College Football - Week 12 (Nov. 17)

[UMFan83]

I'm shocked that the 2 ND fans are arguing against things like the Sagrin rating and SOS and all the other statistical data TT and others posted in order to prove that ND won't get blasted by Alabama

[Guest]

Why exactly are ND fans up in arms here? Am I missing something or would some grotesque situation arise where an unbeaten ND team is left out of the title gamem?

 

MR's been butthurt for weeks that ND's been the lowest ranked of the major unbeaten teams. He's also one "computer geeks in their mother's basement" away from turning into a crotchety old sportswriter.

 

There it is. Just keep your blind faith in the computers that had KSU as the better team this year. They put up about as many points on Baylor as Sam Houston St did (gave up more than SHSt did, too).

 

Wait, you mean the same computers which ranked Notre Dame No. 1 last week? Those computers?

 

Just keep your blind faith in your gut (or whatever) that had ND as the better team this year. They put up about as many points on Pittsburgh as Youngstown State did (gave up more than Youngstown did, too). And Notre Dame was at home in that game!

 

See, I can do it also.

[Tracer Bullet]

Why exactly are ND fans up in arms here? Am I missing something or would some grotesque situation arise where an unbeaten ND team is left out of the title gamem?

 

MR's been butthurt for weeks that ND's been the lowest ranked of the major unbeaten teams. He's also one "computer geeks in their mother's basement" away from turning into a crotchety old sportswriter.

 

There it is. Just keep your blind faith in the computers that had KSU as the better team this year. They put up about as many points on Baylor as Sam Houston St did (gave up more than SHSt did, too).

 

Wait, you mean the same computers which ranked Notre Dame No. 1 last week? Those computers?

 

Just keep your blind faith in your gut (or whatever) that had ND as the better team this year. They put up about as many points on Pittsburgh as Youngstown State did (gave up more than Youngstown did, too). And Notre Dame was at home in that game!

 

See, I can do it also.

 

http://sagarin.com/sports/cfsend.htm

 

Yes. (I don't know when that updates, but as of today, ND was 5th in Ranking and Predictor).

 

When you're trying to sound smug, remember that winning is ultimately important. You seemed to have missed that key component of this little comparison. Oh some school beat Pitt by more than ND beat Pitt? Great. ND won (despite 3 TOs, worst game of the season). The #1 (or 2 or 3) team got blown the [expletive] out by a team worse than that team blew out Sam Houston St.

 

Almost all great teams have close games. But great teams don't get blown out by bad or mediocre teams. Is there some extenuating circumstance? Did they lose their starting QB (Heisman favorite 24 hours ago) or another star player? Nope. Did they give up 5 TOs? Nope, 3-2? Have an incredible amount of penalties or penalty yards? No. Oh, they gave up 340 rushing yards to a team that averages about 200 on the season? oops

[Tracer Bullet]

I'm shocked that the 2 ND fans are arguing against things like the Sagrin rating and SOS and all the other statistical data TT and others posted in order to prove that ND won't get blasted by Alabama

 

You couldn't miss the point more if you tried. You think I give a [expletive] about what the computers say bc that in some way will impact the outcome of a hypothetical game 2 months from now? Do you know how dumb that sounds?

 

Look, there are a lot of intelligent posters on this board that think for themselves and analyze data to come to their own conclusions. For whatever reason, we seem to shut that down when it comes to CFB and just put blind faith in Saragin or w/e. I could give a [expletive] what Saragin or any of you think of ND. You hate the team and most of their fans and (some of you) me? I really don't care. I'm discussing this bc it's interesting to me. Right now it's mostly interesting to me that people here (and certain people in particular) don't see flaws in these models and say "Saragin tells me that the predictor is the best predictor for W-L, but the Big 12 hasn't beaten any good teams OOC yet they have #3, 7, 15, 16, and 20 in predictor and oh wait, #3 just got the doors blown off by #28, who has 5 Ws)

 

If ND and Bama both win out, chances are they'll play in January. I have no idea if ND will win or not. Bama has only played 2 really good teams (1-1) and they were both close games (Miss St doesn't seem like a good team - that's a really empty 8 wins). ND has played at least 3 good teams and won them all with varying degrees of success. I don't think any of those teams is as good as Bama, but ND has at least faced several (5) that have extremely good defenses. Bama hasn't faced a defense as good as NDs, though. I just don't see a blowout either way.

[TruffleShuffle]

http://sagarin.com/sports/cfsend.htm

 

Yes. (I don't know when that updates, but as of today, ND was 5th in Ranking and Predictor).

 

When you're trying to sound smug, remember that winning is ultimately important. You seemed to have missed that key component of this little comparison. Oh some school beat Pitt by more than ND beat Pitt? Great. ND won (despite 3 TOs, worst game of the season). The #1 (or 2 or 3) team got blown the [expletive] out by a team worse than that team blew out Sam Houston St.

 

Almost all great teams have close games. But great teams don't get blown out by bad or mediocre teams. Is there some extenuating circumstance? Did they lose their starting QB (Heisman favorite 24 hours ago) or another star player? Nope. Did they give up 5 TOs? Nope, 3-2? Have an incredible amount of penalties or penalty yards? No. Oh, they gave up 340 rushing yards to a team that averages about 200 on the season? oops

 

i don't even know what point you're trying to make here. maybe kansas state had just played like a great team for the first 10 games or whatever, and then didn't play like a great team (or they were just a fluke) in the game against baylor. was kansas state overrated by the computers? i dunno, maybe, but they're [expletive] computers, they don't have a bias against notre dame.

[bukie]

Sagarin hadn't updated yet when MR had checked. Now it's updated with ND #1 in its BCS rating (just like it was last week), and Alabama #1 in its predictor rating.

[Tracer Bullet]

http://sagarin.com/sports/cfsend.htm

 

Yes. (I don't know when that updates, but as of today, ND was 5th in Ranking and Predictor).

 

When you're trying to sound smug, remember that winning is ultimately important. You seemed to have missed that key component of this little comparison. Oh some school beat Pitt by more than ND beat Pitt? Great. ND won (despite 3 TOs, worst game of the season). The #1 (or 2 or 3) team got blown the [expletive] out by a team worse than that team blew out Sam Houston St.

 

Almost all great teams have close games. But great teams don't get blown out by bad or mediocre teams. Is there some extenuating circumstance? Did they lose their starting QB (Heisman favorite 24 hours ago) or another star player? Nope. Did they give up 5 TOs? Nope, 3-2? Have an incredible amount of penalties or penalty yards? No. Oh, they gave up 340 rushing yards to a team that averages about 200 on the season? oops

 

i don't even know what point you're trying to make here. maybe kansas state had just played like a great team for the first 10 games or whatever, and then didn't play like a great team (or they were just a fluke) in the game against baylor. was kansas state overrated by the computers? i dunno, maybe, but they're [expletive] computers, they don't have a bias against notre dame.

 

You guys just can't get beyond the ND thing. I'm saying the formulas are flawed. I've had this argument with others before when it didn't hurt or benefit ND (it hasn't really been a concern in a while). But keep just saying ND and bias and thinking you're making some sort of point.

[Guest]

Dooley officially fired and won't even coach next week against Kentucky.

[Guest]

I'm perfectly fine with questioning what objective measures tell us. Especially for college football, where like you mention there's much less connectivity and less games per team than every other sport. But that connectivity problem stretches both ways. Anyone can make similarly incredulous statements about pretty much any topic like you've done re: the Big 12 or re: Alabama. They have the same flaws but without the rigor of any objective measure. So what I'm trying to say is that if there's a compelling reason not to believe an objective measure(especially a consensus of different objective measures), that's fine. But the "why can't we think for ourselves" narrative is a bit much if we're only going to try to poke holes instead of offering solutions.

[OleMissCub]

Dooley officially fired and won't even coach next week against Kentucky.

 

losing to Vandy is often a death knell for a coach

 

although Vandy has gotten much, much better under Franklin. If I was his agent I'd be trying to get the hell outta there right now because his stock will never be higher.

[Tracer Bullet]

I'm perfectly fine with questioning what objective measures tell us. Especially for college football, where like you mention there's much less connectivity and less games per team than every other sport. But that connectivity problem stretches both ways. Anyone can make similarly incredulous statements about pretty much any topic like you've done re: the Big 12 or re: Alabama. They have the same flaws but without the rigor of any objective measure. So what I'm trying to say is that if there's a compelling reason not to believe an objective measure(especially a consensus of different objective measures), that's fine. But the "why can't we think for ourselves" narrative is a bit much if we're only going to try to poke holes instead of offering solutions.

 

That's the problem: there is no solution that's going to be acceptable bc people decided decades ago that they should rank the best CFB teams in order and the public likes it. I'm not nearly smart enough to come up with a way to rank a bunch of teams that don't play each other and don't play nearly the same level of competition every week.

 

It's probably better to group teams than rank them, as it's easier to put a number of teams in buckets than in a specific order, esp when you've got dozens of "Team A beat Team B beat Team C which beat Team A" scenarios. But no one's going to go for that (outside of the top 4 teams that make the playoffs, but that's not going to eliminate rankings).

 

Sorry I don't have a solution or a computer that spits out "these teams are too tenuously connected to give you an ordered list supported by a shred of logic." The people that created such models probably don't get much attention from people that want to know who's #1. But it doesn't take a lot of digging to realize that there are gigantic holes in these results, does it?

 

When is the last time the #1 team lost by 28 to a 4-win team in late November? It's just hard to wrap my head around this one.

[Smack]

Deadspin trolling ND fans.

 

http://deadspin.com/5961545/losses-by-oregon-kansas-state-ensure-all+sec-title-game

[Andy]

3 coaches did give 1st-place votes to SEC teams, 2 to Alabama and one, perplexingly, to Georgia.

[Andy]

I'm shocked that the 2 ND fans are arguing against things like the Sagrin rating and SOS and all the other statistical data TT and others posted in order to prove that ND won't get blasted by Alabama

I'm not arguing against any computer ranking. I'm saying that to think a team with a loss and only 2 wins over legitimately good teams is going to crush an unbeaten team with wins over three BCS-ranked teams, two of them likely to finish in the top 10, because of the conference they play in or the 'eye test' or whatever, is probably a misguided idea.

[Exile on Waveland]

It was probably a "misguided idea" to believe Alabama would crush LSU in last year's title game. And yet . . .

[dew1679666265]

Dooley officially fired and won't even coach next week against Kentucky.

 

I've been against firing Dooley all season, but it had to be done. He benched Bray late in the first half in what was obviously a desperation move. I think he lost the players after that. Tennessee was up 7-6 at the time of the benching and Vandy scored 35 of the next 38 points after that.

 

This would be a good time for Virginia Tech to fire Beamer, but I doubt that happens.

[Andy]

It was probably a "misguided idea" to believe Alabama would crush LSU in last year's title game. And yet . . .

Crush? Maybe. But I think the general consensus - or at least it seemed to me - was that Bama was the better team in the first matchup, so them winning was hardly surprising.

 

By that logic, it was silly to think Kansas State would beat a 4-5 Baylor team that can't play defense.

[OleMissCub]

I'm a pretty big SEC wonk but I don't think BAMA would crush ND. Probably be a good game. Bama hasn't impressed me that much this year and is definitely one of the weaker SEC title contending teams in recent years.

[KingCubsFan]

It was probably a "misguided idea" to believe Alabama would crush LSU in last year's title game. And yet . . .

Not really. Alabama was basically a better version of that LSU team, and Les Miles is by all accounts a terrible coach.

[Guest]

http://sagarin.com/sports/cfsend.htm

 

Yes. (I don't know when that updates, but as of today, ND was 5th in Ranking and Predictor).

 

When you're trying to sound smug, remember that winning is ultimately important. You seemed to have missed that key component of this little comparison. Oh some school beat Pitt by more than ND beat Pitt? Great. ND won (despite 3 TOs, worst game of the season). The #1 (or 2 or 3) team got blown the [expletive] out by a team worse than that team blew out Sam Houston St.

 

Almost all great teams have close games. But great teams don't get blown out by bad or mediocre teams. Is there some extenuating circumstance? Did they lose their starting QB (Heisman favorite 24 hours ago) or another star player? Nope. Did they give up 5 TOs? Nope, 3-2? Have an incredible amount of penalties or penalty yards? No. Oh, they gave up 340 rushing yards to a team that averages about 200 on the season? oops

 

So when you use an example that supports your argument, it's good but when I use one in the exact same vein, it's irrelevant. Ok.

 

Just keep on being biased.

[Guest]

3 coaches did give 1st-place votes to SEC teams, 2 to Alabama and one, perplexingly, to Georgia.

 

Oregon also only drops to fourth while KSt goes to seventh so if USC manages to upset Notre Dame, Oregon would be next in line for the title shot.

[Tracer Bullet]

You used a terrible analogy.

 

What dog do you have in this discussion? Why are you so butthurt about ND?

[BigSlick]

Bama has only played 2 really good teams (1-1)

I'm gonna stop you right there

[Guest]

You used a terrible analogy.

 

What dog do you have in this discussion? Why are you so butthurt about ND?

 

I did the same thing you did, so if mine was terrible, yours was also.

 

Seeing as I went to a school whose football team recently jumped up to the FCS level, no, I don't have a dog in this. I'm not butthurt about ND. You're the one who continues to bitch about Kansas State and Alabama when your team is No. 1 in the [expletive] country and when it doesn't matter what any other team does.

[NewUserName]

I am not convinced that Alabama is going to beat Georgia. So the ND/Alabama talk may be premature. I also think that something that is not being talked about much is how the new 4 team playoff would be really a mess if it was implanted this season. I hope the powers to be take notice.