Wow! It’s week 9 already. I’m back in normal routine this week – whew!! That doubling up stuff was hard to write and probably harder to read all the way through. It could be worse: you could have to listen to my squeaky little voice instead. Wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
In some ways the season at the half way point is still an absolute mess – there are still a ton of undefeated teams and many of them play each other. Obviously a lot left to happen. But, it got me thinking (always a scary thing). I wonder how the various conferences are coming along. Who is in line for their respective conference championships games in December? So, of course, the analysis bug started (see, this is why I need readers to suggest topics – you never know what’s going to come out of what passes for my brain). I looked at the Power 5 and the Group of 5 groups for this exercise. Also for the Gof5, I looked at that group’s Top 10. One of them will get an opportunity to play in a New Year’s Six bowl and it will probably be one of them. The FCS only has once conference (SWAC) that has divisions. For that group, who I’ve been ignoring much too long, I looked at the teams most likely to make the playoffs. I’ll explain the methodology below.
For this analysis, I did not take the highest ranked team from each division, but rather took those either leading the division currently or tied in the loss column (except for the ACC Coastal – Virginia (29) beat Pittsburgh (20) so has the equivalent of a loss lead).
Of note: LSU beat Florida earlier in the season. Penn State plays both of the Big 10 (co)division leaders. The Big 12 who plays a round robin before the top 2 teams play for the championship, could have one of their best teams fall to third depending on what Iowa State (30) and Texas (18) do. Almost every team on the list has a tough game coming up which would change the table completely. Go ahead and pencil in the 5 head to heads listed because they are strong probables for Games of the Week.
I did the same thing for the Group of 5. The MAC has a logjam in the East Division that has to get sorted out and the West leader, Ball State (70), has all three East leaders on their schedule. I know my MAC-loving friends are excited about this race. I am for sure. To be totally transparent, I love the MAC conference. Starting in November they start playing MACNATION games on Tuesday and Wednesday that lets their players get more attention from TV and scouts than they normally get. It seems at least one of their divisions goes down to the wire every year. And, like most Gof5 conferences, these guys are never disappointed with a bowl bid. But, I digress:
Of note: Miami beat Kent State, and App State beat both ULM and ULL earlier in the season. 5 of the 7 big matchups are in the Merry MAC, but the biggest game is probably Boise State/Utah State – both are flirting with finishing in the top 25 and that game in November could be the de facto championship. When you look at the rankings of the Power 5 leaders all but 2 are in the top 25. Only 4 of the Group of 5 are, which is pretty normal. So who are the top 10 Group of 5 schools? When we look we see 6 of the teams above are (11 are in the Gof5 top 25 and Kent State is #26). Here are the top 10 of the junior FBS squads.
The FCS has their own voter top 25 and that voting is used, in part, to select the playoff teams. 24 make the playoffs, but the Ivy, MEAC, and SWAC don’t participate (The MEAC and SWAC have a bowl game of their own). If the GCR was used to determine all post season games for Division I (and why shouldn’t it, really?), it would still have to follow certain rules. First, some teams are excluded because their conferences say so. Second, the conference champions for the remaining conferences are automatic qualifiers. So with that in mind, I made the leap that the highest ranked team would eventually win their conference (probably won’t be 100% but there are tons of variables like non-divisioned conferences with over 10 teams) so I went with it. Here’s how it stacks up so far:
Of note: Bethune Cookman (82), Florida A&M (87), North Carolina A&T (97) and Dartmouth (125) are in the top 24, but are excluded due to rule 1. So there are a lot of teams with post season glory to play for. I’d say nearly every team still has a lot to play for – it all depends on expectations and what we do with the lot we’ve been given – we give up or we keep going. That thought led me to think who are the worst teams (mercifully just the bottom 5) by group.
So there you are – the really good, the pretty good, and the ugly. Hope you have a great rest of your week. Please comment, subscribe (if you haven’t already), and share the GCR with others (give them http://bit.ly/2019GCR ) as the link.
Talk to you Thursday about G’s Expectations,
G
