Greetings sports fans! There is one college football game left (at least until the FCS starts their spring schedule) pitting the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Ohio State Buckeyes as the only 2 remaining undefeated teams. We now have to wait and wait until this matchup of long-time bluebloods kicks off. So, to help ease the boredom (or add to it, depending on your point of view, I guess), I will post a series of articles. One will be an Evaluation with the teams current ranking going into the final. Another will be a deeper dive into the weirdness that was 2020. And finally, a prediction for the final game. Be on the lookout for these coming in the next 9 days.
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Each year (I’ve been “public” for 2 seasons now but had an email group for the 7 years before that), I’ve tried to add something new. This year was openly predicting games as soon as I felt the prediction was viable. I’m also going to go back and look at every game in hindsight and see how the predictions worked (the true measure of an upset). For example, Team A was only a 38.7% favorite to win in week 6 – that’s a real-time upset. But depending on what happened to the two teams after that game it could be completely different. If A does well and B falls apart, the hindsight prediction might be Team A 61.8% or not an upset at all or the reverse and the hindsight might be Team A 4.6% which is a major upset. It will be a fun comparison to see real-time week by week prediction success vs hindsight. Hypothetically, the hindsight model is significantly more accurate – we’ll see.
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In Round 3 our first game was Cincinnati (8) v Georgia (10), a game which the GCR picked the Bearcats to win. They fell 24-21 on a 53-yard FG with 0:03 on the clock, a botched kick off return, and a safety to end the game. Taking nothing away from the Bulldogs, but they had 1:38 to drive half the field to get to that opportunity. The Bearcats made a game-changing and incredibly costly mistake. On 3rd and 2 in their own territory with under 2 minutes to go and a 2 point lead, they selected a pass play 15 or 20 yards downfield. It’s one of those plays that ices the game if successful. However, the incompletion stopped the clock. Follow that with a punt and a fair catch and we have 1:38 on the clock. If they had run the ball (first down still ices the game), but a 4th down now puts the Dawgs with just around 45-50 seconds to drive. Bad play call and sometimes it’s just that one decision between a season well played and perfection. In the second early afternoon game on New Year’s Day, Northwestern owned the 1st quarter 14-0, but couldn’t score again until the 3rd when the lead dropped to 14-13. Once they woke up there was no looking back: Wildcats 35-19.
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The first of the (yawn) semi-finals had Alabama never in doubt 31-14 over Notre Dame and the second gave us 15 minutes of good game before Ohio St scored 21 in the 2nd and giving them the 49-28 victory over Clemson. Don’t get me wrong, Notre Dame and Clemson are good football teams and the ACC is a good conference. Neither team looked ready to play or up to the task on Friday. When you get 2 teams in a 4-team playoff, you need to be in the championship game. The ACC, usually a contender for best bowl conference, were a horrible 0-6 (tied with Conference-USA for the worst record). On the flip side, Alabama and Ohio St looked like the 2 best teams in the country. I am looking for a good game January 11.
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Saturday started with NC St taking on Kentucky (owner of a then 4-6 record). The Wildcats led at the half 13-0 and the Wolfpack fought back to within 2 with 70 seconds to go. But onside kicks are not often won and there you have it. Kentucky 23-21. The Outback Bowl promised strength on strength as the offensive powerhouse Rebels of Mississippi (then 4-5) fought the defensive juggernaut of the Indiana Hoosiers (who lost by just 7 to Ohio St). Who would have thought Mississippi could pull of 26-20 victory by scoring the tie-breaker with just over 4 minutes to go? The Fiesta Bowl was a one-halfer. Iowa St jumped off to a 28-17 half time lead over Oregon (21-10 in the 2nd quarter alone) before settling for 2 field goals in the 2nd half: final score Cyclones blow away the Ducks 34-17. The final game of the round was close until late in the 4th. UNC took the lead 27-20 with 13:51 to go. This game was back and forth to that point. So much so that I thought it was a last-possession game, but the Aggies of Texas A&M took over at that point scoring 21 straight to take the game 41-27.
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Overall the GCR was a sad 4-4 over the weekend and 13-12 for the bowl games. A good friend of mine sent me a note speculating that the lack of cross-conference games had an impact on the predictions (52% for the bowl season vs 72% for the regular season), and that is likely a factor especially considering a number of SEC teams with losing records won convincingly over teams with winning records (as an example – see the Big 12 and Big 10 as well). The GCR doesn’t typically do well in bowls every year, compared to the regular season, and there are 2 additional factors I haven’t been able to solve for. One is the expected win percentages are typically much lower than in the regular season (this impacts championship week too in a usual year). If there are 20 games and each has a 55.0% chance to win (to make the math easy), I would expect to go 11-9 in the prediction (or 55%). Again, that’s a second factor. I think the biggest impact is opt outs (every year final year players opt out to prep for the pros – this year add Covid), injuries, coaching changes, morale among teams that feel they should have got a better bowl, etc., that the GCR doesn’t take into consideration. Fortunately, in comparison to the full season or even to this shortened season, the number of games is somewhat inconsequential to the overall success (or not). I’ll show the normal table in the championship prediction post, but to see the hits and misses for the bowl season, here’s a different table.
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In a G’s Explanation, I’ll get into a conference by conference analysis of the bowl season as well as ranking performance. That’s it for this edition #134. I’ll see you soon. Thanks for reading, commenting, and sharing with others, G
