A Review of P5 vs Ranked Teams, 2000-09

[selmaborntidefan]

ALMOST HEAVEN, WEST VIRGINIA RECORD VS END OF YEAR RANKED TEAMS 2000-2009
Jeff Hostetler's Daddy In Law
2000 - 0-3; lost to Miami, Va Tech, N Dame
Rita is my Bride
2001 - 0-5; lost to Miami, Syracuse, Boston College, Va Tech, Maryland
2002 - 3-2; beat Va Tech, Pitt, UVA; lost to Miami, Maryland
2003 - 0-3; lost to Miami and to Maryland twice
2004 - 0-4; lost to Boston College, Pitt, Va Tech, Florida St
2005 - 2-1; beat Louisville, UGA; lost to Va Tech
2006 - 1-1; beat Rutgers; lost to Louisville
2007 - 2-0; beat Cincinnati, Oklahoma
Bill Stewart
2008 - 0-1; lost to Cincinnati
2009 - 1-1; beat Pitt; lost to Cincinnati

Overall record: 9-21

If you go do a study of the home games pitched by Sandy Koufax, you learn that he had ALWAYS been a pretty good pitcher but was saddled with a poor record due to losing home games in Ebbets Field and the LA Memorial Coliseum, both nightmares for a left-hander like Koufax. But in 1963 - his second full season at Chavez Ravine - Sandy became the stud pitcher of the 1960s, going 57-15 with a 1.37 ERA. He was aided in this journey to the Hall of Fame by the new rules that made 1962-68 a pitching dominant era.

In college football, we have a version of Sandy Koufax save for the fact he was never very good at all but simply a illusion: Rich Rodriguez. The man who very nearly became the Alabama head coach rather than the legendary Nick Saban was - in movie parlance - all hat and no cattle. It shocks me that nobody ever notices these things, but I'm used to it.

Rich Rod has his own version of Sandy's 1962 called "2005." Let's break up the numbers above to see precisely how it looks.

2001 - 0-5; lost to Miami, Syracuse, Boston College, Va Tech, Maryland
2002 - 3-2; beat Va Tech, Pitt, UVA; lost to Miami, Maryland
2003 - 0-3; lost to Miami and to Maryland twice
2004 - 0-4; lost to Boston College, Pitt, Va Tech, Florida St

=============================
2005 - 2-1; beat Louisville, UGA; lost to Va Tech
2006 - 1-1; beat Rutgers; lost to Louisville
2007 - 2-0; beat Cincinnati, Oklahoma

Compare above the line (3-14) with below it (5-2). Rich Rod is a genius, right? Uh, no.

1) WVA began the decade with a 7-5 record and getting creamed by every decent opponent.

2) After a drop the first year, WVA won 9 games, which included beating 3 ranked foes.

3) At the end of 2003, the two best teams in the Big East - Miami and Va Tech - shuffled over to the Atlantic Coast Conference. Miami took their 11 wins in 13 years over WVA and left town while Va Tech hung around to finish a two-year out of conference H/H arrangement. Tech won both games.

4) These perpetual defeats for WVA were replaced on the schedule by UCONN, an Independent that began Big East play in 2005. They also replaced Va Tech (starting in 2006) with out of conference softies like Wofford and James Madison, Eastern Washington and W Michigan.

5) In 2005, Cincinnati - an equally unimpressive foe - joined the conference.

6) Maryland slumped from a 10-win team early in the decade to a losing record overnight.

WVA wound up replacing two defeats in 2003 with three easy wins in 2005 and rising from 8 wins to 11 wins - all through the quirk of the schedule. Even with the teams lost, they STILL managed to lose to Va Tech in 2005. When they went 11-2 in 2006, Rich Rod became a much sought after coach, using the questionable logic of "if a guy can win 11 games in consecutive years at WVA, he can win anywhere."

The reality was that his wins total was padded by circumstances over which he had zero to do with pulling off.

Even with all of that, Rich Rod became one of those coaches that chokes at the most inopportune moment. In 2006, he had a schedule designed by Dunkin' Donuts, and he STILL couldn't win the one game that mattered (Louisville). In 2007, he was 60 minutes from a berth in the BCSNCG when his 28-point favorite Mountaineers did a belly flop that would have made the Atlanta Falcons proud and lost to Pitt and their fabulously inept head coach, Dave Wannstedt.

The record at WVA during the 2000s shows this clearly. They were 9-21. They basically had two really big wins, the 2006 Sugar Bowl vs Georgia and a later Fiesta Bowl blowout of Oklahoma.

Given that both UGA and OU have become synonymous with choking, these are hardly worth boasting about in the real world.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

WHAT'S A RUTGERS RECORD VS RANKED TEAMS AT END OF YEAR 2000-2009
Terry Shea
2000 - 0-3; blowout losses to Va Tech, Miami, N Dame
Greg Schiano
2001 - 0-3; lost to Miami, Syracuse, Boston College
2002 - 0-6; lost to Pitt, WVA, Va Tech, Boston College, Miami, N Dame
2003 - 0-1; lost to Miami
2004 - 0-3; lost to Boston College, Pitt, Navy
2005 - 0-2; lost to WVA, Louisville
2006 - 1-1; beat Louisville, lost to WVA
2007 - 0-2; lost to Cincinnati, WVA
2008 - 0-2; lost to Cincinnati, WVA
2009 - 0-3; lost to Cincinnati, WVA, Pitt

Overall: 1-26

Rutgers showed immense improvement over the decade but - just as with WVA - nobody dared look closely and see what was happening. The Scarlet Knights went 3-8 in Terry Shea's last year and followed it with a 2-9 record in Schiano's debut. By 2006, Schiano was seeing his name mentioned in print as the Alabama head coach, mostly because P T Barnum was absolutely right.

Rutgers benefited very similar to the way that WVA did. It should really be an alarm bell for everyone that you have three 11-win teams in a conference with a pile of riff-raff but I'm reminded that the reason so few people bother to think is because it's so damn hard.

Rutgers went from 4-7 in 2004 to 7-5 in 2005 and 11-2 in 2006. A look at their schedule shows why.

1) Miami and Va Tech - combined record of 8-0 against Rutgers - fell off the schedule in 2004 when both went to the ACC.

2) Cincinnati (as noted above) joined the Big East in 2005, and Rutgers beat them the first year.

3) UCONN joined the conference in 2005 and Rutgers went 4-1 against them in the first five years.

This means they replaced two losses with one guaranteed one and one occasionally able to beat win.

4) Rutgers then caught N Carolina and Illinois in down periods and beat both of them.

5) USF joined the conference along with Cincy in 2005, and Rutgers owned them.

6) Syracuse imploded after 2001 and was an also-ran for the rest of the decade

Get rid of two teams killing you
Replace them with two teams you can massacre
Add one team you're essentially the equal
Get lucky enough Syracuse crashes

You just added 3-4 wins per year by softening your schedule.

If you're good enough to win 4, you just got good enough to win 8 without a single upset.

Rutgers wasn't nearly as good as the 2006 hype suggested.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

UTAH UTES RECORD VS END OF YEAR RANKED TEAMS 2000-2009
Ron McBride
2000 - 0-1; lost to Colorado St
2001 - 0-2; lost to Oregon, BYU
2002 - 0-1; lost to Michigan
Urban
2003 - 0-0
2004 - 1-0; beat #25 Pitt
Kyle Is NOT A Boy's Name!!!
2005 - 0-1; lost to TCU
2006 - 2-1; beat TCU, BYU; lost to Boise St
2007 - 0-1; lost to Oregon St, BYU
2008 - 4-0; beat TCU, BYU, Oregon St, Alabama
2009 - 0-3; lost to Oregon, TCU, BYU

Overall record: 7-10

Side observation: the Utes and the Cougars should call their annual grudge match "The Young-Old Bowl."

And so we have it, yet another team that we were repeatedly told "deserves a chance" while playing a schedule that a large Chicago high school could probably attain the same record. That 4-0 in 2008 sticks out like Brady Anderson's 50-home run season in 1996, defying all logic or attempt to rationalize it. A few folks touted Utah for the national championship (sorta like the mouth breathers that bolstered UCF in 2017), but rational folks understand that Utah belongs in the same category only for people who actually believe that Janet Jackson is comparable to Mozart because "they're musicians!"

Look closely - VERY closely - at that 2008 year. Yeah, Utah had one hell of a year, no lie.

But they got Oregon State right after the Beavers played a highly emotional game and stunned the #1 USC Trojans, effectively ending their dynasty. The Beavers then went on the road to Utah against a team coming off a win over perpetual dynasty Weber State. The Utes were 3 points better than Oregon St, but nobody seriously believes that if USC played Oregon St a second time that they'd lose. More on this below.

Utah then beat TCU, which would be a great accomplishment if TCU was as good as their press clippings. They took down BYU and then - unfortunately for all involved - beat Alabama pretty handily in the Tide's first Sugar Bowl appearance since rolling Miami 16 years earlier.


FOOTBALL IS NOT LIKE OTHER TEAM SPORTS

Utah, of course, channeled all their energies into the one game in the Sugar Bowl and - quite frankly - made their program well-known in one battle. Football is not like other sports, though, and that's the difference. It's also why evaluation isn't as "neat" in football as it is in something like baseball.

Unlike other team sports, football BENEFITS from the emotional element, the flow of adrenaline. Baseball is a cognitive sport. Get too emotional over a bad call or bad break in baseball, and you lose and quickly. In football - due to the nature of the game and the contact involved - a player can be on the receiving end of a bad officiating call and then take matters into his own hands by forcing a turnover with his extra emotion/adrenaline. What hurts in other sports can help in a sport like football.

Plus - football is one game whereas most other teams sports consist of a series of games to determine the winner. While the best team does not always win in ANY sport, football offers ways to even the odds that are not available elsewhere.

Consider just a few World Series champions that are considered generally poor MLB teams: 1985 Royals, 1987 Twins, 1988 Dodgers, 2006 Cardinals. ALL of those teams were able to win the World Series by offsetting their weaknesses with their strengths that compounded the opponent's weakness. The first 3 had VERY good pitching staffs that could keep the opposition from scoring; the 2006 Cardinals manufactured runs like the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers. Hit, steal a base or bunt him over, score on the hit - and get adequate pitching.

But in football, it's not cognitive so much as emotive. When a group of players hears for six weeks that they don't have a chance to beat the other team and gets into a game with a team that is disappointed with the outcome that got them to that game, the motivated team will win pretty much every time. This is why Auburn (in particular) often prevails in games where they might have 1/2 the talent than is on the other side of the ball. They read that they're not very good, the other team shows up with less than full motivation, the Auburn crowd is one of the loudest in CFB - and they have nothing to lose. They're not the only ones - you can argue that 1992 Alabama hearing for two full months that they had no business in the game - and then facing an opponent that openly disrespected them - were motivated to change opinions.

This in large part contributes to Utah's one phenomenal year and the end result. YES, they outplayed Alabama and YES, they deserved to win on that particular day. But Utah played 17 ranked opponents in a decade and won less than half of those games. And TWO that they won were bowl games with long prep times, so how realistic is that situation?

Alabama beat as many ranked teams in 2008/2009 as Utah did in an entire decade. The CFB playoff knows this - and the proof is in the pudding of the fact that since they've joined the Pac 12, Utah has been saddled with a more difficult schedule and hasn't even come close to the playoffs.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

TENNESSEE SICK ORANGE RECORD VS END OF YEAR RANKED OPPONENTS 2000-2009
Fire Marshall Phil
2000 - 1-4; beat SCAR; lost to Florida, Georgia, LSU, K State
2001 - 5-2; beat Syracuse, LSU, SCAR, Florida, Michigan; lost to UGA, LSU (SECCG)
2002 - 0-4; lost to UGA, Alabama, Miami, Maryland
2003 - 2-2; beat Florida, Miami; lost to UGA, Clemson
2004 - 1-2; beat UGA; lost to Auburn twice
2005 - 1-4; beat LSU; lost to Florida, UGA, Alabama, N Dame
2006 - 2-4; beat Cal, UGA; lost to Florida, LSU, Ark, Penn St
2007 - 2-2; beat UGA, Wisconsin; lost to Florida, LSU
2008 - 0-3; lost to Florida, UGA, Alabama
Lame Kitten
2009 - 0-4; lost to Florida, Alabama, Ole Miss, Va Tech

Overall record: 14-27

Assessment:
When Phil Fulmer decided to make Alabama play football with one arm tied behind their backs for much of a decade, he looked like a genius save for his constant losing to Steve Spurrier. But his attempt to burn down Alabama led to Fire Marshall Phil burning down ObKnoxville, completely to the ground, sorta like a guy who falls asleep smoking, well, a cigar.

Tennessee reached the pinnacle in 1998, their first national championship since Harry Truman was insulting music critics. Even in 2001, the Vols came within one game of squaring off against Miami for the national title. The world in Knoxville may never have looked brighter than it did on the morning of December 7, 2001. Rumor had it Steve Spurrier was really gonna go this time. The NCAA hammer was about to crush Alabama into fine crimson powder. A win against an LSU team he'd already beaten during the season would send Phil back to a second national title in four years and while the Vols figured to be underdogs against Miami, anything CAN happen in a college football game. December 7, 2001 was a day Commander Phil surveyed his horizon and saw nothing but a bright orange future pwning the SEC.

Instead, it was Pearl Harbor Day (in the most literal sense possible) all over again. A series of unseen torpedoes, bombs, and detailed planning would sink the USS Tennessee right down to the bottom of the river by the stadium with the orange checkerboard.

Things got better for Phil in the first half of the SEC title game. Not only was Nick Saban - a nobody who had lost to UAB just sixteen months earlier - trailing in the game, the doofus had just called a horrific fourth down play that put Tennessee deep in LSU territory. Plus, the starting QB was out. Phil may have counted his money while sitting at the table, but someone was about to flip the table right over on top of his sizable girth.

Saban ended the Tennessee program that night. In essence, he slaughtered the soldiers and waited awhile before administering the complete destruction of the Vols (and Fulmer) after a seven-year Tribulation period.

Tennessee, quite frankly, died that night. Entering the game, the Vols were 5-5 in the new decade against ranked teams. They would average just over one win per year while the rest of the SEC recruited better soldiers, changed their attack strategy, and left Tennessee for dead.

Things got so bad for the Vols that starting on January 2, 2007 and stretching all the way to October 19, 2013, Tennessee compiled a record of 1-21 against ranked teams.....the one win coming over Big East "power" Cincinnati, who ended the year.....at 25.

Tennessee died.
The judge ruled it justifiable homicide.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Tomorrow, I will write one of my most shocking conclusions on this board.
Naturally, the data will prove me right and everyone who disagrees wrong.

Team of the 70s: Alabama
Team of the 80s: Miami
Team of the 90s: Florida St
Team of the 00s:

 

[81usaf92]

Tomorrow, I will write one of my most shocking conclusions on this board.
Naturally, the data will prove me right and everyone who disagrees wrong.

Team of the 70s: Alabama
Team of the 80s: Miami
Team of the 90s: Florida St
Team of the 00s:

What you are going to tell us Clemson under Tommy/Dabo and Joe Pa are going to be at the top? *** blue***

But seriously I look forward to your analysis

 

[selmaborntidefan]

THE DATA

One of the reasons I so enjoy looking at football analytics and how things really look after time has passed is because I enjoy having my assumptions challenged and being forced - at times - to change my opinion to one more in line with the given facts of a situation. I've spent years reading the statistical measures that baseball writer Bill James has used to determine which players are the best. YES, there IS a certain level of opinion, but once one allots for the surrounding scenery to be adjusted to context, we can arrive with some solid conclusions.

Generally speaking, the sports media has given USC the mention of prominence in the first decade of the 21st century. (Note: if you're one of those idiots who wants to 'educate' me about the new millennium didn't REALLY begin until 2001, you can just get lost for all I care. When we discuss history in time periods, we delineate them in an easy category not in a literal one).

But back to USC. The Trojans of 2002-2008 were a lot like the Alabama teams of 2009-??? If every team had one loss then it was USC who was going to get the benefit of the doubt. They had 3 Heisman Trophy winners, a plethora of stars, and teams were given high marks if they even made the games close with USC. The Trojans once reeled off a 34-game winning streak and had a record of 42-1 between October 5, 2002 and the loss to Texas in the 2006 Rose Bowl. Keep in mind that one loss was to Aaron Rodgers in triple overtime.

I will note dismiss USC as some may by diminishing their accomplishments by appealing to the later vacating of wins and the BCS title (and the Bush Heisman Trophy). Someone won the games, someone won the Heisman, and all the after-the-fact justice in the world doesn't change that.

However, I disagree with the assumption that USC - long a college football blue blood - is the team of the 2000s (the Aughts if you will). The team of the 2000s is located 2,405 miles due east of USC in the heart of Gainesville, Florida. Although this assessment is close, the verdict is certain.

The problem - as will always be the case - is that media personalities not named Kirk Herbstreit will ALWAYS be easily impressed with offenses that pour on points and have what they call "Heisman moments." In this case, Florida CAN compete with the visual AND they are without dispute the better team of the decade. Analysts think of the period of time when USC was virtually unbeatable and see the closest thing to perfect, focusing especially on Reggie Bush beating defenses around the corner and the 55-19 thumping administered to Oklahoma in January 2005. But here's the hard reality: Florida beats USC in nearly every single meaningful category and sometimes by a substantial margin. Having TWO legendary coaches - Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer - doesn't hurt.

I realize my opinion will go against the flawed memories of people, but I invite you to consider the actual details as they really exist and not the fantasy you are remembering incorrectly.

Let's just consider a number of categories:

Overall Record:
USC: 102-26 (.796)
Florida: 95-30 (.760)

USC does rate about four games better than Florida for the decade. The Gators were certainly no slouches as they averaged 9 1/2 wins per year along with 3 losses. USC played 3 more games, but even if Florida had won all 3, they'd still be four games behind. The overall record favors USC.

Record vs Ranked Foes:
USC: 24-13
Florida: 28-25

This one is a mismatch that heavily favors Florida. True, the Gators only have four more wins than USC does and a whopping 12 more losses. However - they also played a shocking SIXTEEN MORE GAMES against ranked foes than USC did. Given the decade began with 12-game seasons for most teams that made a bowl game, Florida played an additional entire season of ranked foes and 1/3 of a second season. The objection may be, "But they were 4-12 against those teams, " which is true - but keep reading.

Undefeated Seasons
USC - 1 (2004)
Florida - 0

No debate on this one. USC gets the nod as they completed an unbeaten regular season while Florida never did. Of course, that must also be taken in context. Utah and Boise State BOTH completed TWO undefeated regular seasons, so exactly how much should "but they won every game" really count when judging a DECADE (as opposed to a single year)?

One-loss Seasons
USC 3
Florida 3

It gets a little more interesting when looking at one-loss seasons, and there's no real winner here. Both had three.

Two-loss Seasons
USC 3
Florida 1

USC again gets the nod regarding 2-loss seasons. The degree to which this should matter is debatable, but it is a fact.

Seasons of .500 or below
USC 2
Florida 0

This is a huge point in favor of Florida. USC began the decade in the doldrums before climbing out into national recognition again in 2002. Florida won the SEC title in 2000, a national title mid-decade, and finished a clear #2 to Alabama at the end of the decade. Although both teams showed admirable consistency, Florida trended to show MORE consistency.

Conference Championships
USC 7
Florida 3

In the world of Joel Klatt, "a conference championship is a real thing." Now we can debate WHAT this "real thing" is (other than apparently not Coke), but it's true that USC won a bunch more conference titles than Florida did.

Total Conference Teams Ranked in the Top Ten
USC 30
Florida 47

And we now see - maybe - why USC won so many more conference titles: the Pac Ten was nowhere near the monster that the SEC was. The Pac Ten averaged 3 ranked teams per year each year of the decade. Of course, most years that list consisted of USC, Oregon, and "one other team" that might be Stanford or perhaps Oregon State. Florida, by contrast, played in a league that averaged 4.7 teams in the rankings every single year.

And, of course, there is an immediate objection from the West Coast: "Yes, but the Pac 10 is playing two teams short." That objection is correct. But all we have to do is adjust for it. The Pac 12 had 5/6 as many teams, so all we have to do is see whether they have 5/6 as many ranked teams for the entire decade. Five-sixths of 47 ranked teams is 39.95 teams, meaning that the Pac Ten fell a full TEN TEAMS SHORT of what would be necessary to suggest their conference was every bit as strong as the SEC. Of course, we also have to look at it inversely: if we use the Pac 10 as the standard with their 30 teams, the SEC must have 36 teams ranked to equal the Pac Ten. They beat this by 11 full teams, so whichever way it is viewed, this is a HUGE edge for the SEC and a perfectly plausible reason why Florida has so many fewer conference titles.

Record vs the Opposing Conference:
The Pac Ten went 11-9 against the SEC during the decade.
USC went 4-0 with three blowout wins over Arkansas and Auburn plus a close win over Auburn.
Florida never faced any Pac Ten teams.
LSU - fwiw - was 5-0 against the Pac Ten.

Now that we have looked at the wins, we must also consider and weigh the losses.

Losses vs Teams Not Ranked at End of Season
USC 12
Florida 5

Here is where the argument takes a very bizarre twist. If we can accept that Florida technically was only 4-12 against those extra ranked opponents, we must also accept that USC lost a whopping 12 games in ten years to UNRANKED teams, some of them not very good at all. USC averaged losing to more than one unranked team per season while Florida averaged losing to one only every other season.

Losses to Teams that Ended the Year in the Top Four
USC 3
Florida 8 (plus two more that finished 5th; Florida also beat 2 teams that wound up in the top 4)

USC lost to a few good teams that wound up among the best teams of the year; Florida lost to a LOT of teams that wound up in modern-day playoff spots. The quality of these losses weighs in Florida's favor.

Games Lost To Year's Eventual National Champion
USC 1 (2005)
Florida 2 (2007, 2009)

Further supporting the notion that Florida's schedules were immensely stronger, the Gators lost to the eventual national champion twice - and won two titles around those years - while USC lost once, the memorable Rose Bowl vs Texas.

Games Lost To Year's Loser of National Championship Game
USC 0
Florida 2 (2000 FSU, 2002 Miami)

Florida not only lost to 2 eventual champions, they also lost to 2 eventual runners-up.

Times Beat the Team That Won National Championship
USC 0
Florida 1 (2003, LSU)

This is a weird statistic - an anomaly - but it's true. LSU's lone loss was to Florida.

CONCLUSION

It is entirely possible - it may even be probable - that USC's 2003-2005 teams might ALL be better than any single Florida team or any cluster of Florida teams (2006-2009). But we are not choosing the team of the 'half decade" here, folks. Miami's 2000-2003 run was EVERY BIT AS GOOD as USC's. The Canes reeled off a 31-game winning streak and once had a span of 44 games where they were 42-2, with one of those losses being in double overtime in the national title game. But Miami gets no consideration for the team of the decade because the reality is that they were a plunging has been by 2006.

USC rates ahead of Miami simply because they were better for longer. But Florida won just as many national titles, nearly as many games, and played a SUBSTANTIALLY rougher schedule than USC (or Miami) even dared to imagine (save 2001 Miami). And other than an insane belly flop against MSU in 2004 (the same year MSU lost to I-AA Maine), the Gators were losing to quality foes. USC, by contrast, dropped two monumental upsets in an eight-game span to 28-point underdog UCLA (2006) and 41-point underdog Stanford in 2007. Florida dropped nothing like that save during the Ron Zook era against MSU.

There were some quality teams. LSU is a near miss, Miami and USC are teams of the half decade.

The real team of the Aughts - the team deserving it - is the Florida Gators.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

THE TOP TEN FOR THE DECADE:
1) Florida
2) USC
3) Miami
4) LSU
5) Ohio St
6) Oklahoma
7) Texas
8) Auburn
9) Georgia
10) Virginia Tech

(You can call the 10th spot a tossup between VT, Iowa, and FSU, but I'll go with the Hokies).

 

[selmaborntidefan]

70s: Alabama
80s: Miami
90s: Florida St
00s: Florida
10s: Alabama

(There's no need to do the 10s.....but I will because it will give everyone here ammunition to shoot at people who say, "But Alabama never plays anybody!")

 

[selmaborntidefan]

And just proving that Selma is smarter than 99% of the people doing this stuff.....here's the CFN ratings for the decade, which are atrocious...

AP All-Time College Football Rankings: Best Teams 2000 To 2009

The AP poll is has been the most consistent ranking system over the long history of college football. Going by the final rankings, what programs come out best? Here are the top programs of the 2000…

collegefootballnews.com

1	Texas	190​
2	Oklahoma	170​
3	USC	168​
4	Ohio State	158​
5	Florida	141​
6	LSU	134​
7	Georgia	127​
8	Miami	125​
9	Virginia Tech	122​
10	Michigan	96​
11	Boise State	93​
12	Oregon	90​
13	Auburn	84​
14	Iowa	79​
15	Alabama	78​
16	Florida State	71​
17	Penn State	70​
18	TCU	67​
19	West Virginia	62​
20	Tennessee	61​
21	Utah	59​
22	Nebraska	57​
23	Louisville	56​
24	Wisconsin	54​
25	Washington State	49​

 

[selmaborntidefan]

There are numerous problems with this list. Let me explain THEIR criteria here, which is both simplistic AND ludicrous:

Here’s the drill. Taking all the AP final rankings, CFN devised a scoring system giving every AP national champion 25 points, the No. 2 team 24, No. 3 23, and so on down to the bottom – currently No. 25, but there was a top ten for a bit and later a top 20.

So here is what they did: CFN took ONLY the FINAL RANKINGS (for the AP) of each year, gave points on the basis of the place a team finished, and then they added those points together. To give a quick example, let's say they were compiling ONLY 2011 and 2012. Alabama would have 50 total points because they finished first both years. So - in other words - a team like USC might win consecutive national titles and might have a better record etc, but if they had one bad year while Texas had a bunch of 11-2 seasons and finished higher, Texas rates higher for the decade. Never mind the Longhorns won one national title in the final seconds of one game.


1) How in the hell do you rate Texas ahead of Oklahoma by ANY measure?
Both teams won one national title.
Oklahoma PLAYED for THREE more.
Oklahoma was 6-4 against Texas for the decade.
Oklahoma beat more good teams.

Oklahoma wins over Texas scores: 63-14, 14-3, 35-24, 65-13, 12-0, 28-21
Texas wins over Oklahoma: 45-12, 28-10, 45-35, 16-13

So OU had two absolute blowout wins PLUS three more of at least 11 points and a one TD game.
Texas had two blowouts, a 10-point win, and a narrow 3-point win......in the game where OU's QB didn't play.

When you have as many titles, more title shots, more big wins, and won the head-to-head - any ratings system that rates you lower than the other team is by definition a farce.

2) Final rankings punish GOOD teams that had the misfortune of playing in post-season games.
We have seen example after example where a good team loses either a conference title game or a bowl game and drops behind a team they not only beat but pulverized in the regular season. Strange things happen thanks to focusing solely on the last game.

Examples abound but just consider the 1985 AP final top 20:
Tennessee wound up 4th at 9-1-2 ahead of 9-1-1 Florida, who was 5th. Fine and dandy except Florida beat the Vols head-to-head that year. More ridiculous, Texas A/M (10-2) winds up at 6 while Alabama (9-2-1) winds up at 13 despite handling the Aggies will relative ease when they played. If Alabama was 8-3-1 then okay - but if you can rate a one-loss team over an undefeated team, you most assuredly can rank a team only 1/2 game worse ahead of a team they beat by 13 points. As if that wasn't bad enough, Michigan (10-1-1) winds up at #2 and Iowa (10-2) winds up at #10 despite the fact Iowa beat Michigan head-to-head and was the Big Ten conference champion and Rose Bowl representative. I can understand the notion that maybe Michigan was better since the game came down to the last play.....but SIX SPOTS?????

As if all that weren't bad enough, LSU (9-2-1) with a tie and same record as #13 Alabama finishes 20th because they lost their bowl game.

3) Final rankings are almost always biased in favor of big names at the expense of reality.
If your name is Notre Dame, Alabama, USC, Ohio State, Michigan, or a few other names in the past - then you will almost always get an automatic "blue blood bounce" in the final rankings.

Since I'm hacking on Texas, let's consider them. In 2001, Texas beat Washington in the Holiday Bowl and finished 5th in the final poll, one spot ahead of Oklahoma - who had the same record and, oh yeah, a 14-3 win over Texas head-to-head. Look in polls over and over - particularly those from the 60s through the 80s - and blue blood teams got the benefit of the doubt regardless.

4) Pollsters have an infatuation with offense and a disdain for defense.
This is why I'm really bothered by the AP while actually approving of the idea of the committee. The CFP committee has a number of COACHES that can look at the HOW teams play and in many cases conclude, "they're better/worse than their numbers show." AP pollsters, by contrast, are hung up on offense.

To prove this, look no further than the insane 1980s calculation determined by CFN:
1) Nebraska
2) Miami
3) Michigan
4) Oklahoma
5) UCLA

Yes, according to CFN, NEBRASKA was the team of the 1980s. Sure, they only won THREE fewer national championships than Miami and ONE fewer than BYU........but Nebraska ended the year high in the rankings every year thanks to: a) being a borderline Blue Blood at the time; b) not playing anyone worth a damn; c) running up insane numbers on overmatched foes

Here's a list of Nebraska's final rankings for each year in the 1980s. Miami's is in the parenthesis:
1980 - 7 (18)
1981 - 11 (8)
1982 - 3 (unranked)
1983 - 2 (1)
1984 - 4 (18)
1985 - 11 (9)
1986 - 5 (2)
1987 - 6 (1)
1988 - 10 (2)
1989 - 11 (1)

Seven times in ten years Miami was ranked higher than Nebraska. One can even argue Miami's 1982 team (7-4) should have been ranked, but it is what it is. But it should be noted that Nebraska achieved this ranking largely by being overrated in the first place. In 1983, Nebraska was a substantial number one (30 of 60 votes and a 96-point lead) in the pre-season poll. Nebraska never fell from the top spot. Ever. Nebraska hung huge numbers on overmatched teams: 56 on Wyoming, 84 on Minnesota, 63 on Syracuse, 69 on Colorado, 72 on Iowa St, and 67 on Kansas. Pollsters were dazzled by the "unstoppable" offense. Texas, meanwhile, had the nation's number one defense - and with only 3 exceptions, their scoring was below 30 points per game, largely because they didn't need many points to win. Texas was the only team to beat Auburn in 1983, and there were a legitimate case to make for the Tigers as #1. Because of the bowl contracts, we didn't get Texas vs Nebraska, but the Oklahoma game (where Nebraska won largely due to an officiating blunder on a pass interference) gives us some guidance since Texas had no trouble with OU at all while Nebraska did. Indeed, the Huskers barely scraped by the other good defense they played, Okie State, so the warning was in large letters if anyone was paying attention.

It wasn't until 1991 that the pollsters finally caught on to the ruse of Nebraska. But that didn't help in the 1980s when their offense CONSTANTLY got them ranked higher because it impressed the easily impressed. Ask yourself this question: "how in the hell do you rank Nebraska at number 4 in 1984?" Let's see....they were 10-2 to Oklahoma's 9-2-1, did not win the conference title to play in the Orange Bowl because....they LOST to Oklahoma, 17-7, AT HOME.

So why is Nebraska ahead of Oklahoma in the final ranking? Because somehow, the Orange Bowl loss to Washington (a game that was close but got out of hand late) miraculously turned the Sooners's win over Nebraska into a loss. Spare me the better record nonsense. One-half of a game doesn't undo a 10-point loss at home - particularly since the only reason there was a tie is because the refs botched the Texas-OU game and gave the Longhorns the chance for a game-tying field goal. I'm not even an Oklahoma fan, but this is ludicrous.

Sportswriters are gullible people for the most part. They're a lot like those political pundits who drive past the polls early on Election Day and see long lines of people waiting to vote and conclude "this time we have a record turnout." It never happens that way, though. They want to believe everyone is caught up in what they're caught up in. Same with sportswriters, which is how Jim Rice gets in the Hall of Fame despite the fact Roy White was a better ballplayer (and he was nowhere close to a Hall of Famer).

And remember - it's MUCH easier for a sportswriter to come up with dazzling superlatives and cliches for an offensive play that scores a touchdown than a rock solid defense that doesn't give up many points.