I'm glad that Alabama beat out Georgia for reasons other than tradition, too. Alabama is probably the best team in the nation this year, so what better of an opponent for ND to prove for once and all that it is back.* Had Georgia beaten Alabama after being outplayed (which is almost what happened), then there could have been a debate about whether or not beating Georgia would necessarily prove anything. Instead, the matchup against the Tide gives ND every opportunity to silence their doubters and validate their fans. I cannot wait. January 7th is a long way away.
* Of course, in most practical definitions of the word, Notre Dame is already "back" (if they even went anywhere), but since the goal of the program seems to be winning titles, the Irish need to do so to be all the way back, in the strictest sense of the term.
One More Quick Note on Conferences
One of the assumptions that you'll see when people invoke the conference fallacy is the assumption that the SEC is far and away the best conference. Yes, there are 6 teams in the top 15 and a few other teams look feisty, so the advantage of the strength at the top is undeniable. However, I don't think it's that cut and dry. In truth, you can get very different answers to the question of "which conference is best" depending on what you think makes a conference good.
To understand this differing of opinion, let's examine a source that would disagree with the initial assumption. One such source would be famous statistician Jeff Sagarin. If you look at Sagarin's conference measures, he actually has the Big 12 a little bit above the SEC in both his simple average and central mean calculations. The reason for this is pretty clear: In those measurements he's taking the whole conference into account and when you do that, you'll find that the Big 12 is deeper than the SEC. Examining his pure points predictor, we can see that the second worst team in the Big 12 is Iowa State at 39th. The SEC has a whopping 6 teams with a lower rank than that, which is what drags them down in Sagarin's estimation. I think what we see here is a small symptom of the super-conference fad. That is, smaller conferences will have higher variance in overall quality since they have fewer members, and will have better shots at being the best conference overall (of course, they'll also have a better chance at flaming out as well). The larger conferences, on the other hand, are far more likely to have one or more terrible teams that drag the conference as a whole down in measures such as Sagarin's.
If you instead choose to weight the strength of the top teams in the conference, like many appear to do, then I could see how you could arrive at the conclusion that the SEC is the best. I could even get behind this as a reasonable framework with one caveat: You would need to make sure that you're not overrating these top teams because of their performance against a weak bottom of a conference. The top six teams in the SEC went 30-0 against the rest of the SEC, which suggests that the top teams' records may be a little inflated. That being said, both the top and the bottom of the conference have good enough non-conference resumes to justify the strength of those subdivisions*. As a result, I can understand and support either argument. The main poin from my conference fallacy post still stands though: Just because you win the best conference doesn't make you the best team. Alabama deserves to be in the title game not simply because they won the SEC, but because they demonstrated all season that they were one of the best (if not the best) teams in the nation.
*The top 6 teams passed all of their non-conference tests with flying colors, and even bottom teams like Kentucky (Kent State) and Tennessee (NC State) picked up some nice wins.
My Heisman Ballot
1. Manti Te'o
As a Notre Dame fan, I've been reading a lot of arguments about why Manti should win the Heisman. Many of them laud Manti for being a high character guy and for leading his team to a 12-0 record. These are great things and are very true, but for me the argument for Manti comes down to this:
He was really great at football this year, and there is no runaway candidate.
The first part of the sentence should be obvious to everyone. In case it isn't, remember that this happened. The second part is true a lot more often than you probably think, and is what I'm going to talk about. I think that the Heisman is as difficult to award as any major sports award, because of the nature of college football. You have amazing athletes on 124 teams playing 10 different positions and getting just 12 or 13 games to make their arguments. Given how there are often a large cluster of players that likely provide about the same amount of value to their teams, it can be impossible to narrow down the field. As a result, I have trouble getting too worked up about the Heisman. Yes, I was disappointed when Mark Ingram won (since he was the second best RB on his team), but in general this isn't like baseball where you can often point to solid quantifiable reasons for one candidate.
As for the arguments I mentioned at the beginning, let's deal with those. The character argument usually rubs me the wrong way. Yes, it seems apparent that Manti is a great guy, but a lot of your behavior at that age is determined by your background. Using this as a justification for the Heisman would seem to unfarily discriminate against those from less stable backgrounds. Plus, as much as we think we know these athletes, we really don't. The 12-0 argument is also weak. Yes, A&M lost two more games, but they were both single digit losses to top ten teams. If Pitt makes a short field goal, and A&M's defense forces one more crucial turnover against LSU, then we could be looking at two 11-1 teams. Basically, two not unlikely plays that wouldn't have involved the candidates at hand could have rendered this argument moot. Most advanced metrics show that Texas A&M is just slightly worse (or in the case of S&P+, slightly better) than Notre Dame, so it's not like we're talking about a wide gulf in team quality anyway. In the end, I choose Manti for his skill and his leadership, but with the important caveat that it's really just a guess as to who the most outstanding player of this season was.
2. Johnny Manziel
3. Jadeveon Clowney
One of the more peculiar occurances in conference realignment is that Texas A&M and South Carolina are set to become yearly cross-divisional "rivals", but unfortunately that won't start until 2014, when Jadeveon will likely be terrorizing quarterbacks for money. It's too bad because I would have loved to see Manziel try to wriggle his way away from Mr. Clowney. Perhaps they will meet in Atlanta next year at the SEC championship.
4. Jordan Lynch
5. Marqise Lee
I am also grouping these two together because at this rate with all the conference shenanigans, Northern Illinois and USC will be playing in the PAC-12 title game next year. So we will get to see these two play against each other. Sweet.*
* I really don't have strong feelings, positive or negative, about all of the conference realignment going on so I pretty much just resort to sarcasm when talking about it.
Rankings
1. Notre Dame
2. Alabama
3. Oregon
4. Texas A&M
5. Florida
6. Ohio State
7. LSU
8. Kansas State
9. Stanford
10. Georgia
11. Oklahoma
12. South Carolina
13. Florida State
14. Clemson
15. Utah State
16. Northern Illinois
17. Oregon State
18. UCLA
19. Nebraska
20. Texas
21. Northwestern
22. Vanderbilt
23. San Jose State
24. Michigan
25. Wisconsin
Also Considered: Oklahoma State, Baylor, Boise State, USC, Kent State
Notes on the rankings:
- Here was an interesting letter in Stewart Mandel's mailbag at SI:
I remember last year there was a big push to have Oregon ranked ahead of Stanford even though the Ducks had two losses, because one came to the No. 1 team (LSU) and Oregon beat Stanford head-to-head. The argument was the Ducks shouldn't be punished for scheduling a tough team as opposed to a patsy. This year the situation is exactly reversed. Stanford has two losses, but one came out of conference to the No. 1 team (Notre Dame), and the Cardinal have the head-to-head win against Oregon. As a Cal fan, it truly pains me to ask, but shouldn't Stanford be getting the same treatment?You may notice that I have Oregon several spots above Stanford in spite of the logic in this letter. However, at the end of the 2011 regular season however, I had 10-2 Oregon #5 and 11-1 Stanford #6 for this very reason. The reason for this discrepancy is that there are a few key differences between this year and last year that the writer left out:
1. Their victories over each other were not created equally. Last year, Oregon dominated Stanford by three touchdowns. Stanford took overtime to beat Oregon this year. Both wins are undoubtedly impressive, but Oregon's 2011 win was more impressive.
2. Oregon and Stanford were of roughly the same quality last year, whereas Oregon seems to be a bit better this year. To support this, I cite the fact that Oregon has blown out every non-Stanford opponent this year, while Stanford has had a little more trouble with some of the same opponents. The prime example of this is how Oregon shut out Arizona 49-0, while Stanford had to stage a furious comeback just to force overtime against the Wildcats.
3. Mandel touches on this briefly, but Stanford's loss to 7-5 Washington is pretty weak, even though it was on the road. Oregon's second loss last year was to the far superior USC, who I had #4 at the end of that season. Advantage Oregon.
- All of the talk today is about whether or not Northern Illinois will make a BCS bowl. As I type this, it appears to be too close to call. Naturally, I have a few thoughts about this:
1. I'm a little disappointed that Utah State hasn't gotten more serious consideration from the voters. Most advanced stats have them ahead of Northern Illinois, and they dominated their schedule a bit more than the Huskies, collecting road wins over both Louisiana Tech and San Jose State. Also Northern Illinois' loss came to 4-8 Iowa, while Utah State lost by a total of 5 points in road games against Wisconsin and the underrated BYU.
2. In spite of any arguments you can make for these non-BCS teams, there shouldn't be any outrage if they don't make the top 16. This is not a great year for the non-BCS teams, as there isn't a team anywhere near as strong as the Boises and TCUs of yesteryear (largely because most of those teams are in BCS conferences now). That being said, there are so many inherent disadvantages towards the non-BCS conferences that I won't feel too bad if they "steal" a berth this year.
- In spite of a sometimes lackluster season, Wisconsin appears at the bottom of my rankings because it's impossible to watch a team that thoroughly decimate someone and not put them in my top 25. All of their losses were close ones to good teams, so the Badgers weren't too far off from being a really good team this year anyway. Because of Wisconsin's win, there's a lot of consternation around the internet about a 5-loss team making it's way into a BCS bowl, and how the system is bad as a result. It's important to remember though that the system has nothing to do with Ohio State and Penn State behaving badly and very badly, respectively. There are a lot of arguments to be made against the BCS, but I don't think this is one of them.
- Speaking of thorough domination, there's my Huskers checking in at 19. I still have no idea where to rank this team, just like I haven't had any idea all season. They've blown teams out, gotten blown out, won close games when the score is high, lost close games when the score is high, and even won a couple of defensive battles. To say that this is the most schizophrenic team in the nation would perhaps be an understatement. At least they can hang their hats on a 10 win season and a New Year's Day bowl. And that will truly be a bowl where anything can happen.
Top Games of the Year:
There is no firm criteria for this list. I just want to reward the games that entertained me the most. Things that lead to my entertainment are:
1. Teams playing to the best of their abilities. This doesn't mean you have to be objectively great (though that doesn't hurt), you just have to be doing your best. Think Pitt vs. West Virginia in 2007.
2. The stakes have to be reasonably high. Not every game on this list has to be for the national title, but you have to be playing for more than pride.
3. If either #1 or #2 don't qualify, then there has to be something truly remarkable about the game. None of the games on this year's list fall to this criterion, but that 7 OT Arkansas - Ole Miss game would.
Runners-up: ND-Oklahoma, Kansas State-Baylor, Florida State-NC State, Nebraska-Michigan State
5. Alabama 21, LSU 17 - This is actually the earliest game on the list, which shows how this season didn't really ramp up until the end. The CBS night game is often amazing (UF-LSU in 2007, LSU-Bama last year), and this game didn't fail to excite. LSU played its best game of the year, and Alabama finished the game with the best drive of the year. Unfortunately for this game (and fortunately for college football fans), it was overshadowed by later games.
4. Stanford 17, Oregon 14 - This game gets a couple of bonus points for being brilliantly scheduled alongside the KSU-Baylor game so fans of Notre Dame and the SEC could watch all the dominos fall at once. Of all the performances I've seen this year, the effort from Stanford's defense in this game has to be the best. No other team came remotely close to slowing down Oregon, and Stanford was able to put on a clinic. Oregon still did collect 400 yards, so it wasn't as if they embarassed themselves, but they did show that they are just as stoppable as everyone else.
3. Alabama 32, Georgia 28 - This may be a controversial opinion, but I didn't think this game was as great as everyone else thought. Yes, the stakes were ridiculously high, and yes, we saw a lot of great and memorable performances and plays. However, way too many poor plays and decisions dominated the game. Murray and McCarron both made some boneheaded throws against good but not great secondaries. Georgia didn'r figure out that it should maybe have more than three down lineman until it was too late. And of course, there was the final drive, in which someone should have been screaming "SPIKE THE BALL." This game still gets ranked #3 on my list, because it's probably the first truly memorable SEC title game ever, but neither team played up to their abilities.
2. Utah State 48, Louisiana Tech 41 - The death throes of the WAC turned out to be one of the best under the radar storylines of the year. Three actually good teams battled it out (SJSU being the other) to claim the WAC crown in perpetuity. This game featured an amazing rally by the Bulldogs only to see the Aggies clean up in overtime and take the conference. It didn't hurt that this game was played in one of my favorite outposts in college football, Ruston, Louisiana. Every game I watch there manages to sound both incredbly loud and incredibly small at the same time.
1. Texas A&M 29, Alabama 24 - This game had about everything you could want. Two great teams playing their "A" games. A star being born in Johnny Manziel. A defending champion (and perhaps eventual champion) getting pinned down early and fighting back hard. A tight finish with plenty of drama to go around, resulting in one of the biggest upsets of the season. I hope the title game is as good as this one was. Or it could be an ND blowout, you know. That'd be cool, too.
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