The Michigan difference is that we've romanticized Michigan's history maybe more than any other fanbase.
From 1969 to 2004 inclusive, a span of 36 years, M won or shared the B1G title 21 times. That's about six per decade, and that level of play was maintained for more than a generation. Is it "romanticizing" to point that out?
In the divisional play era, shared titles are no longer possible. But if you count just getting to the B1G title game (even if losing it), that's about equivalent to counting shared titles.
Iowa's winning percentage roughly pre-Hayden-Fry (1950 ~ 1980) is 0.412, which is 5-7 normalized to a 12-game schedule. Since 1980, Iowa is 0.620 which is between 8-4 and 7-5 on average. This is the ceiling for Iowa's program; the floor is being an Indiana/Northwestern-level doormat. Iowa fans know this and are patient through the lean years.
It's a lot different at a traditional blueblood where 8-4 to 9-3 is not a golden era but instead merely average.
From the perspective of six years ago, JH is the obvious choice. No one looks better on paper as a fit for the UM HC position. Let's say that he looks 90% likely to succeed, while no other candidate looked better than 70%.
But once given the opportunity, the wavefunction collapses -- Schrödinger'sCoach. Instead of 90%, you end up at either 100% or 0%. If you get the 100% outcome, nobody's complaining. But if you get the 0% outcome, then you're looking up at 70%, not down.
Dabo did have an easier path. Clemson's recruiting success is predicated on getting to the playoffs consistently, which mostly requires navigating one's conference without a loss.
Over the prior four years (2016-2019 inclusive), Clemson has faced exactly one AP-final-top-ten team in conference play (#8 FSU in 2016). Michigan faced nine over the same span (OSU x4, PSU x3, Wisc x2)
Michigan is about twice as selective as Ohio State (by a quick-and-dirty conversion between median ACT score and percentile), while Caltech is five times as selective as Michigan.
The gap that exists between a good public institution (Ohio State) and a great one (Michigan) is trivial compared to the distance to the real elite schools.
A statistician is a person who will tell you, when you're standing with one foot in liquid nitrogen and the other in molten tin: "on average, you're comfortable."
If the opponent is from the Sun Belt cellar, you can show mercy early because they are not a threat to score a bunch even on the backups.
If the opponent is a big-boy team with a credible offense, you don't slow down in the first half until you are well beyond that margin, say, up 50 points or so.
Wisconsin was #6 and overwhelming choice to win the B1G West
Michigan State was #11
Penn State was #12
Ohio State was #3 and overwhelming choice to win the B1G East
In that context, picking 2-3 losses is more than reasonable. You have two higher-ranked opponents (but not so much higher-ranked that you don't have a shot to beat them), and three tough-but-lower-ranked opponents (who similarly have a shot to beat you). 2-3 or 3-2 in those five games would be the most common outcome.
But what if I'd told you before the season that:
MSU and Wisconsin would barely achieve bowl eligibility,
OSU would forget how to play defense,
UM would be the B1G team on the playoff fast-track, and
of the teams on the schedule only Notre Dame and Northwestern would surpass preseason expectations.
If they did and lost twice, but won a tough conference, they'd still make it.
Like happened in 2016 (PSU) or 2017 (OSU)? Both won the B1G, lost two games, and played in the B1G East when it was arguably stronger than it has looked so far this year. Both lost out on playoff berths to one-loss teams that didn't even get to their conference title game.
The selection committee seems to give primary consideration to the loss column, and then uses toughness of schedule as a tiebreaker. Playing a tough schedule will help you -- but only among teams with the same number of losses.
This year, we have the added problem of failing to derail ND's own playoff aspirations when we had the chance. ND faces four more decent teams (all ranked lower than they are) and they only need go 3-1 against them to lock up a playoff spot. If they can split a pair of games vs. teams ranked around #15, and win two more against teams ranked around #20, they're in. Any top ten team would be a heavy favorite to accomplish that much.
If the Irish get a playoff spot (on top of the SEC winner and Clemson being shoo-ins barring catastrophe)... that leaves only one slot for the B1G, Big XII, and Pac-12 combined. Now you have to worry about not only SEC also-rans, but also getting aced out by an undefeated or one-loss Oklahoma.
... assuming an OSU win over Illnois as well. In that scenario, four teams are co-division-champs, each with a 7-2 conference record.
As for who gets to the B1G title game: the first tiebreak is record among the tied teams. In this scenario, that keeps OSU (2-1) and MSU (2-1) and eliminates UM (1-2) and PSU (1-2). If any tiebreak narrows down to just two teams, the head-to-head winner between the two (OSU) goes.
If OSU loses to Illinois and all those same teams win out, it's only a three-way split for the division title. MSU (2-0 vs UM/PSU) wins the head-to-head tiebreaker over PSU (1-1) and UM (0-2) for the B1G title game berth.
... due to differences in winning percentage (7-1 = 0.875, 6-1 = 0.857) determing division standing rather than the head-to-head tiebreaker.
If LSU beats everyone left on their schedule including Alabama, they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker for the West division. Both would have just one loss in conference play. But 6-1 sits behind 7-1 in the standings regardless, so Alabama gets the title game on the winning percentage difference.
Florida is already behind the other credible East division candidate (Tennessee) and has a head-to-head loss. The canceled game helps them if Tennessee loses twice and if Florida would have lost to LSU, because 6-2 vs 6-2 goes to head-to-head, while 6-1 beats out 6-2. (If Tennessee finishes 7-1 or 8-0, it doesn't matter what Florida does; they are out.)
As of PSU's 8th possession of that game (roughly midway 3Q), they were averaging about 9 yards per possession. PSU's offense was not acting like a threat to score without help.
But Barrett was providing that help. He threw a pick-six early in the second half, and later another INT that set up PSU in plus territory. Urbz turtled up in order to play it safe, and nearly lost the game for doing so.
Imagine that you flip a coin 100 times and get 54 heads. Then you examine the 46 tails, note (correctly) that every single one of those flips was 50-50 to be heads, and figure that you "deserved" 54 + (46/2) = 77 heads in 100 flips.
You're ignoring the fact that you also "deserved" (54/2) tails on the flips you did not examine. When both sides of that "should have been" accounting are done, it works out to a 50-50 exact split for the expected outcome.
If you wanted to do this sort of analysis and end up anywhere close to reality, you'd at least have to pick a Sparty fan to do an equally detailed review of every play that they feel went against them.
Which is not to say that Michigan didn't have some (or even most) marginal calls go against them. It's to say that the 20-point total difference number is meaningless.
I suspect Hoke would have had about the same result, but that does not mean that JH is an equivalent coach.
JH hasn't been a "gets big results in year one" guy in the past. His first year at San Diego (7-4) wasn't better than the prior year (8-2). His first year at Stanford (4-8) was better than Walt Harris' last year (1-11) but winning one-in-three games isn't much to write home about.
.... I think you need to utilize the home stadiums of the higher seeds until you're down to a final four. It brings in fans that don't have to travel to fill the stadium, and it makes seeding more important by giving home-field advantage to the higher seed.
Even the current four-team format is a hardship to fans of the semifinal winners. How many fans can pay to travel to the Rose Bowl and then on about one week's notice arrange travel to Texas? (In an 8-team neutral-site format, the final two teams' fans would be looking at three sets of travel arrangements, the latter two of them made on short notice.)
Top teams by number of wins (before this year, per NCAA 2014 Football Records Book):
Michigan
Texas
Notre Dame
Nebraska
Ohio State
Oklahoma
Alabama
Tennessee
Southern Cal
Georgia
Penn State would be in the middle of that list, knocking Georgia off the bottom, if not for the Sandusky-related NCAA sanctions which vacated a ton of wins. And Georgia (767 wins) is a pretty good distance back of the team right above them (USC at 796) so I'd probably consider that a good place to end the list.
Louisiana Tech isn't a "name" team but by Sagarin-PREDICTOR they are the biggest favorite (-12) of the B1G's December games. Spreads by Sagarin-PREDICTOR:
December: Illinois +12, Rutgers +5, Penn State +4, Nebraska +4, Maryland +11
... assuming all bowls are neutral sites, which may be technically true but may not be so in practice.
All 10 teams are underdogs, but enough (6) are within a TD that they should pick up a couple of wins. I'll say 2-8 with only Penn State and Sparty winning.
I like this better than 8 teams. It makes seeding much more important:
#1-#2: Bye into final four
#3-#4: Home game against worse seed to get to final four
#5-#6: Road game against better seed to get to fnal four
There will always be "bubble teams" regardless of the cutoff. But taking the major conference winners plus one at-large should be good enough. ("If you want in, win your damn conference. If you can't do that, shut up.")
Ohio State (Johnston) is #70 in I-A in net punting.
With all due respect to Jim ("the punt is the most important play in football") Tressel, I'd not consider a punter "a star" unless he was top-10 or so.
College football is a coaches' game, meaning that quality of the coaching staff plays an outsized role in W/L record compared to other sports.
This would not be a complete overhaul of the system (like the transition to/from RichRod): the scheme that Hoke recruits for fits well with Harbaugh's style. There is a ton of young talent on this team. The defense is already quite good and returns nearly everyone. And the B1G is weak and should continue to be so for a while.
The current coaching staff would have a good shot at 8 wins during the regular season next year. I can't believe that an elite staff wouldn't beat that by at least a couple wins. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to see the same 12-0 that Urban managed in his first year.
Saban took Michigan State to 9-2 in 1999, their best record in more than a decade (1991-1998 they lost 5+ games every year), before moving up.
Meyer took Bowling Green (who'd lost 6+ games the prior six years straight) to 8-3 and 9-3 seasons before moving on to Utah. Then he took over a Utah program that had 4+ losses nearly every single year to 10-2 and 12-0 including a BCS bowl win (the first BCS bowl win for a non-AQ team), before moving on to Florida.
Jim Tressel had several mediocre seasons at Youngstown State to start out, so he didn't take them quickly to unprecedented heights as Meyer/Saban did. But after about 5 years he took them on a run of three national titles in four years, and won I-AA coach of the year four times.
All of these guys were picked up from lesser programs and/or lesser divisions, BUT the one thing they had in common was that they were highly successful head coaches at those programs. Taking a I-AA (er, "FCS") head coach who's won multiple national titles, or a non-AQ head coach with an undefeated season and BCS bowl win, or a coach who's taken an average-plus AQ team to unusually good years... those aren't really huge risks. (Harbaugh more or less fits the third category.)
In my view, a risk is picking up a young-and-promising coordinator (like Ohio's OC). That's a big gamble that might pay off big, or might not work out at all. (What if he's largely a figurehead and Meyer is the brain trust by himself, for example?) I'd prefer not to go that route; IMO any elite program should be able to pick from among folks who've already proven themselves highly effective head coaches.
I think an undefeated Big Five team is ahead of any one-loss Big Five team at the end of the year. Metrics like "quality of loss" are out the window. Imagine Michigan State played Oregon State instead of Oregon and was still undefeated,. They might sit at the bottom of the undefeated teams, but they'd almost certainly be in the playoffs if they won out. For that reason, playing in a weak Big 5 conference and not playing anyone of consequence is the best route to the playoffs.
But it's not as if that's a route open to just anyone. Even if Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, etc. played nobody out of conference, they'd lose one Big Ten game and be out of the running (and likely below some two-loss SEC and/or Pac-12 teams). A tough schedule gives you more margin for error, but it also gives your more likelihood of "error" (losses) on your record.
The point of "muggles" in the Harry Potter universe is that most of them are blissfully unaware of the magical world.
Rowling has said she created the word "Muggle" from "mug", an English term for someone who is easily fooled. She added the "-gle" to make it sound less demeaning and more "cuddly".
The charitable reading is this: Use of the term is effectively calling the fans "ignorant outsiders."
The less charitable reading involves tacking on the added nuance that muggles are considered lesser beings by many of the magical folk.
Rutgers' final Sagarin rating the last four years: #100 (2013), #53 (2012), #36 (2011), #90 (2010).
Yes, they had some solid teams -- when Schiano was coach and in a conference worse than the current B1G. Schiano is no longer there. Recent history is: they are stretching to reach the bottom end of the top 40 once in four years, and among the worst teams in FBS twice as often as that.
So let's say that this is a good year for them and they're #40-ish (current rating of #74 notwithstanding, loss to a sanction-depleted Penn State notwithstanding). Even granting that, that makes them only about as good as Iowa or Maryland. Perhaps that's the "kind of game that even a healthy Michgian program drops once in a while." But that would be a lot easier to swallow at 4-2 with the only other loss being a non-blowout to Notre Dame.
On a somewhat related topic: If someone had come to you in August and forced you to bet something precious on Michigan's record through the first half of the 2014 campaign... what would you have picked? I'd have looked at the schedule and would have seen:
Appalachian State, expected to be among the worst FBS teams.
Notre Dame, who should be pretty good
Miami-Ohio, who's picked towards the bottom of the MAC
Utah, who's picked towards the bottom of the PAC-12
Minnesota, who's picked towards the bottom of the B1G West
Rutgers, who's picked towards the bottom of the B1G East
I think I'd have gone with 5-1. In my mind the possibility of a win over Notre Dame would be somewhat canceled by the (relatively slight) possibility of a loss to one of the other five.
There's still plenty of football left to be played. The glass-half-full types can try to convince themselves that Minnesota is going to win the B1G West, Miami-NTM is going to finish near the top of the MAC, Rutgers is going to be much better than everyone expected, Notre Dame is going to be a playoff team, etc.
But I have a hard time buying that. I think it's more parsimonious to suspect that a single team is much worse than expected, than it is to expect that six different opponents all turned out much better.
Oklahoma won 47 straight games between 1953 and 1957.
Nebraska won three MNCs in four years 1994-1997.
Florda State finished in the top 5 something like 15 years in a row in the '80s-'90s.
Southern Cal had a multiple-MNC run just recently, and had a dominant period in the '70s as well.
I think all of those are arguably in the vicinity of Alabama's recent run. Maybe if Alabama wins three more MNCs in the next five years, they'll put some distance between themselves and others.
While I don't think Alabama's run is all that unique, I do agree that one can't use Alabama's recent success as a measuring stick. That's a recipe for disappointment. I'd set the goal as competing for the B1G title (being in the division race up to the final week) most years, making the B1G title game one year in three, winning the B1G one year in five, and making the new 4-team MNC playoff at least once a decade.
That seems like a modest goal that should be achievable even if fans of Nebraska, Penn State, and Ohio State all believe they're entitled to the same thing.
OSU's LB corps is like UM's OL. They have one good player, a couple average-minus ones, and then it's dregs after that. Their 2nd-3rd LBs were out for the Illinois game (details at the linked article, by OSU's equivalent to Space Coyote).
I don't think one can lean on Illinois' scoring vs OSU as being predictive of future results (if it were, wouldn't Indiana have scored more?)
... per Phil Steele's preseason magazine, and his web site:
2010 UM +17
2009 UM +11.5
2008 UM +20
1999 UM -11
1998 UM +10
1996 UM +17
Steele's data ends in 1993, but there were probably several double-digit spreads in UM's favor in the late '80s and early '90s. In the games above, the favorite is 5-1.
My one quibble is that it seems a bit spin-heavy in places. For example, in the "Rosters" section, you compare two quantities:
1.42 years of experience vs 1.65 (~16% higher) in Michigan's favor and call it "slightly" (italicized for emphasis in your original) more experienced.
3.38 stars vs 3.69 (~9% higher) in Ohio's favor and call it "solidly" more talended.
I think the real issues are likely found in individual positions (others have noted OL recruiting) -- rather than in trying to read things into negligible differences in across-the-roster averages. (Meyer walked into some depth issues as well. Ohio started the season with only one servicable LB, but they play only two LB a lot of the time. But that was more a matter of attrition than failure to recruit numbers.)
... I'm guessing that a punt fake was called, but OSU left their defense on the field for the play.
If you've decided you're not going to punt, why go with a less favorable setup (your punt team versus the opponent's defense)? Might as well run your starting offense out there to improve your chances.
... towards the end of the year. Compare their performance against Wisconsin last week, to Penn State's (who also has a pretty good defense) against Wisconsin this week. Maybe because they stopped facing teams that could expose their weakness (pass defense in the middle), maybe because of a couple personnel upgrades at LB.
At the same time as we note OSU's struggles with Purdue and UAB, we should be fair and also note that they beat both Big Ten title game participants. They're overrated as a top-five team, but it's not unreasonable to consider them the best team in the conference. The rest of the B1G consists of a one-B1G-loss team that OSU beat by 25 points (Nebraska), two two-B1G-loss teams that they beat (Michgian, Penn State), and everyone else is 5-3 or worse.
... but Ohio State's position when Cooper was let go was closer to Michgian's position when Carr left (bound to a decent bowl, only a couple years removed from a top-five ranking, etc.). They hadn't lived through the equivalent of the last three years, which made them doubt their program.
As for the Tressel hire, a lot of the fans thought he was too small-time, and too risky to wager that his I-AA success would translate to the next level. But those were the fans fixated on pipe-dreams like Stoops and Urban Meyer and Gruden, who were never realistic candidates. Tressel got rave reviews from the people who actually knew him, and from Ohio HS coaches.
... it's just the average rating of all teams played, adjusted for the home field advantage. So it's not really amenable to being fabricated. He'd have to change the rankings of the teams that go into the schedule calculation instead.
Since Sagarin thinks the Pac-10 is far stronger than the Big Ten, and since the Pac-10 plays 9 conference games, and since most of the Pac-10 teams schedule at least one decent non-conference opponent... it's not too surprising that he ranks all of the Pac-10 teams' schedules as being pretty strong. (Of the top 11 NCAA schedules according to Sagarin, 9 of them are Pac-10 teams.)
Ignoring the site adjustment, Michigan's schedule per Sagarin:
Three top-20 teams: 11 OSU, 15 Wisc, 20 MSU
Two "second 20" teams: 27 Iowa, 28 ND
Three 50-ish mediocre teams: 44 Illinois, 50 PSU, 54 UConn
Four cupcakes: 91 Purdue, 99 Indiana, 107 UMass, 158 Bowling Green
Oregon's divided similarly:
One top-20 team: 3 Stanford
Five "second 20" teams: 22 USC, 23 Ariz, 24 ASU, 31 OSU(ntOSU), 34 Cal
Three 50-ish mediocre teams: 42 Wash, 51 Tenn, 59 UCLA
Three cupcakes: 82 WSU, 168 New Mex, 184 Portland St.
Oregon's schedule isn't tons tougher than Michigan's (only 2 points on average) per Sagarin. The difference is one less cupcake and an extra 25-ish team, more or less. If you took Indiana off Michigan's schedule and turned it into a team like Texas A&M, that would pretty much make Michigan's schedule the equivalent of Oregon's per Sagarin.
The focus on "winning teams" strikes me as kind of odd. The Pac-10 has a handful of decent teams that ended up 6-6 or 5-7 -- for example, Arizona State who gave Wisconsin all they could handle. You credit Michigan with beating a "winning team" in UConn and another in Notre Dame, but I believe that both of those teams are not as good as ASU, for whom Oregon gets no "winning team" credit.
Going to a second level ("winning teams" by opponents) strikes me as even more contrived, as it suffers for the same reason: the Pac-10 having a lot of 0.500-ish teams, and those teams all playing a lot of games against each other.
Who knows, due to the Zook effect... but it doesn't seem to me that OSU has any more trouble with mobile QBs than any other random team. It seems odd to point to OSU-Illinois 2008, ignoring OSU-Illinois 2009 and the Rose Bowl, for example.
Recent Comments
"Fat man touchdown" needs renamed "thicc six."
From 1969 to 2004 inclusive, a span of 36 years, M won or shared the B1G title 21 times. That's about six per decade, and that level of play was maintained for more than a generation. Is it "romanticizing" to point that out?
In the divisional play era, shared titles are no longer possible. But if you count just getting to the B1G title game (even if losing it), that's about equivalent to counting shared titles.
Iowa's winning percentage roughly pre-Hayden-Fry (1950 ~ 1980) is 0.412, which is 5-7 normalized to a 12-game schedule. Since 1980, Iowa is 0.620 which is between 8-4 and 7-5 on average. This is the ceiling for Iowa's program; the floor is being an Indiana/Northwestern-level doormat. Iowa fans know this and are patient through the lean years.
It's a lot different at a traditional blueblood where 8-4 to 9-3 is not a golden era but instead merely average.
From the perspective of six years ago, JH is the obvious choice. No one looks better on paper as a fit for the UM HC position. Let's say that he looks 90% likely to succeed, while no other candidate looked better than 70%.
But once given the opportunity, the wavefunction collapses -- Schrödinger's Coach. Instead of 90%, you end up at either 100% or 0%. If you get the 100% outcome, nobody's complaining. But if you get the 0% outcome, then you're looking up at 70%, not down.
Dabo did have an easier path. Clemson's recruiting success is predicated on getting to the playoffs consistently, which mostly requires navigating one's conference without a loss.
Over the prior four years (2016-2019 inclusive), Clemson has faced exactly one AP-final-top-ten team in conference play (#8 FSU in 2016). Michigan faced nine over the same span (OSU x4, PSU x3, Wisc x2)
Michigan is about twice as selective as Ohio State (by a quick-and-dirty conversion between median ACT score and percentile), while Caltech is five times as selective as Michigan.
The gap that exists between a good public institution (Ohio State) and a great one (Michigan) is trivial compared to the distance to the real elite schools.
A statistician is a person who will tell you, when you're standing with one foot in liquid nitrogen and the other in molten tin: "on average, you're comfortable."
The NCAA record comeback is about 35 points.
If the opponent is from the Sun Belt cellar, you can show mercy early because they are not a threat to score a bunch even on the backups.
If the opponent is a big-boy team with a credible offense, you don't slow down in the first half until you are well beyond that margin, say, up 50 points or so.
Where things stood in the consensus of preseason publications (UM was #9):
In that context, picking 2-3 losses is more than reasonable. You have two higher-ranked opponents (but not so much higher-ranked that you don't have a shot to beat them), and three tough-but-lower-ranked opponents (who similarly have a shot to beat you). 2-3 or 3-2 in those five games would be the most common outcome.
But what if I'd told you before the season that:
.... then how many losses would you have picked?
Like happened in 2016 (PSU) or 2017 (OSU)? Both won the B1G, lost two games, and played in the B1G East when it was arguably stronger than it has looked so far this year. Both lost out on playoff berths to one-loss teams that didn't even get to their conference title game.
The selection committee seems to give primary consideration to the loss column, and then uses toughness of schedule as a tiebreaker. Playing a tough schedule will help you -- but only among teams with the same number of losses.
This year, we have the added problem of failing to derail ND's own playoff aspirations when we had the chance. ND faces four more decent teams (all ranked lower than they are) and they only need go 3-1 against them to lock up a playoff spot. If they can split a pair of games vs. teams ranked around #15, and win two more against teams ranked around #20, they're in. Any top ten team would be a heavy favorite to accomplish that much.
If the Irish get a playoff spot (on top of the SEC winner and Clemson being shoo-ins barring catastrophe)... that leaves only one slot for the B1G, Big XII, and Pac-12 combined. Now you have to worry about not only SEC also-rans, but also getting aced out by an undefeated or one-loss Oklahoma.
... assuming an OSU win over Illnois as well. In that scenario, four teams are co-division-champs, each with a 7-2 conference record.
As for who gets to the B1G title game: the first tiebreak is record among the tied teams. In this scenario, that keeps OSU (2-1) and MSU (2-1) and eliminates UM (1-2) and PSU (1-2). If any tiebreak narrows down to just two teams, the head-to-head winner between the two (OSU) goes.
If OSU loses to Illinois and all those same teams win out, it's only a three-way split for the division title. MSU (2-0 vs UM/PSU) wins the head-to-head tiebreaker over PSU (1-1) and UM (0-2) for the B1G title game berth.
... due to differences in winning percentage (7-1 = 0.875, 6-1 = 0.857) determing division standing rather than the head-to-head tiebreaker.
If LSU beats everyone left on their schedule including Alabama, they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker for the West division. Both would have just one loss in conference play. But 6-1 sits behind 7-1 in the standings regardless, so Alabama gets the title game on the winning percentage difference.
Florida is already behind the other credible East division candidate (Tennessee) and has a head-to-head loss. The canceled game helps them if Tennessee loses twice and if Florida would have lost to LSU, because 6-2 vs 6-2 goes to head-to-head, while 6-1 beats out 6-2. (If Tennessee finishes 7-1 or 8-0, it doesn't matter what Florida does; they are out.)
As of PSU's 8th possession of that game (roughly midway 3Q), they were averaging about 9 yards per possession. PSU's offense was not acting like a threat to score without help.
But Barrett was providing that help. He threw a pick-six early in the second half, and later another INT that set up PSU in plus territory. Urbz turtled up in order to play it safe, and nearly lost the game for doing so.
Richt went 0.680 in SEC play. The three decades prior to Richt, UGA's winning percentage in SEC play was 0.645.
I suppose that's "above average," but not by much. It's one extra win every four or five years.
... who doesn't get all the Richt love?
UGA consistently sits near the top of the list in terms of number of active NFL players (this year: tied with Alabama, just behind LSU, Miami, USC).
... and of those schools probably has the least to show for all the talent passing though their program.
The last few years in particular, the other traditionally good programs in the SEC East have been a trainwreck. It should have been easy to excel.
Not that I view Richt as a bad guy (or even a bad coach). To me, he's the poster boy for "doing less with more."
Imagine that you flip a coin 100 times and get 54 heads. Then you examine the 46 tails, note (correctly) that every single one of those flips was 50-50 to be heads, and figure that you "deserved" 54 + (46/2) = 77 heads in 100 flips.
You're ignoring the fact that you also "deserved" (54/2) tails on the flips you did not examine. When both sides of that "should have been" accounting are done, it works out to a 50-50 exact split for the expected outcome.
If you wanted to do this sort of analysis and end up anywhere close to reality, you'd at least have to pick a Sparty fan to do an equally detailed review of every play that they feel went against them.
Which is not to say that Michigan didn't have some (or even most) marginal calls go against them. It's to say that the 20-point total difference number is meaningless.
I suspect Hoke would have had about the same result, but that does not mean that JH is an equivalent coach.
JH hasn't been a "gets big results in year one" guy in the past. His first year at San Diego (7-4) wasn't better than the prior year (8-2). His first year at Stanford (4-8) was better than Walt Harris' last year (1-11) but winning one-in-three games isn't much to write home about.
.... I think you need to utilize the home stadiums of the higher seeds until you're down to a final four. It brings in fans that don't have to travel to fill the stadium, and it makes seeding more important by giving home-field advantage to the higher seed.
Even the current four-team format is a hardship to fans of the semifinal winners. How many fans can pay to travel to the Rose Bowl and then on about one week's notice arrange travel to Texas? (In an 8-team neutral-site format, the final two teams' fans would be looking at three sets of travel arrangements, the latter two of them made on short notice.)
Top teams by number of wins (before this year, per NCAA 2014 Football Records Book):
Penn State would be in the middle of that list, knocking Georgia off the bottom, if not for the Sandusky-related NCAA sanctions which vacated a ton of wins. And Georgia (767 wins) is a pretty good distance back of the team right above them (USC at 796) so I'd probably consider that a good place to end the list.
... prior to about 1980.
But they upgraded thier schedule with decade-long series with both Notre Dame and Alabama, and then earned enough credibility to win a couple MNCs.
Louisiana Tech isn't a "name" team but by Sagarin-PREDICTOR they are the biggest favorite (-12) of the B1G's December games. Spreads by Sagarin-PREDICTOR:
December: Illinois +12, Rutgers +5, Penn State +4, Nebraska +4, Maryland +11
January: Wisconsin +12, Sparty +1, Minnesota +4, Ohio State +5, Iowa +8
... assuming all bowls are neutral sites, which may be technically true but may not be so in practice.
All 10 teams are underdogs, but enough (6) are within a TD that they should pick up a couple of wins. I'll say 2-8 with only Penn State and Sparty winning.
I like this better than 8 teams. It makes seeding much more important:
#1-#2: Bye into final four
#3-#4: Home game against worse seed to get to final four
#5-#6: Road game against better seed to get to fnal four
There will always be "bubble teams" regardless of the cutoff. But taking the major conference winners plus one at-large should be good enough. ("If you want in, win your damn conference. If you can't do that, shut up.")
Either Ohio State gets left out of the playoffs and the Buckeye fans get insanely pissed off.
Or else they get in as the #4 seed, get housed by Alabama, and the Buckeye fans get pissed off.
Most OSU fans think Urban is playing with house money this year due to Braxton's injury.
Ohio State (Johnston) is #70 in I-A in net punting.
With all due respect to Jim ("the punt is the most important play in football") Tressel, I'd not consider a punter "a star" unless he was top-10 or so.
College football is a coaches' game, meaning that quality of the coaching staff plays an outsized role in W/L record compared to other sports.
This would not be a complete overhaul of the system (like the transition to/from RichRod): the scheme that Hoke recruits for fits well with Harbaugh's style. There is a ton of young talent on this team. The defense is already quite good and returns nearly everyone. And the B1G is weak and should continue to be so for a while.
The current coaching staff would have a good shot at 8 wins during the regular season next year. I can't believe that an elite staff wouldn't beat that by at least a couple wins. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to see the same 12-0 that Urban managed in his first year.
The team Florida destroyed was Eastern Kentucky.
It'll be interesting to see how the Gators do at Florida State next week. I'm guessing they'll be on the receiving end of the destruction.
Saban took Michigan State to 9-2 in 1999, their best record in more than a decade (1991-1998 they lost 5+ games every year), before moving up.
Meyer took Bowling Green (who'd lost 6+ games the prior six years straight) to 8-3 and 9-3 seasons before moving on to Utah. Then he took over a Utah program that had 4+ losses nearly every single year to 10-2 and 12-0 including a BCS bowl win (the first BCS bowl win for a non-AQ team), before moving on to Florida.
Jim Tressel had several mediocre seasons at Youngstown State to start out, so he didn't take them quickly to unprecedented heights as Meyer/Saban did. But after about 5 years he took them on a run of three national titles in four years, and won I-AA coach of the year four times.
All of these guys were picked up from lesser programs and/or lesser divisions, BUT the one thing they had in common was that they were highly successful head coaches at those programs. Taking a I-AA (er, "FCS") head coach who's won multiple national titles, or a non-AQ head coach with an undefeated season and BCS bowl win, or a coach who's taken an average-plus AQ team to unusually good years... those aren't really huge risks. (Harbaugh more or less fits the third category.)
In my view, a risk is picking up a young-and-promising coordinator (like Ohio's OC). That's a big gamble that might pay off big, or might not work out at all. (What if he's largely a figurehead and Meyer is the brain trust by himself, for example?) I'd prefer not to go that route; IMO any elite program should be able to pick from among folks who've already proven themselves highly effective head coaches.
I think an undefeated Big Five team is ahead of any one-loss Big Five team at the end of the year. Metrics like "quality of loss" are out the window. Imagine Michigan State played Oregon State instead of Oregon and was still undefeated,. They might sit at the bottom of the undefeated teams, but they'd almost certainly be in the playoffs if they won out. For that reason, playing in a weak Big 5 conference and not playing anyone of consequence is the best route to the playoffs.
But it's not as if that's a route open to just anyone. Even if Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, etc. played nobody out of conference, they'd lose one Big Ten game and be out of the running (and likely below some two-loss SEC and/or Pac-12 teams). A tough schedule gives you more margin for error, but it also gives your more likelihood of "error" (losses) on your record.
The point of "muggles" in the Harry Potter universe is that most of them are blissfully unaware of the magical world.
The charitable reading is this: Use of the term is effectively calling the fans "ignorant outsiders."
The less charitable reading involves tacking on the added nuance that muggles are considered lesser beings by many of the magical folk.
I looked at the top of his twitter feed and didn't see it. Maybe he deleted?
Given the timing it sure seems that your reporting had a major impact.
I tried googling that quotation, but it only turned up some Sparty rivals site as the source.
It's claimed to come from ESPN Insider, but has anyone actually seen that text on ESPN's web site?
I suspect some Sparty fans are trolling. It just doesn't read like something a 17-year-old kid would say, to me.
The way I see it: if you're running onside kicks and still trying to score, you can't complain if the opponent also behaves as if the game's not over.
The only way MSU ends up with the field position to score on seven running plays, is a pointless failed onside kick.
http://philsteele.com/Pdf/last20years/michigan.a.pdf
Recent lines:
2013 +4.5, 2012 -9.5, 2011 +3, 2010 -4.5, 2009 +4, 2008 +4, 2007 -4, 2006 -15.5
... he saw it and told the players to delete it (i.e., helped cover up a rape, which is itself a serious crime).
Lying then is OK. Lying now, not so much. But you can see that there would be some motive to lie now.
Rutgers' final Sagarin rating the last four years: #100 (2013), #53 (2012), #36 (2011), #90 (2010).
Yes, they had some solid teams -- when Schiano was coach and in a conference worse than the current B1G. Schiano is no longer there. Recent history is: they are stretching to reach the bottom end of the top 40 once in four years, and among the worst teams in FBS twice as often as that.
So let's say that this is a good year for them and they're #40-ish (current rating of #74 notwithstanding, loss to a sanction-depleted Penn State notwithstanding). Even granting that, that makes them only about as good as Iowa or Maryland. Perhaps that's the "kind of game that even a healthy Michgian program drops once in a while." But that would be a lot easier to swallow at 4-2 with the only other loss being a non-blowout to Notre Dame.
On a somewhat related topic: If someone had come to you in August and forced you to bet something precious on Michigan's record through the first half of the 2014 campaign... what would you have picked? I'd have looked at the schedule and would have seen:
I think I'd have gone with 5-1. In my mind the possibility of a win over Notre Dame would be somewhat canceled by the (relatively slight) possibility of a loss to one of the other five.
There's still plenty of football left to be played. The glass-half-full types can try to convince themselves that Minnesota is going to win the B1G West, Miami-NTM is going to finish near the top of the MAC, Rutgers is going to be much better than everyone expected, Notre Dame is going to be a playoff team, etc.
But I have a hard time buying that. I think it's more parsimonious to suspect that a single team is much worse than expected, than it is to expect that six different opponents all turned out much better.
Goofers are coming in with a backup QB, their offense wasn't all that great to start with, and their strength (running game) is a good matchup for M.
They'll be lucky to cross midfield.
... was "worst case 7-5, best case 11-1," and eventually settled on 9-3.
Link: http://mgoblog.com/content/preview-2014-heuristics-and-stupid-prediction
The individual position/unit predictions aren't far off, but most everything seems to have come out on the low end of the predicted range.
Four games into the season 9-3 isn't ruled out, but looks like an awfully big hill to climb.
Oklahoma won 47 straight games between 1953 and 1957.
Nebraska won three MNCs in four years 1994-1997.
Florda State finished in the top 5 something like 15 years in a row in the '80s-'90s.
Southern Cal had a multiple-MNC run just recently, and had a dominant period in the '70s as well.
I think all of those are arguably in the vicinity of Alabama's recent run. Maybe if Alabama wins three more MNCs in the next five years, they'll put some distance between themselves and others.
While I don't think Alabama's run is all that unique, I do agree that one can't use Alabama's recent success as a measuring stick. That's a recipe for disappointment. I'd set the goal as competing for the B1G title (being in the division race up to the final week) most years, making the B1G title game one year in three, winning the B1G one year in five, and making the new 4-team MNC playoff at least once a decade.
That seems like a modest goal that should be achievable even if fans of Nebraska, Penn State, and Ohio State all believe they're entitled to the same thing.
OSU's LB corps is like UM's OL. They have one good player, a couple average-minus ones, and then it's dregs after that. Their 2nd-3rd LBs were out for the Illinois game (details at the linked article, by OSU's equivalent to Space Coyote).
I don't think one can lean on Illinois' scoring vs OSU as being predictive of future results (if it were, wouldn't Indiana have scored more?)
... per Phil Steele's preseason magazine, and his web site:
2010 UM +17
2009 UM +11.5
2008 UM +20
1999 UM -11
1998 UM +10
1996 UM +17
Steele's data ends in 1993, but there were probably several double-digit spreads in UM's favor in the late '80s and early '90s. In the games above, the favorite is 5-1.
My one quibble is that it seems a bit spin-heavy in places. For example, in the "Rosters" section, you compare two quantities:
1.42 years of experience vs 1.65 (~16% higher) in Michigan's favor and call it "slightly" (italicized for emphasis in your original) more experienced.
3.38 stars vs 3.69 (~9% higher) in Ohio's favor and call it "solidly" more talended.
I think the real issues are likely found in individual positions (others have noted OL recruiting) -- rather than in trying to read things into negligible differences in across-the-roster averages. (Meyer walked into some depth issues as well. Ohio started the season with only one servicable LB, but they play only two LB a lot of the time. But that was more a matter of attrition than failure to recruit numbers.)
... I'm guessing that a punt fake was called, but OSU left their defense on the field for the play.
If you've decided you're not going to punt, why go with a less favorable setup (your punt team versus the opponent's defense)? Might as well run your starting offense out there to improve your chances.
... towards the end of the year. Compare their performance against Wisconsin last week, to Penn State's (who also has a pretty good defense) against Wisconsin this week. Maybe because they stopped facing teams that could expose their weakness (pass defense in the middle), maybe because of a couple personnel upgrades at LB.
At the same time as we note OSU's struggles with Purdue and UAB, we should be fair and also note that they beat both Big Ten title game participants. They're overrated as a top-five team, but it's not unreasonable to consider them the best team in the conference. The rest of the B1G consists of a one-B1G-loss team that OSU beat by 25 points (Nebraska), two two-B1G-loss teams that they beat (Michgian, Penn State), and everyone else is 5-3 or worse.
... but Ohio State's position when Cooper was let go was closer to Michgian's position when Carr left (bound to a decent bowl, only a couple years removed from a top-five ranking, etc.). They hadn't lived through the equivalent of the last three years, which made them doubt their program.
As for the Tressel hire, a lot of the fans thought he was too small-time, and too risky to wager that his I-AA success would translate to the next level. But those were the fans fixated on pipe-dreams like Stoops and Urban Meyer and Gruden, who were never realistic candidates. Tressel got rave reviews from the people who actually knew him, and from Ohio HS coaches.
Not sure I'd be all fired up about someone who has health issues and already retired twice.
He's a genius coach, but you wouldn't know whether you'd have him for a decade or just for one or two years.
... it's just the average rating of all teams played, adjusted for the home field advantage. So it's not really amenable to being fabricated. He'd have to change the rankings of the teams that go into the schedule calculation instead.
Since Sagarin thinks the Pac-10 is far stronger than the Big Ten, and since the Pac-10 plays 9 conference games, and since most of the Pac-10 teams schedule at least one decent non-conference opponent... it's not too surprising that he ranks all of the Pac-10 teams' schedules as being pretty strong. (Of the top 11 NCAA schedules according to Sagarin, 9 of them are Pac-10 teams.)
Ignoring the site adjustment, Michigan's schedule per Sagarin:
Three top-20 teams: 11 OSU, 15 Wisc, 20 MSU
Two "second 20" teams: 27 Iowa, 28 ND
Three 50-ish mediocre teams: 44 Illinois, 50 PSU, 54 UConn
Four cupcakes: 91 Purdue, 99 Indiana, 107 UMass, 158 Bowling Green
Oregon's divided similarly:
One top-20 team: 3 Stanford
Five "second 20" teams: 22 USC, 23 Ariz, 24 ASU, 31 OSU(ntOSU), 34 Cal
Three 50-ish mediocre teams: 42 Wash, 51 Tenn, 59 UCLA
Three cupcakes: 82 WSU, 168 New Mex, 184 Portland St.
Oregon's schedule isn't tons tougher than Michigan's (only 2 points on average) per Sagarin. The difference is one less cupcake and an extra 25-ish team, more or less. If you took Indiana off Michigan's schedule and turned it into a team like Texas A&M, that would pretty much make Michigan's schedule the equivalent of Oregon's per Sagarin.
The focus on "winning teams" strikes me as kind of odd. The Pac-10 has a handful of decent teams that ended up 6-6 or 5-7 -- for example, Arizona State who gave Wisconsin all they could handle. You credit Michigan with beating a "winning team" in UConn and another in Notre Dame, but I believe that both of those teams are not as good as ASU, for whom Oregon gets no "winning team" credit.
Going to a second level ("winning teams" by opponents) strikes me as even more contrived, as it suffers for the same reason: the Pac-10 having a lot of 0.500-ish teams, and those teams all playing a lot of games against each other.
Here's a longer version with the play that precipitated the meltdown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LSNUXTdHyc
Juice was good for 77 yards passing and 18 yards rushing in a 30-0 shutout at Ohio State last year.
Who knows, due to the Zook effect... but it doesn't seem to me that OSU has any more trouble with mobile QBs than any other random team. It seems odd to point to OSU-Illinois 2008, ignoring OSU-Illinois 2009 and the Rose Bowl, for example.