Pre-Bowl Top 25 and LSU 2024 Schedule

LSU’s 2024 Schedule : Historical and Competitive Ramifications

I’ve sat down to this blog a few times, and each time some other news item comes out.  The most recent event was the release of LSU’s schedule with the actual dates. 

I decided to just cover that and the top 25 for now.  Interesting bowl games (to me anyway) are still about two weeks away, so the rest can wait.

We’ve known all the teams on LSU’s 2024 schedule for a while but not who LSU was playing on what date.  The one constant going back as long as I remember is Alabama after a bye week and between about November 3 and 12, this time on the 9th. Alabama seems to keep roughly the same order from year to year, but no one else does that I’ve noticed. 

Given the addition of the second bye, I like that it was added before Ole Miss.  That’s been a tough contest lately.  LSU has a three-game losing streak in College Station, but I’m still less worried about that game than about Ole Miss.

Texas A&M was scheduled on the traditional late October date for Ole Miss though. LSU will play the Rebels two weeks earlier, with Arkansas sandwiched in between. 

LSU WR Chris Hilton and the Tigers came up short in the final seconds in Oxford in September. LSU won four “Magnolia Bowls” in a row from 2016 to 2019, but since then the winner has always been the home team.

Florida was traditionally around the date the Ole Miss game is scheduled, but this might be the last year of what has been an annual series since 1971 anyway.  It was also after Alabama this year, so it was easy to leave it where it was.  At least they weren’t both road games in either year.

LSU doesn’t have a long ongoing annual tradition with anyone else on the 2024 schedule. 

They had only played Texas A&M once (in a bowl) between 1995 and 2012, the year the Aggies joined the SEC. LSU had previously played the Aggies in early September, but it’s different when it’s not a conference game.  

I wouldn’t be opposed to making it an early game in the future though, especially since LSU won’t play Auburn annually anymore. Mississippi St. was a typical September fixture for a while also, although on the traditional schedule they were after Alabama. I’m still annoyed LSU plays neither Auburn nor Mississippi St. next year.

Since the annual series with Tulane ended in 1994, LSU has played whatever somewhat proximate SEC is left without a good end-of-year rival. Arkansas was not particularly close to and had no longstanding recent rivalry with anyone in the SEC when it entered, so that was fine for about 20 years. Then after Missouri and Texas A&M joined (and two “transitional” years elapsed), it made sense to split that up when it became clear that the Aggies weren’t playing Texas anytime soon.

Now that the Thanksgiving/rivalry-week Longhorns-Aggies series is rekindled and Bedlam is on hiatus, it wasn’t a huge shock that LSU finishes with Oklahoma in Baton Rouge. We are used to playing a team with a reddish color from a neighboring conference to the west.

The SEC could have mixed things up in some other ways in 2024, but it was easier not to, especially since next year is just a one-off and not part of any dedicated rotation. Just as a neutral fan of college football and historical rivalries, my hope is that Oklahoma either can manage to schedule Oklahoma St. again or that they play Missouri on rivalry week. I would be OK with LSU going back to Arkansas or having some type of rotation (perhaps switching between Oklahoma and Arkansas or between Vanderbilt and Kentucky). There was some history with Kentucky. LSU played the Wildcats 51 years in a row at one point (ending with the 2002 season).

Ollie Gordon II rushes for one of two touchdowns in the 27-24 win in Stillwater, OK, on November 4. Although Bedlam has typically been a close game in recent years, Oklahoma had beaten Oklahoma St. eight of nine seasons going into 2021.  The Cowboys ended on a high note though, winning two of the last three.

As far as I’m concerned, LSU could even go back to playing Tulane if the two sides could come anywhere close to a mutually agreeable deal; but since that hasn’t happened in nearly 30 years, I’m not optimistic. There was a home-and-home in 2006 and 2007, but LSU felt like they gave up revenue from a potential home game to enrich Tulane. Since then, LSU has played every other Louisiana Division I program, all of whom seem content with being paid money to travel to Tiger Stadium occasionally rather than expecting a home-and-home exchange.

Anyway, putting tradition aside, I like that there aren’t brutal back-to-back weeks. Going to Florida after hosting Alabama isn’t ideal, but there is only one instance of LSU playing 2023 bowl teams two weeks in a row, and that’s UCLA and South Alabama (both were barely eligible and both will be home games).

USC and UCLA are separated by Nicholls St. and South Carolina. The Bruins or Gamecocks could have a good year, but I doubt both will. I don’t see much risk of looking past an SEC road game or coming down from an emotional high for the first home game that is against a Power 5 opponent.

There were years when I’ve been glad LSU got an apparently tough opponent from what we used to call the SEC East, but we didn’t need one given the out-of-conference slate. Also, I’m not even sure if you need a good non-annual schedule, especially if the SEC eventually adds a ninth game, in the playoff system. I guess we will see how lines get drawn between 4 and 5, 8 and 9, and 12 and 13 in playoff selection

Top 25

Other than their effects upon the Playoff resumes as mentioned in the previous blog, I didn’t have much to say about the conference championship games because they weren’t very surprising.  I don’t know why Oregon was favored by so much; but as I kept telling everyone, they didn’t deserve it.  I wasn’t a big believer in Georgia since the only SEC West teams they faced were Auburn and Ole Miss and they didn’t do anything out of conference until beating an average Georgia Tech team a couple of weeks ago.  Very good Alabama teams have struggled with Auburn before, so I didn’t attach much importance to that.  In lieu of Georgia, I admittedly picked the “wrong” Big Ten team as #1, but it wasn’t my fault Ohio St. had a better schedule than Michigan.  As expected, the Wolverines had no problem with Iowa. 

I’m listing my top 25 teams below, but I think they all fairly logically proceed from the results of those games and what I had written about the Playoff teams last week.

Rank	Team	Last
1	Washington	1
2	Michigan	2
3	Alabama	5
4	Texas	4
5	Florida St.	6
6	Georgia	3
7	Ohio St.	7
8	Oklahoma	11
9	Oregon	8
10	Penn St.	9
11	Ole Miss	10
12	Missouri	13
13	Liberty	17
14	LSU	15
15	Iowa	12
16	James Madison	14
17	Troy	22
18	Louisville	16
19	Notre Dame	21
20	N Carolina St.	18
21	So. Methodist	—
22	Tulane	19
23	Toledo	20
24	Arizona	24
25	Miami U.	—

Out of Top 25: (23) Oklahoma St., (25) Oregon St.

Honorable mention: Kansas St., Oklahoma St., Oregon St., Clemson, Memphis

Week 10 Top 25 2023

I mentioned in the last blog that my ratings were delayed this week.  I realized while I was compiling them that not enough credit was being given for playing a series of good opponents.  I’m ok with giving undefeated teams or teams with very good records against mediocre to bad opponents the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not OK with James Madison being #6, Liberty being #11, and Troy being #17.  I think if any of those teams played a random selection of top 25 opponents every week, their record would be about 1-9 or 2-8 right now.  

Adjusted Approach to Top 25 and Possibly to Ratings

In recent years I added what I called weights to “good” games. 

To explain how this came about, my original formula from about 18 years ago was sort of based on a 10-point scale.  If you beat every team you played and those teams beat every team they played apart from you, you’d be between 9 and 10 depending on how good the opponents of the teams you beat were.  This was the entire rating at first, but it later became sort of the first round where I used that number to decide how much credit you got for a win or how much you got subtracted for a loss. 

Realistically the best teams can hope to be around 7 (Ohio St. right now is 6.676).  So what I did with the “weights” was if you played teams better than 5 points (which right now is 14 teams), you’d have a certain number added to your overall rating.  Another 16 teams are between 4.25 and 5, so I would add a smaller number for playing those teams. 

This was regardless of whether you won or lost because you already lost points, so getting some of them back because it’s a good team isn’t a bad thing.  I don’t just want to reward beating them.  I wouldn’t want to reward Texas for beating Alabama and losing to Kansas St. (if the Longhorns had lost over the weekend) where I would not reward another team (like LSU) for beating Missouri and losing to Alabama. I actually think it’s better if you consistently beat teams lower than you and only fall short if you have a very good opponent.

Anyway, I’m starting to question if that’s the best approach.  Wherever I draw the line is ultimately going to be kind of arbitrary. I mentioned the 5-point thing.  Kansas is 4.98.  How much less credit should you get for beating them than you do for beating Louisville at 5.01?

I also didn’t want to go backwards and introduce more subjectivity on my part.  What I decided to do was just to add that initial number to what I have been publishing as the computer ratings.  I could only use a fraction of that number because the other ratings right now tops out at 0.93.  For most top 25 teams, the largest number is about 10x the smallest number, so I though the fairest thing to do was divide the largest number by 10 and then add the two together.

I’m still giving myself the leeway to move teams up to three spots for the top 25.  I might go down to two next week, and I will let you know if I made a change to the published ratings.  I want to see how it plays out.  Sometimes when I make changes, they’re great for one week but I quickly see problems going from one week to the next.  That’s fine for my top 25, but I don’t think it’s good for the computer rating.  It’s good to be able to compare numbers over longer periods of time. 

Big Picture for LSU after Bama Loss

I had a couple other quick thoughts about Saturday’s game. I’ve mentioned LSU’s personnel issues on defense. I also mentioned that the LSU defense was put in a really difficult spot in the fourth quarter when Alabama received the ball at the LSU 25 after an interception only a few seconds on the clock after the previous Alabama offensive drive (3 minutes and 65 yards).

I don’t blame Jayden Daniels for trying to make a play, the ball getting tipped, etc., but giving up a touchdown after the quick turnaround is not proof of a bad defense in that moment. No LSU fan goes on about how bad the 2019 defense was, and no one wanted Dave Aranda to be fired; but LSU gave up 41 points in that game. The Tigers gave up three touchdowns in the fourth quarter and the SHORTEST touchdown drive was 75 yards. I highly doubt that if Joe Burrow threw an interception two plays after one of those drives that the defense would have stopped the Tide from scoring.

“Hot seat” isn’t nearly dramatic enough for Baton Rouge media personalities when they get worked up about something.

So I’m not on the “Fire Matt House” bandwagon that others are on. I know that in hindsight we should have tried to spy more because knowing what we know now, the offense didn’t get close to enough points for the defense that we played. Maybe LSU would have gotten lucky and there would have been a bunch of drops and bad passes. However, we don’t know if more open receivers would have backfired. I don’t hear anyone saying Nick Saban and his defensive coach are incompetent for sacrificing QB rushing yards for more pass coverage. Jayden Daniels ran for more yards than Jalen Milroe, and the former left the game with 13 minutes left.

If both teams had scored in the 40s in an LSU win like four years ago, everyone would be happy. But LSU commentators are going on the radio or on YouTube and saying giving up 40+ to Alabama is never OK regardless.

Even though he’s one of those who I think has been too much of an alarmist about the defense, Matt Moscona pointed out an interesting thing Kelly has been dealing with. You’d think no matter how badly things went off the rails, if you take over a team less than two years after a national championship, you’d have a pretty good recruiting class coming of age. But no, there are only three players left who were recruited in the wake of that championship. The rest of the team is either players Kelly brought in or players that came to play for a team that was going .500. The older players in the subsequent classes who stayed with the team are great. I always have a soft spot for overachiever types, but to think there isn’t a significant talent gap just because we escaped with a win over Alabama last year is silly. Having a better personality and recruiting in a better location than Saban was only getting Coach O so far.

Speaking of which, I want to compare with Saban for a moment. Saban went 26-12 (68.4%) in his first three years at LSU. Kelly is at 69.5% right now. Pretty good for having almost no junior class last year and almost no senior class this year. LSU has a chance to go 4-0, but let’s say they go 3-1 the rest of the way. That would give Kelly a 70.4% mark going into next season. In his last three Division I stops, there was a significant improvement in year three; but even if there isn’t, far too many fans are overreacting.

Granted, LSU had a worse record the two years before they hired Saban than they did the two years before they hired Kelly, but there wasn’t a transfer portal back then. There were good players who had come in after respective 9- and 10-win seasons in 1996 and 1997 who didn’t have a good option other than to stick it out. (By the way, there was only an 11-game regular season back then.). Gerry DiNardo, Saban’s predecessor, won 69.7% over his first three years, so it’s not like Saban blew away anything anyone had seen in recent years right away.

To make some less big-picture comments and get back to the rankings, I think it still makes sense to put Texas ahead of Alabama.  That may change if Oklahoma loses again and LSU wins out.  I’ve mentioned that LSU can get some meaningful positive points in each of the next few weeks.  They’ll definitely be favored in the next two and they haven’t lost to Texas A&M in Baton Rouge since 1994 (the year before DiNardo started), so chances are pretty high they’ll be favored in that one too.  Unfortunately, Georgia St. (who is in between Florida and Texas A&M) has lost two in a row though.  They still may be the second-best team in Georgia.

College Football Playoff Rankings

I think it’s ridiculous that the committee thinks Oregon is the top one-loss team. The Ducks have the 82nd-best schedule. I know they played undefeated Washington, but the Huskies have played the #99 schedule. I don’t even factor in opponents’ opponents’ records as much as many similar blogs do. Some count that equally to opponents’ record because it’s a much narrower range from team to team. Utah, the Ducks’ best win, has a top-50 schedule but two losses.

The big difference comes after Oregon’s marquee win. The highest-rated opponent after that is Colorado, which is #69 overall. Alabama and Penn St. have each beaten four teams who are better than Colorado. Ole Miss, Texas, and Louisville have each beaten five teams who are better than Colorado. I can understand giving some credit for having one close loss to an undefeated team, but it shouldn’t compensate for about every other game being against a team in the top half of the FBS versus about 20% of games being against such teams. Any other team that’s a candidate for the college football playoff would be all but guaranteed to be 8-2 against the Ducks’ schedule, and most would probably beat Utah, my number 20 and the CFP’s #18.

I also don’t think Oregon St., who played no one of note out of conference, is close to the best 2-loss team. I don’t know where they get the idea the Pac-12 is so great. Arizona lost to Mississippi St. and is now half a game out of third place. Notre Dame has suffered a third loss now, but they beat USC (who actually is third place) easily. Wins over Wisconsin and TCU (albeit by lesser teams) have lost their luster.

There isn’t reason to get too annoyed yet, but the committee’s disregard of quality of opponents is something to watch out for going forward.

Comments about My Top 25

I think Purdue is better than their record, but Michigan hasn’t added as many points per week as other major-conference teams do on average.  Even with USC’s struggles, they’re worth a lot more than Purdue.  Alabama and Texas both added high-quality wins as well.  Texas was a lot closer to losing at the end, but I don’t factor that in.  

Georgia and Michigan can each get a good number of points next week though.  Penn St. (who is playing Michigan) and Ole Miss (who is playing Georgia) are right behind them, but neither the Nittany Lions (Rutgers and Michigan St.) nor the Rebels (UL-Monroe and Mississippi St.) have nearly as many potential points to gain in the last two weeks of the season as the Bulldogs (Tennessee and Georgia Tech) and Wolverines (Maryland and Ohio St.) do.

The last time Ole Miss played Georgia, Rebel QB Chad Kelly led the team to a 45-0 lead in Oxford in 2016. Bulldog QB Jacob Eason (right) was only able to complete 44% of his passing attempts and failed to throw a touchdown. Somehow the Bulldogs’ long-awaited chance at revenge is not the SEC game of the week. I wish Ole Miss would go back to those uniforms. by the way.

So if you want to see an SEC team in the playoff, you need to be for Georgia (even if you’d rather see Alabama).  If you want to see a Big Ten team, you need to cheer for Michigan (even if you’d rather see Ohio St.).  I’m not saying the CFP committee always agrees with me, but high-quality wins are usually important to them in the end.  Even if two or three one-loss teams make it, I doubt either one will be Penn St. or Ole Miss.

The order of Kansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St. is mostly explained by what I said earlier about bad losses.

I liked not having to drop Missouri, Kansas St., and LSU too far.  Part of that is due to Tulane and Toledo playing fairly weak opponents (even though Tulane barely won again). Losses by USC and UCLA helped too. 

USC almost stayed in the top 25 given that the Washington loss didn’t hurt much, but there is only so much room for 3-loss teams.  The rest of the honorable mentions are from outside of the major conferences.

They didn’t make the honorable mentions, but Duke, Arizona, North Carolina St., and U. Miami are the other major-conference three-loss teams in the top 40.  North Carolina still only has two losses but has a relatively low schedule strength.  It’s interesting how many ACC teams are in the 30s.  Clemson (despite four losses) has a good chance of joining that group in the next few weeks.

Top 25

Rank	Team	Last
1	Ohio St.	1
2	Florida St.	2
3	Washington	6
4	Texas	4
5	Alabama	5
6	Michigan	3
7	Georgia	10
8	Ole Miss	7
9	Penn St.	8
10	James Madison	9
11	Oregon	13
12	Kansas	19
13	Oklahoma	11
14	Louisville	20
15	Oklahoma St.	24
16	Missouri	15
17	Liberty	12
18	Utah	16
19	Iowa	17
20	Troy	—
21	Oregon St.	25
22	Tennessee	—
23	Notre Dame	14
24	Kansas St.	23
25	LSU	22

Out of Top 25: (18) Southern CA, (21) Air Force

Honorable mention: Tulane, Southern CA, Toledo, Memphis, Fresno St.

Week 9 Top 25 2023

Welcome New Readers

Since I’ve been on WordPress, I’ve always gotten a big boost in readers for the LSU-Alabama weekend, but the last couple of weeks have been the best non-Alabama weeks over the past two seasons. I wasn’t able to look at weekly stats from before that, but given that I wasn’t really committed to this in 2020 and 2021 and LSU was pretty irrelevant anyway (I didn’t even bother to say much about the respective Alabama games, although 2021 was close), I doubt any weeks in those years were better.

It’s quite possible 2019 had better weeks, but I’m sure that was more Joe Burrow’s doing than mine. I’ve also done a lot less to garner views than I did in prior years. I guess I’ve gotten more serious about work and health and things like that, and I also spend more time just relaxing.

At any rate, I wanted to welcome anyone who is new to my page. I’ve been a pretty avid LSU football blogger (during the season anyway) since the 2005 season, which happened to be when Les Miles came to Baton Rouge. My ranking system was developed from 2003 to 2005 and improved in a couple of ways since then, but I only have an online archive going back to my 2008 rankings. I don’t mind that because they became a little more sophisticated that year (qualifying for Massey’s comparison site) anyway. I’ve done a personal ranking since 1995, but to my knowledge I haven’t published anything I wrote before 2006.

Although I am an LSU fan, I’m very strict about not letting my personal views affect my computer ratings. In fact, at this moment, on my list LSU is as lower as or lower than they are on any other ratings list that Massey indices. This is not to be confused with top 25 rankings blogs like the one below that deviate less and less from the computer ratings as the season progresses.

Comments about CFP Rankings

I made an unexpected trip to the dentist on Tuesday, so I didn’t have the time to post this that I originally thought I would have. The delay does give me the occasion to comment on the first College Football Playoff rankings. Obviously, I agree with #1; but if you’re disregarding last year and basing the order of the top four solely based on quality of this year’s wins, there is no logical way to place Florida St. below Michigan and Georgia. If you are basing it on prior years and think Georgia is close to #1, why not keep them #1 until they lose, especially since that could be any week as the Bulldogs get into the difficult portion of their schedule (following the win over Florida with games against Missouri, Ole Miss, Tennessee, and Georgia Tech in consecutive weeks).

What if I told you there is an SEC game this weekend that will likely decide the division wherein the one-loss team is trying to avenge last season’s close loss (which took place after giving up two late touchdowns) and that I’m not talking about the SEC West?

I don’t see the argument for Michigan to be ahead of the Seminoles at all. The last time we saw them before this season they were losing to TCU in the semifinal. I don’t think that gives you the right to rest on your semifinal-loser laurels for the next 10 months. Is it purely a prediction of where they think the teams will end up? When did we ask this committee to prognosticate like that? I thought they were supposed to evaluate how good the respective teams are currently this year.

Comments about My Top 25

I was not surprised by too much that happened over the weekend, although I wouldn’t have bet on both Arizona teams winning.  They had both been on the wrong side of some close games before, so it’s not like I thought either team was incapable.  Perhaps Oregon St. and Washington St. just don’t have the depth and talent (and possibly not the coaching either) to keep their early-season success going.  I would have laughed if USC had lost again, but one win and one loss in the last two weeks is probably the deserved outcome.

I feel somewhat vindicated that Ohio St. nearly became the computer #1 after I had to assist them the past few weeks.  Ohio St. has a much better remaining schedule.  Florida St. still plays Pittsburgh, who only has one FBS win, and North Alabama, a subpar FCS team.  Of course, Ohio St. still plays Michigan, who is much better than anyone the Seminoles will play.

I didn’t predict Kansas to beat Oklahoma per se, but I didn’t think the Sooners would finish undefeated, and a road game against a team that I had ranked a couple of weeks ago isn’t the most surprising one for the Sooners to have lost.  Oklahoma may also struggle to beat Kansas St. and/or Oklahoma St., both of whom have re-entered the top 25.

I know some people think if Texas and Oklahoma each have exactly one loss, Oklahoma should automatically be higher; but I strongly disagree.  Texas has a much better strength of schedule given the game against Alabama (Rice and Wyoming aren’t terrible either), and the Longhorns also beat Kansas

Another interesting side effect of the upset is that now there are five former Big 8 teams (Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Kansas St., and Oklahoma St.) in the top 25.  One of the others, Colorado, was ranked earlier in the year and is still in the top 60.  The other two, Nebraska and Iowa St., are both in the top 45.  When Oklahoma plays Missouri next year, it will be the first SEC game between two former Big 8 teams.  Colorado will rejoin the Big XII, where four other former Big 8 teams will play next season.  Nebraska will remain in the Big Ten.

Kansas RB Devin Neal dives for a touchdown against old Big 8 (and Big 6 and Big 7) rivals Oklahoma on Saturday in Lawrence, Kan. The Big 8 conference broke up in 1996, and it had almost been that long since Kansas had beaten Oklahoma. Neal ran for 112 yards in the Jayhawks’ 38-33 upset win.

As I anticipated last week, I didn’t do any subjective ranking to factor in.  I did move teams up to three spots.  I was a little bit liberal about what that means though.  For instance, Troy, Oregon St., LSU, and UCLA were all between 0.350 and 0.360, so I considered that a tie for 25^th.  (0.01 is a typical gap between consecutive teams after the top 10, where many gaps are even larger.)  That’s how I got LSU as high as they are.  I’m going to elaborate just for illustrative purposes, but if you’re not interested in a detailed breakdown, skip the next three paragraphs.

I am more lenient toward teams who play in more difficult conferences and who have more understandable losses anyway.  Part of the reason is I’m less concerned about such teams getting away with anything.  LSU will either lose to Alabama and likely fall out (continuing the current trajectory anyway), or they’ll beat Alabama and this will avoid the volatility of being 16^th one week, unranked the next, and being back in the top 20 (or maybe even in the top 15) the week after that.

One of LSU’s losses was two months ago to a team that is still undefeated in relatively hostile territory (not a true road game but close), and the other was on the road and was just a matter of which team was able to score last in the last two minutes. 

I think it was right to have the gap between Oregon St. and LSU since the two teams who beat the Beavers have seven combined losses to the one combined loss by the two teams who beat LSU.  LSU’s best win Missouri and Oregon St.’s best win Utah are similar, but I give the edge to Missouri (who still only has one loss…for now). 

Falling 11 spots for a loss to a team with a winning record seems harsh enough though, so I was not inclined to let Oregon St. fall out of the top 25 completely.  Also, teams like Troy and Tulane (the other candidates for top 25 other than UCLA, whom the Beavers beat and who is lacking in quality wins) aren’t going to be seriously tested in the future like Oregon St. will be.  Three of the four remaining opponents for the Beavers (Colorado, Washington and Oregon) are more highly rated than any team that remains on Tulane’s schedule, for instance.  Only one of Troy’s upcoming opponents (Louisiana-Lafayette) is higher-rated than Colorado, and it’s not by much.  (All of LSU’s remaining opponents are better than all of the remaining opponents for either Troy {who already played Georgia St.} or Tulane.)

I mentioned UCLA in the last paragraph.  It was a little weird to take them out after getting their second-best win, but every previous Pac-12 opponent (Utah, Washington St., Oregon St., and Stanford) lost.  Also, they were 28^th, so the only way to rank them would have been to remove Oregon St., which did not make sense.

Wisconsin and Minnesota were in a virtual tie in the computer, so I included them both in the “honorable mention” list.  That list is usually only five teams, but I made an exception.  I believe Toledo is the first MAC team on the list this season.

Top 25

Rank	Team	Last
1	Ohio St.	1
2	Florida St.	2
3	Michigan	4
4	Texas	5
5	Alabama	6
6	Washington	8
7	Ole Miss	7
8	Penn St.	10
9	James Madison	13
10	Georgia	12
11	Oklahoma	3
12	Liberty	20
13	Oregon	17
14	Notre Dame	15
15	Missouri	11
16	Utah	9
17	Iowa	18
18	Southern CA	23
19	Kansas	—
20	Louisville	22
21	Air Force	24
22	LSU	16
23	Kansas St.	—
24	Oklahoma St.	—
25	Oregon St.	14

Out of Top 25: (19), North Carolina, (21) Wisconsin, (25) UCLA

Honorable mention: Troy, Tulane, UCLA, Toledo, Wisconsin, Minnesota

Week 7 Top 25 2023

I’m still moving toward my completely objective top 25; but if you just want to know what the computer says, go here.  Last week, it was less than 1/3 objective.  Today, it’s roughly half.  The initial list I made was 60% objective, but I still allowed myself to move teams by up to 5 spots after that.  The only exception was Ohio St., whom I moved six spots.  There is a good chance the Buckeyes will be near #1 on their own merit next week anyway (if they beat Penn St. of course).

This might be the last week I can have Georgia ahead of all the one-loss teams though.  Texas has the #3 schedule, and Georgia has one of the worst in FBS.  Adding a bye week doesn’t help.  The Bulldogs have a gauntlet after that (three games against ranked teams, one on the road, and two other good teams away from home), so they’re not pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes to get back to the Playoff; but this is meant to be a snapshot.  They should not be in the top four or even the top eight if the season ended now.  Not only was Vanderbilt a weak opponent, but all of the Bulldogs’ best three opponents so far (Kentucky, South Carolina, and Auburn) lost to teams the Bulldogs have not yet played or will not play.

Just like last week though, most teams did not move more than a couple of spots from the improvised formula.  There may still be some volatility in the coming weeks because for many teams next week’s result will still make up 1/6 of their FBS opponents, so it counts for about twice as much as a game does at the end of the year.  Also, I’m going to continue to give myself less power to smooth out any transitions up or down the rankings.

The top 9 should make a lot of sense based on last week.

Iowa is exactly where the formula put them.  If Penn St. loses, the Hawkeyes may fall a spot or two, but I think this is fair for right now.  North Carolina is undefeated and has played a significantly better schedule than Georgia has, so I thought that spot was good for them.

Louisville followed up on the win over Notre Dame with a loss to Pitt, so this allowed LSU to move ahead of the Irish despite having a much less impressive win.  The only loss by either of the two teams who beat LSU was to Alabama, so LSU’s two losses look much more excusable right now.  Pitt already had four losses and had no FBS wins going into last week.  They had a significant drop-off from last season.  Former Pitt (and USC) quarterback Kedon Slovis going to BYU didn’t seem to do either side any good.

Michael Penix, Jr., of Washington prepares to attempt a pass against the Oregon Ducks in Seattle on Saturday. While both teams did have some success on the ground, the anticipated quarterback battle largely delivered. Although Penix threw for fewer yards and a lower completion percentage and threw the game’s only interception, he made up for it by throwing for two more touchdowns and about half a yard more per attempt than Oregon’s Bo Nix threw.

Oregon is still a good team despite the setback in Seattle.  Their loss is similarly excusable to LSU’s losses, but there just isn’t a quality win like LSU and Notre Dame have.  Missouri also only has one loss, but obviously I think hosting LSU is a step down from traveling to Washington right now.

Five of the remaining nine teams in my top 25 are in the Pac-12.  It took me a while to sort them.  I think it’s easier to explain in reverse order.  Despite two losses in a row, Washington St. deserved to stay ranked because they beat Wisconsin, the team I would otherwise have put #25.  Colorado St. isn’t bad for a second-best out-of-conference win either.   

I don’t know why Wazzu lost to Arizona so badly, but margin of victory (or loss in this case) isn’t a big concern for me going forward.  The week before, the Cougars lost to UCLA, so I put the Bruins higher.  Oregon St. beat UCLA, and I think they only ended up losing to Washington St. because the game was in Pullman.  Also, it’s a singular loss.  The Beavers also beat Utah, so I think putting them between Washington St. and Utah made sense.

USC lost, but it was out of conference to Notre Dame, so I don’t have a problem with leaving the Trojans ahead of Oregon St., UCLA, and Washington St.  You could argue about Utah, but it helps that the Utes beat Florida, whom I have #32 right now.  Baylor isn’t having the best season, but going to Waco is still a strong second-best out-of-conference game.  I don’t think USC has beaten anyone nearly as good as Florida.  The Utes are 1-1 against the rest of the top 25 (win over UCLA, loss to Oregon St… another reason the Beavers are ahead of the Bruins), which is of course better than 0-1.

I squeezed Duke ahead of USC because they played Notre Dame closer and also because Clemson is creeping their way back toward the top 25 like Florida is.

I wasn’t blown away by the fact that Tennessee beat Texas A&M at home, but I like the way that they were able to grind out a low-scoring win and never seemed panicky or particularly at risk of losing.  There were times last year when the Volunteers were out of their element when a defense was able to slow them down.  I’m seeing some maturity and consistency that I’m not seeing from teams that are lower; and I mentioned Florida vis-a-vis Utah, so I’m more forgiving of that loss than the combinations of two losses below or the singular loss to Pitt.

I moved James Madison as far down as I could, so I don’t think the Dukes would beat the Volunteers on a neutral field right now; but this is a normal consequence of the computer formula.  I could be wrong though.  I would have sworn all last year that Tulane wouldn’t have beaten USC on a neutral field, for instance.  I have Tulane #31, by the way, between the five honorable mentions and Florida.  Kansas St. is right after Florida, which explains in part why Missouri is still as high as they are.  Kentucky isn’t a bad #2 win for a one-loss team either.

Top 25

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

Out of Top 25: (20) Kentucky, (24) Wisconsin

Honorable mention: Liberty, Air Force, Wisconsin, Troy, Clemson

LSU/Mizzou & Week 6 Top 25 2023

Intro

I actually have two blogs of material this week since I didn’t have time to post the other one last week.  I finally did get around to entering all the FBS results into the spreadsheet for my computer formula.

I thought posting the rankings blog was more important to get more back on schedule.  I haven’t even promoted them like I usually do because most people aren’t really interested on Thursday and Friday.

LSU QB Jayden Daniels keeps the play alive in the first quarter in Columbia on Saturday. Daniels was responsible for 389 total yards and four touchdowns (with no turnovers). It should have been more scores, but we don’t need to get into why he didn’t get credit for more.

LSU/Missouri Recap and Reaction

I wanted to include a couple of comments about LSU’s win over Missouri even though my next blog will in part be about the game before.

It was nice to get Mizzou back for the first game after Covid, when LSU’s rising star quarterback Myles Brennan played a great game in Columbia but got hurt and was never seen in meaningful action again.  I’m torn between saying LSU deserved to win that game and that LSU was lucky they competed in any games in 2020 and 2021.

Anyway, that was also the only season I know of when the LSU defense was nearly as bad as it is this year.  I have barely even watched LSU play defense the last two games, by the way.  Auburn’s offense isn’t as good as that of Mizzou or Ole Miss, so I’m hoping it might be more tolerable next game. 

The second half of the Mizzou game was not bad though, to be fair.  Six of the home Tigers’ 8 possessions did not result in points.  Ideally LSU would like to force the other team to punt more, but missed field goals and interceptions result in the same number of points that “three and outs” do.

Preface of Rankings

For the rankings this week, it’s still mostly subjective; but there is an objective element now.  I gave each team a score that was a combination of my subjective and objective ratings, and then I allowed myself to move teams a maximum of five spots from the order the improvised formula put them in.  For most teams, it was only one or two spots though. The objective ratings aren’t as thorough as they will be (for instance, no credit was given for quality of FCS opponents), but they’re complete enough to give a strong idea of who the most accomplished teams are.

Oklahoma was the best team in my formula, but it’s partly because they beat 6 FBS opponents (none of which were very good before last week).  So I felt the need to move them up considerably.   I haven’t been impressed with them in “the eye test” since Caleb Williams transferred to USC, which is partly why they weren’t higher going into the week; but I couldn’t move Georgia any higher given the rules I made above.  Florida St. has had two lucky wins, so I didn’t want to put them in the top 3 either.

Oklahoma’s Nic Anderson catches the winning touchdown pass from Dillon Gabriel in Dallas on Saturday. Gabriel did not complete as many passes or throw for as many yards as Texas’s Quinn Ewers, but he threw no interceptions and Ewers threw two as Oklahoma got revenge for a 49-0 loss to the Longhorns last season.

Speaking of USC, I’m not impressed with them much at all once I sat down and looked at who they’ve beaten and the records of those opponents.  They just went to triple overtime against Arizona, who lost to Mississippi St., possibly the worst team in the SEC West.  The Trojans are undefeated though, so I thought I would put them ahead of the best two-loss team, Notre Dame.  I would not be surprised to see USC lose to the Irish or any of the ranked Pac-12 teams though.

There were a couple of other large movements in the rankings. Louisville is another undefeated team who had a big, somewhat unexpected win over the weekend. North Carolina also made a big jump, but I am still concerned by the narrow home win over Appalachian St. One of the things I do when I move to more objective rankings is to de-emphasize margin of victory though. I added a couple of Big Ten teams with understandable losses, as well as adding LSU back.

Even though I understand it can look bad to move teams too dramatically, I still think it was the right choice to take LSU out when they fell to 2-2 against FBS opponents (which included a 3-point home win over Arkansas) going into the Missouri game. I also still think I was right to put Mizzou ahead of the four teams who fell out (as I’ll explain, formerly #21 Kansas didn’t fall far), but at any rate it makes sense for LSU to be a bit higher than those other Tigers now.

I can defend most of the choices I made last week, but the idea is to be as accurate as possible now, not to put last week on a pedestal and see who deserves to move up or down a set number of spots based on a preconceived idea of how good last week’s respective opponents were. I continue to think it’s the right thing to start evaluating teams differently around this time of year. Preseason, knee-jerk reactions to one or two early results, and margin of victory should count for very little going forward.

I’ve hardly had any teams from the G5 (those outside of the Power 5 conferences) ranked this season, but four of the best five unranked teams by both the computer and the overall formula are G5.  They are as follows: James Madison, Kansas, Liberty, Memphis, and Wyoming.

I was going to leave it at that, but since I mentioned Liberty, it will be interesting to see how former Liberty and Ole Miss head coach and current Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze does in his first trip to Tiger Stadium since 2016. He was winless in three contests there as the head coach of Ole Miss, most notably in 2014 when his undefeated #3 Rebels were upset 10-7 in one of those Les Miles defensive and ball-control classics. When I get a chance, I’ll try to get caught up on the rivalry blogs.

Top 25

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

Out of Top 25: (21) Kansas, (22) Kansas St., (24) Tennessee, (25) U. Miami

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 4 Top 25

This was another vacation week, but I’ll start getting things back to normal in the coming week. This is still all in my mind and not based on my formula at all, but it’s meant to be at least somewhat of an estimate. If you didn’t play a good team last week and someone lower than you did, you might fall. Just to make up numbers, let’s say you had 20 points and the team after you had 19 last week. If that team got a quality win worth 3 and you got a mediocre win worth 1, you fall below that team. I don’t care how good you looked beating a winless team or an FCS team or whatever, you’re not entitled to keep your spot. I’m also allowed to change my mind about how good an opponent earlier in the year was. I know these are things most pollsters don’t do; but if I thought most did a good job, I wouldn’t have started doing my own top 25 28 years ago. However, since this was slightly rushed, there probably were a couple of cases where I just left teams about where they were by default and wouldn’t have with closer analysis.

Also, if you lose a game I fully expected you to lose to a higher-ranked team, I’m not inclined to lower you too much. An exception to that is if it’s a 2-loss team. A team that has two losses right now could end up being one of the best teams, but it’s going to take a while to recover a rating, so I don’t put teams like that in the top 25 right now.

Alabama looked a little more like what we expect from a Nick Saban Tide team against Ole Miss in Tuscaloosa on Saturday. Above, Rebel QB Jaxson Dart was pressured into a bad throw by DL Justin Eboigbe. Ole Miss was held to 10 points or fewer for only the second time since 2018 (the other being against Baylor in the Sugar Bowl two seasons ago).

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

Out of Top 25: (18) Clemson, (22) Central Fla., (25) Colorado

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.

Preseason/Week 0 Top 25 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Pre-Bowl Ratings and Reaction to Major Bowl Selections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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