Category Archives: college football

Rating the 2018 Non-Conference Slate: Big Ten

Next up, the Big Ten. As usual, the “N-” prefix indicates a neutral site game and, though it’s not going to come up a lot in this one, italics indicates the team is in the FCS. Let’s get to it.

  1. Northwestern (1.25 legit, 0 FCS): Duke, Akron, Notre Dame. Hey, look, Duke got a 0.25 this year, okay? At this point David Cutcliffe has be considered more of a quaterback warlock than a guru.
  2. Ohio State (1, 0): Oregon State, @Texas Christian, Tulane. In reality, we’ve got some interesting ones here. While Oregon State stands no chance of winning, it could be a useful gauge for both teams. Ohio State @ TCU a stand-out game that will definitely warrant mention at the end of this series of posts.
  3. Maryland (1, 0): N-Texas, @Bowling Green, Temple. Let’s take a moment to Bowling Green’s loaded out-of-conference schedule: @Oregon, Maryland, Eastern Kentucky, and @Georgia Tech. That’s three Power 5 teams (and, well, three paychecks, but sshhh). As for the Terps, well, this could also be relatively loaded. Texas should be better this year, and Temple is occasionally feisty.
  4. Michigan (1, 0): @Notre Dame, Western Michigan, Southern Methodist. They don’t play Notre Dame every year, but nonetheless they play them reasonably often, so I had to rank them fourth instead, of you know, third.
  5. Pennsylvania State (0.25, 0): Appalachian State, @Pittsburgh, Kent State. I already wrote about playing Pitt, but the gist of it is that it’s a Good Thing. The rest of this schedule is, like a Murphy bed, functional.
  6. Nebraska (0.25, 0): Akron, Colorado, Troy State. Speaking of dormant rivalries, I wholly support former Big 8/12 teams playing each other again. Especially when neither of them is still in the Big 12.
  7. Michigan State (0.25, 0): Utah State, @Arizona State, Central Michigan. I enjoy that Michigan State is playing two Western teams, and I enjoy even more that they’re going on the road to Tempe. Surely more than one Spartan will leave wondering why they didn’t consider Arizona State.
  8. Illinois (0.25, 1): Kent State, Western Illinois, N-South Florida. As I’m sure I’ll say a few weeks from now, that USF game is at Wrigley Field for some reason. As for this schedule, Illinois are really, really hoping that they win two f these games.
  9. Iowa (0.25, 1): Northern Illinois, Iowa State, Northern Iowa. NIU is pretty spicy usually, the Cyclones are improving, and UNI usually makes the FCS playoffs every year. Look, Iowa should pretty much always go 3-0 against this slate, but I’m just saying there’s a chance.
  10. Purdue (0, 0): Eastern Michigan, Missouri, Boston College. I feels like a schedule with two P5 teams should rate higher, but alas, those are the breaks when those teams are Mizzou and Boston College. But hey, that Purdue-Mizzou game figures to be pretty poinsty, so this may wind up being a fun OOC schedule nonetheless.
  11. Wisconsin (0, 0): Western Kentucky, New Mexico, Brigham Young. Three games at home, no threat to the road-paving Wisconsin offense, three very probable victories.
  12. Indiana (0, 0): @Florida International, Virginia, Ball State. I think the Indianas of the world should try to schedule those trips to Boca Raton at the end of the season, but what do I know?
  13. Rutgers (0, 0): Texas State, @Kansas, Buffalo. Whatever the opposite of the “Game of the Week” concept is, I’m pretty sure Rutgers at Kansas is going to be it.
  14. Minnesota (0, 0): New Mexico State, Fresno State, Miami. That’s the Miami in Ohio at the end there, and all the games at at home, so, alas, the boats will continue to be rowed strictly in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Rating the 2018 Non-Conference Slate: ACC

First up is the ACC. FCS teams are indicated in italics and a “N-” prefix indicates a neutral site game. Onward!

  1. Florida State (2 legit, 1 FCS): Samford, Northern Illinois, @Notre Dame, Florida. It may top the list, but this isn’t an interesting OOC slate, per se, thanks to Florida being an annual rivalry and Notre Dame being a quasi-ACC member.
  2. Pittsburgh (1.25, 1): Albany, Pennsylvania State, @Central Florida, @Notre Dame. Meanwhile, Pitt gets credit for getting Penn State on the schedule, and that road trip to Orlando could definitely be a thing. This is the sort of schedule that, if they actually had any hope, could actually #PutPuttIn.
  3. Georgia Tech (1.25, 1): Alcorn State, @South Florida, Bowling Green, @Georgia. The Tennessee game last year was fun, but of course wound up being a stomach punch in a way that few other Georgia Tech games have been in the 15 years since I matriculated at MaTech. Suffice it to say, Alcorn State will be much less stressful.
  4. Louisville (1, 1): N-Alabama, Indiana State, Western Kentucky, Kentucky. I took a quick look to figure out if there were any other notable Indiana State alumni other than Larry Bird, who will presumably be mentioned often on the broadcast of that game. The answer, as it turns out, is “no, not really”.
  5. Miami (1,1): N-Louisiana State, Savannah State, @Toledo, Florida International. Strap in, because in addition to UCF and USF above, we’ve got some weird G5 road games coming. First up is the Canes going to… Toledo of all places. Oh, and yeah, they’ve got a neutral site opener with LSU, which should pretty quickly prove whether the current conventional wisdom about both of those teams is correct or not.
  6. Syracuse (1, 1): @Western Michigan, Wagner, Connecticut, N-Notre Dame. See what I mean? Though to Western Michigan’s credit, they’ve done a pretty good job over the years of getting major teams to visit. To be honest, I’ve been expecting this sort of arrangement to become more common for years because it allows major programs to save some money.
  7. Virginia Tech (1, 1): William & Mary, East Carolina, @Old Dominion, Notre Dame. I really feel like I shouldn’t count Notre Dame for ACC teams at all. Maybe next year.
  8. Wake Forest (1, 1): @Tulane, Towson, Notre Dame, Rice. To continue the thought from above, the rating system says this is a more interesting schedule than Clemson’s. Yes, TAMU isn’t rated as a 1, but again Notre Dame is sorta-kinda-basically in the ACC anyway. Let’s just agree that Clemson should be ranked, say, 6th instead of 9th.
  9. Clemson (0.75, 1): Furman, @Texas A&M, Georgia Southern, South Carolina. Since I used up most of my thoughts about Clemson’s schedule above, let’s take a moment to appreciate the actual road game against a Power-5 opponent. That’s a trend I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing take-off, the good ol’ fashioned home-and-home.
  10. North Carolina State (0.5, 1): James Madison, Georgia State, West Virginia, @Marshall. NC State is looking to be the masters of the state of West Virginia, I guess.
  11. North Carolina (0.25, 1): @California, @East Carolina, Central Florida, Western Carolina. Ah, just a South Carolina away from having all of the Carolinas! Alas. That said, this should rate higher for the road trip out to Berkeley, though I suspect that game won’t be quite as much Culture Shock Central as when Ole Miss visited a few years ago.
  12. Duke (0.25, 1): Army, @Northwestern, @Baylor, North Carolina Central. This is about as bad of a rating as you can get with a schedule that features two Power 5 teams, but UNC edged them out with the road trip to Berkeley and a game with the Defending National Champions.
  13. Boston College (0, 1): Massachusetts, Holy Cross, @Purdue, Temple. Am I saying that with this schedule Purdue is a more interesting matchup than Indiana? Yes. Also, Temple is occasionally spicy, so there’s some credit there too.
  14. Virginia (0, 1.5): Richmond, @Indiana, Ohio, Liberty. Liberty is transitioning to FBS right now, so they count as half-a-FCS team. Other than that, there’s another road game. I guess these ACC schedules are going to be stack with home games in a year or two or something.

Rating the 2018 Non-Conference Slate: Prologue

So, as per usual, my brother and I have recently completed the exercise of rating every Power 5 team’s conference schedule for the 2018 season. You can read a general overview of the process here, so I’ll cut straight to the chase.

We rated 73 different teams this year. Non-P5 teams that merited a rating higher than 0 were Defending National Champions Central Florida (0.25), Houston (0.25), South Florida (0.25), and Boise State (0.5). 26 of the 73 teams were rated as 0, 11 as 0.25, 10 as 0.5, just 3 as 0.75, and 23 got a 1.

Those 23 were: Alabama, Auburn, California-Los Angeles, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Louisiana State, Miami, Michigan, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Oregon, Pennsylvania State, Southern California, Stanford, Texas, Texas Christian, Washington, and Wisconsin.

The average rating for all teams was 0.45.

Here are the average ratings for each conference:

  1. Big 12 (0.525)
  2. Pac-12 (0.5)
  3. SEC (0.482)
  4. ACC (0.464)
  5. Big Ten (0.446)

That’s a pretty big shuffle, but a couple of Big 12 teams got promoted to 1’s this year, which likely explains it. At any rate, stay tuned for the actual ratings!

Bowl Games 2017: Epilogue

Since I’m about to do the previews soon, I should probably wrap up last season’s bowl coverage.

The page has been updated with the grim news: this was my poorest year, by far, since 2005, which was the last time I got less than 50% right. Fortunately, I’ve been doing this for so long (since 1999!) that it didn’t put much of a dent in my overall percentage, where I’ve gotten 54.5% correct over all those years.

We’ll crank up the 2018 out-of-conference previews soon!

Bowl Games 2017: Final

As usual, all times Eastern and all predictions wrong.

8:00: Alabama vs. Georgia (College Football Playoff National Championship Game @ Atlanta, GA; ESPN): I hate this game. I will watch it, because I am a college football fan and it is the last game for seven months. It is also the most import game of the year, because a champion will be crowned. But regardless, I hate this game. Let me count the ways:
1) I grew up in Alabama, rooting for Auburn because my third grade teacher, on the last day of school before the Iron Bowl one year, was rooting for Auburn. That’s pretty much it. I don’t care for Auburn so much these days, but I cannot root for Alabama under any circumstance.
2) In 2003, I matriculated at Georgia Tech. Our biggest rival is Georgia. This rivalry is called “Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate” for a reason. Enough said.
3) It’s not like Alabama needs more titles, they already claim somewhere between a dozen and like 500 (I always forget).
4) Oh, yeah, and Auburn’s second biggest rival? Georgia.
5) Did you watch that Sugar Bowl, where Alabama basically took a freshman quarterback and sucked all the life out the Clemson offense? That 24-6 score is ridiculous. Bama could have won the game by not even fielding an offense, because their defense scored more points than Clemson did. And indeed, the Clemson defense had a pretty good game, but it didn’t matter because their offense was dead on arrival.
6) Okay, yes, the Rose Bowl was exciting even if the result went the wrong way. (If only Oklahoma fielded an even average defense…) But the fact of the matter is that Fromm hasn’t seen anything like this Alabama defense, which used the bowl break to get healthy. Now they’re back.
7) Of course, it could be argued the Bama defense hasn’t seen an offense like this all year, but if there’s any kind of offense an Alabama defense can stop it’s a run-first offense like Georgia’s.
8) Georgia’s defense is pretty good. Yes, they just gave up 531 yards of offense, but no one is going to confuse Jalen Hurts for Baker Mayfield.
9) Add it all up, and it looks for all the world like a tight, low-scoring game where the team that makes the least mistakes will win. And given that, you have to figure it’s going to be Alabama. I hate whoever is going to win either way, but given everything I think this game favors the Tide.
S&P+ line: Alabama by 2.3
Watchability tier: [redacted]
Previous meetings: Interestingly, despite having been in the same conference since 1921 (when both joined the original Southern Conference; both also left for the new SEC in 1933), they’ve only played 67 times. Generally speaking, schools used to have considerable leeway over even conference scheduling (famously, until recently Georgia Tech had only played the two Mississippi* schools five times combined despite having been in the SEC together for decades), but even still 67 times in nearly a century is not a lot. They did play every year from 1944 through 1965, but since then they’ve only met 16 times. I can explain the gap after 1992, since that’s when the SEC began divisional play and placed the two in opposite divisions, but between 1965 and 1992 I don’t really know why they didn’t play more often,  even given scheduling considerations in the then 10-team league. At any rate, Alabama won the last regular season meeting in 2015, 38-10. The series began in 1895 with a 30-6 Georgia win, and Alabama is sitting on a three game winning streak. Alabama also has a 38-25-4 all-time series lead.
*: Somewhat hilariously, this will change in the near future, but despite the above Alabama has played Georgia more times than Ole Miss. (And also founding SEC members Kentucky and Florida.)
Last bowl game: See the previous post.
Announcers: Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit