Football standings if every 1-score game reversed. Guess who's #1?
Fun exercise about what the 2021 NCAA football standings would be had every 1-score game been reversed in the regular season. You can probably guess who would have (tied for) best record overall: Nebraska! They would have been 11-1 with only a loss to to OSU by 9. (8 point losses were considered 1-score games.)
Michigan would be 9-3, with losses to Rutgers(!), Nebraska, Penn State. They'd gain a win against MSU (which they should have anyway). They'd still beat OSU, but because OSU would have been 11-1, OSU would have won the B1G East. Michigan's win over Iowa is not included because this counts regular season only (and Michigan wouldn't have gone to the B1G Championship game anyway, OSU would have.)
MSU would have been 7-5, which is about what the metrics thought they should have been IIRC.
January 9th, 2022 at 4:45 PM ^
Username checks out? If my aunt had balls, etc?
That's all I got.
January 9th, 2022 at 5:20 PM ^
That would be crazy
January 9th, 2022 at 5:31 PM ^
Like having subs
January 9th, 2022 at 5:39 PM ^
And, depending how close you two were before you found out, a good reason for psychiatric help...
January 9th, 2022 at 4:45 PM ^
I think the part I dispute is that it's a 'fun' exercise. I mean really the only person who should do this exercise is Scott Frost ahead of his annual review meeting with the AD.
January 9th, 2022 at 7:42 PM ^
Hey, it’s OT season! There’s not much else to do for fun. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
January 9th, 2022 at 4:46 PM ^
Michigan State seems a bit lucky to end up where they did
January 9th, 2022 at 4:50 PM ^
tells me the difference between a good and a bad season is pretty close. But it also tells me that its not a good indicator of who is REALLY good, since there are teams that win close who are really good (e.g. Bama a couple times).
Also tells me that teams are all a few bounces between winning and losing all over the place. Except nebraska, who sucks at finishing games.
January 9th, 2022 at 4:51 PM ^
Guess who would be rich if I had the 6 winning lottery numbers?!
January 9th, 2022 at 6:17 PM ^
That guy with two thumbs?
January 9th, 2022 at 4:53 PM ^
Really the only thing this exercise illustrate is that the best teams don't play in very many close games during the season (duh) and that Nebraska had a hilariously historically miserable season that honestly should be damning evidence to fire Frost instead of giving him another year
January 9th, 2022 at 4:53 PM ^
Love me some Guess Who!
January 9th, 2022 at 5:01 PM ^
If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.
January 9th, 2022 at 6:37 PM ^
Now there's an expression I haven't heard in a very long time! ;-)
January 9th, 2022 at 5:17 PM ^
Brought to you by Carol Frost!
January 9th, 2022 at 5:17 PM ^
Brought to you by Carol Frost!
January 9th, 2022 at 5:22 PM ^
This is fun, thanks for posting. 2021 Nebraska is easily one of the funniest college football teams ever--if you're not a Huskers fan
January 9th, 2022 at 5:44 PM ^
If you had an eye in your asshole imagine all the shit you'd see.
January 9th, 2022 at 6:17 PM ^
Scott Frost is 5-20 in one-score games. Losing close games is in his DNA. Unless he gets bit by a radioactive arachnid, that's not changing.
January 10th, 2022 at 9:25 PM ^
Used it all up in 1997. Fuck that guy
January 9th, 2022 at 6:18 PM ^
So the Matt Campbell fans will say it's OK to hire him after all.
January 9th, 2022 at 6:25 PM ^
Change the big N to a big A and this looks like a pretty fair preseason ranking from August.
January 9th, 2022 at 6:44 PM ^
Now do the exercise where we rank teams based on who outhit each other.
January 9th, 2022 at 7:51 PM ^
If one-score losses don't count, then Bo didn't lose a game from 1971-1976.
January 9th, 2022 at 8:06 PM ^
I've been thinking about this. We just wrapped up our best season in over two decades, and we're kinda freaking out because there's all these rumors that the coach that got us there might leave.
A couple bad bounces in a couple of our wins, and we'd have ended up 9-3 instead. No B1G Championship, no playoff, a "Who cares" bowl that half our seniors opted out of, and the debate about if we even wanted to keep Harbaugh would be raging.
Not the OSU game though... that one was not close.
January 9th, 2022 at 8:18 PM ^
There's a reason Nebraska (and Penn State, and Florida, and Texas) lost more 1-score games than they won.
Florida's the only one of those 4 that made a change where it counts, and won't have that issue again in 2022.
January 9th, 2022 at 8:26 PM ^
This is always an interesting exercise and can point out where teams maybe got a bit lucky vs. unlucky. At the same time...Nebraska being 5-20 in 1-score games under Frost (or whatever it is) feels like more of a feature than a bug right now.
I think there are teams that play close games because they have a talent disadvantage OR play a style that is big on chaos and trying to bring variability to games. Indiana under Kevin Wilson feels like another one where a bunch of games were zany because they scored quickly and didn't really stop anyone.
UM going 9-3 feels right but look at Alabama - 8-4 and in the middle of the SEC.
January 10th, 2022 at 8:22 AM ^
Just think if the Hutchinson touchdown (his shin was down?)against MSU stands....
UM is then undefeated, Bama and Georgia are 1 loss teams. Cinci is undefeated....
It may have been UM #1 vs Cinci #4.
(Kinda doubt they would put two SEC teams in a rematch #2/#3, but possible).