AP Poll Week 11: #9 Michigan
November 7th, 2021 at 2:35 PM ^
purdue deserves to be in. beating the then-ranked #2 and #3 teams, and they have a 6-3 record.
tailgating yesterday and watching the game, oodles of michigan fans yelling, 'boiler up!' was so nice to see as a pre-game to the IU game.
November 7th, 2021 at 2:37 PM ^
Wow, I expected a quick, "It's up!" Nice work.
November 7th, 2021 at 2:38 PM ^
msu dropping only 3 spots is comical. OSU has a fix for that in a couple weeks. Notre Dame and Cincy being ranked as high as they are is also a farce. Some could say same thing for UM however. Win out and the noise goes away
November 7th, 2021 at 2:47 PM ^
And what undefeated/1-loss teams (correct or not, Power 5 teams are generally ranked in order of their number of losses at this point of the season) that MSU is ahead of should they be behind?
- U-M, of course MSU has the head-to-head win.
- Oklahoma State, this is the team that probably has the best argument.
- Wake Forest, doesn't have a real quality win, their defense is an order of magnitude worse than MSU's defense.
- Houston, AAC team that has run of 8-straight wins but lost heads-up to an average Texas Tech team.
- UTSA, Louisiana-Lafayette, Coastal Carolina, San Diego State, lower-tier conference teams.
November 7th, 2021 at 3:10 PM ^
Wake Forest lost to UNC yesterday.
November 7th, 2021 at 3:24 PM ^
I'm not sure the context of this comment. Wake did lose to UNC, yes. That dropped their record to 8-1.
November 7th, 2021 at 3:55 PM ^
The issue with msu ahead of um is that, while they have a marginal head to head win, they have a much worse loss and no other quality wins. Our loss is much better and we also have a win against Wisc.
November 7th, 2021 at 4:07 PM ^
I'm sorry, but that logic is circular and really self-serving.
You're denigrating MSU in your first sentence ("marginal" win, "no other quality wins"), and really make them out to be a team no-better than, say, Purdue. But in your second sentence you give U-M credit ("our loss is much better") for a loss over a team you just denigrated.
Both teams are 8-1, both teams lost to above-average B1G teams on the road, one team beat the other. From a strict-ranking perspective, I fully understand why MSU would be ranked over U-M.
November 7th, 2021 at 4:26 PM ^
Michigan state is fraudulent…the win again UM at home and took everything including refs to win by less than a TD
November 7th, 2021 at 5:00 PM ^
No, it's not denigrating the opponent, per se, it's denigrating the nature of the wins / losses in question.
He (or she) is saying that MSU's "win" over Michigan was marginal in the sense MSU were clearly thoroughly outplayed at home. They didn't look any better than Purdue even in that win (and probably aren't).
And Michigan's "loss" was better because they outplayed the opponent and had a number of unfortunate things go against them. They still looked the better team even in loss. Whereas Michigan State's loss was one in which they were clearly outplayed and they lost by a significantly larger margin (3x).
I don't have a problem with MSU still being ahead. If you're ranking on "resume" it's reasonable to put MSU ahead. If you're ranking teams based on which team you think is "better" i.e. who you think would win on a neutral field, it's Michigan all day long. AP voters take various approaches.
November 7th, 2021 at 5:19 PM ^
It will be interesting to see where Michigan and MSU end up in this week's CFP poll. I believe Michigan will be ranked ahead of MSU in that poll, perhaps by two spots or more.
November 7th, 2021 at 5:34 PM ^
The "nature of the win" should matter for a predictive (forward-looking) ranking system.
But if I'm ranking based on actual on-the-field win and loss results (and this is what I feel the CFP should do, but they don't), the "nature of the win" is irrelevant to me. It's simply a win, a 1 as opposed to a 0 in the binary nature of things.
I suppose this is all philosophical, but adding in all these advanced analytics (which I AM a fan of, but only from a predictive POV) into CFP rankings means we get things like Alabama being ranked #2, just because they are Alabama.
November 7th, 2021 at 6:07 PM ^
But absent of a standardized system where teams can't pick their schedules like the NFL, we have to sort through the murkiness of what the Ws and Ls actually mean.
And the CFPs stated mission is "to select the best teams".
I don't think Alabama is being ranked #2 just because they're Bama. They didn't make it in 2019 despite being "Alabama" with two losses by a combined 8 points, one of which to the #1 team and while still being ranked top 4 by all the advanced metrics.
They're being ranked #2 because they have by far the more impressive wins amongst anyone vying for #2 (by 40 over Miss St. by 31 over Miami by 21 over Ole Miss by 28 over Tennessee, etc).
But it appears they've heavily weighted H2H in the first rankings so I do expect MSU to still be ahead of Michigan Tuesday. And I'm fine with that.
November 7th, 2021 at 5:15 PM ^
I don't feel strongly about the MSU/UM rankings or OSU/Oregon rankings, but I understand the pushback to the apparent emphasis (according to the networks this year) on head-to-head result. Head-to-head absolutely should matter significantly when the rest of the record is the same, or it is hard to evaluate the rest of the record, or if a team has won all of its games (against weaker opponents). But when two roughly equal teams played each other, one of them has the loss to the other, and the other has a loss to a very bad team, it is hard to see how putting the head-to-head victor above the other team doesn't discount the need to win your other games. It's not the best example (need to look at other factors -- best win, etc.), but OSU's one loss to a highly ranked Oregon team is a much "better" loss than Oregon's loss to a 3-6 Stanford. Like I said, I don't feel strongly about either of these decisions (and I also do not think it will matter in the least), but I think teams need to take care of winning the games they are supposed to if they want the head-to-head results to matter significantly. (E.g., if Cincinnati had lost to Navy or Miami-Ohio, I would have no issue with them being ranked below ND, despite the head-to-head win.)
November 9th, 2021 at 9:34 AM ^
You seem to be misintpreting some of my argument. The "marginal" win comment wasn't denigrating msu (clearly both teams are nearly evenly matched), but was in reference to the fact that they needed a number of breaks/calls to go their way simply to get a 4pt win at home (with likely the energetic crowd they will ever have this season).
A fair comparison of records needs to go further than just overall W-L and must examine the full slate. MSU beat UM (close) at home, but their next biggest win is a scuffling Miami, with UM's next being at Wisc (also somewhat scuffling, but not nearly as much). Michigan has the better SoS and also the various advanced metrics state that Michigan is the "better" team. Sagarin, just as one example, currently has UM at 5 and MSU at 24. A better metric, the Massey composite of 70 different ranking methods, has Michigan at 4 and MSU at 10.
Head-to-head matters, but not enough to override the rest of the body of work (and all 8-1 records are not equal).
November 7th, 2021 at 2:39 PM ^
So let's look back at the season and see how these insightful pollsters have done during the course of the year. First week...second week...third week... Well OMG, here in week nine they are still clueless.
November 7th, 2021 at 2:45 PM ^
Let us see the logic here. ND loses to Cincinnati at home. M loses to MSU by 4 on the road. M beats Wisconsin by a lot. Let us have ND above M.
Meaningless polls but it still irritates me.
November 7th, 2021 at 3:09 PM ^
Great points. Obviously, they value wins and losses more than on field performance. Notre Dame racked up a bunch of points on Wisconsin as an unpolished Wisconsin team scrambled to pull out a miracle. MSU wins at home while getting lots of breaks and getting pummeled statistically. I am ok with MSU staying ahead of Michigan (time will tell) but I don't see Notre Dame there given the near miss with Toledo and the lack of big win (although Michigan doesn't really have one either )
Notre Dame is #10 in fancy stats so they are not terrible. Michigan is #4 (may change later this week.)
I am guessing they don't want two Big 10 teams in the playoff and are using ND to check that.
November 7th, 2021 at 2:47 PM ^
How in the heck is Purdue not ranked??? 6-3 record, beat Iowa and MSU.
November 7th, 2021 at 5:36 PM ^
Because they're not in the SEC.
November 7th, 2021 at 3:16 PM ^
Well, under normal circumstances MSU would've plummeted more after that loss to Purdue. Though since they recently defeated Michigan, that made it tough for voters to drop them down too far in the polls.
I mean, there would've been hard questions about where does Michigan belong if the voters had moved MSU much further down.
November 7th, 2021 at 3:56 PM ^
"Just Win, Out Baby"
November 7th, 2021 at 3:57 PM ^
This poll doesn't matter anymore now that the CFP poll comes out every Tuesday.
November 7th, 2021 at 4:10 PM ^
Can we just hire Luke Fickell already
November 7th, 2021 at 11:39 PM ^
as Waterboy
November 7th, 2021 at 4:12 PM ^
Cincinnati having a great season however struggled with Tulsa yesterday only big win is over Notre Dame. Tulsa lost at home to U. C. Davis, an FCS team. Notre Dame eked out a 3 point win with Toledo, and FSU, who does not have it this year. Both Cincy and Notre Dame are significantly overrated imho.
November 7th, 2021 at 6:29 PM ^
Win this week, and we absolutely will be in control of our destiny vs OSU.
MSU very well could lose at least 2 more games. Stroud and co. might have 600 yards through the air vs them. Maryland throws it around a ton too they could make it interesting, and Penn St won’t be easy either (although Walker might run all over them).
We need All back and hopefully AA is good to go. Haskins can definitely carry it 30x, but having Corum or Edwards in at least some role would be huge this week as Penn St’s rush defense is not good…at all