seasons.  Utah went 10-4 in each of the last two seasons, winning the Pac-12 both years.  I know Florida beat Utah anyway last year, but you can’t expect the SEC to win every game like that.

LSU-Florida St. was the only game of the three that was an apples-to-apples comparison. 

It is interesting that the Pac-12 is disintegrating at the same the conference had the most successful Week 1; but other than Colorado, nothing is too impressive based on recent seasons.

I considered ranking Purdue in preseason, and Fresno St. beat the Boilermakers on the road. I thought it was good to make sure one team from outside of the major conferences (and Notre Dame) was included. I also considered Wyoming, which beat Texas Tech; but the Cowboys rarely sustain their early-season successes whereas Fresno St. is often one of the top teams in the Mountain West. I also take overtime wins with more of a grain of salt.

Top 25

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

Out of Top 25: (17) TCU, (19) S. Carolina, (22) Boise St., (25) Texas Tech

Rivalry Week Top 25 and CFP Reaction

CFP Reaction

I ended up agreeing with the committee regarding the top 5.  I’ll be really surprised if two of the current top 4 lose this weekend.  I had said before last week that I thought Ohio St. would be one of the stronger non-champions were they to lose to Michigan.

Neither Tennessee nor Alabama, who each have two losses, had a non-conference game that was worth very much to compensate for the extra loss.  The SEC is better, but it’s not so much better that you don’t need either a very good non-conference game or a ninth conference game. 

I did think that LSU would have deserved consideration if they had finished with 2 losses, but the Tigers did get the ninth conference game when they qualified for the SEC Championship Game.  This would have given LSU a second win over a team who finished with a winning record in conference.

Anyway, as to who #6 should be, I disagree with those who have Tennessee behind Alabama.  Tennessee not only played the #1 team in the country by virtue of playing in the SEC East, but they also beat both of the top teams in the SEC West.  Alabama didn’t beat anyone in the top 6 (there are 7 teams per division) of the SEC East, and they also didn’t beat the only team with a winning conference record (LSU) in the SEC West.  The Tide did lose two games in the last second, but I think beating more good teams should count for more than how close the losses were.  Alabama didn’t have to beat a team like either team who beat Tennessee.  Texas was a better non-conference opponent than Pitt, but that doesn’t make up for Alabama playing Vanderbilt as the extra cross-divisional opponent while Tennessee drew LSU, not to mention Georgia and South Carolina.

Ratings and Other Thoughts

I don’t think this technicality matters as far as Playoff arguments but something else that annoys me is if you lose a tiebreaker for the conference championship game, you’re still considered a divisional co-champion.  Even though LSU lost after clinching the spot in the championship game, Alabama can now claim they’ve won the SEC West 10 of 11 years (the exception being 2019).  I prefer the NFL approach.  If you lose the tiebreaker to the team that advances as the winner of the division, you’re not called a champion or co-champion.  The previous time the Tide lost it outright was also to LSU, in 2011.  Since divisions will cease to exist in about two years, I hope we can get at least one more outright win in the next two years.

Back to my rankings/ratings, you may have noticed the “weighted rank” doesn’t penalize as much for losses anymore.  I’ve compensated for that by making it a smaller component of the overall total, but it still does take record into consideration to some extent.  For instance, Vanderbilt had to play four of the five best teams by conference record in the SEC and is only #39 in the weighted rankings because the Commodores also have 7 losses.  Alabama only played two of those teams and is #15 in the weighted rankings largely because there were no other losses.

So, although when I first introduced the weighted rankings they were meant to stand alone, in no universe did I think LSU was #1 last week or that Oregon St. is #2 this week (after Georgia); but those are the teams (other than Georgia) most deserving of bonus points if you will given a combination of a good record and quality opponents.  I also think it’s right that Clemson lost an extra spot (from what they are in the original unweighted formula) because their weighted rank fell to #24.  Clemson just barely edged out LSU and Oregon St. 

Sometimes you have to hold onto your hat in the last 20 minutes of a Rivalry Week game.

One might come to the conclusion that I don’t give conferences other than the SEC enough of a chance with the weighted component, but there are five Pac-12 teams in the weighted top 10 and only three SEC teams.  All things being equal, LSU and Tennessee having such tough conference slates would have caused them to finish lower than Alabama in the standings, but they both beat the Tide and ended up with the same number of conference losses as the Tide. 

USC was the only one of those five Pac-12 teams to have a better weighted rank than unweighted rank.  This was because the other four all finished with three overall losses.  It also helped that the Trojans played Notre Dame.  This compensated somewhat for USC not having played Washington and Oregon.

The other teams in the top 10 of the weighted rankings are Texas and Michigan.  Michigan is doing well being that they only played two teams in the top 40 in my overall ratings, but of course being undefeated helps.    Texas has the opposite situation: a number of top-40 opponents (4) but also a number of losses (4).  Texas has also played 5 teams that finished between numbers 41 and 65 with only one opponent (ULM) below #85.

There are only a couple of the lower teams I thought needed a little bit of explanation beyond the results of last week.

It really hurt Florida St. that Clemson and LSU lost because those games were largely responsible for the Seminoles’ having an unweighted ranking of 14 and a weighted ranking of 16 last week.  Notre Dame’s loss to USC also had some collateral effect upon the ACC as a whole as well given that the Irish beat both of the ACC title contestants and another team (Syracuse) who went .500 in conference and finished 7-5 going into the bowl game.

The only other team who seems somewhat out of place is Boise St.  The win over Utah St. wasn’t the most impressive (although to be fair, the Aggies had won 5 of 6 going into the game), but the three teams who had beaten the Broncos all had “good” weeks.  The Broncos’ worst loss, UTEP, is still not a good team; but the Miners improved their strength of schedule considerably by playing UTSA.  You probably know what happened with Oregon St. (who beat Boise St. in Week 1) and why their stock improved.  Also, BYU improved its strength of schedule with the win over Stanford (who played in a good conference and somehow beat Notre Dame…. Best wishes to departing head coach David Shaw, by the way. How he made it so long is beyond me).

Boise St. LB Ezekiel Noa sacks Fresno St. QB Logan Fife in the third quarter of what was at the time a close game in Boise on October 8. The Broncos outscored the Bulldogs 20-0 in the last 20 minutes of the game to win 40-20. A rematch will be played for the Mountain West title tomorrow, also in Boise.

I also noticed there were some games that weren’t included the last time or two I had updated the weighted rankings, so that may have played some role in why Florida St. fell after a loss and why Boise St. rose so far after a win over a now-6-loss opponent.  I think that’s also the main reason UCLA fell so much last week and rose so much this week. Without correctly factoring in how good USC was, it made the loss to the Trojans look worse than it should have; and this is now corrected.

Regardless, I like the process I’ve followed this year because it’s been a lot more stable.  I don’t like to say a given team is top 10 one week and not in the top 25 the next or that six or seven teams are in this week’s top 25 but weren’t in last week’s.  We don’t really find out that much about a team in one game, especially not when it’s 1 of 12 games, so I don’t like to see much volatility later in the year even if there are some adjustments in the methodology.

Top 25

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

For the detailed ratings of all 131 teams, see here or follow the link in the heading for “Knights Ratings” at any time while browsing the site.

LSU @ Texas A&M Post Mortem

As I’ve done the last couple of weeks (including on Thursday), I’m going to wait until the College Football Playoff standings come out for detailed analysis of the remaining competitive teams (which of course no longer include Clemson or LSU), but you can see my ratings here.  I will comment briefly that I think it’s appropriate for a couple of different reasons for USC to be ahead of Ohio St. at the moment, so I commend the polls for coming to that conclusion as well and doing so decisively.

I’ve also updated the LSU-Texas A&M Rivalry Blog, which was first written before the 2010 Cotton Bowl.  Jimbo Fisher may have a worse record as Aggie head coach than Kevin Sumlin did overall, but he’s 3-2 against LSU compared to Sumlin’s 0-6 record.  It’s also the third time in those five games that the team with the better record lost on the road. 

Jimbo Fisher walks the sidelines as the LSU offensive coordinator before the BCS championship/Sugar Bowl in New Orleans in January 2004. He now has a winning record against his former employers.

I started writing this before the game ended, but I think there will be a few reactions to the LSU-Texas A&M game that aren’t accurate. (ESPN confirmed this this morning, saying “Jimbo Fisher EXPOSES LSU” in the headline of their YouTube video about the game. If the title is something that low-IQ, I don’t even click on it.  So I’m not making a point-by-point rebuttal, but I will elaborate more below.)

I don’t think it was trap game or that LSU was looking ahead.  It was the next major-conference opponent for two weeks.  Yes, there was a big game coming up against Georgia; but the players knew they had some things to clean up after the Arkansas game.  Texas A&M had beaten Arkansas earlier in the year after all.  The Aggies had suffered some injuries since then, but so had Arkansas.  Everyone knew it was a talented, dangerous team.  This isn’t a coaching staff that would have distracted the team with an early preview of Georgia (Kelly confirmed this with the media), and winning the game yesterday would have actually taken a weight off of them.  Maybe you shock the world, but even if you don’t you have a great bowl game no one expected you to be in to fall back on.  Now that’s in doubt.

My impression is that it was the opposite of looking past the opponent.  I think some of the LSU players were too nervous and playing not to lose.  It’s easy to feel unease in a hostile environment.  If there were some consideration of A&M’s record, I definitely think the thought was more, “How much would it suck if we lost to a team with that record?” than “Forget all the great athletes they have, we’ll beat A&M easily because their record isn’t good.”  

Playing not to lose was cited by multiple people as why Alabama lost to Tennessee, and I got a similar vibe here.  I think that is a more frequent problem with the top teams than “looking ahead”.  The Tigers also seemed like they were playing tight against Arkansas, and they weren’t looking ahead three weeks.  Arkansas just didn’t have the athletes (or they weren’t playing well enough that day) to capitalize.

I would cite a combination of rivalry, revenge (for last season when LSU won with the lesser team), and wanting to take out an overachieving team that was possibly in position to make the playoff without a loss.  Also, they knew it was the last chance to play a game for several months (or ever in some cases).  It doesn’t make up for how badly A&M underachieved of course, but there is only so much you can do in one game.

Yes, A&M was up three touchdowns midway through the fourth quarter (I’ll get to the circumstances below), and I think some will say LSU didn’t “show up,” but a game getting away from you doesn’t mean you never showed up.  I told Tennessee fans the same thing when some of them said that after the South Carolina loss.

LSU RB John Emery, Jr., scores the tying touchdown early in the third quarter in College Station yesterday. Emery would only finish with 55 yards from scrimmage but scored all three of LSU’s touchdowns (at least the ones that counted).

In the second half, LSU started with two three-and-outs on defense and a touchdown on offense to tie the game.  I wouldn’t say everything had gone according to plan, but that was a more comfortable position than LSU had had at a similar point in most of the previous games against major-conference opponents.  After three drives of the third quarter against Florida St., LSU was down 17-3.  At the same point against Mississippi St., LSU was down 16-10.  At the same point at Auburn, LSU was down 17-14.  At the same point against Ole Miss, LSU had just scored to get to make it 24-20 Rebels. LSU was also way down against Tennessee, but that was the only one LSU didn’t either lose as a result of a blocked extra point or win. I guess one problem was only one of those situations had taken place on the road, so this was more difficult.  LSU had some luck against Auburn that they didn’t have here.

Going back to this game in the third quarter, LSU had withstood the A&M rally and was in position to take the lead (and to take the crowd out of it) with another good drive.  With the ball and a 17-17 score, LSU gained six yards on first down.  That was more than they had gained on any first down in the previous drive (which ended in a touchdown), and the Tigers had only had to convert one third down.  But in two plays all of that momentum was reversed.  The Tigers were forced into a third down.  It was a third and one, which seemed like no big deal given what I said about some prior plays that half, but Daniels made what appeared to be a bad decision not to hand the ball off and tried to roll out.  He fumbled as he was hit trying to get around the end, and A&M returned the fumble for a touchdown.

LSU QB Jayden Daniels picks himself up from the turf as DB Demani Richardson is about to return Daniels’s fumble for a touchdown to give the Aggies back the lead, which they would not relinquish again.

It also didn’t help that LSU’s attempted comeback was thwarted by what I think was a completely incorrect call on the field in the last three minutes, but it still would have been unlikely for the Tigers to come up with another touchdown, a two-point conversion, and at least one other point after.  If that’s called a touchdown and there is no fumble, that’s nearly the entire difference in the game though. 

This isn’t sour grapes or blaming the refs for the loss, but this is something that has annoyed me for a long time even if it’s not against my team.  I think if you have the ball secured against your chest and your feet land in the end zone, that should be a catch, the play should be over, and nothing else should enter the equation.  In this situation, WR Jaray Jenkins also took two steps out of bounds with the ball secure.  It’s bad enough if the player then goes to the ground in the end zone, but it’s absurd to even talk about what happens on the edge of the turf as he’s avoiding people on the sidelines, but he did eventually go to the ground and drop the ball.  I’ve seen players toss the ball up in the air or spike it after demonstrating far less control over the ball.  This whole “surviving the ground” thing is nonsense in that situation. 

It’s the equivalent of a baseball catcher tagging someone out and then falling and dropping the ball on the way to the dugout.  Or an even better analogy would be a basketball player calls timeout as he’s going out of bounds and then drops the ball when he lands on someone’s lap, so the timeout doesn’t count because he retroactively didn’t have possession.

Rant over.  My point is it really was a close game, not that playing a 7-loss team close is something to brag about; but it wasn’t in reality all that different from the previous conference game.  I don’t think LSU was exposed or embarrassed or anything of the sort, just not the better team that day and certainly not the team that got more breaks. 

I noted the live stats as of the end of the third quarter, so it’s not the official three-quarter stats, but it’s close enough.  At that point, LSU had about 50 more yards in the air (but more incompletions) and about 50 fewer yards on the ground.  This included most of the Texas A&M drive that resulted in the Aggies going up two scores, so LSU was generally the better team before the fumble.  The one weakness in the stats was the third-down performance on both sides of the ball.  Four of 9 wasn’t bad for LSU’s offense, but giving up 7 of 10 to the other team is terrible, especially if they got a touchdown on one of your OFFENSIVE third downs. 

Speaking of third downs, another key play I wanted to highlight took place after the start of the fourth quarter.  LSU still had a decent chance of coming back as they were only down 14 with 11:30 to play and had forced a third and six from the A&M 27.  The Aggie quarterback Conner Wiegman threw deep downfield to WR Moose Muhammad III, who could not have been covered better, and even threw a little bit behind him.  But partly due to Muhammad’s timing in reacting to the ball, it came down right between him and LSU safety Sage Ryan even though both players were touching one another as the ball arrived (it was correct not to call interference either way).  The ball even touched Ryan’s fingertips as Muhammed was hauling it in. 

I couldn’t find a picture of the play I was talking about, but this was just a couple of plays later: another great catch by A&M WR Moose Muhammad, III, who finished with 94 receiving yards. His right arm may be extending a little bit too much, but it’s still a great catch; you also can’t fault Sage Ryan on this play either.

I knew the fumble-touchdown had been a dangerous turn in momentum (Brian Kelly said after the game, “That momentum swing, I don’t know that we ever recovered from it”), but that’s in hindsight.  It didn’t seem insurmountable in the moment.

That catch, though, gave me a strong conviction that it was not going to be our night.  I’m rarely that discouraged in a two-possession game with over 11 minutes left, but I think it was warranted.  If we couldn’t stop them despite covering a receiver that well, we weren’t going to be able to stop them.  At least not enough to outscore them by two touchdowns the rest of the way.

I do want to elaborate on why I think saying LSU was exposed was a low-IQ take.  A good example was 2018, when Ohio St. had beaten unranked opponents by an average score of 51.4 to 16, and the only team that had stayed within single digits of the Buckeyes was a top-ten Penn St. team in Happy Valley.  Then Ohio St. loses to unranked Purdue 49-20.  That’s exposed. 

“Exposed” is not when a two-loss team shows problems it had shown all year (slow start on offense, giving up a large number of rushing yards on defense) but unable to make up for it in other areas on that particular night. LSU gave up 222 rushing yards to Florida, and the Gators were playing from behind (and therefore less inclined to run than they normally would be) the entire second half.  Texas A&M never trailed, so it’s not surprising that they did even better.  The Aggies did end up on the wrong side of a couple more games, largely due to injuries of key players; but they’re not a dramatically different team than Florida is.  Exposing an opponent isn’t confirming a weakness that other similar teams have exploited in the past.

Also, if any exposing was done, it wasn’t Jimbo Fisher doing it.  Two of the plays I highlighted were defensive plays, and the offensive play (or plays if you include the touchdown in the picture) was a great individual effort by Muhammad. It wasn’t a brilliant call or a great pass.  Without that catch, the Aggie offense would have had only two touchdown drives against three three-and-outs in the final 50 minutes of game play.  You’d like them to have zero touchdowns over that span of course, but that’s not being exposed by the other team’s play-caller.

Anyway, I think most reasonable people predicted 8 wins or fewer for LSU, maybe 10 on the high end after a bowl game, so having 9 going into the game is still something to be very proud of.  Most people predicted more wins for Texas A&M. I actually wish we didn’t have to play Georgia, but there is a chance something crazy could happen.  I thought LSU was going to get blown out by Tennessee in 2001 (the last time LSU made the SEC championship game with three losses), but they weren’t.  Regardless, for a team that was so out of it 11 months ago that they barely had enough players to play an embarrassing Texas Bowl to get to #5 in late November was impressive.

Week 12 Top 25 and CFP Reaction

First, I want to note that I’ve updated the LSU-Arkansas series blog. I didn’t mention that if you didn’t watch the game, the final score is misleading. The LSU defense was extremely dominant, and the 13-3 late edge seemed almost insurmountable, although of course one more late play could have made the difference in the game. This was the third consecutive game in the series that was decided by three points and the third consecutive win by the road team, both firsts in series history.

Assuming I have time, I’ll write more about potential playoff scenarios later, but I’ll just make general comments about the ratings. I did wait to publish this until after the College Football Playoff (CFP) rankings.

The Race for #5

Since someone will lose between Ohio St. and Michigan, both currently ranked highly enough to make the four-team playoff, there is a lot of interest in who #5 is or will be.

Although in my rankings (and in the CFP’s), LSU stayed ahead of USC, I don’t necessarily fault the rankings that allowed the Trojans to go ahead. Obviously, UCLA is significantly better than UAB and the combination of UCLA and Notre Dame is significantly better than the combination of UAB and Texas A&M; but I just hope that LSU and USC can switch places just as easily if LSU beats a much better team on December 3. Even in my ratings, I expect the Trojans will go ahead with a win (over Notre Dame) after the games this weekend.

The CFP committee doesn’t let us know how close USC is to overtaking LSU, so we will just have to guess there, but I do think if they didn’t move USC ahead now, it would indicate that either (1) they aren’t going to move the Trojans ahead next week either or (2) if they do, it would be a very close call and can be just as easily switched back by LSU beating a better team in the conference championship game.  Despite what Bo Nix says, I think Oregon (assuming they make the title game… more about the “civil war” opponent below) is still a good bit behind Georgia.  If Oregon loses, that makes it worse for USC regardless of whether the Ducks still make the championship game (I think they would need Washington to lose in that scenario.)

I do have Clemson ahead of LSU right now, but I also think a win over Georgia would overcome the deficit.  It may be closer than I would have thought previously given South Carolina’s win over Tennessee.  The Gamecocks have a reasonable chance of winning the in-state rivalry though.  That win by an SEC team would also give LSU a higher rating in comparison to other competitors for #4. 

I think I value many of the same things the committee does, but I think they have a dim view of Clemson for a few reasons. For one, they just don’t seem that capable of scoring the points to keep up with a good offense; and it’s just very rare that your defense can be dominant enough against a good team (and they were anything but against Notre Dame) to compensate. In my ratings, you can win every game 7-3 and you get the same number of points as if you win 77-3 or 77-73. (I do take off a little if you win close games by three or fewer at home though.). For another, although they have played a long list of above-average teams, they’ve only played two teams in the top 20, and they’re only 1-1 against those teams. Also, those two teams each have three losses apiece. When I add in the “weighted” ratings, that’s meant to give extra credit for playing some of the best teams; but the overall ratings do not have the extreme focus on best opponents that the committee has.

Shifting ratings of prior opponents has some impact upon teams moving up and down in my ratings, but I think they’re still pretty stable being that there were only two teams that fell out of the top 25 (and they both obviously deserved to).

Although I think every reasonable ratings system has Georgia #1, there are some shortcomings being that the Bulldogs didn’t play any of the top three teams of the SEC West. If they’d played Alabama or Ole Miss, it would help LSU more to win that game. At least before the Texas A&M game, Auburn (whom Georgia plays every year) looked like the worst team in the SEC West. Mississippi St. isn’t the best either, although maybe those Bulldogs will win the Egg Bowl. I think a two-loss LSU would be a deserving #4 regardless, but I’m just talking about the numbers right now.

Other Developments in the Rankings

Tennessee’s falling four spots was reasonable.  I think they should remain ahead of Alabama.  I don’t think head-to-head is a good reason alone (given that it means the worse loss is worse for Tennessee), but the fact that Tennessee has played Georgia and Alabama hasn’t is a good reason.  Both Tennessee and Alabama have played LSU in the same stadium, and we know how those games went.

It’s also helping LSU that Florida St. has been increasing its standing.  Although I generally like Florida St. better, I’m used to having more mixed feelings in their games against Florida because I usually want to make LSU look better.  But in this year, it’s the opposite since (although LSU has played both) I think it’s better if a team LSU lost to increases its rating instead of the fourth or fifth team the Tigers will have beaten doing so.

You might have expected some of the teams to fall more due to losses, but a loss to a good team this late in the year doesn’t hurt too much given that each successive game is a lower percentage of the total.  Even a loss to a team that is destined for a less-than-impressive bowl game isn’t catastrophic.  I have a couple of SEC results in mind.  If you’re Central Florida, you can’t lose to Navy though.

Oregon St.’s rise may seem unusual, but all of their best prior opponents have been improving. Fresno St. lost its first four games against FBS opponents but has won all six since then. Boise St. started 1-2 against FBS opponents and is now 7-3 in such games. Washington St. has won three games in a row to improve to 7-4 overall. You’re probably already familiar with the gradual improvements of USC, Utah, and Washington. Although USC was high in the polls all year, they didn’t justify it much until later in the season.

Without commenting on the Playoff, USC appears to be the team to beat west of the DFW Metroplex. After struggling to score at times in the first half, the Trojans scored touchdowns, including the one above by WR Kyle Ford on the first play of the fourth quarter, on their first four possessions in the second half to take a 10-point lead in the Rose Bowl on Saturday. After UCLA threw a late interception, USC held on for a 48-45 win.

Finally, Texas has improved in recent weeks as the Oklahoma win has gotten stronger and the Alabama and TCU losses have been hurting the Longhorns less.  Some may wonder how they could possibly be ahead of Kansas St., but you can’t just look at records and conference membership.

Even within the same conference, a better strength of schedule can compensate for a loss. Obviously, Alabama is a much better team than Tulane, and even Texas’s second-best out-of-conference opponent (UTSA) is comparable to Tulane (and they actually rate better as an opponent although not overall). It also helps that Texas did not play an FCS team. Kansas St. not only played an FCS team, but that team is only 3-7 within the FCS (3-8 overall). I think TCU playing Texas again would make for a better game, but I guess we’ll see how it goes.

The Horned Frogs finish with Iowa St. and most likely Kansas St., two of the old Big XII North opponents (only three of which remain in the Big XII after the departures of Nebraska, Colorado, and Missouri). The Wildcats play Kansas, the only other former Big XII North team still in the conference. If Kansas St. wins, they’re in the championship game. If not, they’d need Texas to lose to Baylor. Even though I already think Texas is the better team, I suspect the committee would like TCU better if they beat two-loss Kansas St. rather than three-loss Texas.

Top 25

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

Week 8 Reactions and Top 25

This was almost completely written over the weekend (and I updated the records on the Ole Miss blog), but it was just one of those weeks where everything took twice as long as it should have.  I have a salaried position; so if things take longer, that just takes away my free time.

Ole Miss @ LSU and the Final Score

LSU and the top 25 finally aren’t completely separate topics, but I’ll address and elaborate upon that game first and most extensively.  LSU had the best knockoff of a top team (I wanted to say upset, but it wasn’t one) in the win over Ole Miss.  I had the Rebels 5^th and LSU 19^th, but the major polls had the Rebels 7^th and LSU unranked.  Las Vegas and I both picked LSU to win though.  I heard that the amateur bettors (misled by polls and sports shows, I guess) picked Ole Miss in droves to keep the line close.  Ole Miss may still make a New Years Six bowl though, because I don’t know who other than Alabama is likely to beat them.  The Egg Bowl may be close, but Texas A&M and Arkansas look bad more than they look good these days.

I did pick a much closer game, but it could have been 28-10 at the half (rather than 20-17) without a great play by Jaray Jenkins to catch an underthrown touchdown pass through double coverage and without Ole Miss settling for two field goals.  Ole Miss would have also scored in the final minutes of the third quarter without an interception by Joe Foucha in the end zone on a second-and-goal from the 9.  Despite being much shorter range, that was even more of an underthrow than there was for the Jenkins touchdown (due in part to the pressure on the quarterback). 

It was the opposite of the Tennessee game, where all the breaks before and after halftime went the other way and put the game out of reach for the Tigers.

I’ll explain further why I don’t think I was terribly wrong in my estimation of the Ole Miss offense or the LSU defense; but I did say that if the game got to a point where Ole Miss needed to rely on Jaxson Dart (more on him in a moment), they were probably in trouble.  When LSU scored on the ensuing drive after the interception that kept it a 4-point game, I didn’t see a realistic way back for the Rebels.

LSU could have done the 4-down kneel to avoid the last touchdown late in the fourth quarter, and that would have put them only three points over the 35 I predicted; but I don’t think scoring on a run up the middle is running up the score.  If you had told me LSU would have the ball for nearly a quarter more than Ole Miss did, I would have increased LSU’s score on that basis too. 

On the other hand, if you had told me how many total yards the two teams would have, I might not have changed my score prediction.  LSU did a much better job of making their yards lead to points.  That hasn’t always been the case.

Regardless, if you followed the score I predicted, you won money on both the point spread (LSU -1.5) and the over/under (64), so I don’t feel bad that LSU won by about 20 more points than I thought they would.

Freshman LSU LB Harold Perkins pursues Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart Saturday in Tiger Stadium. Both Dart and head coach Lane Kiffin commented on Perkins’ impact on Ole Miss, particularly in passing situations.

Jaxson Dart

I do want to say that I didn’t mean my remarks in the preview about Dart to be insulting.  I actually like him, and I’m glad he transferred from USC to a team I don’t mind cheering for most of the time.  I just thought he and the offense as a whole had some limitations that LSU could exploit.  I watched him play against BYU last year, and they nearly won that game even though it was toward the end of a terrible season for the Trojans.  I still remember his positive attitude during and after that game.  I also respect the way he hung in there Saturday despite all the hits.  His interview with the media struck a good tone as both an opponent and as a teammate.  He seems more mature than Lane Kiffin does, to be honest. Dart was also one of the scholar athletes of the game, so it’s OK if I’m correct that he’s not one of the best quarterbacks in college football.  He’ll probably be fine if he doesn’t go pro.

Rating LSU, Ole Miss, and the ACC Atlantic

As in the polls, there was too much of a gap for LSU to surpass Ole Miss in the rankings regardless of the final score.  Even though Florida St. has only lost to ranked teams (more on their division in a moment), their three losses are too much of a drag on LSU.  Although LSU’s schedule otherwise has been better than Ole Miss’s, there is still the FCS win over Southern and the win over New Mexico, probably one of the five worst FBS teams. 

I’m a little surprised only one voter in either poll voted for Clemson as #1.  I know their wins haven’t been by large margins, but two different teams (Wake Forest and Syracuse) can credit their only loss to Clemson.  North Carolina St. only has two losses, one to Clemson and one to a team (Syracuse) whose only loss is to Clemson. Florida St. has three losses: Clemson, Wake Forest, and North Carolina St.  There are no ties, so all of these other teams had to account for wins against one another at some point; but no outside team has beaten any of the five.  I think they’ll all be favored in the remaining games not against each other also.

After four turnovers by otherwise-reliable offensive starters, Clemson backup QB Cade Klubnik (2) led the Tigers to just another routine win over an undefeated opponent. It was Clemson’s 38th straight home win, an ACC record.

I do think the winner of Tennessee and Georgia (if undefeated) will likely overcome Clemson at some point.  Right now, I think Tennessee would win; but I believe in getting credit for the wins that have actually happened once they occur and not before.  That’s why I wouldn’t have wanted Ole Miss higher than they were.  Just because they would eventually have a mostly SEC schedule doesn’t mean they should have gotten special treatment when they had only played a few SEC teams, two of them in the bottom fourth of the conference.

Additional Top 25 Commentary

Ohio St. moved down and back up based on something I had entered incorrectly into the computer formula, so their increase isn’t apropos of anything.  By the way, it’s also possible that the eventual winner of Ohio St. and Michigan could pass up Clemson. 

Another possibility of Clemson being passed up without losing would be after the conference championship games.  Right now, North Carolina (who lost to Notre Dame and barely beat Appalachian St.) leads the ACC Coastal by a game and a half over Duke and Georgia Tech. 

Teams like Illinois and Utah didn’t do anything wrong, but you can get passed up when you don’t play.

Tulane, Liberty, and the aforementioned North Carolina join the top 25 for the first time this year.  I don’t think they would beat now-unranked teams like Texas (who lost to Oklahoma St.) and Mississippi St. (although Liberty versus Mississippi St. would be an interesting game given the two head coaches); but none of the three has shied away from competition, and they only have one loss apiece.  Newly arrived Troy has two losses, which is why they are the last of the new teams, but one of those losses was after giving up a Hail Mary touchdown to Appalachian St. (making them just barely worse than North Carolina through the lens of the common opponent anyway) and the other was to Ole Miss.

Kentucky only fell out due to a bye week, and Mississippi St. only fell out due to losing to Alabama, so either could be back shortly.  Another SEC team, South Carolina, is getting close to consideration for a ranking.  Other than the ones who just fell out, other teams in my top 35 are Kansas St., Coastal Carolina, Texas-San Antonio, Houston, and Cincinnati. 

For the full list of 131, follow the link above to “Knights’ Ratings” or go here.  I’ve now included conference ratings (simply based on average rating) below the team ratings.

Top 25

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

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.

Bayou Bengals Conquer Swamp

As I said the last time I wrote, which was a couple of months ago, I’m still overwhelmed with all the work I’ve had to do catching up after the March-June lockdowns.  It’s not just doing the work that would have normally gotten done. It’s also the fact that the places I have to go make me go multiple times a week when I used to have to only go once or twice a month. 

There were other factors that caused me to lose interest in this season.  It was partly LSU being such a letdown for the fans compared to last year, but it was also partly the lack of interconference games and just the weird disjointed nature of the season in general.

If LSU had played South Carolina or one of the programs we don’t see much, I probably wouldn’t want to write anything today even if that opponent had been in the top 10.

What got me to write was the fact that this is one of the big rivalry games for LSU and also the fact that I finally feel at least somewhat optimistic about next year again.

When I wrote that last blog two months ago, I actually wrote about the LSU-Florida series because I believed that would be LSU’s next game.

I didn’t pick LSU to pull the upset, but I wrote in part:

[T]here has been a fair share of upsets in the history of the series, most prominently when Florida was the only team to beat LSU in 2003 (which they did in Baton Rouge), when the Tigers won the national championship.  In 1997, LSU was the first team to beat the Gators after the Florida national championship the year before.  The most-recent major upset was in 2017 when LSU rebounded from a loss to Troy by beating the #21 Gators (then led by current Razorback Feleipe Franks) in the Swamp.  That game started a tailspin for Florida that ended in the firing of HC Jim McElwain. 

I mentioned the location of a couple of the games since neither team has seemed intimidated by the other’s home stadium over the last couple of decades.  Part of it is they’re at similar latitudes (the heat and humidity, sometimes well into the season, gets to some of the opponents) and accustomed to big crowds and big games.  LSU has gone long stretches of time (such as November 2008 to September 2014) with no home losses except to Florida and Alabama, and LSU is often one of the few with a recent win at Florida.  For instance, LSU and Florida St. were the only two teams who won at Florida between November 2014 and early October 2017, when LSU won for the second time in a row at Florida. LSU was the only team to win at Florida between the end of the 2003 season and the last week of September 2007.  LSU, Auburn, and Ole Miss were the only teams to win there between the end of the 2003 season and October 2010, with LSU being the only one to do it twice. 

This game also marked a return to the consistent theme of close games in this rivalry.  Last year was closer than the score indicated, but the game was an aberration because it was decided by double digits with the favored team winning at home.

Ron Zook was the only head coach to defeat Nick Saban’s Tigers in 2003; but the Tigers would get revenge in 2004, the last season for both at those respective schools.

See my list of recent games in the series (the second section with a bold heading here).

For the second time this decade (although the two overlap), LSU has won three out of four games in Gainesville.  In total, the Tigers have won 4 of 6 in the Swamp (LSU has won 6 of 8 and 8 of 11 overall against Florida).  Other than Florida St., no other program has won at Florida more than twice in the same period; although it is worth pointing out that Georgia has only been there once in the last few decades.

Speaking of Florida St., I wanted to note that Jimbo Fisher went 4-0 in Gainesville (7-1 overall) as Florida St.’s head coach, so the Seminoles are tied with LSU in winning 4 of the last 6.  Fisher’s Aggies happened to be the only team to beat Florida this season before yesterday.  As offensive coordinator under Saban, Fisher had also helped in LSU’s wins in the Swamp in 2002 and 2004.  The 2002 win had been LSU’s first at Florida since 1986.  2004 had some parallels to this one as LSU started a freshman QB (JaMarcus Russell), and it was one of the bright spots in an otherwise unremarkable year that followed an LSU championship the year before. 

Russell didn’t play well in that game though and had to be bailed out by the veteran Marcus Randall.  This year, LSU had no veteran there to bail anyone out; and Max Johnson lasted the whole game.  This brings up the other motivation for writing this.  I’m actually looking forward to next year now.  We have three quarterbacks who can do a decent job.  I don’t know if Johnson or TJ Finley, the original replacement for season starter Myles Brennan, can put up the numbers Brennan put up yet—79/131 for 1112 yards and 11 TD in three games—but they are both unusually good leaders for their age; and I think the coaches can trust either one.

LSU won despite having only one veteran of the team on offense, tackle Austin Deculus, who was hurt during the game.  The top three targets the Tigers had expected to have this year, Ja’Marr Chase, Terrace Marshall, Jr., and freshman TE Arik Gilbert were all absent, as was up-and-coming WR Racey McMath (who was hurt against Arkansas). 

Cornerback Derek Stingley, Jr., one of only 3 returning defensive starters going into the season, was ruled out during warmups.  Another Cornerback Cordale Flott , one of the only semi-experienced players going into the season, was ejected in the first half for targeting.  It didn’t look like targeting live (I’m starting to think any good hit is targeting when in doubt), but the point is that even the players who saw action in relief last year weren’t really involved in the win. Other than the kickers, the players on the field at the end were almost exclusively players whose names you probably wouldn’t know even if you’d watched every snap last season (and I’m pretty sure I did). 

LSU did have one veteran on the offense technically; but it was center Liam Shanahan, who going into the year had never played in FBS (he’s a graduate transfer from Harvard) and had not played center.

LSU was supposed to have at least a handful of returning starters going into the year; but along with players lost during the season, many never even started it. Chase opted out before the year started.  A third cornerback, Kary Vincent, Jr., also opted out of the season entirely.  Tackle Tyler Shelvin, who was expected to be the top defensive lineman, also opted out.

If knocking off an opponent with 8 wins within the SEC isn’t a good sign for the young inexperienced players the Tigers had out there, I don’t know what is.

Even with a loss next week, which would make LSU the first defending national champion with a losing season since 1943, I still don’t think this team is as bad as the 2008 Tigers who went only 3-5 in conference.  That team just happened to win four nonconference games, five including a bowl.  By the way, LSU lost in Gainesville by 30 that year.

Maybe if the Tigers get blown out Saturday, I’ll count them as just as bad this season; but I don’t see that happening.  I would like to have the Missouri and Mississippi St. games, where LSU led or was tied in the fourth quarter, back though.  6-3 right now would be absolutely spectacular given what the Tigers have been through.

LSU QB Max Johnson throws from the end zone in the second quarter Saturday.

To finish my thought about the quarterbacks, Johnson had more total yards (291) than Finley had in any of his five starts.  Finley had almost as many in wins over South Carolina and Arkansas, respectively, which makes him at least an adequate option if needed next near; but the Florida defense is on a different level from those two teams.  Johnson was named SEC Offensive Player of the Week. Cade York, who kicked the winning field goal from 57 yards, was the SEC Special Teams Player of the Week.

This brings up another positive, which is coaching.  I was very down on the coaching staff early on, so this is another relief for me going into next year.  It was a very good move on the part of the coaching staff to start Johnson given the relative lack of film (there was some: Johnson threw for about 280 combined yards in relief against Auburn and Alabama as well as appearing in a couple of other games) and the fact that it forced the Gators to respect the quarterback run.  I didn’t like the safety prevent or whatever you call it at the end of the game; but for much of the game, the Tigers kept Kyle Trask uncomfortable.  It wasn’t all blitzes (which Bo Pelini, who was also on staff back in the Fisher days at LSU, is known for), since some of the pass coverage made Trask choose between throwing the ball away and taking a gamble or sack.  A couple of his gambles resulted in interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown.  Florida had one other turnover, a Trask fumble; but LSU didn’t commit any.  The Tiger defense also recorded 4 sacks to the Gators’ 2.

One other series note: Ed Orgeron is now 3-2 against Florida and 2-2 against Dan Mullen.

As for the guy who threw the shoe, ESPN had a nice piece about people throwing shoes or other things during games. The minor league manager at the end was the best. Funny he was with the Braves organization. Bobby Cox should have argued like that.

Orgeron and Mullen both had a little bit of experience with Ole Miss football over the years; but if you want to read about LSU against the Rebels in general, see my Rivalry Series blog about that.  This will be the first time Orgeron will coach directly against his friend Lane Kiffin, for whom he was an assistant at Tennessee and then USC.  Orgeron of course was the interim coach after Kiffin was fired from the latter job.

I don’t have anything else to add about what’s going on right now.  Don’t count on a lengthy blog next week regardless.  I may just update the Series blog and put a blurb here.  I have some work to do in the offseason on those to make them more streamlined.  I haven’t updated any of the other entries since my last blog either.

I’ll probably have something to say about the postseason even though LSU won’t be part of it.  If I do a final poll, it will just be subjective.  My computer system doesn’t work with some teams playing six games and others playing a dozen or so.  It’s also hard to have it mean anything with many teams not even playing a single game out of conference.

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.

Alabama Is Not a Playoff Team

I’m not here to argue that it’s unreasonable to believe Alabama is one of the four most-talented teams or to argue that there is no circumstance in which Alabama should be in the Playoff. What I am going to argue is that Alabama should only be considered if a conference champion hardly did anything important on the national level other than win that championship game.

I’m OK with Alabama being #5 as long as it doesn’t mean that if Georgia loses to Auburn or LSU, Alabama gets a playoff spot. Until the championship games are played, all one-loss teams are one-loss non-champions, so it doesn’t really bother me that much if you think Alabama is the best one-loss non-champion.

Alabama head coach Nick Saban reacts to the LSU touchdown with 6 seconds left in the first half in Tuscaloosa on Saturday. The Tigers led 33-13 at that point.

It should be a completely different conversation when comparing a one-loss non-champion to a one-loss champion. Rather than giving Alabama the benefit of the doubt, as it seems college football voters (the committee still votes; it’s just a more complicated process than the polls) always do, any one-loss champion should get the benefit of the doubt instead.

For instance, if LSU had one loss, the Tigers could point to the win over Florida and the win over Texas. Alabama can point to Tennessee and Duke. That doesn’t overcome champion versus non-champion. Unless Clemson loses, the only team I can think of that might give me pause is Utah. If Utah beats Oregon, they’ll be 1-1 against the top 30 (I consider USC top 30 even though the polls don’t, and maybe the latter will change after USC wins over Cal and UCLA), just like Alabama will be if they beat Auburn.

Maybe you could argue that the only reason Texas A&M won’t be in the top 30 is the fact that the Aggies have four currently top-5 teams on their schedule (they already played Clemson and Alabama and have Georgia and LSU left), not to mention #12 Auburn (who also beat them). So maybe it would then be fairer to say even without a championship game Alabama is 2-1 against teams that have reasonable capability of beating a top team whereas Utah will be only 1-1 even with the benefit of the championship.

So I’ve laid out what kind of argument might work for me. I just don’t see any potential one-loss major-conference champion apart from Utah or Clemson (whose best win might be Texas A&M) failing that test. I could also see a one-loss non-champion such as Ohio St. or Minnesota belonging ahead of Alabama.

Just thought this was funny. If you don’t get it, it’s a reference to the 2015 Sugar Bowl loss to Cardale Jones and Ohio St. in conjunction with the loss to former Ohio St. backup Joe Burrow on Saturday.

I’ve mentioned resumes, so let’s break down the resumes. I start with the various teams’ current ranking, then I discuss what could happen to that ranking down the line. This is relevant because I don’t accept the argument that a team was tough to beat just because they were ranked highly when you played them. Polls can be wrong, especially early in the season. Remember how Nebraska (4-5 and has only played one of the top three teams on its schedule) was ranked in both polls after Week 1?

Alabama:

Top-50 Wins –  #13 Auburn (who would be a few spots lower if they beat Georgia before losing to Alabama and several spots lower if not)

#43 Texas A&M (who might be higher if they beat LSU and will be lower if they don’t)

Loss – #1 LSU (will be clear favorites in remaining games)

If Oklahoma wins out:

Top 50 wins:

#6 Baylor, probably twice (obviously would fall in that scenario)

#28 Texas (losing to Baylor and winning the other two probably won’t hurt the Horns and may even result in a higher ranking)

#32 Oklahoma St. (will probably be about the same if they beat Baylor and lose to the Sooners, will probably be lower if they lose to both)

Loss: #30 Kansas St.

If Baylor wins out:

Top-50 wins – #16 Oklahoma, probably twice (would fall slightly in that scenario; the Sooners would benefit from wins over Oklahoma St. and TCU)

#28 Texas (might be about the same if that is the only loss, will be lower if they also lose to Iowa St.)

#30 Kansas St. (could be a bit higher since they already lost to the Bears and will probably be favored in remaining games)

#32 Oklahoma St. (will probably be a bit lower if they lose to the Bears and the Sooners)

Most likely losses – Texas or Oklahoma

If Minnesota wins out:

Top-50 wins – #2 Ohio St. (if the Buckeyes make the Big Ten
championship, but of course they would lose a few spots by losing to Minnesota)

#5 Penn St. (may lose a few spots by losing to Ohio St. and several spots by losing to Indiana), possibly twice if the Nittany Lions beat the Buckeyes.

#20 Wisconsin (may lose a few spots by losing to Minnesota but should win the rest)

#27 Iowa (may lose a few spots by losing to Minnesota but should win the rest)

#48 Illinois (probably won’t lose ground by losing to Iowa and beating Northwestern)

Most likely losses – See list of top-50 wins

If Penn St. wins out:

Top-50 wins – #2 Ohio St. (would lose a few spots of course)

#4 Minnesota (likely Big Ten championship opponent; would
lose a few spots of course)

#19 Michigan (will be higher if they beat Ohio St., probably about the same if not)

#27 Iowa (may lose a few spots by losing to Minnesota but should win the rest)

#36 Indiana (probably would finish about the same if they beat Michigan, lower if two or more losses in the last three games)

#39 Pittsburgh (would improve by beating Va. Tech and Boston College, probably even an improvement if they also lose to Clemson).

Loss – #4 Minnesota (would be hurt by any loss; see above)

If Oregon wins out:

Top-50 wins – #15 Utah (in Pac-12 championship; probably would not
change much if they win the other remaining games)

#25 USC (may be slightly higher, will be favored to
win remaining games)

#35 Washington

Loss:

#13 Auburn  (who would be a few spots lower if they beat Georgia before losing to Alabama and several spots lower if they lose to both)

If Utah wins out:

Top-50 wins – #7 Oregon (would drop by losing to Utah)

#34 BYU (will probably lose ground if they lose to San Diego St. regardless of other wins; will gain slightly if they beat the Aztecs)

#35 Washington (will improve with wins over Colorado and Washington St., will drop if they lose either or both)

Loss – #25 USC (may be slightly higher, will be favored to win remaining games)

I already talked about Utah.  Oregon in this scenario would have played 11 major-conference opponents, including all of the good teams in the Pac-12 and Auburn. I don’t want the Ducks penalized for playing a good non-conference opponent in August and not losing again even if Alabama beats the team they lost to in late November.  The wins are still more important.

Even if Baylor loses to either Texas or Oklahoma and then wins the Big XII championship, I’m still more impressed by that. 

Resumes aside, I’m against a team like Alabama being able to game the system like this.

I’m in favor of the 8-game SEC schedule because I want teams like Florida and South Carolina that have tough annual rivalries to be able to play other competitive games out of conference and still have a couple of games to catch their breaths.  But it shouldn’t be used by teams like Alabama to play 10 games against mediocre (or worse) opponents and only have to win one of two games against really good opponents.     

The Gamecocks overdid it this year by scheduling North Carolina and Appalachian St., but maybe they thought both would be worse than they have been.  Alabama didn’t do any of that.  Maybe when Alabama scheduled Duke, they didn’t sign on to play any weaker of a team than Florida did when they scheduled Miami; but Alabama doesn’t have an annual series either cross-division or out-of-conference that’s worth anything.  Florida already knew they had LSU and Florida St. in addition to the SEC East.  South Carolina already knew they had Texas A&M and Clemson annually in addition to the SEC East (I’m not sure how recently they realized they were also playing Alabama this year). 

A team should never have an easier road to the Playoff by losing a game, and that’s what Alabama thinks they deserve just like they thought they deserved it in 2011.  They don’t.  If they have a clearly better resume, I understand just taking the four teams with the best resumes; but if there is any doubt at all, the committee should lean toward conference champions and against potential rematches.  Also, just like in 2011, I think losing at home should doubly mean you don’t deserve a second shot.

It’s not only resumes, it’s not only fairness for this year’s teams, the idea should also be to discourage bad scheduling.  Duke has had some good seasons in the past, but they never had beat-Alabama (or other serious title contender) levels of talent. When the Tide played USC or Virginia Tech in earlier seasons, there was at least a chance they’d be facing a challenge.  They knew all along Duke wasn’t going to be a challenge.  The other three would have been bigger upsets than have ever happened to my knowledge. 

I also don’t believe for a second that New Mexico St. was the best team they could get that week when Saban went on his little rant.  There are a ton of better programs who would have loved the exposure of a nationally televised game in Tuscaloosa.  Troy or UAB would have been better opponents.  They certainly wouldn’t have required large travel budgets or had trouble selling their ticket allotments.

It’s also not right that the only two teams who can challenge Alabama (Auburn and LSU) play Georgia and Florida respectively every year while Alabama plays Tennessee.  If Alabama doesn’t win despite the uneven playing field and despite playing the eventual champion at home, they don’t deserve sympathy or special consideration.  I don’t care if the entire offense already has NFL contracts waiting.