What a fantastic weekend of football!! We saw expected and unexpected blowouts, a few upsets, some OTs, a brawl for the ages, and some down to the wire contests. That was fun, however… if you didn’t see it, Dan Mullen (Florida head coach) took umbrage when his QB took what Mullen thought was a late hit just before the half. He went ballistic which erupted into a street fight on the field. 3 players were ejected although I saw a bunch more than 3 landing punches. To add insult to injury, Mullen came out of the locker room at halftime and riled up the crowd. I get protecting the QB, but the coaches are supposed to be examples of good behavior. Not to mention, you know the NCAA and SEC are reviewing the actions of the teams and coaches (from Missouri as well) and fines or suspensions could ensue. Just in time for the World’s Largest (probably not this year) Cocktail Party when Mullen and team have to face Georgia for what is probably the SEC East title.
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Alabama (1) blanked Mississippi St (64) 41-0 while Clemson (2) had an epic comeback against Boston College (26) 34-28 after being down 28-10. They were able to hold on to their spots. The Big 12 may have opened the door for the soon to start Pac 12 with losses for Oklahoma St (14) and Kansas St (30) who were the only undefeated teams in conference play coming in. If a team out west can go 6-0 and win their championship game, they have an argument. The Big 10 is already interesting after just 2 weeks of play: 2-0 undefeated team Ohio St (12) probably isn’t a huge surprise. A 1-0 Wisconsin (20) isn’t a shock either. The other 3 2-0 teams? Indiana (2-0), Northwestern (9), and Purdue (13).
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Of the 119 teams, there are 22 winless squads. In the FCS, Chattanooga (118) and SEMO (116) are 0-1. N Alabama (67) is the lone 0-2 team. Missouri St (109), Austin Peay (96), and Mercer (107) are 0-3. Citadel (60) and Campbell (55) are 0-4. That’s 0-21 for those 8 teams. The rest of FCS is a combined are 17-18. For the big schools, Colorado St (119), New Mexico (110), UMASS (88), and Nebraska (91) are 0-1. Illinois (106), Iowa (97), Minnesota (117), Penn St (47), Utah St (115), and UNLV (114) are off to an 0-2 start. FIU (104) is the sole 0-3 record holder, while Vanderbilt (113) holds the 0-4 spot. At 0-6, we have Kansas (71) and in the worst start of the year, ULM (100) is 0-7.
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On the flip side, there are 19 perfect teams. 2 are in the FCS, both 1-0: North Dakota St (70) and S Illinois (80). In the FBS, Wisconsin (20) is the sole 1-0 team. At 2-0, Indiana (8), Ohio St (12), Northwestern (9), Purdue (13), Boise St (33), Nevada (32), San Diego St (36), and San Jose St (38) are off to great starts. Jumping all the way to 5-0, we have Cincinnati (5-0) and Marshall (17). 6-0 brings us Notre Dame (5), Liberty (23), Coastal Carolina (10) and Alabama (1) while the two teams winning their first 7 bouts are BYU (11) and Clemson (2).
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Next week is an exciting week as the Pac-12 and the MAC make their debuts. So far it looks to be a full slate which would bring the total of FBS teams with at least one game played to 127. Only Old Dominion, New Mexico St, and UCONN would be left. No new teams so far in the FCS (although games pop in last minute sometimes) so their participants will remain at 16 for the year. Week 10 will give us 61 contests, but that is a different post (see Wednesday night for the what to watch edition of G’s Expectations).
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With no further ado, here are the 119 who have played so far from Alabama to Colorado St.
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That’s it for this week. If you like what you saw and/or read, please share with others – it is much appreciated. If you have concerns, please share them with me in the comments. The more feedback I get, the better the GCR can become. Thanks, G
Robert, I’m surprised that your model coincides well with how we think the colleges should stack up in a normal year. The reason I’m surprised is that with hardly any interconference play, how does the model know that Power 5 colleges are generally better than the Group of 5 colleges?
The reason I ask is that I would think it would be hard to also make a comparison between conferences within the Power 5 when there is almost no interconference play. When this long extended season is done, how do I know that the number 1 team in the PAC 12 is not as good as the number 1 team in the SEC (other than from bias based on previous years’ performance)?
This also has some applicability in a normal year when one conference, such as the SEC, plays fewer out-of-conference games than teams from other conferences do (I believe that’s true?). Although, there is probably some way to show that the smaller number of interconference games in the SEC is still statistically significant.
Hi Carl, great question as always. There is an assumption in the programming from the origin of the GCR that, as a whole, Power 5 schools are slightly advantaged over Group of 5 school. Between G5 and FCS is a larger “discount”. It’s not exactly this but something like this. 3 schools each have 10 wins. The P5 school counts as 10, the G5 school counts as 8.5, and the FCS school counts as 5. The values (which are not the actual values but directionally correct) impact SOS and Performance scores to different degrees. So, in short, yes, there is a general hit for playing a G5 or FCS school but a bonus for those G5/FCS who play up. That’s based on general performance over the years. All of that to say 3 of the top 11 and 7 of the top 25 are G5 schools as of right now.
Balancing between conferences this year is a more conceptually difficult task. I honestly had no idea how it would work. This year will be different because of a more “pro-like” schedule. The Big 10 will likely be down to 2-3 perfect teams in their third week (in a normal year it might be 5-6). The Big 12 is already out of the race, in a normal year, but how many perfect teams will there be with the all-(or nearly all)-conference schedules? Normally all FBS conferences play an 8 or 9 game conference schedule out of 12 regular season games. The Big 10, PAC-12, and Big 12 play 9 so they have fewer non-conference games than the ACC, SEC, or G5 teams. How is that going to play out in the rankings, I don’t know. But the SOS is based on the quality of teams played (measured by wins, essentially, with some adjustments) and the quality of opponent’s opponents. The performance score is based on wins/losses with some adjustments. Is a 5-1 PAC-12 team equal to an 8-2 SEC team or a 6-2 Big 10 team? Don’t know yet. I made some adjustments so that there isn’t any bias based on games played (although 0-1 teams tend to be ranked very low) that I didn’t even know was inherent. Most years there isn’t as much diversity in that stat.
Hope this helps. Time will tell. I actually had a lot of the concerns that you voiced here and almost skipped this season because of them. Glad I didn’t.