Most of the following is adapted from a blog originally published on TSN on September 13, 2009. When details of a recent LSU season are not mentioned, this is because LSU played multiple Pac-10/current Pac-12 opponents in a season (1976, 1977, 1979, and 1984).

I’ll start with Washington since that’s the team LSU played last week, then I’ll go in alphabetical order for the Pac-10 teams, followed by the new Pac-12 teams. Washington was the seventh game against a Pac-10/Pac-12 team for LSU in the past 10 seasons (2003 to present). All of them were the first major-conference opponent of the respective seasons for LSU. The game last week was only the third between the Huskies and Tigers.

In the first meeting, LSU’s second home game in 1983, LSU broke a record for attendance at Tiger Stadium and beat the 9th-ranked Huskies, 40-14. LSU would only win 2 subsequent games on the season, finishing 4-7. That season, combined with a 1-3 end to the previous season, cost head coach Jerry Stovall his job. Washington finished 8-4.

Many of you probably remember the second meeting between the two, in 2009. LSU was ranked #11 going in, so many found the final score underwhelming in light of the Huskies’ 0-12 season the year before. Meanwhile, LSU had its most losses since 2002 in the prior year. The Tigers only won by 8, but it was only that close because Washington had scored as time expired. There was also a point earlier in the fourth quarter where the Huskies closed to within 8 with a field goal. Washington’s game-ending touchdown had been the first since its opening drive.

Washington would lose three subsequent games by even fewer points (one of those in OT) and would barely miss bowl-eligibility after a 5-7 campaign. LSU would finish 9-4 (only one game better than 2008) after losing to Penn St. in the CapitalOne Bowl.

Arizona

LSU is 3-0 against Arizona. The first game, in 1984 (see USC for more details on that season) was close, with LSU winning 27-26. Arizona would finish 7-4 but failed to make a bowl game. LSU blew out Arizona in both games in the last decade, with LSU winning 59-13 in Tucson in 2003 and 45-3 in Baton Rouge in 2006. The 2003 game was the first time LSU had played a Pac-10 team since 1984, when the Tigers played Arizona and USC in consecutive weeks. LSU would win the BCS national championship in 2003 and the Sugar Bowl in 2006 (finishing 11-2 after 7 straight victories to close out the year). Arizona finished 2-10 in 2003 and 6-6 in 2006.

Arizona St.

The only game against Arizona St. was in 2005. Some call it the Katrina Game. LSU’s original opening-game opponent that year was North Texas, whom the Tigers played on schedule this season after another hurricane passed through Louisiana almost 7 years to the day. In 2005, however, that game was canceled in anticipation ASU was supposed to have been the first game of a home and home in Baton Rouge, but with the LSU campus playing a large role in shelter and triage in the week after Katrina (the game was less than two weeks afterward), it was moved to Tempe, and Arizona St. donated the profits to hurricane relief, so it didn’t count toward the home and home, which was moved to 2015-16. 2015 is the next game LSU is scheduled to play against a Pac-12 opponent.

LSU (led by JaMarcus Russell and Joseph Addai) won an exciting back-and-forth game, 35-31, after Early Doucet scored the go-ahead touchdown on a 39-yard pass with 1:13 left in the game. Sam Keller of ASU threw 4 touchdowns in the loss. Arizona St. out-gained LSU 560-434, but the Tigers (in the first game with Les Miles at the helm) converted all three fourth-down-conversion attempts and blocked a field goal, returning it for a touchdown. 28 of the Tigers’ points were scored in the fourth quarter.

Full post

I thought I would give a few reactions and explain a couple of things this week now that we are starting to have just a little bit of context.

Obviously week 1 was half of the season so far, but now that prior opponents also have another game under their belts, there is more reason to reward and punish teams based on Week 1, so some of the rankings are partly a result of improved perspective.

I have moved a couple of teams as a result of close games, which I think is appropriate this early. Last week, I took out Wisconsin and Stanford. I definitely feel vindicated about Wisconsin. I don’t know about Stanford, but I guess we’ll see this week against USC.

Speaking of the Trojans, they didn’t look too good against the Orange of Syracuse, but I’m not seeing anything too troubling yet. Northwestern may well be a decent team, and they’re 2-0. They beat the Orange by a single point in Week 1, followed by defeating Vanderbilt by 10. Northwestern did better against Vandy than did South Carolina, although the Gamecocks played the Commodores in Nashville. Not that that’s the most intimidating place in the SEC (or even the Northern SEC East).

I moved South Carolina down a single spot, but I will keep an eye on both USC’s and also on Vandy, Syracuse, and Northwestern.

Going back to the top, now that LSU beat Washington just as easily as they did North Texas, I think that provides enough information to knock Oklahoma down a spot for the UTEP game (17-point win in Week 1). Even if UTEP and Washington are equal (a dubious proposition), I’m comfortable giving LSU the edge for #2 this week.

Kansas St. benefited for taking a chance scheduling and still beating the tar out of the team (the Miami Hurricanes). This is an instance of giving the benefit of the doubt to an impressive score against a historically strong program, although that won’t (and shouldn’t) carry any weight later. Last year, Miami finished 6-6, beating Ohio St. and just barely losing to Kansas St. Also, the ’Canes appeared to improve in Week 1 by beating Boston College, to whom they’d lost in their prior game back in November. Nos. 8-12 certainly hadn’t done anything to justify continuing to rank them ahead of K-State.

Why did I put Mississippi St. roughly where Kansas St. used to be? Well, they played Auburn and beat them more easily than Clemson had. Rather than baselessly concluding Auburn is bad, I thought the solution was to move Mississippi St. up. They both get credit for having played what appeared to be a decent team going in but not so much that the move ahead of the teams I liked enough going in to put them higher than Clemson. I didn’t want to knock Michigan St. down either, although I don’t think Boise St. will have a good season by their standards.

I don’t have to explain why Arkansas is no longer ranked. As for ULM, they were on their way to losing and got breaks with a couple of injuries. They took advantage and that’s nice, but would you really rather your team have to beat them or a team I did rank?

Why did I just take out Oklahoma St. and not rank Arizona. Simple. Arizona had to go to OT to beat Toledo in Week 1. Maybe Oklahoma St.’s losses, at least at this point, have made them not deserving of a spot instead of the game making Arizona deserving of one.

I don’t know if Nebraska going to the Rose Bowl and losing is so bad until we have more information about UCLA. Knocking them down 11 spots seems sufficient. USM was a decent team last year too, and Nebraska beat them by 29 in Week 1. Also, UCLA did a good job by dominating Rice on the road on the first Thursday of the season. I’m not saying Rice is good, but a more mediocre team could have struggled more in that situation. There was a bad stretch on defense in the Rice game (17 points given up in 8 minutes, with a turnover given up by the UCLA punt-receiving team), but I think that by itself isn’t cause for alarm enough not to rank the Bruins after the win in Week 2. UCLA is two games above .500 for the first time since Oct. 2009.

The new Nos. 17-23 got the two-spot bumps for Arkansas and Oklahoma St. getting out of the way. Notre Dame’s win over Purdue wasn’t impressive, but just like my policy with similar teams, I’m not going to conclude a close result is a negative just yet. I was tempted to move Florida up even more for going to A&M and winning, but since that was close too, I thought it was more fair not to. For all we know, Purdue may be better than A&M is.

Texas was between Clemson and Virginia Tech, and I just didn’t see a reason to change this.

Continue to full blog, including rankings list

I was spending some time with family, so I didn’t get to see much of the actual games, but here are my rankings anyway. I did get to see my first live game in 13 years. It wasn’t much of a game, but the L.A. Coliseum alone was worth the trip.

rank / team / prior

1 Alabama 1

2 Oklahoma 2

3 LSU 3

4 USC 4

5 Georgia 5

6 Oregon 7

7 S Carolina 6

8 Michigan 8

9 Arkansas 9

10 W Virginia 10

11 Florida St. 11

12 TCU 13

13 Kansas St. 14

Full post

I had a lot of thoughts about what the conferences should do moving forward, but there were a couple of LSU issues I wanted to cover first, this being the last non-game week.

Mettenberger seems to be dong extremely well. In the final scrimmage, he completed 26 passes on 36 attempts for 336 yards. There was an indeterminate number of TD passes, but I’m not sure how relevant that is anyway. According to the stats given, he didn’t fare nearly as well in the first two scrimmages, with only 15 completions each time.

Kenny Hilliard seems to be at or near the top of the RB depth chart, so I’m excited to see him this year.

There are a couple of linemen who are “a little nicked,” according to Les, but I’m still feeling fairly positive about the offense.

Defense is a little more up in the air. There is only one real returning starter in the secondary, and there has already been an injury. FS Eric Reid is the only returning starter from that unit. The defense as a whole returns 4, although Tharold Simon had a lot of impact in more limited playing time last year. There is a lot of talent, but talent alone doesn’t stop tackles from being broken/evaded and passes from being completed by the other team.

In recruiting news, LSU has two good incoming quarterbacks, Rivals’ #4 pro-style QB and another product of the state of Georgia (as was Mettenberger), Anthony Jennings, whom Rivals ranks as the #12 dual-threat QB. It will be interesting to see how much LSU goes for the dual-threat options in the future. LSU is now ranked #5 in overall recruiting class by Rivals.

Moving from the future to the distant past, I thought this was a nice tribute to a former LSU player turned NFL Hall of Famer: http://bleacherreport.com/tb/d8jlB?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=lsu-football

Onto the conferences, I know I like to talk about this topic a lot, but the regional rivalries and series histories are important to me.

First off, I’m hoping the ACC and SEC stay at 14. The only way I would support a 16-team conference would be if 7 or maybe 8 games counted toward the conference title. With 9 games, you could have one team with two extreme lightweights from the other division as well as an extra home game, and that team could end up ahead (either by a single game or due to a head-to-head tiebreaker) a team who had an extra road game and played two of the best teams in the other division. I can countenance 8 games because there may be a natural rival in the other division anyway, and it could be used to even out the home/away situation mentioned. One game is less likely to be determinative than two. Such an arrangement might work in the ACC if it continues to poach the Big East but I don’t think it would work well in the SEC.

Full post

Top 25:

rank / team / prior

1 Alabama 3

2 Oklahoma 11

3 LSU 1

4 USC 13

5 Georgia 20

6 S Carolina 7

7 Oregon 8

8 Michigan 6

9 Arkansas 9

10 W. Virginia 22

11 Florida St. –

12 Mich St. 17

13 TCU 12

14 Kansas St. 15

15 Nebraska 23

16 Clemson 21

17 Texas –

18 Okie St. 2

19 Va. Tech 16

20 Stanford 10

21 Ohio St. –

22 Florida –

23 Wisconsin 18

24 Notre Dame –

25 Cincinnati 25

Out of rankings: (4) Boise St., (5) Houston, (14) Baylor, (19) So. Miss., (24) Penn St.

Previews

1. Alabama – I don’t put the defending champions #1 as a general rule, but I couldn’t really see any strong arguments against. I’ll get to Oklahoma in a moment, but LSU, who was (rightly I think) #1 in some of the computers based on beating a more impressive list of teams last year, has some more obvious adjustments that need to be made. The Tide will have to travel to Baton Rouge, but this is a series where the road team has traditionally done better, so that’s not really instructive. The fact that a lot of the same players showed up for a championship game the way they did makes a difference.

2. Oklahoma – I don’t think we’re going to see two teams from the same conference playing for the national championship again, and I don’t think Oklahoma has what it takes to pull off winning such a game, but looking at last year’s talent combined with returning starters, and Oklahoma is a natural pick for #2. I considered the Sooners for #1, but I’ve done that a few times since their 2000 national championship team, and we have yet to see a team like that, with the possible exceptions of 2004 and 2008. Notice the 4-year increments? The Sooners return 8 starters on offense, 7 on defense, and both kickers. This was a team that looked like it had a good road to the national-championship game last year at one point, so the experience could make the difference.

3. LSU – I was already inclined not to make LSU #1 before the Honey Badger news came out. That’s going to hurt on a defense that nominally returns 4 starters, although with the depth, that’s misleading. We haven’t even gotten a meaningful preview of new QB Zach Mettenberger. At least we had gotten one of Matt Flynn before the 2007 season, and don’t forget that team lost two games, so I don’ t put this team in the same category as either last year or 2007, both years I ranked LSU in the top 2 to start out. That said, I am cautiously optimistic. It’s hard to rate your own team, but I think you can tell by my description of the other nearby teams why LSU is here.

4. USC – I continue to find it ridiculous how people acted like USC had won a conference championship and bowl game just because it was idle for both “playing weeks”. Since I use a measure that only gives you points if you play, the Trojans finished 13th in my rankings. It also didn’t help that they lost to Arizona St. I punish bad losses more than some other rankings do. Anyway, there was definitely some talent and it did gel more as the season went on, so I’m fine with including this team in the top 4. Even with a much lower starting point, that wouldn’t rule out success. In 2003, LSU was coming off of an (unranked) 8-5 season and won the BCS championship. Neither the (undefeated) 2004 nor the (BCS champion) 2010 Auburn teams were very highly-rated going in either. Auburn finished in the “others receiving votes” category in both prior years. I’m sure there were some others in the recent past who performed similarly.

5. Georgia – Three SEC teams finished in the top 5 last season, so I’m putting three in the top 5 right now. I didn’t say, “Where’s another SEC team,” but I’m skeptical of Oregon, #5 in both major polls, and I think we just got a bit of a preview of this year during the Dawgs’ 10-game winning streak last season. Whoever wins the West can expect the SEC Championship game to be very interesting. I have been a Murray believer for a while, we’ll see if he has the great year that he has the potential for this season.

Full post