Happy Saturday college football fans. We are down to four games that count (I’m not including the Senior Bowl or the East-West Game or any of those). January 13th we have LSU and Clemson fighting it out in New Orleans for the FBS Championship. Before that, on the 11th, we have James Madison and North Dakota State competing for the FCS Championship (the culmination of the highest NCAA recognized playoff) in Frisco, Texas. Monday we have the Lending Tree Bowl out of Mobile featuring Miami of Ohio and ULL (they prefer Louisiana now – I may switch that over the summer). And then there’s today’s game. Before we jump into that Ohio was up 30-9 and, I guess forgot there were 4 quarters. Nevada scored twice in 2:06 to cut it to 9 points. The Bobcats blocked the extra point for the first score and the 2-point try failed. They threatened again with just over 3 minutes to play getting all the way to the Ohio 6 before a botched play resulted in a 19 yard loss and a fumble. With the win, the GCR prediction model is now 25-12 for the bowl season.
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Just a reminder that I’m soliciting feedback. Thank you for those who reached out already – great stuff to think about for next year. Keep it coming.
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For reference the key metrics for today’s game are the Group of 5 average OffEff is 99.2, DefEff is 102.4, and GCR Ranking is 106.8.
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In case you couldn’t tell from the tag in today’s title, Tulane (104, 6-6, 4th in the American West) and Southern Mississippi (105, 7-5, 3rd in the Conference USA West), meeting today at 11:30 Eastern in Fort Worth’s Armed Forces Bowl, are, to date, the closest match up of the bowl season. Kentucky/Virginia Tech has a closer percent to win at 50.01%, but their respective numbers showed different teams. Look at this: both teams were 0-1 against the GCR Top 25. Both teams faced 7 good (6+win) teams. The Green Wave played 4 great (10+win teams) while the Golden Eagles played 3. Both teams have colorful mascots! Tulane faced opponents with a combined record of 82-70 while Southern Miss toiled with 82-71 foes. Both teams have DefEff ratings of 112, above average for Group of 5 teams. Both teams have above average offenses as well with Tulane at 117 and the Golden Eagles at 104. If I didn’t use formulas to predict games, I’d be hard-pressed to use this analysis to say anything other than coin flip. The calculations don’t tell us much more putting Southern Miss 50.2% to win. It is somewhat telling that in the updated model for next year, the Green Wave would be 93rd while Southern Miss would jump to 72nd. Vegas likes the Green Wave -7.0 so I’m calling this an upset.
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That’s today game. I’ll be back tomorrow night to talk about the last non-championship game of the year. Leading up to the championship games, in addition to the actual analysis and predictions, I’ll talk a bit more about the formulaic changes for next year. Then after the championships are over, I’m planning different cuts of the data by conference, division, and category (P5, G5, FCS) looking at ranking, SOS, OffEff, DefEff, etc. There will be a lot to digest so I’ll spread them out a bit. I’ll also have a blog with a deeper analysis of bowl success by conference/division. I’m also looking at various top 25 and bottom 10 categories for individual teams (OffEff, SOS, etc.). Later, I’ll look at coaching changes. In the spring, once all of the conferences actually complete their schedules), I’ll start 2020 with the preseason ranking SOS ranking.
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If there are any other looks you’d like to see – for example, I’m toying with the idea of spending the off-season in deep analysis for each conference; how the teams stack up beyond just wins and losses – send me a note or comment and I’ll do the best I can. There will be 7 1/2 long months before the next kickoff.
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That’s it for today. As always, thank you for reading and sharing with others, G
