Saturday, October 12, 2013

College Football: The First Month (and a week)

Coming into the 2013 college football season, I had planned to write about college football at large about once a month, just like I did last year.  I still plan on doing this, but this entry ended up being a little late.  Trying to figure out one's career and preparing for a visit from the parents will do that to a guy.  Fortunately, I have some time now.  Let's talk about the greatest sport for a bit.

Six Weeks Makes a Difference

Before the season, I posted my thoughts on the upcoming season, complete with a rundown of what I thought would be the top 40 or so teams.  Given those prognostications, let's see what went right and what went terribly wrong.


Prediction: Alabama and Oregon are the two best teams
Grade thus far: A

A few other teams could stake their claim to one of the top two spots at this point, but I would still take these two against the world.  The Tide have a flaw or two, but they've been able to minimize those and navigate through the toughest part of their schedule with aplomb.  As for Oregon, Mark Helfrich may not be as good of a coach as Chip Kelly, but he can at the very least coast on the immense amount of talent he has on hand.  After all, Larry Coker did win his first 25 games with Miami.


Prediction: Florida State would be really good
Grade thus far: A

In spite of all the Florida State angst from the past decade that seemed to keep voters from giving the Noles a high ranking early on, it was pretty easy for me to think that this team could buck the school's recent trend.  Adding an insane prodigy like Jameis Winston* to a program already loaded with talent seems like a pretty strong formula for a top five team.  This is probably my biggest "win".

*At the beginning of the season, I bet Fro that The Wonderful Monster would win the Heisman with 10-1 odds.  Current odds from Bovada: 9-1.  Sweet.


Prediction: Missouri and Arizona State would be "surprise" teams
Grade thus far: A-

For once, my surprise teams are actually doing well.  Arizona State was gaining some mainstream hype in the preseason, so I didn't go out on a huge limb with them, but they've come through regardless.  I thought they would split their difficult four game stretch, and that's exactly what they did (Sorry, Badgers).  Their defense hasn't been as strong as I would have thought, but Taylor Kelly and Marion Grice have proven able to lead a very strong offense (7th in S&P+) that should contend for the Pac-12 South.

Missouri on the other hand, was a little more off of the radar due to their 5-7 campaign from last year.  With a healthy James Franklin and Henry Josey, the Tigers have been able to pick off where they left off in 2011, when they were a fringe top-25 team.  They haven't played any great teams en route to their 5-0 start, but that will change with the "big three" of the SEC East in the next three weeks.  I think Missouri will win one of those games and maybe even two.


Prediction: USC, Northwestern, and Ole Miss supporters should all slow down a bit
Grade thus far: B+

Most voters had at least a couple of these teams ranked, but I omitted all three from my preseason top 25.  These teams have had some bright moments, but I think I've been largely vindicated in not fully trusting any of them.  Yes, Northwestern has a great offense, USC has a great defense, and Ole Miss has a lot of young, exciting talent.  However, all of these teams have stumbled a bit (or in USC's case a lot).  There's reason for optimism, but I think there are a lot of teams better than this group.


Prediction: Notre Dame will still be pretty good
Grade thus far: B-

I knew that Everett Golson and Manti Te'o would be missed, but I just didn't know how much.  This is still a good team that has done alright considering the tough schedule, but the Irish are clearly worse than they were last year, especially on defense.  My long term hopes for the program under Brian Kelly are still high, but that doesn't mean there won't be bumps in the road like this season.


Prediction: Baylor is a little overhyped
Grade thus far: C-

I knew their offense would be good, but I didn't know it would be historically good.  They are literally first in everything, and they are coming off of this performance:

And they are scoring more than almost everyone in half the time:

Yes, they haven't played anybody yet (although West Virginia has been at least decent at defense), but a lot of other teams have also had easy schedules and none of them have come even close to doing this.  It's entirely possible that they will falter a bit when their much more difficult November slate rolls around, but I think they have a legitimate chance at winning the conference, and perhaps even making the title game.


Prediction: Texas will be good
Grade thus far: D

OOOOOPS!  Oh well.  Sometimes teams just collapse.  Couldn't happen to a nicer program.


Rankings

1. Oregon
2. Alabama
3. Stanford
4. Florida State
5. Clemson
6. Ohio State
7. Texas A&M
8. Georgia
9. Washington
10. LSU
11. Baylor
12. Oklahoma
13. Florida
14. UCLA
15. Louisville
16. South Carolina
17. Miami (FL)
18. Michigan
19. Oklahoma State
20. Missouri
21. Wisconsin
22. Michigan State
23. Virginia Tech
24. Fresno State
25. Northwestern

Also considered: Notre Dame, Arizona State, Auburn, Texas Tech

I'm pretty happy with the top part of the rankings.  I feel we've seen enough from these teams to say that they're the best in the land at this point.  Once I get to Louisville at #15 though, it's pretty much a crapshoot from there.  The next 15 teams feel like a blurred mess to me, so don't get too offended if you think I have someone ranked too high or too low. 

Lest you think I dropped Northwestern a bunch because of their extremely close loss to the Buckeyes, let me say that I had them #24 the prior week.  I don't have the Wildcats as high as the voters, primarily because of their mediocre defense (48th in S&P+).   While their offense mostly helped them stay close, their inability to stop Ohio State's running game is what ultimately doomed them.  Their game against Wisconsin this week will go a long way in determining whether or not they can defend a power rushing game, and perhaps contend for a Big Ten title.


All Defense, No Offense

If you head on over to the S&P defense ratings page, you'll see a very interesting top four.  For those that don't like to click on things, those four teams are Florida, Michigan State, Virginia Tech, and USC.  Even if you're not a fan of advanced metrics, it's hard to deny that those aren't four of the best defenses in the country.  After all, Florida held a great Miami offense to 212 yards on the road, and Virginia Tech only allowed two offensive touchdowns to the #1 team in the country.  What is especially strange about this group though, is that all of these teams combine their great defenses with much, much worse offenses.  By the same S&P+ metrics, here are those teams' offensive rankings:

Florida: 69th
USC: 75th
Virginia Tech: 94th
Michigan State: 96th

Now, if you go just a little bit further down the list of top defenses, you will start to see a few teams (like Stanford and Alabama) that are just about equally great on both sides of the ball.  It's clear that a great defense doesn't mean you can't also have a great offense.  But I do find it quite strange that this season's very best defenses reside on teams that are less than stellar overall.  One of the most interesting second-half storylines for nerds who like defense (like me) will be watching just how much these teams can accomplish while being extremely one-sided.

Another Word on Scheduling

In my preseason post, I wrote about how bad the in-conference schedules were this season, with the main culprits being an easy road for Alabama and a terrible slate of cross-conference battles in the Big Ten.  I didn't talk about the terribleness of non-conference schedules, mainly because it's generally assumed to be true.  While I do agree that the best teams don't challenge themselves enough, I think the lack of good games can sometimes be overstated.  Case in point is this tweet, and the article to which it links:
There are a few problems with this statement.  First of all, it's a little strange that he doesn't include Notre Dame, since they are the main annual non-conference opponent for many top-5 conference teams (which I will refer to as B5 for the rest of this section).  Secondly, BYU is basically in the same boat as Notre Dame now, with non-conference contests against a lot of pretty good B5 teams like Utah, Georgia Tech, Texas, and Wisconsin (not to mention ND).  Thirdly, a couple of the B5 leagues (Pac 12 and Big 12) play nine conference games, which means that those leagues have fewer non-conference games in the first place, which will skew the overall percentage of non-conference games towards the smaller conferences.  Even if all of the B5 teams played half of their games against other B5 teams (a reasonable expectation, since that group makes up about half of FBS), only a little more than 15% of non-conference games would be played between two B5 teams.  This shows that the divide between the current state and ideal state of scheduling isn't as wide as the 7.8% number alone would have you believe.

In sum, I would say that the author buries the lede when it comes to the root of non-conference scheduling problems.  If you click through to the article, you will see that he mentions that "34.4% of all non-conference games (this season) will involve FCS teams."  I wouldn't necessarily advocate for completely throwing these games away; they do send a lot of money to programs in need of it, and the little guys even get wins out of these games occasionally.  Rather, I would like to see the number of these games greatly reduced.  Hopefully, the upcoming playoff (and the playoff committee that comes with it) will encourage teams to shift the balance back towards stronger non-conference scheduling.


SEC Dominance

Much has been made over the last eight years about the SEC's dominance over the rest of college football.  While the margin of separation between them and other conferences has been overstated, the SEC has indeed been the best conference ever since their BCS title streak began.  That said, we might be seeing a small changing of the guard this year.  With the sudden improvements at programs like Washington and UCLA, the PAC-12 may actually be the best conference this year.  For some evidence, here is a chart that shows the average F/+ rating by conference for the past seven years:


A simple average of the ratings probably isn't the best methodology, but it is simple and transparent, so we'll go with that for now.  As you can see from the chart, the SEC has been the best conference every year from 2007 to 2012, and has occasionally towered over the rest.  This year though, we are starting to see a challenger arise from the West.  The Pac-12 hasn't seen this level of play since the tail end of the USC dynasty.  A few lean years gave way to a new group of coaches that have mostly succeeded in bringing the conference back.  Since we are almost out of non-conference games, most of the differentiation between the conferences at this point will take place in the big remaining non-conference games like Stanford-ND and Florida-FSU.  It will be interesting to watch and see if the SEC "dynasty" finally comes to an end this year.

Weekend Predictions

Wisconsin 52, Northwestern 28

I've heard a lot of narratives that say Northwestern will be too exhausted from the Ohio State game, both mentally and physically, to win this game.  While I don't normally subscribe to such theories, that could certainly be true.  Regardless of that, I simply think that Wisconsin is the better team, and I don't think the Wildcats have the ability to consistently stop a team as physical as the Badgers.  If Wisconsin does win this game, they'll have a good chance at getting to 10 wins, because look at this.  I honestly think they have as good of a chance of winning the rest of their regular season games as anyone not named Alabama.

Missouri 35, Georgia 31

We all know that Georgia will be without their two best running backs, and a couple of their top receivers.  Still, Aaron Murray has improved to the point that I'm nervous to pick against him.  I'll continue to ride my "surprise" team here, but don't be surprised if Mizzou's big upset (or upsets) happens in the next two weeks instead, at home against Florida and/or South Carolina.

LSU 27, Florida 17

This is probably the hardest game to pick, in part because of the imbalance between the different sides of the ball that I mentioned earlier for Florida.  While LSU won't have the best unit on the field, they are far more balanced than the Gators (6th in offensive efficiency, 13th on defense).  Loucheiz Purifoy is a great cover corner, but he can only cover one of the Odell Beckham Jr./Jarvis Landry duo.  I can see Florida limiting LSU's offense, but not quite enough to get the win.

Oregon 38, Washington 31

I didn't write anything about Washington meteoric rise in the predictions section, because I never even mentioned them in my preseason post.  In my defense, they had basically been the most average team in the nation for the past decade (excluding that 0-12 season).  Thus, when they turned into a championship-level team overnight (7th in Sagarin, 11th in F/+), I was a little surprised.  Oregon is still the better team, but they will get one of their biggest tests of the season here.  Mariota should outpace Keith Price in the battle of QBs, but the Huskies defense and the insanity of Washington's home field advantage should keep it close.


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