Week 5 Top 25 2023

My vacation has been over for more than a week, but I’m only about 1/5 of the way through adding results for an eventual computer rating, which I hope to have some semblance of by next week. Given that a team playing tonight is in my top 25, I couldn’t wait any longer to put up another subjective top 25.

LSU and Florida could well be among the best 25 teams; but consistent with my approach last week, I think if you have two losses right now, that’s too many to remain ranked. Also, either could seemingly lose several games by being unable to stop teams with any regularity when on defense.

Since Kentucky beat Florida easily and is undefeated, that seemed like a good option to take the Gators’ place. I haven’t thought Texas A&M was deserving of a ranking since last September; but in hindsight, the Aggies seem to have meaningfully improved from last year judging by the first couple of SEC games. Since their only loss is to U. Miami, who is undefeated, I thought it made sense to give the Hurricanes the final spot given that I’d decided it could not go to Florida or LSU.

Kentucky RB Ray Davis scored 4 touchdowns and ran for 280 yards against Florida in Lexington on Saturday.

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

Out of Top 25: (12) LSU, (15) Florida

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.

Coach O and Week 13 Top 25

Coach O

I haven’t had time to go into much detail with LSU. Now that there won’t be a full slate of games again, I can update the various rivalry blogs and talk about the new coach when there is one.

I want to say a few things about Coach Orgeron. First, I should acknowledge that I did think it was appropriate to go a different direction with the head coach, so don’t read my praises of the good things he did as criticism of the decision. Coach O admitted and seemingly understands that the last couple of seasons were not up to the LSU standard of performance. I don’t think he has had enough personal interest and enthusiasm in maintaining the 2019 success as he had in getting there, but I will always appreciate what he did in getting there.

There were some ups and downs in the first 54 weeks between Les Miles being relieved of his duties and the day LSU went to Gainesville in 2017; but from that point on, there was a clear upward trajectory. The only losses from that point until 2020 were two games against Alabama (one by 14 and one by 29), one game against Florida (by 8 the next season), and two rigged debacles (against Notre Dame and Texas A&M, respectively) that were decided in the final seconds, neither of which ultimately counted for much. There wouldn’t have been much excitement about a second consecutive Citrus Bowl win anyway, and the A&M loss didn’t deter the Fiesta Bowl from selecting the Tigers. Getting to that bowl, not to mention winning it, was the more important byproduct of the success of the 2018 team.

So unlike what some will tell you now, it wasn’t just one fluke year. Coach O did some serious heavy lifting to get from the team he took over in 2016 to the top of the mountain in 2019, but LSU started with a loss in 2020 and never showed that winning edge again. The Tigers didn’t even win consecutive games until December of 2020 (that season was all conference games) and didn’t win consecutive conference games at any point in 2021.

2021 also marked the second consecutive season in which the Tigers opened with a loss. The one time Les Miles did that in 12 seasons, he was gone within a month. LSU didn’t typically open with weak opponents either. Since 2005, LSU has started with 12 Power-Five opponents, 7 of them ranked in the top 25 at the time of the game.

Jimbo Fisher, former LSU offensive coordinator under Nick Saban and Les Miles who has been mentioned in various LSU coaching searches, exchanges pleasantries with outgoing LSU head coach Ed Orgeron in Baton Rouge on Saturday.

The point is we went from consistently starting on solid ground to only doing so a couple of times under Coach O. In hindsight, UCLA was the beginning of the end. The rumor was that Kentucky was a must-win, and I’m not sure that’s true; but it was definitely not acceptable to lose by 21 after letting Auburn sneak out a win (their first in Baton Rouge since 1999) the week before. That’s when I understand the decision was made. In the excitement yesterday, Coach O said the decision was made after Kansas; but it’s another basketball school that mostly wears blue and starts with a K, so I’m pretty sure he meant Kentucky.

Speaking of Kentucky, there are some LSU fans only who seem upset that the Tigers may hire Wildcat coach Mark Stoops, but they could do much worse. There may be a better coach for the amount they’re willing to spend, but it wouldn’t bother me at all. These are probably the same LSU fans who were heartbroken the Tigers didn’t get Tom Herman, who did much worse at Texas than Coach O did at LSU overall.

Playoff Race

That’s enough about a 6-6 team for now. I’ll move on to the top teams.

Some may be surprised that Oklahoma St. is so high, but that’s mostly a function of the Cowboys not being a team the media wants to hype. They’re not going to drive high TV ratings. It might also be partly because no matter how good they are, they typically lose to Oklahoma. Of course that didn’t happen this year; but the media isn’t going to admit they overlooked someone in the playoff conversation until the end of November, so they’ll pretend they’re fifth or sixth.

The media also forgets that this thing called non-conference scheduling exists. Of course the 8 teams Alabama has played in the SEC are better on average than the 9 teams Oklahoma St. has played in the Big XII, but those other teams matter too. Boise St. is very good team, better than U. Miami, but the low-IQ take is the Hurricanes were ranked when Alabama played them so they must have been good!

Whether you think U. Miami was better or not, one should also acknowledge that the Tide also scheduled Southern Miss and New Mexico St. (as well as an FCS opponent, but Oklahoma St. did the same, so I’m no using that against them for the purposes of the comparison). Southern Miss has had good seasons in the past, but they’ve been mediocre on a good day lately; and NMSU has only made one bowl game in 50 years. The two won a combined three games against FBS opponents for the season. Two of those wins were Saturday, over two teams who themselves have a combined one win over other FBS opponents.

Oklahoma St. wide receiver Tay Martin reaches out for the end zone in the win over the Sooners on Saturday in Stillwater. The Cowboys play Baylor for the Big XII Championship next week.

Alabama will be ahead if they beat Georgia, don’t get me wrong; but don’t fall for the idea of Oklahoma St. being undeserving just because Kirk Herbstreit or whoever doesn’t have them in the top four. I’m also not saying the Pokes are a lock against Baylor, especially since rematches are tough. By the way, they also don’t get nearly enough credit for beating the Bears the first time, just because Baylor hadn’t gotten a high ranking yet. Kansas is almost as bad as USM and NMSU, but obviously that’s a conference game.

As for Michigan, the only reason they’re even close is that they didn’t schedule an FCS opponent. Their average FBS opponent is about #60 whereas the average FBS opponent for Alabama or Oklahoma St. is about #52. The Wolverines scheduled a couple of respectable MAC opponents as well as Washington (who unfortunately had a bad year), but there are a number of mediocre teams in the Big Ten that dragged down their average. The best few teams in the Big Ten may be as good as or better than the best teams in the SEC or the Big XII, but more than one or two are clearly part of the bottom half of college football.

I think Michigan will also deserve to play for a national championship with a win. If the Wolverines play as they did Saturday, they will be hard for anyone to stop; but I like to reward the teams who play more of the types of opponents who are likely to beat a top a team.

Speaking of which, Cincinnati and Notre Dame is a split decision as far as weighted and unweighted; but the Bearcats will be ahead in both with a win on Saturday. I don’t have any qualms about them potentially losing out to four one-loss teams though. If Alabama beats Georgia, I would actually be annoyed if Cincinnati made it in ahead of a winning Oklahoma St. team. Terrific that they won their early-season Super Bowl over Notre Dame, but the results simply do not indicate to me that they could play a Big Ten, SEC, or Big XII schedule including the title game and finish with one loss or fewer.

If it’s undefeated Cincinnati versus two-loss Alabama, who was a field goal away from losing to Florida and who went to four overtimes with Auburn, I’d be on the other side of the argument though. I doubt the Bearcats could play Alabama’s schedule with only two losses either, but I’m willing to resolve that doubt in their favor. Also, Notre Dame, who began the season with narrow wins over Florida St. and Toledo, hasn’t played a ranked team (either currently or at the time) since Cincinnati. I would have no problem leaving the Irish out. In short, I’m not close-minded about teams from lesser conferences; but it should only be considered when multiple other options fall short.

Top 25

rank	team	last
1	Georgia	1
2	Oklahoma St.	3
3	Alabama	5
4	Michigan	7
5	Cincinnati	4
6	Notre Dame	2
7	Ohio St.	6
8	Ole Miss	9
9	Baylor	12
10	Iowa	14
11	B. Young	10
12	San Diego St.	20
13	Michigan St.	15
14	Oregon	21
15	Oklahoma	13
16	UL-Lafayette	19
17	App. State	16
18	Wisconsin	8
19	Wake Forest	18
20	TX-San Anton’	11
21	Pittsburgh	—
22	Utah	22
23	Houston	25
24	Boise St.	17
25	Arkansas	—

Out of Top 25: (23) Texas A&M, (24) Purdue

1-130 computer ratings

2021 Week 12 Top 25

I tried to change something at the last minute last week, and that messed things up for this week.  I don’t like when there are dramatic shifts from one week to the next.  According to the original top 25 last week, I created some unnecessary changes and then in a few cases there were dramatic changes back this week.  I shouldn’t have tried to intervene and temporarily alter my formula last week, so I took the unusual step of changing the rankings for last week.

Redoing the previous final rankings is why I couldn’t get this out sooner, but it’s here now.

Michigan did not lose last week, but the Wolverines got relatively few points for beating Maryland.  This allowed other teams to pass them up.

Oklahoma St. beat Texas Tech, which is a good but not great opponent.  I think it was more helpful that Baylor has now won five of six since losing to the Cowboys and that Boise St. has won four games in a row. 

Also, Cincinnati is still feeling a negative effect from their games against Indiana, Notre Dame, and Navy.  Although when the Bearcats play East Carolina next week, the Navy/East Carolina game won’t really matter, for now it hurts Cincinnati that the Pirates won.  Notre Dame didn’t slip enough in points to fall a spot (especially without Michigan gaining very much), but their value as a win went down and will go down again.  Indiana still only has a single win against an FBS opponent.

Although Alabama beat a decent team in Arkansas, many SEC teams took a hit to their respective strengths of schedule this past week, so the win was not quite enough to put the Tide ahead of the Bearcats.  Auburn is slightly better than East Carolina, so I do expect the Tide to move up with a win.

C.J. Stroud threw for 6 touchdowns (all in the first half) and 432 yards with and only 3 incompletions in 35 attempts for the game. Three different receivers had over 100 receiving yards. Ohio St. also had over 200 rushing yards.

Ohio St. shot up in many rankings because of their margin of victory over Michigan St., but as much as that helped, don’t forget that they lost to Oregon.  So it hurt the Buckeyes in my rankings that the Ducks lost.  It will probably help the playoff ranking though, because they intentionally lowered Ohio St. for losing to Oregon given that Oregon had the same number of losses.  With this logic (not mine), it’s better to lose to 2-loss Oregon than 1-loss Oregon.  None of this really matters if they beat Michigan and Wisconsin.  I don’t see any scenario where that wouldn’t be enough to put Ohio St. in the top 4.  Same thing if Michigan beats Ohio St. and Wisconsin.

I didn’t investigate why Appalachian St. went up so much, but I believe it’s because of prior opponents such as U. Miami and Coastal Carolina.  The Mountaineers have a much better strength of schedule than UL-Lafayette.  The reason the “weighted” ratings are so named is they provide extra points as the scores of the best opponents improve, so it’s harder to see the direct correlation between what happened last week and the new ratings.  Also, the loss to Texas hurts UL-Lafayette (who didn’t play Coastal Carolina) more every week.  The Ragin’ Cajuns play the Mountaineers on Championship Saturday anyway, so they can confirm if they really are better.

The only other movement that may seem a little strange is San Diego St. dropping three spots.  The Aztecs played UNLV, so they didn’t get many points from that, and other teams were able to pass them.  There was a similar logic to Texas A&M falling two spots.

Anyway, this is basically the formula I’m going to follow the rest of the year.  The only slight tweak is that it’s not a perfect average between the weighted and unweighted ratings, the latter of which make up maybe 55% of the overall rating.  I could change the weighted formula so the bonus points aren’t so high, but it’s just easier to do it this way.

I noticed based on the Massey comparison site that I give the majority of the MAC better ratings than the other ratings represented on Massey’s site (at least as of Sunday evening). I double-checked every team to see if there was any problem and couldn’t find one.

rank	team	last
1	Georgia	1
2	Notre Dame	2
3	Oklahoma St.	6
4	Cincinnati	4
5	Alabama	5
6	Ohio St.	7
7	Michigan	3
8	Wisconsin	10
9	Ole Miss	12
10	B. Young	9
11	UTSA	15
12	Baylor	16
13	Oklahoma	18
14	Iowa	14
15	Michigan St.	11
16	App. State	22
17	Boise St.	19
18	Wake Forest	8
19	UL-Lafayette	20
20	SDSU	17
21	Oregon	13
22	Utah	25
23	Texas A&M	21
24	Purdue	24
25	Houston	—

Out of Rankings: (23) Utah St.

1-130 computer ratings

2021 Week 1 Top 25

I’m still a bit thrown by last year’s COVID season. I was on vacation recently, but even if I weren’t, I don’t really know how to do a preseason ranking when I had no real method of comparing teams last year with vastly different lengths of seasons and many major-conference teams playing one or no inter-conference games. Also, because of that vacation, I didn’t get to complete my blog about the previous academic year. I’ll get to it, but I didn’t want to just put up a list without talking about it.

The last time I didn’t have a previous season of my own rankings to look at was the first time I started ranking teams myself back in 1995; so like then, I’m just relying on a vague notion of how good teams are as reported by others.

Since Clemson lost, I felt it was only right to put the two most credible teams on an annual basis who aren’t Clemson in the first two spots. Those are Alabama and Ohio St. For #3, why not the team who beat Clemson? Georgia is also no stranger to big games and major bowls in recent seasons. Tulane was theoretically the home team, I’m not on the Boomer Schooner after a 5-point win over the Wave in Norman. I have to stay with the current SEC even though that makes three of four. #4 for me is Texas A&M based on last year’s 10-1 season and Orange Bowl win combined with a lack of drama in Week 1.

In what was supposed to be the big heavyweight match-up, there was one touchdown.. by a defensive player (Christopher Smith, #29). Either things are changing in college football or maybe they’re not such heavyweights after all.

Clemson needs to find more offense somewhere, but I can’t find any other credible #5 team at the moment.

Cincinnati also only lost one game last year on the way to the Peach Bowl, also losing to Georgia in that game, so they’re #6.

Penn St. started out with a true road game against a good program in Wisconsin, so I’d like to give them credit. Unlike the polls, I don’t feel some obligation to only move them up a limited number of spots.

Iowa also won an early Big Ten contest between ranked teams, beating Indiana at home. Indiana probably isn’t a huge player on the national scene permanently, but it’s something.

Florida and Oklahoma seemed like two appropriate teams to round out the top 10 since both went into the Cotton Bowl as top 10 teams last season. Since Oklahoma won by 35, I’ll give the Sooners the nod for #9. Tulane isn’t great, but they went .500 going into the bowls last season, so they may be better than Northern Iowa (who lost narrowly to Iowa St.), for instance.

In that process, I’ve ranked two teams who played 10 or more games last year with only a single loss: Texas A&M and Cincinnati.

Next I’m just going to rank the teams in that category who haven’t lost yet this year. Again, I don’t operate with similar constraints to the polls. Even though polls technically don’t matter anymore there is still this custom of not ranking teams without major conference schedules very high because what if they keep winning? Because later someone might have to cogitate a bit and not just automatically move teams up for not losing. That doesn’t bother me at all.

Also, I’ve already listed almost every team that finished ranked with two losses last season if that team has not yet lost this season. Other than Iowa St., the highest-ranked team in the AP poll with 3 losses (Texas) was only #19, so I don’t feel like I’m being unfair to teams with better schedules than these.

11. Liberty, which won the non-major Super Bowl over the next team…
12. Coastal Carolina
13. BYU

Liberty handed Coastal Carolina its only loss last season on this blocked field goal in overtime by #55 Elijah James.

Maybe it’s because when I first watched college football, there were still ties, but overtime wins don’t sit well with me. I don’t regard those as 100% wins. But Notre Dame didn’t lose in Week 1 and the Irish did only lose two games last season, one to Clemson, so I’ll put them #14.

The next group is the 3-loss teams that finished ranked last season. Of those, I will put U. Miami last since they lost, but losing to Alabama isn’t really evidence the Hurricanes don’t belong.

15. Texas
16. Iowa St.
17. Oklahoma St.
18. U. Miami

The next two teams had really good seasons last year, especially for them, so I’m not going to be too harsh as a result of losing to teams already ranked above.

19. Indiana
20. UL-Lafayette

So far, I have not considered any Pac-12 teams. They didn’t play enough of a season last year and certainly didn’t do enough against other conferences to warrant inclusion. The only two that I will rank happen to be cross-town rivals. Oregon played in a major bowl with only 4 wins. In my view, they shouldn’t have even been considered. Beating Fresno by 7 in Week 1 this year doesn’t make me feel any differently.

21. USC
22. UCLA

Two other teams won bowl games last year after entering the bowls with one loss. They didn’t play full schedules either, but I think they deserve some recognition. They also happen to be in the same conference as one another.

23. Ball St.
24. Buffalo

Looking at last year and the preseason consensus, the best team that I won’t rank is probably North Carolina. I won’t rank the Tar Heels because they lost to…

25. Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech QB Braxton Burmeister ran for one touchdown and threw for another in the first half, but the Hokies’ game against North Carolina was also largely a defensive struggle. The Tar Heels were defeated by a score of 17-10.

I think this is a reasonable mix of teams from various regions and conferences giving due regard to last season’s level of success and the Week 1 opponents. You might not like which teams I put in what order, but this makes a lot more sense to me than the way the polls do things.

Most if not all of the non-major teams would probably finish near the bottom of the SEC, but we don’t know how good much of the SEC is right now. LSU might beat every single one of the non-majors above, but they lost to a team that rightly was not ranked. LSU and the other SEC teams rightly were not ranked last season and have done nothing yet to show things are different this season. Ole Miss had a great bowl win last year, but they still finished behind LSU in the SEC. Lamar Jackson hasn’t played for Louisville in a few years, so I’m not giving the Rebels (are we still allowed to call them that?) a spot in the top 25 for beating the Cardinals.

I think after one game it’s OK to still largely consider last season. Also, many of the non-major teams were willing to play whomever was available. It’s not their fault that conferences like the SEC wouldn’t even give them a chance to schedule opponent from that conference. It would be different if some of these conferences played 10 games against the SEC and lost every single one of them last season. I don’t think it’s appropriate to look back to before last season to support rankings this season.

Also, since I’m not considering any rankings from last season official, I want to give credit to those teams that took advantage of the opening last season provided to show something special. UL-Lafayette, for instance, deserves recognition even though I don’t think they’ll ever be the best team in the state talent-wise or a serious national contender. They couldn’t play an SEC opponent last year, so they played a Big XII opponent, and not even a close one. Still they traveled there (to Ames to play Iowa St.) and won. I’m not going to take that away from them because they lost to another well-regarded Big XII team to start out this season.

If the Cajuns deserve to be where I put them, then teams that didn’t lose their opener are appropriately placed here too.

A 12-team Playoff Is a Horrible Idea

As you might have noticed, I didn’t blog much last year.  My main interest in writing about college football is to discuss methods of evaluating and ranking teams, especially my own system.  I don’t think there is any good way to do that when some teams play 5 games and others play 12 games.  I don’t think there is any good way to do that when several major conferences don’t play any (or at least not any meaningful) interconference games.

I was going to wait until after the College World Series for my next blog.  In past years, I’ve done sort of a summary of the major sports for the academic year.  I guess this year I’ll include the 2019 football season since that was the only major championship in the previous academic year.

Anyway, those plans changed when I saw the proposal to triple the size of the College Football Playoff.  It so happens that at least LSU baseball is over for the season today, but I started writing this Friday.

The best argument for expanding the Playoff AT ALL (putting aside adding 8 teams) is that the current format doesn’t give access to teams from outside of the Power 5 (P5; SEC, Big XII, ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12) conferences. 

I’ve criticized the committee for going out of its way to denigrate Group of 5 (G5; the other football conferences) teams, but nothing about even an undefeated G5 team like Central Florida made me question the legitimacy of the 2017 Playoff, for instance.  The last two games the Knights played that year, they needed two overtimes to beat then-#20 Memphis in Orlando and won another close game over 3-loss Auburn, who was then ranked 7^th. 

Shaquem Griffin sacks Auburn Quarterback Jared Stidham during the Peach Bowl on New Year’s Day 2018.

The Knights had a great season, don’t get me wrong, but playing exciting games against teams like that doesn’t mean people need to you see playing for a national championship.  Even if we assume the same result would have taken place had the game been at Auburn in early December, I don’t think being blown out by Alabama or Clemson in the quarterfinals would have made any team feel better or been enjoyable for the fans.

Regardless, if we went back to a more statistical model like the BCS (which was originally half objective and later reduced to 1/3), there would likely be G5 teams who finished in the top 4. 

In 2010, for instance, TCU (which was then in the Mountain West) actually finished third in the BCS.  All of the people who happily responded to the abolition of the BCS because they didn’t have to do math anymore should re-evaluate that decision rather than giving the committee control over the postseasons of 12 teams rather than 4.  Let’s also remember that it wasn’t the objective criteria that put two teams from the same division in the championship in 2011: it was the voters.

Based on what we’ve seen from the committee, any G5 team will have to play on the road against a team the committee ranked #5-8.  Then if they win that, they can then be one of 8 teams to play for the championship.  Since it would require 4 wins, one on the road, that’s not an extremely realistic path to a national championship.  It would be a much better path to have a neutral-site game between the #4 P5 team and the best G5 team every year for the last spot in a 4-team Playoff (meaning 3 total wins, all at neutral sites).  In short, adding 8 teams to the equation rather than one isn’t the best way for a G5 team to have a chance, so let’s drop that pretext.    

The quality of the arguments for this arrangement goes down from there.

One is the conference championship games (CCGs) should be for a spot in the Playoff.  Unless all 10 conferences are sending teams, that just deepens the separation between the P5 and the G5. 

Do people remember how bad some teams in major conference championships have been?  In 2011, UCLA had to get a special exemption just to be bowl-eligible when the Bruins fell to 6-7 after losing to Oregon.  Obviously, the Bruins didn’t win the game, but upsets between teams that shouldn’t be close on paper have happened in these games.  One of the big CCG upsets was back in 2001 when LSU (with 3 conference losses) beat Tennessee.  It was very exciting that the Tigers got back to the Sugar Bowl (or any major bowl) for the first time in 15 years, but it would have been silly (and potentially embarrassing) for them to play for a national championship.  They also played another conference champion, Illinois.  The Big Ten has been good lately, but that wasn’t always the case.  Wisconsin won the Big Ten despite 5 losses in 2012.  Having a shot at winning the Rose Bowl wasn’t reward enough?

LSU quarterback Matt Mauck, not to be confused with former Missouri quarterback Maty Mauk, evades pressure in the 2001 SEC Championship Game. Mauck ran for 50 yards and threw for 67 in relief of Rohan Davey before being named MVP of the game.

Those were entertaining bowl games, but Numbers 1 to 4 shouldn’t risk injury by having to beat such a team just to get into the semifinals.  I think it’s actually one of the good things about college football that you can win a major post-season game and end your season on a high note without winning the whole thing.    Winning the Rose Bowl or the Sugar Bowl in a non-championship year will be little more than a participation trophy for a top program if in order to even be in the game, you have to be outside of the top 12.  I think both bowls have been cheapened enough by mediocre teams who finished second or worse in their conference but who made the game because the better conference teams were in the Playoff.

The last thing I want to mention isn’t really a rebuttal, but it’s an important argument against the expanded Playoff.  It’s the fact that you take the importance out of the regular season. 

If you do give the automatic bids to winners of conferences, non-conference games become even more like preseason games.  If you want your team to last through a 9-game conference schedule (in most major conferences), a CCG, and 3 or 4 more post-season games, why take your chances with another major-conference opponent?  As I mentioned earlier, this also takes away an important tool in comparing teams.  I don’t actually want conferences like the SEC to get by on their reputation.  We should try to figure out who the best teams are every year and not just guess that the SEC champion is automatically one of the top 4 teams. 

I’ll give an even older example from my many years of following LSU.  In 1988, the Tigers won the SEC despite 2 non-conference losses.  This is completely unthinkable now, but the SEC evolved into the best conference from being rather mediocre back then.  Even 16 years later, Auburn went undefeated and couldn’t play for the championship.  Important context is when LSU shared the national title with USC the prior year, it was only the SEC’s fifth national title since 1980 (it would have only been 4 had the BCS been adopted in 1996).  Another important aspect was that there were only three non-conference games in 2004.  The Plainsmen played The Citadel, Louisiana-Monroe, and Louisiana Tech.  But I think adding additional games to the end of the season will make such a selection of opponents commonplace, especially as compared to LSU intentionally playing teams like Ohio St. and U. Miami (which finished #2 in both polls) in 1988.  So without something to show changes in conferences, evaluations will be more about prior years than the current year.

I’ve been told people will still insist on maintaining big rivals and will still prioritize them, but I don’t believe that.  Think how many annual rivalries have been lost as conference schedules have grown and realignment has taken place.  Texas doesn’t play Texas A&M, Pitt doesn’t play West Virginia (or Penn St., for that matter), Auburn doesn’t play Georgia Tech, Notre Dame doesn’t play Michigan, and Oklahoma doesn’t play Nebraska (although they will this year).  I don’t have a dog in any of those fights really, but they were still games I would often look forward to and enjoy.

Even rivalry games that will continue won’t mean as much.  I can assure you from my vivid memory of 10 years ago that it’s more important for LSU to finish ahead of Alabama during the post-season than during the regular season.  That game would have been much less exciting if it were known that the loser was overwhelmingly likely to play for the national championship anyway.  Michigan-Ohio St. in 2006 was another game that would have been much less exciting.  People discussed the possibility that there could be a rematch (and that the loser could still win the national title), but it was far from a guarantee and didn’t happen. 

#1 Ohio St.’s Beanie Wells breaks a tackle to get into the secondary in the second quarter against #2 Michigan in 2006. Wells would score on what would be a 52-yard run. The Buckeyes ultimately won, 42-39, to get into the BCS title game, which they would lose to Florida.

It might be difficult, but let’s imagine for a moment that Michigan isn’t as good as they were in 2006 and played Ohio St. after already being eliminated from conference and national contention.  How exciting might it be to potentially keep Ohio St. out of the Playoff?  The Buckeyes might still win the conference and a major bowl, but Michigan would still have that accomplishment if nothing else.  If Ohio St. is guaranteed a spot in the Playoff by winning the Big Ten the next week anyway, it won’t mean much.  There would even be an argument that Ohio St. should rest some of their key players.  It wouldn’t even be very good bragging rights.

In some cases, it could be better to lose a regular-season game and not make the CCG.   Alabama was in the top 2 in 2011 after not making the CCG, and then they were in the top 4 in 2017.  So if the top 4 teams get a bye into the quarterfinal anyway, an Alabama would essentially get two byes. 

If it’s a situation where a non-champion doesn’t get a bye, they could still have an advantage over whatever team they play in the first round if that other team had to play a CCG.  I don’t think it would be four rounds of playoffs starting in late December.  The first round would probably be at campus sites the week after CCGs.  So let’s say Penn St. loses to Ohio St. and they don’t have a great strength of schedule since they don’t have to play the best two teams from the Big Ten West.  Would it be really fair if they had a week off and then played Georgia, who just lost to Alabama the week before or Oklahoma, who just won the Big XII CCG? 

The only reason I was for a top-2 or top-4 national championship was so we didn’t leave teams who may very well win national titles out of the process. In 1994, there was an undefeated Penn St. team who didn’t get a shot at Nebraska because they had to go to the Rose Bowl.  That kind of thing happened many times.  I mentioned the 2004 Auburn team who couldn’t get into the top 2.  Maybe there is some team that will be a big sob story and cast a shadow over a winner of the 4-team playoff, but I haven’t seen anything like that yet.  If such a scenario is at risk of happening, which I doubt, why is the solution to add 8 more teams instead of one or two?

The college football big-wigs should just admit this is just a cynical ploy for more money.  Not likely, I know, but fans could at least not do their bidding by concocting weak arguments in favor of this proposal even if it means their team has a better shot to make the 12-team playoff than it does to make the 4-team playoff.

SEC and Overall Rankings Weeks 2 and 3

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to write anything last week. I wouldn’t have had time this week if it weren’t for the holiday today.  I’m still trying to catch up at work from everything that wasn’t done during the shutdowns.  Last time I wrote about how badly LSU did in a game they won in a blowout the next week.  It would be nice to have a repeat of that. 

I definitely didn’t think both Florida and LSU would be coming off of a loss before the season or even going into last week.  LSU has four games against currently top-15 teams on the schedule.  Even with wins in the other three (Ole Miss has a great offense, and Arkansas has a win and two close games against good teams; I don’t have anything too complimentary to say about South Carolina, but they may be as good as or better than the Missouri team LSU just played), that would leave the Tigers with a 4-6 record.  If there is ever a year when you need a non-conference schedule it’s when you have 5 returning starters, and two of the big ones have missed three games combined.  There have been years without a winning record in conference since LSU’s last losing season in 1999 (3-8), but this year a losing record in conference is a losing record period.  I’m not sure if 5-5 gets a bowl game this year.

The development of the passing game, led by Myles Brennan, has been one of the few bright spots for the LSU team so far.

More details about the games and teams later.  I’m going to show the Week 2 lists first.  I think it’s better than trying to do two weeks at a time.

Week 2 (these are based on SEC weeks) Rankings

SEC

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

Inter-conference group

1. Clemson
2. U. Miami
3. Cincinnati
4. Notre Dame
5. North Carolina
6. Oklahoma St.
7. S. Methodist
8. Virginia Tech
9. Brigham Young
10. UL-Lafayette

Week 3 Rankings and Comments

SEC

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

Inter-conference group

1. Clemson
2. North Carolina
3. U. Miami
4. Cincinnati
5. Oklahoma St.
6. Notre Dame
7. S. Methodist
8. Virginia Tech
9. Brigham Young
10. UL-Lafayette

Rankings commentary

I was impressed by Georgia’s win over Auburn, but I still have some doubts due to their narrow win over Arkansas.  Arkansas is greatly improved, but they’re not a national-championship contender.  Tennessee doesn’t tell me much since the Volunteers have only beaten two of the five worst teams on my list.

Going back to Arkansas, they really should have beaten Auburn, but the officials were so anxious to blow the whistle on a spike they didn’t notice it went backwards.  I still think it’s appropriate this early on to group together teams with the same records though.

Texas A&M barely beat Vanderbilt, which has been blown out by LSU and South Carolina, so that’s why I couldn’t put them ahead of Florida.  They did just beat the Gators, but they were at home (with a real crowd… God bless Texas), and I really believe the Aggies only won because they were the last team with the ball.

Kentucky narrowly lost to Ole Miss and easily beat Mississippi St., so it made sense to put them a couple of spots ahead of the Bulldogs and one spot behind the Rebels.  Mississippi St. did better against LSU than Missouri did, but Missouri was missing a lot of players and has had a more difficult schedule. Mizzou also didn’t lose badly to a 1-2 team.

I don’t think anyone outside of the SEC would beat Clemson or even come close right now, so I considered not moving U. Miami down at all, but I was impressed with North Carolina’s win over Virginia Tech.  Not much else interesting has happened in the last couple of weeks.  SMU beat Memphis the week before last, so that’s why they’re there and the Tigers aren’t.

LSU

Missouri Recap and Criticisms

Back to those other Tigers.  I know Missouri is the Tigers too, but to avoid confusion I won’t call them that.  First, I want to say that Miles Brennan played great despite several incompletions (many not his fault), and I’ve already seen a good bit of improvement from the first week.  He’s also getting better at avoiding big sacks, so it’s more than just the stat line.  WR Terrace Marshall, the one veteran with extensive experience, and true freshman TE Arik Gilbert are also doing well. 

Those are the only places where I don’t have criticism.  For some reason, LSU refused to run the ball in the first half.  It’s not that they can’t run the ball.  Apart from three runs from the Mizzou 1 (on only one of which he scored), Tyrion Davis-Price gained more than 6 yards per carry; and John Emery, Jr., had two carries for 7 yards.  It’s not unusual for the running game to improve as the game goes on, especially with a productive passing attack to go along with it.  Obvious rushing situations also tend to work better when you find some kind of way to get the ball lateral to spread out the defense rather than just trying to pound it forward.

Weaknesses on defense are easier to exploit than weaknesses on offense.  There have been some good pressures; but if the opposing quarterback can avoid them and make a decent throw, there is a good chance it will be a touchdown. If it’s a pass out of the backfield or only a short distance downfield, it can go for 25 or 30 yards.  Missouri had three lost fumbles and a turnover on downs after a poorly conceived fake punt.  A team without those mistakes (especially if the Fighting Tigers don’t learn some ball control) could score 70 against LSU, especially if you consider that Mizzou was without some of its best receivers. 

All that said, LSU still should have won the game.  There is the obvious goal line stand at the end where they could not score from the one in four attempts; but on the drive before that, they had a first down from the Missouri 22.  If they manage a field goal there, a field goal on the last drive wins.  Instead, LSU suffered a sack and a delay of game penalty that set up a 3^rd and 18.  They would try a field goal anyway, but it was blocked.  It may not have been had it been from a shorter distance with less need to drive the ball though.

LSU-Florida Recent Series

There haven’t been enough games between LSU and Missouri to do one of these, but here is my Rivalry Blog that covers LSU and Florida.

This rivalry has been played every year since the 1970s with only brief interruptions in the decades before that.  I’m definitely NOT calling an LSU win, but there 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. 

I mention in the Rivalry Blog that the most interesting part of the series in my recollection has been when Les Miles was LSU’s coach and Urban Meyer was Florida’s.  Both started with the respective schools in 2005.  Meyer left Florida after the 2010 season, and Miles was fired from LSU in September 2016.  Anyway, in those six seasons the two teams were even at 3-3.  All three LSU wins were by 4 points apiece while all three Florida wins were by 10 or more, but only one was a blowout.  The two teams combined for three national titles and five SEC championship appearances during that period. The fortunes of the programs have fluctuated; but the close games have continued after Meyer and Miles left their respective schools, including five in a row between 2014 and 2018.

Clyde Edwards-Helaire, who averaged over 10 yards per carry in the game, scores on a touchdown run against UF last season, helping LSU to a rare double-digit win over the Gators.

In the last 9 years, LSU has gone 6-3 against the Gators but only 2-2 under Orgeron.  Dan Mullen is 1-1 against the Tigers as the Florida HC.  He was only 2-7 against LSU while the Mississippi St. HC, but the two wins were in his last four years with the Bulldogs.  Mullen beat Orgeron the only time he faced him as the Bulldog HC, 37-7, in 2017.

I just updated the Vanderbilt Rivalry Blog

. 

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.

2019 Preseason Rankings Intro

I’ll publish the top 25 in a couple of days, but I’m going to keep you in suspense while I talk about my philosophy and some of the turnover that you may notice from the end of last season.

There are a few things I want to say about my philosophy when it comes to preseason rankings.  Although I do pride myself on a team having a good season after I started them unusually high or a bad season after I start them unusually low, I’m not trying to have the exact top 25 that will be in place at the end of the year. 

I’m also not trying to have the exact top 25 that will be in place before the bowls.  It sounds strange, but a lot of people will make the top 4 the teams they think will be in the playoff.  If there is a close call at #4 and #4 loses to #1 by 40 while #5 wins a big bowl, #4 going into the playoff is not going to stay #4.  There could even be a #6 or #7 that pass them up.  But if I were still on a site with a lot of comments, people would show up and tell me I’m crazy for thinking three SEC teams will be in the Playoff.  I wouldn’t even want that to happen if I honestly believed the best three teams were in the SEC.

Anyway, what I do believe in is a best guess as to who is going into the season with the toughest team.  So with that in mind, I don’t care how easy your schedule is.  Some people seem to think rankings are a list of most likely teams to go undefeated.  For instance, I read something that touted Nebraska as a potential ranked team since they don’t play any of the best teams in the Big Ten.  That tells me nothing about how good Nebraska is, so I don’t care.  Maybe they’ll get fewer injuries that way and will therefore be harder to beat in the bowl than they would have been otherwise.  But that’s one reason this isn’t as much about who’s good later in the year. 

Nebraska didn’t win its first game last year until October 20 (pictured). The Huskers finished the year 4-8 (a couple of plays from 6-6), but I’m still skeptical of a drastic improvement.

However, I do expect some correlation between the best teams going into the season and the best teams at the end of the season.  And by going into, I mean those with the best prospects on paper, not necessarily the teams who will have the most successful first few weeks.

For a while I focused just on returning starters and how good a team was last year, but I’ve been led astray too many times recently and decided to look more in depth.  If Alabama only had 9 returning starters (RS), for instance, I’d still have them in the top 5.  In past years I may have expected a team like that to fall from 14-1 to 10-4, but I don’t know if any number of returning starters no matter how small would cause Alabama or Clemson to lose four games this season.  Last year, the Tide only had 10 RS.

Tua Tagovailoa (pictured during the 2018 national championship) may feel spoiled as Alabama increases to 12 returning starters from 10 last season.

Such programs just get too many great recruits, and their coaches are attentive and hardworking enough to make even recent high-school players elite college players in just a few months. Teams like that seem most vulnerable early in the year (which I maintain is why Alabama has lost to Ole Miss recently but not LSU), so I guess that’s one caveat to what I said about who’s best going in, but Alabama has also lined up against some decent teams in the first game and blown them out.

Conversely, the two teams with the most RS are UCLA and Texas St.  If you put all of their returning starters on the same team, I still wouldn’t put that team in my top 25.  UCLA could be in the top 25 at the end of the year for all I know, but it would take a lot of improvement that I’ve seen no evidence is forthcoming from that particular program.  I had the Bruins 95^th at the end of last season, so even if they improve 65 spots (jumping over half the teams in FBS football), they still wouldn’t be in the top 25.

The worst team last year that I’m ranking here is Florida St. (whom I had #61 in the final ratings), but since their schedule was so tough last year, their record wasn’t very indicative of talent level.  The Seminoles finished the year against five consecutive ranked opponents (beating one). The only loss to an unranked opponent was to Syracuse, which finished ranked #15 in both major polls and which nearly beat Clemson.  I decided that was as low as I was willing to go though.  I had Virginia Tech many spots lower and after some consideration opted to leave the Hokies unranked despite 16 returning starters.

Florida St.’s one-point loss to Miami, in hindsight, resulted in the Noles’ first season without a bowl game since 1982.

There were three other teams I considered moving into the rankings now despite not finishing last year ranked, but I’ll wait and see for now (last year’s final ranking), Mississippi St. (30), Baylor (47), and Wisconsin (48).

The only ranked teams from last season that I ruled out immediately were in the Mountain West. Boise St. has lacked consistency in recent years and only returns 13 starters, which do not include last year’s quarterback.  Fresno St. and Utah St. return only 9 starters apiece.  The “mid-major” teams can have difficulty with continuity even with a large number of returning starters.  I did decide to give Appalachian St., which returns 16 starters, the benefit of the doubt though.  By the way, RS numbers do not include kickers. 

Other ranked teams that fell out between the final ratings of last season and now are Kentucky (#12, 8 RS), Army (#14, 11 RS), Stanford (#24, 9 RS), and Iowa (#25, 10 RS).  Kentucky has improved or maintained its record from the previous season every year since 2014, but all good things must come to an end.  I considered keeping Army as the Black Knights have responded well in the past to personnel turnover, but there were too many talented major programs that have more potential to reach major bowls.

I’ve given you a few hints, but check back for the preseason top 25 in the coming days.

CFP Response and Bowl Projections

As for my top 25 commentary, I was slightly off in my prediction (here) that Clemson would overtake Notre Dame.  I forgot to account for the ACC losses to the SEC.  It makes it worse that Louisville and Florida St. are both in the ACC Atlantic. Clemson will move ahead next week in the unweighted ratings for sure;but I think in the lead up to the Playoff, the weighted ratings are more useful. I’m less confident there. 

Before I start talking about bowl possibilities, I did want to comment briefly about the bottom of my top 25.Texas and Fresno St. are subjectively good enough at the moment to be included as ranked teams. They’re just two weird teams that look good in one system but not in the other.  But if as expected they both lose in championship games, I won’t feel bad about leaving them out of the final top 25 before the bowl games. If they win, I think they’ll be rewarded fairly.  I just thought the fairest solution was to publish a top 25 this week that was completely objective. 

LSU did fall a spot in the unweighted ratings,but they were actually sixth in the weighted ratings before the supposed loss to Texas A&M (see the link at the beginning for more about that).  Even if that were a legitimate loss, LSU should still be considered the #3 team in the SEC.  I’ll explain why, but given the CFP rankings it may not matter who is ranked higher.  Florida and Kentucky didn’t play Alabama, and Texas A&M didn’t play Georgia.  I think being the only team of the four to play both divisional champions makes your conference record better if it’s a tie.  I think the following chart demonstrates my point better than my explanation.  I’ll explain below the charts why Kentucky shouldn’t merit consideration (unless you’re fixated on head-to-head and like to ignore the other 92% of the season). 

This chart shows who played whom and the relevant records. LSU beat an opponent above this group and has no losses below, unlike the other two teams.

Not to mention that Texas A&M has a non-conference loss.  I know it’s to a good team, but decisive wins over Georgia and U. Miami are better than a win over Kentucky in overtime and a loss to Clemson.  A questionable loss, but the Aggies don’t want to go down that road. Non-conference losses count in bowl game consideration. You’re just lying to yourself if you don’t think Florida would have gotten better bowl games (including at least one Sugar Bowl appearance) had they not lost to Florida St. the past few seasons, for instance. See the following for a chart of games that weren’t against the top 5 of the SEC.

As for this season, Florida did beat LSU on October 6 but since then the Gators struggled at Vanderbilt before losing to Missouri and Georgia.  They haven’t really redeemed themselves from those performances in which they lost by a combined 40 points.   The Gators only have a 4-point win over South Carolina (who is now 6-5) and wins over FCS Idaho (their second FCS opponent of the year) and a frankly sorry Florida St.team.  Good thing for Jimbo that he bailed, but that’s another story. Also, if want to say Florida goes ahead of LSU because of head to head despite the schedule, you’d better give a better bowl game to Kentucky than you give to Florida. I know they don’t have the chomp thing, the annoying song after the game,and that stupid jingle when they make a first down; and their fans don’t travel as well (especially not in the midst of basketball season), but be consistent if you’re going to go with that argument.

Obviously, I’m not making that argument about Kentucky though.  I’m surprised the Wildcats are so far ahead of Texas A&M in the CFP rankings, but I guess they are a lot more interested in body of work than who the hot teams are.  Suffice it to say Kentucky’s only win in the last month over a bowl-eligible team is the win over Middle Tennessee by 11.  The Wildcats have also lost to a bowl –ineligible team (Tennessee) in that time.

You could say LSU hasn’t redeemed themselves from the Alabama loss, but I don’t think they need to in the same way.  The Sugar, Peach, or Fiesta won’t involve playing Alabama, at least not unless Alabama loses in embarrassing fashion on Saturday (but for that a much different team from the one that showed up in Baton Rouge will have to be playing in Atlanta).  Those bowls might involve playing a team as good as Missouri or Texas A&M.  I know the loss-is-a-loss theory, it’s what my computer is mostly based on; but I think any bowl would love to have a 7-overtime 146-point game between good teams like the one in College Station on Saturday.  They don’t need the SEC team to win.  Think of the commercial revenue and the many highlights and references to that bowl over the years.  No bowl wants to see a team that plays 21 points poorer than Missouri though.  If it’s against a team even better than these three SEC teams, only one team of the three has beaten a team in the CFP top 8 (top 8 is significant because it’s higher than the three teams I’m focusing on).  

I think even if Georgia beats Alabama the Sugar doesn’t want LSU because LSU fans don’t buy as many hotel rooms and go to expensive restaurants over a few days like Florida fans might.  If you’re a conspiracy theorist ,this alone was a reason to fix the game in favor of the Aggies.  

I suspect the Peach will prefer Florida for geographical reasons whether the Gators were 9^th or 10^th.  The Fiesta is an even longer way away from Baton Rouge than the Peach.  I know only two states separate Arizona and Louisiana, but I promise you that trip is no leisurely stroll.  I do think more fans would travel from Baton Rouge than from Pullman, for instance; but the Fiesta doesn’t seem to like to have two teams from east of the Mississippi unless one of them is Notre Dame.  Except for the 2016 Clemson-Ohio St. national semifinal and the Notre Dame-Ohio St. games (2005 and 2015 seasons), you have to go back to the 1991 season to find a Fiesta Bowl that did not involve a team from West of the Mississippi (and six Fiesta Bowls since 2001 involved two from West of the Mississippi). 

Maybe the fact that the LSU campus is right next to the Mississippi is good enough, but I don’t know.  It is a good sign that LSU is several spots ahead of Washington St. and is also ahead of some other possibilities (such as Penn St. and Texas A&M).  It will be interesting to see what happens if LSU is not in a CFP Bowl.  Although LSU has been to the Citrus the past two seasons, I guess it’s possible they could go there again.  It’s also possible the Citrus would pick Kentucky, who is far ahead of the Aggies in the CFP rankings.

I’m going to give my major-bowl projections as of right now as well as how I would expect the CFP to decide the bowls.  I think one mistake people make in bowl projections is they act like the season literally ends right now.  So for instance, undefeated Alabama and one-loss Georgia are bowl teams.  If there were no SEC championship game, it’s no question that both teams should be in the top 4, but the only logical way to put Georgia in the top 4 is if you think they’re going to beat Alabama.  So I am going to factor in the expected results of the games on Saturday.   

I think I’ll be in agreement with what I expect the CFP will do. I have Ohio St. ahead of Oklahoma right now because beating Michigan and Penn St. are both better than anything Oklahoma has done, but I think Oklahoma redeeming their only loss would do a lot more for their argument than Ohio St. beating Northwestern would. Oklahoma will certainly be higher in my unweighted system. We’ll have to see what happens in the weighted one.  We do have a different committee now, so maybe they look at things slightly differently from the one last year.

Cotton: Alabama vs. Oklahoma

Orange: Clemson vs. Notre Dame

Sugar: Georgia vs. Texas

Rose: Washington vs. Ohio St.

Peach: Florida vs. UCF

Fiesta: LSU vs. Michigan

It’s unknown which hat Les Miles will wear if LSU plays Michigan. He may play it safe and stick with his Kansas hat.

It’s fairly straightforward to figure out what happens if one of Clemson, Oklahoma, and Ohio St. are upset. Instead of a choice between 5 teams for 4 spots, all 4 competitive teams make it. If Clemson were the one to lose, I would expect them against UCF in the Peach Bowl.  Georgia would be in the Sugar Bowl, so only one SEC team (I guess Florida) would be left for the Fiesta Bowl.  I wouldn’t like it, but TCU had the better resume a few years ago; and they lost out to Baylor due to head-to-head even though it was a close game. If Oklahoma is the team to lose, they would bump LSU from the Fiesta Bowl.  If Ohio St. is the team to lose, my guess is they bump Florida from the Peach and Florida bumps LSU from the Fiesta.

If two of them lose, it would then be easy for LSU to find a spot again because I think Georgia would make the semifinal even with two losses, and the Sugar Bowl would be available to the top SEC team(apparently Florida).

If Washington were to lose, you just replace them with Utah.  If UCF were to lose, replace them with Boise St.  If Boise St. also loses, my guess would be UCF keeps its spot.

If Georgia beats Alabama, I think both Georgia and Alabama would be in the top 4 again, so I’ll make full projections for that scenario since it would be a lot of changes.

Orange: Clemson vs. Alabama

Cotton: Notre Dame vs. Georgia

Sugar: Florida (though I would switch LSU andFlorida as explained) vs. Oklahoma

Rose: Washington vs. Ohio St. 

Fiesta: Washington St. vs. Michigan

Peach: LSU vs. UCF

This time if Ohio St., Clemson or Oklahoma were to lose, I think Washington St. would get bumped and LSU would stay.  Unless it’s Oklahoma, I would guess LSU would go to the Fiesta.  If it were Oklahoma, I think the Sooners go out West and LSU stays in the Peach. The same thing as before applies to Washington’s spot in the Rose.  If Boise St. were to replace UCF, I would guess the Broncos would play Washington St. (or Oklahoma) while Michigan/LSU would be moved to Atlanta. Take the over in that Fiesta Bowl if it happens.