The blog has now been active for 25 days!! Thank you for nearly 650 hits, 16 subscribes, and 90 Facebook likes. The train may not be moving very fast, but we are moving. With all of the crazy stuff going on in the world today (and in college football where the transfer portal seems to be the “beam me up Scotty” solution for players – that could be a topic for a future post), it just seems to me sports, whether it’s the great college football, or the NFL, or NHL, nor NBA or MLS or Premier League or other college sports or high school still have a little bit of purity. Some teams are better than others, but fans are fans. I think sports fans are like siblings: I can pick on my brother and sister all I want, but if someone else does…look out! We all feel that way about our team or teams of choice. So far in the 16 posts, I’ve come up with the topic, made my – often rambling – point (sometimes in such a way that the reader may understand it even). But this post is different. I could talk about coach’s hot seats or rant about the inconsistency of teams or conferences or drone on about which teams have the best offense or defense statistically – yes, I have a measure for that. But what I really would like is to get even more involvement from the readers. It would be pure hubris for me to assume that whatever I feel like talking about is top of mind or even interesting to everyone (or anyone) else.
So, this post is a beg and plead. In the comments, send me topics you would like to see. I may not be able to write about all of them, but in my profession (I’m a Master Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma and a Business Transformation Consultant), Voice of the Customer is paramount to a good product or service. So, I’m practicing what I preach. This is a form of brainstorming so no idea is a bad one. Add on to others’ comments. Form the topics as questions or statements – I don’t care – just send the comments. I was thinking about this post last night and it will be a fairly common one (at least 2-3 times a year) – always on the Tuesday “rant” post. That said, keep in mind that from September to November, Tuesday is rant/interesting factoid type posts – tell me what you’d like to see there. Thursday is What to Watch – tell me what you’d like and/or provide feedback on what I already do. Sunday has the ranking itself and then, later, the analysis from that week. Ditto! By the way, in December and the first half of January, I plan to have weekly rankings/analysis. From then until August, the blog will slow down a little moving to monthly or so and be news/changes/rants/etc. In August as we approach the start of the season, we’ll move back to weekly, pure analysis.
That’s it – thank you in advance for the plethora, nay, the cornucopia of thoughts/comments/suggestions/topics from all of you. As always, please share with others to add to the mix and subscribe if you’d like.
r
One of my observations is that college football teams seem to fall into tiers. Right now there is the super-tier of Alabama and Clemson. Then there are about 6 or 10 other top-tier programs. Then there are about 40 to 50 wanna-be top-tier programs. Then there are the rest of the FBS teams who don’t have a hope of being a top-tier program.
My interest in the tiers is how likely are teams able to move up a tier? Every school’s athletic director and the school’s fans want their program to take that next step, but there seems to be impenetrable layers between the tiers (unless you’re falling).
Coaches agree that 75% of college-level success is recruiting and only 25% is actual coaching (broken down further into X’s and O’s, motivation, practice process, conditioning, culture, and in-game decision making). We all know that good recruiting begets good recruiting — in other words, the best prospects want to go to the winningest programs. This stacks the deck against programs wanting to move up a tier.
You might say that, well, an up-and-coming coach could find those diamonds in the rough that the top programs missed. And actually that might be true for skill positions where intangibles, athleticism, and football IQ are nebulous enough properties to judge, and some good skill players get passed over by the top programs. However, the top tier programs always have big strong linemen. Size and strength are very easy to judge, so the top-tier programs get a head start and a huge advantage in the recruiting game, because as we know, games are won on the line of scrimmage.
So enough of my pontificating. What can you do about this, Robert??? Huh, huh, huh?
Nothing, maybe, except to analyze those tiers over the years to see how hard it is to move up. I’m thinking that it is pretty easy to fall down a tier with a bone-headed coaching change or two. Both Notre Dame and Michigan fell out of the top tier a decade or two ago. Michigan is still a wanna-be at this point.
The first step of this I guess is to look at how the tiers shake out over the years that you’ve been doing the GCRanking. This may not be enough data, so I’m expecting you to re-create the GCR going back to the Princeton glory days. (That’s probably asking too much.)
Thanks! Even if you don’t select my challenge, at least I got to rant on a nationally syndicated blog.
As a follow-up to Carl’s insightful post, interested to know if a program such as Illinois can get back to fielding a competitive team or does the cycle of talent->success->more talent…ultimately preclude this. It seems the Saban’s and Meyer’s of college football can move most programs forward, yet would they or anyone be able to do the same in Champaign?
These are great thoughts. I can see some research in my future!!! Keep the ideas coming!