Intro and more on ASU (2005)

I wanted to write blogs on two separate occasions, but my work week did not allow me that.

If you want to see my top 25, please click here.

I’m not one of those “homer” types who likes to dwell on how great my team is, but I am impressed with the fact that LSU hasn’t lost a regular-season non-conference game since opening the 2002 season with a road loss to Virginia Tech (then ranked #16). The streak of 40 wins in such games broke the mark completed by Kansas St. in 2003.

Although there are certainly more daunting non-conference schedules around, LSU has put forth a serious effort to have at least one non-conference opponent that at appears to be formidable on paper every year.

The other record is more of a “personal best” as LSU has won 20 consecutive home games since the 13-3 loss to Tim Tebow’s #1 Gators in 2009. This is the only time in its history that LSU has won so many consecutive home games.

I wanted to go through them and talk in detail about some of the close calls and big games (some of which were not so close) during the longer streak.

This piece at “Nola.com” covers several of them, but I’ll mention a few more...

Full post

My ratings didn’t join the SEC trifecta trend. By the way, I added another proposal to my SEC realignment blog. It wouldn’t help out the balance of power though. I also updated my LSU-Ole Miss Rivalry blog.

Alabama should surpass Oklahoma St. next week if they beat Auburn. But if the Tide is idle the following week and the Cowboys defeat the Sooners, Oklahoma St. would resume its #2 spot. Remember that late losses are penalized in the polls but not here. As to #3, Texas A&M isn’t as good as Penn St. is, so that’s one reason Arkansas is a bit behind Alabama. Also, of course, Arkansas’s loss to Alabama hurts it more than Alabama’s loss to LSU hurts the Tide. Alabama also gets credit for a high-quality win over Arkansas.

Another conceptual difference from the polls is you aren’t penalized by losing spots but by losing points. Oklahoma St. did lose about .12 for losing to Iowa St., but since there was a big gap and Alabama only played Georgia Southern, that wasn’t enough to move ahead. Oklahoma, who also might have had a chance to move ahead, lost. Next after Oklahoma was Oregon, who also lost. It’s not at all a typical result to lose to an un-ranked team and stay #2, but this wasn’t a typical weekend.

But there was a lot of movement after the top three because the next few teams were really close together, and they still are. It’s hard to predict whether beating LSU followed by beating Georgia would be enough for Arkansas to be #1 or #2, but it certainly seems possible, particularly if Alabama beats Auburn and Georgia beats Georgia Tech. There would also be some benefit with SEC wins over Wake Forest, Florida St., and Clemson. Arkansas did play Vandy (who will be the team to play Wake) and South Carolina (who will be the team to play Clemson).

Boise St. doesn’t have much to add to its total, although of course wins by Georgia would also help the Broncos. But Wyoming is not a great team and a win over New Mexico wouldn’t be much better than a bye week.

Houston can significantly improve its rating with wins at Tulsa and if they win that, likely Southern Miss in the CUSA championship game. USM wouldn’t be as good of a win now that the Golden Eagles have lost to UAB. Both would be would be tougher games than any Houston have had so far, and Houston was fortunate to beat UCLA (win at home by 4) and Louisiana Tech (win at home by 1) in the early going.

Virginia Tech shouldn’t be overlooked either. They only have the loss to Clemson, which they could redeem in the ACC Championship game, if they can beat Virginia for the ACC Coastal division next week. The ’Hoos last defeated the Hokies in 2003.

I’m disappointed in the voters for putting Stanford 4th, , although I am not surprised. I hope whatever happens (apart from the Cardinal winning the Pac-12 and the only other BCS-conference options having two losses apiece), the voters have the good sense not to put a team with a 23-point home loss in mid-November in the BCS title game. That’s just an echo of Nebraska in 2001 if that happens.

Continue reading for discussion of other teams and the full ratings/rankings.

LSU note: This is only the Tigers’ fourth 8-0 start (1973, 1958, and 1908). See also the updated LSU/Auburn edition to my Rivalry Series.  I'm trying not to be too happy about Wisconsin and Oklahoma.

Big East/ACC recombination

I’ve already gotten some responses to the first section along the lines of “What about West Virginia? Virginia Tech?” I put them both in this group. As I did before, I’m going to have the two divisions both vertical next to each other with the permanent rivals (other-division team to play every year) paired horizontally.

Miami-BC
Va. Tech-WVU
Virginia-Maryland
USF-Rutgers
UNC-Syracuse
Duke-Army
Wake-Navy
NCS-Connecticut

It’s not the best set-up for West Virginia admittedly, but I think they would have good rivalries with Virginia Tech, Maryland, and Navy. I don’t think they’d be much better off staying in the current Big East with Pitt leaving. I was a little haphazard with the last 5 permanent rivalries, but they wouldn’t really be necessary. The teams could alternate over time. Virginia and Va. Tech could swap occasionally. Breaking up Miami and BC would not be allowed as long as Doug Flutie is alive though. I’m somewhat kidding. You could argue the two Florida teams don’t belong at all, but I’m OK with allowing for custom to prevail over geography in some places.

Full blog, including Big Ten +2 +4

Took me most of the day, but I got it all done finally. I am a little disappointed because I feel like it’s a step back from what I was doing with the subjective rankings (I’ll explain), but it was finally at the point where it was too hard to do a fair subjective ranking anyway. I had the teams arranged in a pretty neat way with the winning teams ahead of the losing teams, but now that’s gotten more complicated. It makes a lot less sense to have Temple between Penn St. and Maryland, for instance, and there is of course the triangle of impossibility with South Florida beating Notre Dame, who beat Pitt, who beat South Florida (handily). Those are just a couple of examples where I thought, “What would I do with this information?”

I don’t see any glaring errors (although I was able to find some), but there usually are some mistakes at this point. Let me know if anything seems ridiculously out of place (like an undefeated team being 80th or a team with one win being 40th or something of that nature). I have one area where I type in the record and another area where wins go in one set of columns and losses go in another, so if that doesn’t match up, it causes really strange results. Sometimes the ratings comparison gives me a heads up when I realize I have the highest or lowest ranking for a given team.

I wish teams with respectable losses were higher (and undefeated teams with bad schedules were lower), but it will come around. Right now in most cases if you have on loss, you’re 25% behind in the winning percentage. Two losses, you’re probably 50% behind or at least 40% behind. When it gets to be more like a 10 or 15% difference with each loss, that will allow some of the good record/poor schedule teams to move down.

These rankings are made with the emphasis on having the top 5 to 10 teams in the right order at the end of the season. I give teams some amount of credit based on winning FCS games, and it depends in part on that team’s record. It doesn’t amount to much at the end of the season, but with 1/3 to 1/5 of opponents being FCS for a lot of teams, it does count for more now, so there can be some weird results because of that. Also, if a team has a bye week and an FCS opponent at this point, that makes it more likely that team has gotten by without playing anyone. So even if it’s a team that will likely finish with 4 or 5 wins, they might look good mathematically right now. So not only do my ratings not predict future events, but future events are needed in order to make my ratings look better.

This also isn’t a good barometer yet for teams that have played and lost tough games. Oregon, for instance, would have been better off beating another FCS team than losing to LSU. The Ducks only have intra-subdivision wins over Nevada and Arizona. The only reason Oregon is as high as they are is because Nevada has had a good schedule. I don’t think Arizona will finish winless against FBS teams, so when they win a game, that will pick the Ducks up a little more, and Nevada’s record should improve at least to the vicinity of .500.

The system’s limitations on giving Oregon its due have also affected LSU. In the by-the-numbers ratings, LSU is 4th because the only win that comes across as being of very high quality is West Virginia. Along with Oregon, Mississippi St. doesn’t count for too much because the Bulldogs have only beaten Memphis and Louisiana Tech (in OT at home, which gives Miss. St. even less credit). But again, if they turn their record around and get some wins of higher quality, this will help out LSU.

I treat #1 as a special case, and as is typical, I leave the team I have at #1 unless there is something at least troubling that happens. An example is the game USC nearly lost at Washington in 2007 (the Trojans won, 27-24, and lost to Stanford the next week). LSU just beat Kentucky 35-7, with the 7 coming as the last score of the game, so nothing troubling there. And as I just explained, I think they’ve beaten quality teams, it just hasn’t come across in the numbers yet. But my ratings site is always going to be the exact numbers the formula gives me.

I’ll at least leave LSU there for a few weeks unless I think the team that rates #1 is either equally deserving or more deserving. If LSU loses, that will also cause me to lean toward the by-the-numbers #1. Not only do the Tigers face Florida next week, but Oregon will play Cal and Arizona St. in the next two weeks. Mississippi St. faces UAB (not a good team, but a needed chance for an FBS win) and South Carolina. Getting into the conference schedule already helps out the stronger conferences in general.

Continue to ratings...

I’m starting to write this as the season is about to kick off, so I know it won’t be done by the time the first games are over. I promise to ignore what I’m sure will be riveting Mississippi St.—Memphis and Wisconsin—UNLV games. These are sometimes close, but only if the major-conference team plays abysmally, so it won’t be that much of a sacrifice to ignore these. Full-time jobs always find a way to ruin some of the the fun, such as the fun that can be had by taking ones time and digesting all the different prognostications and competing arguments.

I’m excluding special teams with my returning starters until the list at the end. I just don’t have time to worry about that. I’ve always sort of felt compelled to qualify these situations. It’s just a weird area that’s hard to predict. I don’t think it’s as important whether you’re a returning starter there. There a few kicks here and there than can come down to experience, but I think it’s easier for someone with the talent to be really good right away than it is in a lot of other positions. And having the right returner can matter as much or more than the kicker being experienced, and I’m certainly not looking into that.

For the first time ever I’m picking LSU #1 going in. (But I’ve picked Oklahoma and Ohio St. three times each, so LSU has some catching up to do if you look at recent national titles won.) I know, it’s easier to pretend to be right for a few weeks no matter how bad the pick is, so a lot of people aren’t going to pick them for that reason with at least a reasonable chance of a loss in the first week. There is also a major question mark at quarterback, but I think Alabama has an even bigger issue there. I would pick any of LSU’s three quarterbacks (and maybe even Russell Shepard) over either of Bama’s options.

As for Oklahoma, that’s an easy team to pick, and an easy team to be wrong about, almost every year. But you don’t look too foolish because they don’t play that many games with a high chance of a loss and with Texas not being very good and Nebraska out of there, they have a great chance at a BCS game, maybe the highest odds of any team if I were to set them right now. “OU” (even though the name of the school starts with “The University”) last won the national championship in 2000, and they’ve had teams that have looked better than this one going in, and it didn’t pan out. They have a relatively easy schedule, great. But that makes them a good team why exactly? Their 15 returning starters match LSU’s number (and Alabama’s number too).

I have more about my past preseason #1s below.

Who else is a contender for #1? Oregon? They got ink for the offense, but the reason they made the national title game (having avoided a loss in a low-scoring game against Cal) and had a good chance of winning it was defense. Only 5 starters return there. Now, it’s possible LSU’s offense was make the defense look adequate to good, but if they have another Cal performance on offense, they’re in trouble. It’s not like the whole offense returns either, 7 starters. So that’s a total of 12. I’m not buying the Ducks.

Stanford has the quarterback but not the support. That’s not a really tempting #1 anyway. The Cardinal return 11 starters, for the record.

Boise St. returns only 14 starters. That’s not bad, but it’s not almost the entire team like last year, and they lost to Nevada last year and only got to the Las Vegas Bowl.

These are some other teams that I couldn’t seriously consider...

Continue reading top 25 and top 10 commentary