Do opinions on CFB swing more from week to week than any other sport?

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HYPOTHESIS: Texas and ND do not have good defenses

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) September 18, 2016

@mgoblog not positive we do right now either.

— Alexander Dobbs (@IAmTheDobbs) September 18, 2016

Between this exchange and most people, including ESPN, having L'ville jump from #10 to #2 after peeling back FSU, It made me wonder if any other sport has the same dramatic changes in opinion from one game to the next.

Our defense was viewed as one of the best in the country in the offseason and without 2-3 NFL draft picks available they're more or less doing what we expected. Our D gave up 21 points yesterday and you'd think we were getting pushed around all game by the change in commentary. For comparison, the other teams in the top four gave up 63 (FSU), 24 (OSU) and 35!! (BAMA) *Ole Miss defense scored once also*. Bama, everyone's standard, is probably the only team who can get away with that and not have anybody talking about them being a disappointment.

Overall, it just seems like the weekly overreactions to every event are juvenile. Texas beating ND in week 1 and shooting up from unranked to #11 is a prime example. The polls aren't the only guilty party, though, it seems like its just the culture around CFB. Is any other sport even close to being as extreme?

 

Farnn

September 18th, 2016 at 10:58 AM ^

How do you avoid that and still have enough numbers in the run game when the QB is used as a runner?  Durkin leaving a safety back at all times is a large part(beyond just missing Glasgow and Mone) of why Michigan was killed by IU and OSU.  If we can't get decent coverage by safeties then we end up outnumbered at the LOS.  If OSU goes with 4 WRs and 1 RB, Michgan needs 7 in the box for the 5 OL, 1 QB, and 1RB.  If they only put 6 in the box, to give them safety help for the WRs, then OSU runs for 5-7 yards a pop and slashes through the defense.

Farnn

September 18th, 2016 at 11:22 AM ^

How does removing a LB help you match up in the box?  That gives you 6 in the box against 7.  And who exactly should replace McCray?  I'm starting to think that once Lewis is back, Clark may move to safety against teams that put 4+ WRs on the field.

charblue.

September 18th, 2016 at 11:25 AM ^

reflected not only game film this season but last year as well, especially that first play from scrimmage, a trick play that was almost reminiscent of the one that MSU ran last year in the second half to climb back into that game. They isolated Thomas on a slotback twice and he got beat downfield, once because Peppers was slow in giving help. But in each case, the throws were there.

I think a review of this game will show that Colorado had a very well-scripted offense starting out the contest and knew exactly what it wanted to run and against whom it planned to attack on defense and that's what it. It attacked the deep middle and it tried to take advantage of run gaps knowing it really couldn't run but had to keep Michigan honest. I think it tried to exploit defensive alignments and blitz tendencies, rather than outexecute Michigan when it had the ball.

The Colorado defense never really pressured Michigan in pass protection except with outside corner blitzes, including one that Khalid Hill failed to see and let Speight become a defenseless target early on leading to a fumble recovery for a score.

Everything is a work in progress and every game is about how you manage your ability and risk to erxecute what you expect the opposition to do to you and against you. And what we've seen teams do against Michigan is attempt to shudown the run game and force Speight to beat them. They are trying to eliminate long possessions and Michigan is not fighting to maintain that run-first image when it feels like it won't work. Which is a good thing because resileincy is the sign of a great team and a smart one.

Chuck Norris

September 18th, 2016 at 10:40 AM ^

I think it does, but I also think that the opinion swings are largely justified due to how important the regular season is.

If the Tigers play like shit and lose a game, no one cares that much. There are 161 other games. Same for hockey and basketball.

In the NFL it's a bit more important, but the way the playoffs are set up one loss isn't going to ruin the season. If New England gets blown out in game 3 people will be like "well that sucks," but they won't suddenly think that they won't make the playoffs.

Conversely, FSU playing like shit and losing in week 3 practically guarantees that they're out of it permanently. As such, it's a much bigger deal.

LSAClassOf2000

September 18th, 2016 at 10:42 AM ^

I think that in any sport where there are relatively few games which constitute a season, you're going to see wild swings in opinion week to week, especially because one shit performance can make the realizeable a distant fantasy for some teams. In baseball, by contrast, you see shifts in opinion occur over weeks, and sometimes just from a "strong" to "weak" version of the same position, for example. In football - college and pro - "we're great" to "we suck" can happen in hours with some fans. I think that's expected, even though a great majority of fan reactions are pretty juvenile sometimes. 

SHub'68

September 18th, 2016 at 11:29 AM ^

combine that with the weight opinion has in the determination of who plays for the title, all the opinion gets magnified in the media. Because all the teams don't play enough against each other, all you have are hypothetical match ups between teams and units. So you end up with "UM's D looks really vulnerable to a mobile QB, if they were to play X team, they'd get torched. Have to drop them a couple spots." And it matters, unlike in most other sports.

Bleedmaizeblue

September 18th, 2016 at 10:49 AM ^

I think the polls should be released after week 4. For 2 reasons. Because you start to get a good gauge when teams are at after 4 games. And because then CFB could play up all the hype!

Zeeland

September 18th, 2016 at 10:55 AM ^

Also, the preseason polls are based on last year and program history. Personnel change drastically from year to year. There are always teams like Louisville that are surprises and really good coming from nowhere. If the first polls came out in week four, there wouldn't be such drastic adjustments.

Could college basketball be the only other sport to top football?

LKLIII

September 18th, 2016 at 11:11 AM ^

It swings more wildly due to the relatively few games we play in a season, but I also think the swings are even more dramatic in the first few weeks of the season.  The sample size is only 3 games, whereas when a team performs a certain way in game #8 or #9, you can measure it against a prior data set of 7 or 8 prior games.

It's like how a GPA swings wildly early on during an academic career.  Once you're dealing with junior year grades in a given semester, it doesn't swing the overall GPA nearly as much as that second term freshman year.

michfan23

September 18th, 2016 at 11:14 AM ^

I think CFB opinions change so wildly every week because of the polls. Professional sports have standings and playoffs, but we know it will eventually filter to two teams. We debate more in CFB because of the rankings that come out weekly. We are looking for distinctions. Fans can argue that polls should t come out until later in the season, but this debate fuels the early part of the season, creates tv ratings, and increases fan involvement.




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Heisman212

September 18th, 2016 at 11:24 AM ^

It's the only sport where we try to figure out playoff teams and championship winner weekly. We never let the games play out. It's so media driven you really have to have your own opinion or you'll go nuts. Bama wins in a shootout they're great. Louisville wins in a blowout over FSU and they'll say FSU wasn't that good to begin with. EvrygMe matters but none more than the next.

Swayze Howell Sheen

September 18th, 2016 at 11:25 AM ^

I think this is actually the nature of CFB - tough grueling game played by large groups of college-age kids will lead to wildly different performances from week to week. Case in point: MSU. Had little desire or drive against Furman - they suck! Looked pretty strong against ND - hey, they are pretty good! (and, ND sucks!). As long as I've watched CFB, these surprising ups and downs have been there - it's just hard to get 100 players focused on each and every game.

 

 

BlueMk1690

September 18th, 2016 at 11:35 AM ^

of any major sport people follow. One game in college football equates 7 games in the NBA or NHL.

But even more importantly because there's no standardized schedules and regulated talent distribution, nobody really knows how good teams are. It's all speculation even after the national title game it really is just kind of an opinion thing. So couple that with a very short season and people are gonna be all over the place.

Just look at our game threads and see how opinions can shift within a half of football based on individual drives. CFB is the definitive sport for hot takes.

bdneely4

September 18th, 2016 at 11:34 AM ^

Each week? After the first quarter yesterday, we should have fired D Brown, everything Harbaugh chose to do needed to be questioned and our defense will finish last in CFB. Obviously I am joking, but it is amazing what you will start questioning from even play to play.




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DealerCamel

September 18th, 2016 at 11:40 AM ^

Football's a weird thing because so few games are played relative to other sports.  A three-game stretch can swing the narrative of an entire season for good or bad, in college or the NFL.

Brick in The Wave

September 18th, 2016 at 11:47 AM ^

I don't know how good we are or how high our ceiling is but I have total confidence in our coaches and believe that we will continue to get better throughout the year. That has not been the case the last decade we often peaked in weeks 3-5.

Are we a NC contender? Not sure but we will be playing our best football at the end of the year.

PeterKlima

September 18th, 2016 at 11:50 AM ^

another factor is the diverse nature of all the teams and conferences. at the start of the year, we don't know who is good or not, so we over react.

lhglrkwg

September 18th, 2016 at 11:51 AM ^

I think our D is certainly still good with the caveat being we have good - not elite - safeties who are prone to busting plays. Colorado didn't do a ton other than torch the safeties a few times. Very few teams will be able to run the ball on us consistently (like less than 5) and very few can pass consistently against our starting corners. The safeties are the weak point and that is what it is

mgobaran

September 18th, 2016 at 12:05 PM ^

It's a product of who we were playing. Colorado is a spread to run team, and instead of keeping a safety back and letting us get gashed like Indiana or OSU did last season, we challenged them to beat us over the top. They did 3 times. It was also the only way to move the ball after the slants were adjusted out of the game. 

So they went back to the well as much as possible. So much so that their QB got knocked out of the game due to the cosntant need to long developing routes to get behind our safeties. 

Our defense is just fine. I'm sure we will see it grade out pretty well in the UFR. Each one of them got beat once. I know Peppers did enough the rest of the game to soar back above zero. I'm sure Hill and Thomas are right in the zero range. The corners were great on fade routes. LBs were all over the place. Gary/Wormley/Glasgow/Hurst were in the QB's grill all day. And the run game was non-existent.