Reaction to CFP and LSU’s Bowl Selection

My top 4 agrees with the committee’s, and I would even have the same matchups. I would have had Washington and Texas in the Rose Bowl though, which makes more sense geographically; and I wouldn’t have made the Longhorns (who are supposedly the worse seed) close being at home.

My top 4 is based on the best teams.  I’m not saying that I don’t think a team like Florida St., which went undefeated and even played two programs with multiple championships in the last 20 years out of conference, should be included in the top 4; but I think Alabama and Texas both have strengths of schedule that cancel out the additional loss and then some.

Florida St.’s Exclusion

The committee’s instructions do not include something that says, “an undefeated conference champion should be given priority over a conference champion who is not undefeated.” 

I would be OK with adding such a stipulation, especially if it also added language that said an exception could be made if the non-conference schedule is particularly weak, which would certainly not be the case here. 

My point is the committee did its job.  If I were a one-man committee with the same instructions, I would have put aside my preference for including Florida St. and given the same list of best 4 teams.

There is also language that the committee can consider injuries to major players.  I don’t consider anything like that in my formula, and I can’t think of any consistent way you could apply that to any formula.  There are no strict standards for injury reporting in college football like there is in the NFL.  Even if there were, it would be difficult to enforce that and provide consistent oversight for injury reports of all 133 teams and then add those reports to a formula.  I don’t like the idea of using that as an argument because every team has a mix of players who are hurt or otherwise unavailable from game to game that can affect any outcome.  Others are playing hurt or playing with some other type of stress or distraction.

In the only touchdown drive of the game by either team, Lawrance Toafili (#9) rushed for 75 yards in two plays. Florida St. won the ACC championship, 16-6, over Louisville in Charlotte last night. It was the Seminoles’ first conference championship (and first 13-0 start) since Jimbo Fisher and Jameis Winston led the team in 2014.

What I do think is fair, and what I think the committee did, is to look at how they played at the end of the year.  They did not look like a top-4 team against Florida or Louisville.  I don’t think they looked like a top-20 team in either game.  I have Louisville in the top 20; but if I considered the trajectory of their season, I wouldn’t have them anywhere close.  I have Kentucky #47 right now, and the Wildcats won at Louisville 8 days ago.

I don’t include that in my formula, but I’ve never had a problem with the basketball or baseball committee’s giving more weight to recent results, and I don’t fault the football committee for doing so.  If there were no SEC championship and Alabama beat Georgia earlier in the year, I wouldn’t want them to be given less credit for that, but obviously the committee isn’t being unfair about when you any played a given game.  If anything, I think they’re being charitable to Texas for not considering how long ago the Alabama game was (or any game against a top-20 opponent was) in ranking Texas #3.  But the point is that’s why I don’t include it in my formula.  It could yield unfair results that way, but a person can avoid such outcomes.

So I have Florida St. fifth without considering margin of victory, how the Seminoles looked in those games, or the Jordan Travis injury.  I also didn’t consider how Florida and Louisville were playing, just their respective seasons as a whole.  So I think there are more than enough factors not to consider Florida St. to be a top-4 team.  It’s not just one thing.  But as I said, I’m very sympathetic if you ask me who should get to play for the championship instead of who the four best teams are.

Some people are coping by saying, “at least it’s an expanded playoff next year”; but that doesn’t give me any consolation personally.  None of the major-conference championship games would have been for a spot in the top 12 this year.  I might not even watch next year if LSU isn’t in it.  There is a good chance the committee will already know exactly who the top 12 is by championship weekend, and the games will solely be for seeding.  I’ll have my opinions again, but it will lose a lot of the excitement.

Alabama vs. Texas

To go back to the Alabama-Texas discussion I began in previous blogs (especially the last rankings blog) and touched on a couple of paragraphs ago, I think too much attention is being paid to a head-to-head game in September and not enough attention is being paid to all the games since then.  I have Alabama #2 in strength of schedule vs. FBS teams and Texas 21^st.  Texas does get a little more credit for playing all FBS teams though.  If I ignore Chattanooga from Alabama’s schedule and drop Baylor from Texas’s schedule, Alabama still ends up stronger.  The average of the best 12 teams Alabama faced is about equal to that of #39 Iowa St.  The average of the best 12 teams Texas faced is about equal to that of #51 Northwestern.

So now I’m going to get to arguments from outside of looking at the computers.  Alabama has a better loss from longer ago.  The #1 wins by each team are roughly even (Alabama vs. Georgia), but I would give Alabama more credit for getting the win in December versus September.  Even if you still give Texas a point from there to make the two teams even, I don’t know how you argue LSU and Ole Miss aren’t better wins than Oklahoma St. and Kansas St. 

I think Texas would have to have a far superior list of the more middle-of-the-road wins to overcome that, and I don’t think they do.  Texas beat Wyoming, Iowa St., and Texas Tech.  Alabama beat Kentucky, Texas A&M, and Auburn.  Those are pretty similar lists of three.  Although it did fall a little short, I do think the Longhorns made a very good attempt at playing the necessary type of schedule to prepare them for an SEC season.  If you’re one of those people who says, “sorry, that win over Auburn was ugly and if they’re that close, I’m going with head to head,” that’s a reasonable point of view.  It’s just not how I see it.  I would have been perfectly happy to have joined you in laughing at Alabama if Texas and Florida St. had made it ahead of the Tide though.

Alabama WR Isaiah Bond (who may have pushed off first) catches the go-ahead touchdown pass on fourth and 31 in Auburn 8 days ago. The need for a miracle finish in this situation is one argument against Alabama’s inclusion in the top 4.

As I mentioned, what I don’t like is when someone says, “I don’t care what else they did, they each have a loss and Alabama’s is to Texas. End of story.”  That’s just wanting to rush to a conclusion and not consider the season as a whole.  Word keeps telling me not to use the phrase “season as a whole,” but I don’t know a better way to distinguish my more holistic approach from the approach of just cherry-picking a couple of factoids and stopping there.

Washington vs. Michigan

I don’t have strong feelings about Washington ahead of Michigan, but I’ll lay out the arguments.  I have Michigan about 99% as good as Washington, so there isn’t a huge separation.  I like that Washington had a much tougher game this weekend, but obviously Michigan had a much tougher rivalry-week opponent.  Maybe some of the narrow margins of victory (both Oregon games, Arizona, Arizona St., Utah, Oregon St., and Washington St. were all within one possession) hurt the Huskies.  Michigan had a robust list of top-three wins: Ohio St., Penn St., and Iowa.  I think Oregon would beat Ohio St. and Penn St. but it was just unfortunate for the Ducks that they had to play a top-2 team twice instead of Ohio St.’s once.  Iowa is a better third win than Washington’s third, which might be Arizona.  But then Michigan’s fourth- and fifth-best wins are UNLV and Bowling Green (they didn’t play Northwestern or Wisconsin, which are my two highest Big Ten teams after Iowa).  I strongly believe both would lose to both Oregon St. and Utah and probably USC as well.

LSU Bowl Selection Reaction

D’Cota Dixon celebrates the game-clinching interception of LSU QB Brandon Harris in 2016 in Green Bay, Wisc., as LSU was driving with just under a minute left in the game. This was one of the final nails in the coffin for LSU head coach Les Miles, who was fired three weeks later.

I’m sure I’ll go more into bowl match-ups later, but I’m disappointed that LSU will be playing Wisconsin.  I was hoping for either Notre Dame, which would give the Tigers a chance to get revenge for some foolishness in bowl losses over the last 10 years (as well as being the Brian Kelly bowl), or Iowa.  The contrast in styles for Iowa/LSU would have been worth getting up early for.  Wisconsin isn’t an offensive juggernaut – they haven’t scored more than 30 points in a game since September – but they’re not Iowa.  Wisconsin isn’t even in my top 50.  I think either LSU won’t get up for the game and it will be ugly regardless of the winner or we could get another blowout like last season.  Neither would be a very satisfying end to the year. It’s one of six bowl games between the SEC and the Big Ten.

Top 25 Later This Week

I have my top 25 ready.  Of course it’s mostly based on my ratings with a few adjustments, but I don’t want to overshadow it with all of the discussion of the top 4, so look for that later in the week.

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 1 Reaction and Top 25 2023

Since the last blog…

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

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

LSU-Florida St. Reaction and Historical Comparisons

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts on Brian Kelly

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

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

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

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

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

Other Results and Reactions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top 25

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

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

2021 Week 4 Top 25

rank team last
1 Alabama 1
2 Georgia 2
3 Oregon 5
4 Penn St. 4
5 Florida 7
6 Ohio St. 8
7 Cincinnati 6
8 Iowa 3
9 B. Young 9
10 Coastal Car. 13
11 Arkansas 17
12 Oklahoma 11
13 Notre Dame 15
14 Oklahoma St. 16
15 Texas 19
16 Ole Miss 20
17 Michigan 22
18 Michigan St. 23
19 Texas A&M 14
20 Baylor —
21 Fresno St. 21
22 Louisville —
23 C. Florida —
24 UCLA 25
25 San Diego St. —

Out of rankings: (10) Clemson, (12) Liberty, (18) Iowa St., (24) Wyoming

Sorry this is so late.  Normally I would push a blog back at this hour, but it had to be posted given that it’s now Saturday on the east coast.

I don’t usually drop a team as far as I did Clemson, but that’s the danger with leaving a 1-loss team in the top 25 at this time of the season.  Two losses is too high a percentage of the season to stay ranked, but at the same time losing to what looks like one of the best teams so far shouldn’t necessarily knock you out of the top 10.

Liberty also fell all the way out, but I don’t think I’ll get much push-back there.

I can’t get on board with some of the other ACC teams I’ve seen getting votes right now.  North Carolina looks bad.  North Carolina St. lost to Mississippi St.  In its only games of note, Wake Forest beat Virginia, who has another loss and it’s to North Carolina, and Florida St.  No need to elaborate about the ’Noles. 

Some lazy pollsters ranked Auburn, but the Tigers should at least go win in Baton Rouge if they want to show there is something special about this year’s team as compared to others from the Plains in recent years.  Maybe Penn St. was a moral victory in the eyes of some, but if there are undefeated teams with actual victories over opponents of some quality, I’ll take them instead.

Iowa struggled against an opponent Vanderbilt beat, so I had to knock them down a bit.  Plus Iowa St. lost again.  I did give Baylor credit for the win over the Cyclones, but again I don’t think it’s appropriate to rank a two-loss team at this point in the season.

Louisville LB Jaylin Alderman made his only snap of the game count when he returned an interception for a touchdown to break the tie in the final 30 seconds against Central Florida.

I’m giving some delayed credit to Louisville, who beat Central Florida two weeks ago.  I took the Knights out but didn’t put the Cardinals in.  Some other teams fell below Central Florida and Louisville last week more than either adding anything significant to their respective resumes.  Reminder that the Knights beat Boise St., who had a strong win over Utah St. last week.  The Broncos did suffer one other loss, but it was to Oklahoma St., so they may be ranked in the coming weeks if they continue to do well in the Mountain West.

Speaking of which, I decided to take Wyoming out (Ball St. isn’t as good as i thought they were previously; also, the Cowboys barely beat Connecticut) and replace them with another Mountain West team, San Diego St.  The Aztecs are 2-0 against the Pac-12, although Arizona barely counts.  Utah is a respectable win though, at least based on information available so far.

Week 3 Top 25 and Conference Report

Week 3 Conference Report

The only decent interconference records are held by the Big XII (23-4 including 11 FCS wins), Big Ten (23-7, including 6 FCS wins), and SEC (30-6, including 8 FCS wins).  You can only tell a limited amount from the games between those conferences, but I think Arkansas’ win over Texas is significant.  Arkansas is usually one of the worst teams in the West, and Texas is usually one of the best teams in the Big XII.  To my shame as an LSU fan, I think the Tigers have the SEC’s worst loss, but the good thing is the Pac-12 barely has a winning overall record, so they’re not close to being considered.  UCLA is an improving program, but they shouldn’t beat a team with LSU’s recent success in the SEC.

It is bad that Vanderbilt lost to East Tennessee St., but it’s not that unexpected for the worst of any conference to lose to an FCS opponent.  This year, FCS teams have won 10% of the time against FBS opponents.  Also, the Commodores redeemed themselves somewhat against Colorado St.  On the other hand, the Big Ten and Big XII have not suffered such losses yet.

The best win by the Big XII was West Virginia over Virginia Tech, but the Mountaineers also suffered a loss to Maryland.  I don’t really fault the Big XII for the other two losses: Iowa St. usually loses to Iowa, which looks to be a very good team this year; and Kansas staying with Coastal Carolina as long as the Jayhawks did was a positive in my view.

WVU RB Leddie Brown runs for a touchdown on Saturday in Morgantown. He rushed for 161 yards on the day.

The Big Ten has the most losses in this group, although most are excusable.  Nebraska did well to keep Oklahoma close.  Illinois (losses to Virginia and Texas-San Antonio) is just having a bad year.  Northwestern has had recent success though, so their loss to Duke isn’t as well-taken.  I also didn’t expect Indiana to beat Cincinnati.  I do fault Ohio St. a bit for losing to Oregon.

So, for the Big Ten, I just think there is too much blame to go around.  There also isn’t a really great win.  Michigan St. had a good win against U. Miami, but I think the Hurricanes were just overrated.  Penn St. was a good win over Auburn, but Auburn has a new head coach after losing at least 4 games every season since the national-championship loss to Florida St. in the 2013 season.  Auburn is just not what they used to be.  I know Penn St. did poorly in last year’s abbreviated season, but after going 11-2 and winning the Cotton Bowl in the last full season, I still think they’re a program more on the right track.  It just wasn’t a huge deal that they beat Auburn at home.

The SEC’s other losses weren’t anything to write home about.  Pittsburgh was somewhat of an upset against Tennessee, but the Vols are usually in the bottom half of the SEC if not the bottom quarter.  Mississippi St. has an accomplished head coach with an entertaining personality and therefore some potential, but we haven’t seen much from the Bulldogs since Dan Mullen left after the 2017 season.  I’d frown upon losing to most American Conference opponents, but Memphis is a much better program than most in that conference. 

I’m giving to the edge to the SEC at this point based on Georgia’s win over Clemson.  Neither the Big Ten nor the Big XII has that giant-killer sort of game on its resume.  Georgia is one of the top 5 to 10 programs right now, don’t get me wrong; but Clemson is one of the top 2 programs right now.  West Virginia beating Virginia Tech (who was only ranked because they beat a likely overrated UNC team) is no comparison.

Since this is a combined blog when originally I meant it to be two separate blogs, I’m just going to give a list of the other conferences with their records and my ranking.

The American Conference (AAC) might raise some eyebrows based on record alone, but trust me that they have better wins and a stronger schedule as a whole.  I mentioned a couple of them above: Memphis over Mississippi St. and Cincinnati over Indiana.

4. ACC (22-12, including 10 wins over FCS)
5. Pac-12 (16-15, including 7 wins over FCS)
6. MWC (20-13, including 8 wins over FCS)
7. AAC (17-18, including 8 wins over FCS)
8. Sun Belt (17-10, including 8 wins over FCS)
9. Independents (13-6, including 2 wins over FCS)
10. CUSA (16-17, including 12 wins over FCS)
11. MAC (13-22, including 10 wins over FCS)

As for the rankings, the first thing I wanted to note was that I left USC in last week’s rankings by accident.  I should have ranked Central Florida #24, although last week’s performance has taken the Golden Knights back out of the rankings.  I also should have taken UL-Lafayette, which lost to Texas in Week 1, out and left Texas in at #25.

So this should have been the final three teams and the “out of rankings” list last week:

23 Ball St. 23
24 C. Florida —
25 Texas 15
Out of rankngs: (20) UL-Lafayette, (21) S. California, (24) Buffalo

Week 3 Top 25

Moving on to this week, I decided to move Oregon up another chunk of spots.  I know at the end of the season “win chains” (Team A beat Team B who beat Team C and so on) get ridiculous, but it’s one of the few things to go on as we transition from a general sense of a team in preseason to a situation where we can exclusively rely on observations from this season alone.  We also don’t have enough games played where we can disregard a win chain where maybe a 3-win team upset an 8-win team. 

Anyway, the Ducks beat Fresno St. in Week 1.  The closeness of that game was actually part of the reason I didn’t rank the Ducks after Week 1, but now that the Bulldogs beat UCLA, who beat LSU by a couple of possessions, the Ducks have two good wins.  This increase in rank doesn’t have anything to do with Oregon’s win over Stony Brook last week.

Oregon RB CJ Verdell outruns the Buckeye secondary for a 77-yard touchdown in Week 1 in Columbus. This is still a very significant game for both parts of this blog.

Also, Ohio St. (the other meaningful victim of the Ducks) has improved in status in my view.  The Buckeyes are the only team to beat Minnesota, who just beat Colorado by 30.  The Buffs played a close game against Texas A&M the week before.  Anyway, this not only bolstered my decision to move up Oregon, it also led me to move Ohio St. up and Texas A&M down.  I also moved Oklahoma down after another close game against a seemingly mediocre opponent.

Although I didn’t want to punish Liberty or Coastal Carolina for any particular reason, I don’t mind them being the victims of the Buckeyes’ and Ducks’ improvements given Coastal’s close game against Buffalo and Liberty’s close game (in week 2) against Troy.  Those were both road games against respectable Group of 5 programs though.  I also didn’t want to move Oklahoma down that far, so someone had to get the short end of the stick.

Partly because Georgia Tech lost to Northern Illinois, I also moved Clemson down considerably for its struggles against the Ramblin’ Wreck.  In the Tigers’ defense, they did score nearly twice as many points as did the Yellow Jackets; but when that margin is one possession, that’s still a cause for concern.  I don’t see this as a contradiction to giving Georgia credit for beating Clemson, but this is another instance of the natural process of changing the focus to this season.  Clemson needs good wins to compensate for the loss now, and that wasn’t one.  They can’t just point to success over past seasons.

Also, Georgia and Clemson seem to be moving in opposite directions.  I’m encouraged by the Bulldogs’ 96 points in the last two games.  UAB isn’t great, but the Blazers have won 8 of 12 including last season.  Asking Georgia to score any more points than they did would have been wrong, and UAB was held off the scoreboard until the fourth quarter.  South Carolina was not a good team last year, but don’t forget that the last time the Gamecocks went to Athens they won.  So a solid 27-point win was also about as much as you could ask of the Bulldogs.  No need to give South Carolina bulletin-board material for next year.

Again, I hope you’ll forgive my lack of elaboration for the other new and moved teams since I’m trying to keep the size of this combined blog under control.  Apart from Wyoming, all of the new teams are also being recognized by the major pollsters. 

Wyoming beat both Northern Illinois and Ball St.  I mentioned that Northern Illinois beat Georgia Tech, whom Clemson barely beat.  I ranked Ball St. in the preseason, and the Cowboys beat the Cardinals by a larger margin than Penn St. did.  For all I know, Ball St. may not win another game; but I don’t think they changed much between playing Penn St. and playing Wyoming at the very least.  Northern Illinois’s other loss is to Michigan, which I’m also giving credit for starting the season well.  It’s only consistent to also include Wyoming at this point.  I did rank the Cowboys a couple of spots below the Wolverines, but they had a much closer game against the Huskies than Michigan did.  I know they don’t attract the attention of many voters (although someone in the AP put them 25^th); but if Wyoming were named Notre Dame with the same resume they do now, they’d probably be in the top 10.  I definitely don’t think they’ve done anything as bad as losing to Fresno St.  They haven’t beaten LSU either, but we don’t really know what that means yet.  Doubt should be resolved in favor of the undefeated team, at least in September.

Wyoming QB Sean Chambers led the offense to over 200 passing yards Saturday in Laramie. He also added 21 net yards on the ground.

rank team last
1 Alabama 1
2 Georgia 2
3 Iowa 3
4 Penn St. 4
5 Oregon 13
6 Cincinnati 6
7 Florida 8
8 Ohio St. 14
9 B. Young 11
10 Clemson 5
11 Oklahoma 7
12 Liberty 9
13 Coastal Car. 10
14 Texas A&M 12
15 Notre Dame 15
16 Oklahoma St. 16
17 Arkansas 21
18 Iowa St. 22
19 Texas 25
20 Ole Miss —
21 Fresno St. —
22 Michigan —
23 Michigan St. —
24 Wyoming —
25 UCLA 19

Out of rankings: (17) U. Miami, (18) Indiana, (20) Virginia Tech, (23) Ball St., (24) Central Florida

Last Week

Week 1 Games and the SEC

As you might expect, I have a few things to say about the SEC’s performance in the opening weekend.  It wasn’t nearly as bad as ESPN’s David Hale and others made it out to be though.  I’m surprised he didn’t attack LSU for only winning the second half 13-0 like he attacked Georgia for only winning the second half 9-0 after a 21-6 halftime lead.  He basically ends with “So what if the SEC might have six really good teams, Wyoming could be third in the SEC East!”  Nothing in the results suggested Wyoming would beat Kentucky or Vanderbilt (Georgia and Florida are considered the top 2), but I’ll elaborate more below.

I’ll start with the positives.  Alabama, Georgia, and LSU didn’t do anything to complain about, although I suppose Bama could have started a little faster.  LSU had to punt only once in the first half and only allowed one meaningful drive to take a 42-3 lead into halftime, so I can’t complain about that one.  Florida, my fourth SEC team, looked mediocre against Miami, but I didn’t hold it against them for my Preseason/Week 0 rankings.

LSU QB Joe Burrow threw 5 touchdown passes (and led the Tigers on a 6th touchdown drive) before being benched early in the second half to give backup Myles Brennan playing time.

Auburn, a surprise top-10 pick of mine, looked terrible for much of the game, especially on offense.  I still think Gus Malzahn needs help calling plays – he had stopped for good reason – but they showed a lot of toughness in the fourth quarter.  LSU often plays Auburn in early games, and it’s been a consistent problem over the years. 

I know Oregon was supposedly #11, but they haven’t had double-digit wins since 2014 and have only won 18 games in the last three seasons.  I don’t care how many returning starters they have, they didn’t deserve #11 in my view.  I do give Auburn credit for the win, especially QB Bo Nix for hanging in there and playing like a veteran at the end, but it wasn’t spectacular.  They also need better coaching in my opinion.

I was nonetheless content with 5 wins, 4 of them over Power 5 opponents, by the SEC top 5.  There are 5 other SEC teams that I would rather not be associated with right now though.

Last season Arkansas went from a team that could hang in there against a tough schedule (despite winning only 11 games combined in Bret Bielema’s last two seasons) to a bad team by major-conference standards.  The Razorbacks showed few signs of recovery in a close win over Portland St. (although the defense wasn’t terrible), but I’m afraid Tennessee may be joining the Hogs among the ranks of bad teams.  Despite having more returning starters and winning more than twice as many games as Georgia St. did last season, somehow the Vols lost to the Panthers at home.  I guess the Vols are still pretty much a lock against Chattanooga, but I wouldn’t be confident in them beating BYU, UAB, or ANY SEC team.  They probably will win at least a couple of games, so I don’t want to be too dramatic, but this looks really bad.

I’m very disappointed in South Carolina for losing to North Carolina.  The Gamecocks beat the Tar Heels in 2015 despite only finishing with a 3-9 record that year.   The Heels went on to have a perfect regular-season ACC record.  South Carolina has to be significantly better than that team (they were my last pick in the preseason top 25), and I imagine North Carolina is much worse than that team. Maybe this series will be a reverse bellwether.

I saw some people suggest ranking Missouri, and I considered it before thinking about how hard it might be to replace Drew Lock and rebuild the offense (it didn’t occur to me that the defense would be that much worse).  I had the Tigers 35^th last year, so I wasn’t confident they would even be that good, not to mention 10 spots higher.  I still didn’t think they would lose to Wyoming, who finished 86^th in my ratings and had two fewer returning starters.  Allowing 27 points in a quarter to them is just embarrassing even though it was a close final score.

These guys look really rebellious.

Least distressing of the four SEC out-of-conference losses was by the team whose mascot used to be a Rebel before it became a bear and then a shark.  I was hoping Ole Miss would beat Memphis, but I knew the odds were against it.  The Rebels (I think I’m still allowed to call them that) had a 10-win team who lost there, coincidentally also in 2015.  Memphis has given Central Florida problems in the last couple of seasons while Ole Miss hasn’t beaten anyone since October 13 (when they barely beat Arkansas), so it made sense that Memphis was favored.  At least the Tigers didn’t beat the spread.

By the way, I wish former Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze a speedy recovery (from his back surgery and staph infection) and good fortune in trying to build a FBS program at Liberty.  Personal indiscretions (and possible recruiting violations) aside, I respected his ability and his teams when he coached in the SEC.  It’s good to see him as a head coach again, albeit in a hospital bed.

It’s hard to see, but the reclined man in the red hat is new Liberty head coach Hugh Freeze.

Despite what some SEC detractors say, there was nothing wrong with Mississippi St. or Kentucky.  UL-Lafayette (I refuse to call a regional university “Louisiana” when there is another “Louisiana” that still goes by UL-Monroe) ended up only losing by 10, but they were down by 21 going into the final 10 minutes.  At no point in the fourth quarter did the Ragin’ Cajuns have even a 3% chance of victory.  Also, ULL was a bowl team last year; they weren’t Georgia St..

Kentucky, which had by far the fewest returning starters in the SEC, struggled a bit in a 14-14 first half against Toledo, but the Rockets only scored 3 points in the 28 minutes and 58 seconds after halftime.  Meanwhile, the Wildcats scored 24 points in that span.  It annoys me that people suggest ULL’s touchdown with 2:45 left and Toledo’s touchdown with 1:02 left meant the outcomes were in doubt late in the game. 

Vanderbilt lost to a good team in Georgia, so no complaints about them.  And no, David Hale, losing to Georgia by 24 isn’t proof that Wyoming would beat them.  I don’t know how Georgia made Vanderbilt look bad at the same time Vanderbilt made Georgia look bad, but that’s typical SEC-hater logic.

Outside the SEC

First I wanted to mention Army, the final team that I decided NOT to rank.  I’m glad I didn’t rank them, because they didn’t score the final go-ahead touchdown against Rice until less than four minutes remained in the game.  The Black Knights only scored a total of 14 points against a team that suffered an 11-game losing streak last season. 

(This paragraph is a bit of a digression, but I found it interesting.)  Last year by contrast, LSU took less than 22 minutes to score 28 points against Rice.  The LSU offense looked great in the first game this season, but it wasn’t great late last year.  Don’t bring up Texas A&M: it was only 31 all at the end of regulation, and the Aggies were not playing good defense.  For instance, they gave up 28 to Mississippi St. a few weeks before.  Against LSU, Florida, Kentucky, and Alabama COMBINED the Bulldogs scored only 16 points.

So maybe in hindsight I’ll regret ranking Florida St. and South Carolina (also, Iowa St. took 3 overtimes to beat FCS Northern Iowa), but at least I correctly recognized that Army and Missouri weren’t bringing top-25 teams into this season. I’m also glad I decided not to rank Virginia Tech, a loser to Boston College.

In my defense, I’ll also note that Florida St. showed the kind of team I imagine being #22.  When they play a team that’s at least competing for a ranking, they might do something like score 31 points in 26 minutes while only giving up 13.  At another point in the season against a team just as good, they might not score at all in 34 minutes while giving up 23 points.  The Noles just happened to do both things in the same game.  I’m holding out hope they’ll figure out how to keep the offense going in future games against decent teams. 

Maybe I should have given Boise St. the benefit of the doubt in preseason.  I just thought they would struggle against a “big boy” opponent like they did last season against Oklahoma St.

Hugh Freeze isn’t the only recently-successful SEC coach who made his debut yesterday.  There was a guy known as the Mad Hatter on the sidelines in Lawrence, Kansas, facing Indiana St.  It looked like a reasonably good start as the Jayhawks at one point led 16-3, although the offense could have been better. 

It should have been a larger lead. After four consecutive first downs in the second quarter while running a hurry-up offense, Kansas had a first and 10 at the 16.  RB Khalil Hebert fumbled for a loss of 4 yards. KU recovered, but they went right back to struggling and had to settle for a field goal..  The Jayhawks didn’t score an offensive touchdown until 8:40 remained in the third quarter.  Then they missed the extra point. 

It didn’t look like a problem at first as the Sycamores went three and out, but then a Jayhawk turnover on the next offensive drive led to a touchdown on the subsequent Indiana St. drive.  After an exchange of punts, Kansas got the ball back deep in its own territory.  Facing a third down and a possible safety, QB Carter Stanley began to try to throw the ball rather than taking a sack.  Before he could get it off, it was knocked out, leading to an Indiana St. touchdown and one-point lead.  Stanley was able to shake it off and led the Jayhawks down the field.  The drive stalled at the Sycamore 33, but Stanley threw for 11 yards on 3^rd and 6 to WR Andrew Parchment to keep the drive alive.  On the next play he threw a 22-yard touchdown pass to WR Daylon Charlot with 2:20 left. 

Then came the only high-quality Mad Hatter play (if you don’t count I-formation after I-formation).  On the two-point try, Kansas engineered some kind of end-around reverse with a TE wheel route.  Parchment almost fell down evading the rush, but TE Jack Luavasa was wide open in the end zone, so Parchment didn’t have to have his feet set very well.  The conversion wasn’t necessary in hindsight anyway since Indiana St. couldn’t get another first down, but it was entertaining.

Kansas head coach Les Miles meets and greets supporters after winning his first game with the Jayhawks.

It remains to be seen if Kansas can struggle like that on offense (the touchdown I didn’t mention was a pick-six) and win a Big XII game though.  Maybe the Kansas QB Stanley will play more like he did at the end of the game going forward.  To go almost back to the beginning of this blog, I could see some parallels with Auburn.  Auburn is much better than Kansas (and Oregon is much better than Indiana St.) – don’t get me wrong – but both offenses were painfully bad until well into the second half; on the other hand, both quarterbacks (despite having good reason to doubt themselves) were able to hang in there for comeback wins late in the fourth quarter.

Week 11 Top 25 and Comments

LSU-Alabama

Not too much to say about LSU, at least not compared to before the game. I was very surprised with the lack of a passing game because of how that had appeared to develop in previous weeks.

Had it existed, it would have opened up the run; but to be honest, Leonard Fournette wasn’t making the best decisions anyway. It never seemed to sink in for him that the only holes that were going to open against Alabama were going to be small and very temporary.

Danny Etling made a number of decent (although imperfect) throws that just weren’t caught, so there was never any reason to provide much better than man-to-man coverage.

It’s a credit to the LSU defense it wasn’t 42-0 instead of 10-0. There were a couple of plays where the defense had the ball carrier or receiver in a good spot and just didn’t make the play, but that’s not worth griping about. They played well enough to allow a minimally competent offense to win. I think Dave Aranda won more strategic battles than Lane Kiffin did. That was the “chess match” everyone wanted to key in on before the game.

Alabama QB Jalen Hurts attempts to avoid a sack.

The LSU offense barely won any battles. They had one first down in the second half and six for the game. In recent games, the LSU offense was able to wear down the defense; but in this game the LSU offense seemed to get more discouraged and inept with every play. Maybe Steve Ensminger isn’t the play-caller we need after all (I wonder why Guice only got two carries, I wonder why Fournette wasn’t used as a decoy at all), but for the most-part I don’t care who calls the plays with that lack of execution.

Alabama has once again defeated LSU more than twice as many times as LSU has defeated Alabama. For more, see the series blog.

Future LSU Games

Enough about that. Arkansas lost 56-3 a couple of weeks ago, and yesterday they beat Florida by 21. If they can turn it around after that game, LSU can after this game… never mind that the next game is against Arkansas. If the LSU players like Coach O and want to keep him, they need to win. I don’t know if they need to win all three remaining regular-season games; but they can only win one at a time, and it’s definitely time to get the Golden Boot back.

No meaningful chance of any kind of conference honors now, but I think we could get a decent bowl game going 6-1 to end the season. It would be the same record as last year, but we lost 3 games late last year.

Rankings Commentary

Other than some other SEC play, I didn’t see too many of the other games. Most of the ones I recorded were blowouts, but I’ll talk about the impacts of the various games on my rankings.

Arkansas over Florida was a big win for the SEC West. Mississippi St.’s win over Texas A&M also helped some teams like LSU, which stayed in the top 40. Arkansas especially is also part of the reason Auburn went up several spots. It’s also helpful to Auburn that Clemson continues to do well.

As I anticipated, Western Michigan and Boise St. are still gradually sliding downward despite winning.

North Carolina might be surprising until you look at what their opponents did this week. Georgia, Florida St., and even Illinois won. Florida St. played a future UNC opponent rather than a previous one, but the wins by the non-conference opponents are really significant because they don’t involve a loss by another conference team.

The win by Illinois also kept Western Michigan from falling even farther.

Tennessee also fell despite a win (over Tennessee Tech), mostly because Texas A&M lost.

West Virginia also fell. Missouri and Texas Tech lost, while Kansas barely counts for any points. On the other hand, Oklahoma St., the team that beat West Virginia, got a quality win over Kansas St. to move into the top 25.

Appalachian St. improves in part because Miami won. The Hurricanes are one of the Mountaineers’ two losses (the other was Tennessee).

Wyoming improved party because of Air Force’s non-conference win over Army and Northern Illinois’s second consecutive victory after starting 1-6.

Of course in all these cases, it helps if there is a group of teams close together (for instance, #16 is closer to #32 than #4 is to #5) and other nearby teams lost, didn’t play, or for some other reason had worse weeks.

My conference standings didn’t really change much, but the SEC is still considered ahead for having more teams in the top 40. As I mentioned, LSU barely hung on to the top 40. Arkansas rejoined the top 40 although they did so by knocking Florida out of the top 25. Georgia knocked Kentucky out of the top 40, but it was not enough for the Bulldogs to join the top 40.

There are several SEC teams that have potential to move up though. Arkansas and Florida would likely make it into the top 25 with wins. LSU could make it in depending on other games, but 15 spots is a lot to move in one week. The SEC also has 6 teams between #43 and #62. So the only SEC team below #62 is Missouri, which fell to #107.

Not surprisingly based on this information, when you look at all the teams top to bottom, the SEC comes out first as well.

Top 25

rank/team/prev
1 Alabama 1
2 Clemson 2
3 Michigan 3
4 Ohio St. 4
5 Penn St. 7
6 Auburn 13
7 Washington 8
8 W. Michigan 6
9 Texas A&M 5
10 Louisville 10
11 Boise St. 9
12 Wisconsin 12
13 N. Carolina 22
14 Tennessee 11
15 Virginia Tech 16
16 Wash. St. 17
17 Florida St. —
18 Oklahoma 19
19 Colorado 25
20 Nebraska 14
21 Houston 15
22 App. St. 23
23 Wyoming —
24 West Virginia 21
25 Okie St. —

All 128 teams

Out of rankings: (18) Florida, (20) South Florida, (24) Utah

Week 10 Top 25 and Comments

Housekeeping

I haven’t been been doing my weekend blog with everything going on with the election. I don’t want to say anything about my political leanings here, although I would mention that since 1984 the LSU/Alabama game has corresponded with the party that won the presidential election. When a Republican won, LSU beat Alabama; and when a Democrat won, Alabama beat LSU. For more on the series see here and this is a list of other related blogs.

LSU-Alabama Rivalry since 2000.

Anyway, my weekly schedule may change slightly if I have a reaction to the first College Football Playoff rankings, which will be released on Tuesday afternoon. If I post on Tuesday, I most likely will not post on Wednesday. One reason I’m posting today is so the blogs can be more spread-out.

Contrast with Other Rankings

I usually ignore the polls, but I think there are some important things to address with the losses that took place over the weekend.

Apparently, because some teams lost, Nebraska essentially gets a mulligan. The best team the Huskers have beaten is Wyoming, but they stay in the top 10 despite a loss. I can’t even take that seriously. LSU lost to Wisconsin by 2 points and fell 16 spots, but now losing a close game to Wisconsin is like losing to Alabama I guess despite the Badgers’ two losses.

Other than now-#22 (my #30) Oklahoma St., Baylor has beaten NO ONE and now has a loss to a Texas team that didn’t even get a single top 25 vote THIS WEEK. But the Bears stay 13th.

I understand Western Michigan being a lot lower than I have them because for me they’ll keep going down while for the polls (assuming wins) they’ll keep going up despite not having any tough opponents coming up, whereas the only way a team like Baylor, West Virginia, or Nebraska fails to get quality wins in the coming weeks is if they lose again and fall below Western Michigan anyway. Nebraska might have to lose twice though.

I’m hoping the college football rankings exercise some greater degree of sense, but I suspect they’ll give the three Power-5 teams I just mentioned the benefit of the doubt more than they deserve.

Discussion of My Rankings

I didn’t have the time and energy to look it up for my last rankings blog, but I wanted to mention that last week is the first time Colorado has been ranked in my top 25 since September 30, 2007. The Buffs finished that season 6-7 after losing to Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide in the Independence Bowl.

Colorado QB Cody Hawkins throws a pass in the upset of Oklahoma in September 2007.

Due to the large number of losses, Colorado just barely remains in the top 25 this week despite the bye.

As I anticipated, Alabama remained #1 despite the Clemson win (while the Tide was idle). It also helped Bama that USC and Kent St. won.

Clemson had another close call, but being that the game was on the road, this does nothing to diminish how many points they get. I only lower the reward or penalty if the home team wins a close game (defined as overtime or within 3 points) since home field accords an advantage or about 3 points. The Tigers were just too far behind to surpass the Tide in one week.

Ohio St. won of course, but it also helped that Wisconsin (the Buckeyes’ best win) won. Texas A&M’s best win had been Tennessee, which lost. The Aggies also didn’t gain very much by beating New Mexico St.

Western Michigan fell two spots during the bye week, but this fall will probably continue as the Broncos will play the lower-rated MAC teams in the coming weeks.

Tennessee still has the best schedule, which is why they remain so high; and again, it also helps that so many other teams lost.

The Power-5 teams between 7 and 21 are well-positioned to move up into the top 5 or top 10 with quality wins. I don’t have some vendetta against the teams in that range, but some of them haven’t played the better teams in their respective conferences yet.

One example was Washington, who hadn’t really played anyone before this week. But they beat a good team this week, so they move up. Baylor lost to a mediocre team, so they remain un-ranked. The Bears still have chances for quality wins though.

Boise St. is another team that I expect will fall in the coming weeks since the Broncos do not play anyone better than #100 Hawaii until November 25.

Boise St. was upset by Wyoming, which as I mentioned played Nebraska earlier in the season. So this is one reason why the Huskers didn’t fall lower.

The conference standings tightened because Minnesota joined the top 40 while the number of SEC teams in the top 40 remained the same. Arkansas fell out as a result of its bye week, but Kentucky moved into the top 40.

South Carolina’s upset of Tennessee also hurt the SEC because it knocked the Vols out of the top 10 but did not add South Carolina to the top 40 (the Gamecocks are now #50). It may increase the number of bowl-eligible SEC teams when we get to that point though.

The ACC was hurt slightly by Clemson’s win over Florida St. since it knocked the Seminoles out of the top 25, while a loss may have put both in the top 10. Also, Wake Forest loss to Army, which took the Demon Deacons out of the top 40.

Top 25

rank/team/prev
1 Alabama 1
2 Clemson 2
3 Michigan 3
4 Ohio St. 8
5 Texas A&M 5
6 W. Michigan 4
7 Penn St. 10
8 Washington 17
9 Boise St. 6
10 Louisville 9
11 Tennessee 7
12 Wisconsin 18
13 Auburn 15
14 Nebraska 11
15 Houston 21
16 Virginia Tech —
17 Wash. St. 20
18 Florida 23
19 Oklahoma 19
20 South Florida —
21 West Virginia 13
22 N. Carolina 12
23 App. St. 25
24 Utah 14
25 Colorado 22

All 128 teams

Out of rankings: (16) Florida St., (24) Navy

Bring Back the Big West

Even though this could have been the promising first year of a reorganized respectable second-tier conference, the WAC as we used to know it seems pretty much dead. All the football members have left or are leaving apart from Idaho and New Mexico St.

As recently as 1995, the top three WAC teams of this year, Louisiana Tech, Utah St., and San Jose St., all competed in the Big West. Nevada, UNLV, and New Mexico St. were also in that conference, and Boise St. joined (along with Idaho) in 1996.

Which got me thinking… since there won’t be a WAC, why can’t there be a Big West in football again? I can’t think of a good reason. In football, the Big East is doing so much expanding from the area near the Mississippi River all the way to Boise and San Diego, so that can incorporate these teams while the rest of the conference can keep operating as it is already, with some possible quality expansion in other sports.

These were the teams in the WAC in 1995:
Air Force
BYU
Colorado St.
Fresno St.
Hawaii
New Mexico
San Diego St.
Utah
UTEP
Wyoming

Boise St. and San Diego St. are actually going to be in the Big West in other sports, and Hawaii is already there. I imagine Utah St. and San Jose St. (which appear to be headed to the Mountain West) could be brought back with just the foundation I’ve mentioned so far. BYU left the Mountain West to become independent in football (WCC in other sports, which makes less sense than the Big West would), but no currently AQ-conference has offered them a spot, and they’re naturals to be playing the likes of Boise St. and Utah St., both of which they’ve played this season.

The East-West alliance along the lines of the previously-discussed MWC-CUSA idea didn’t work out because of all the existing obligations (essentially schools could then leave without buyout fees and without paying the conference shares of post-season revenue), but all those problems aren’t here since administratively, it would still really be the Big East.

Louisiana Tech is a definite for the Conference USA, but that’s fine because they were too far to the East for the WAC anyway. The Big West football conference did extend into Arkansas and Louisiana briefly (inlcluding Louisiana Tech and UL-Lafayette, then known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana). There is a bit of a central region in the Big East as well that could provide the anticipated mega-conference some flexibility, so they’re not completely out of the question later.

The Big East has already announced plans to include Memphis, Tulane, SMU, and Houston. With the quality Western teams available, I would think Memphis and Tulane would be playing in the true Big East (by which I mean teams that would be in the Big East in other sports and in the Eastern division in football), but SMU and Houston would be good opponents for them as well. If only one of the four goes out West (in the even both Cincinnati and Connecticut find other conferences), then SMU and Houston could still be permanent opponents.

The only teams left from a couple of years ago (to make up the core of the true Big East) will be Connecticut, Cincinnati, and South Florida.

So this is what I’m thinking as a possible alignment…

Big East	Big West
Central Florida	Boise St.
Cincinnati	BYU
Connecticut	Hawaii
East Carolina	Houston
Memphis	Nevada
South Florida	San Diego St.
Temple	SMU
Tulane	UNLV
Future possibilities	Future possibilities
Army	Air Force
Louisiana Tech	San Jose St.
Navy*	Utah St.

*-Navy is already set to join in 2015.

Apart from Navy, the Western future possibilities are more likely in the event of more shuffling of the Eastern teams. The ACC or Big Ten could take teams from the East if they want to go to 16. If the SEC goes to 16, they would likely come from the ACC, which will probably want to replace those two. So if two teams are lost from the Eastern division, they could be replaced by SMU and Houston, whose spots in the Western division could be taken by San Jose St. and Utah St. I could also see SMU and Houston joining the Big XII to make it… wait for it, 12 teams. Then you could simply replace them with San Jose St. and Utah St. Air Force (who could of course be a permanent opponent of Navy) seems like another reasonable possibility

To balance out possible unfairness from permanent opponents, I would be in favor of only counting divisional play toward picking the contestants for the championship game, but this would not rule out one or two games against teams from the other side during the season. If Air Force and Navy were in different divisions, they would still need to play one another. I don’ t know if Army is a possibility, but just for instance, it might be that if all the Commander-in-Chief teams are in this conference, two permanent opponents would be needed. That can’t really be done if it counts as an equal conference game. Other programs may not prefer to play any inter-divisional games.

Also, if circumstances change (which seems to happen every couple of months), maybe there could be too much interest in the East and not enough in the West. Then, you could easily have Memphis and/or Tulane move to the West.

I guess we can expect the Mountain West to have a number of members suitable for a round-robin format, which is sort of why it was created around the turn of the 21st century. So in addition to the three programs mentioned as future possibilities for the Big West, the Mountain West membership includes Wyoming, Colorado St., Fresno St., and New Mexico. I started this off by mentioning Idaho and New Mexico St. They could fit right in if some of the defections take place. Another possibility would be UTEP, which is less than an hour away from New Mexico St. West Texas might be a place to make recruiting inroads. Of course, the Big East is already going to be in East Texas.

Idaho isn’t quite as great of a fit for either conference, but another possibility for Idaho is to go back to the Big Sky, which may also house future FBS programs, by the way.

Anyway, there are definitely suitable teams for an 8-10-team Mountain West as well as an 8-team Big West to be part of the football Big East.

The bowl policies are interesting here. The Fiesta Bowl currently is the Big XII champion’s default destination, but that is going to be the Sugar under the SEC-Big XII contract, so that will open up. Maybe the winner of the football Big East could play there, even if the winner were from the East. An Eastern team might be good enough for the Orange Bowl in some years, but nothing would rule out a Pac-12 or Big XII #2 team playing the MWC champions in the Fiesta Bowl if it worked out that way. I don’t think the MWC under what I’m envisioning would be a fixture in the major bowls, but there may be some years where that would be appropriate. The Cotton Bowl also seems to be taking on increasing importance, but one would think that would be a common location of the SEC-Big XII bowl in the years where the Sugar is a semifinal bowl. In other years, the football Big East might be a good fit as well, regardless of which division the winner comes from.

The Big East doesn’t have to be an unmitigated coast-to-coast disaster, but I’m afraid that is a possibility without the kind of clear direction I would like to see it have with the Western teams. Funny that just a could years ago, many (myself included) were thinking the solution might just be to make the MWC an AQ in lieu of the Big East or simply to remove the Big East from AQ status to make room for more MWC or WAC teams. Now I’m talking about a lot of the teams in question being in the same conference somehow.