If Friday (or sometimes Thursday) is rant day at Football Perspective, then perhaps the first Tuesday in December can be fantasy day. Since everyone else does it, allow me to describe to you my preferred college playoff system.

• A modified 8-team playoff that’s actually a 10-team playoff with a four-team “play-in” round. A playoff system should not undermine the regular season, and my system places significant emphasis on success in the regular season: the most-accomplished teams get to clear the lowest hurdles due to byes, home-field, and weaker opponents.
• Notre Dame and the conference champions from the SEC, B12, P12, B10, and ACC earn automatic berths to the playoffs but only if they finish in the top 14.
• A selection committee (or a BCS-style ranking system) is used to select the remaining teams. There is a limit of 4 teams per conference. The “play-in” round and the first round of the playoffs are held at the higher seed’s location the week after the conference championship games (i.e., next weekend).

Therefore, Alabama (#2 in the BCS), Kansas State (#5), Stanford (#6), and Florida State (#12) would be guaranteed spots by virtue of being conference champions. Notre Dame (#1) is also guaranteed a slot.

That leaves five at-large selections:

— Florida (#3)
— Oregon (#4)
— two of Georgia (#7), LSU (#8), Texas A&M (#9), and South Carolina (#10)
— Oklahoma (#11)

Basically the only teams that could complain about this system are the leftover SEC teams, but I’m okay with that since they would be considered the 5th and 6th best teams from their conference. I suppose 12-1 MAC Champion Northern Illinois might be bothered, but they lost to Iowa and had a cupcake schedule. Had Nebraska defeated Wisconsin, or had Ohio State been eligible, Oklahoma or a 4th SEC team would have been left out.

For purposes of this post, I will say Georgia and A&M would be the committee’s picks.

Here’s how the playoff system would work. The three highest-ranked conference champions (Alabama, K-State, Stanford) get byes along with the next three highest-ranked teams — Notre Dame, Florida, and Oregon. The other four teams play at the site of the higher ranked team ^[1]I would have the committee involved in this step of the process as well and instruct them to avoid rematches if possible. This year it is not an issue. this Saturday (December 8th). So we would have:

Play-in round

#13 Florida State @ #7 Georgia
#11 Oklahoma @ #9 Texas A&M

— Had UGA beaten Alabama, the Bulldogs would have earned a bye followed by a home playoff game. By losing, they have to play a play-in game and then win a road playoff game. So the SEC Championship was a critical game — and there’s a good chance the committee would have simply selected LSU instead because of the loss.
— Had Florida State beaten Florida, they would have had likely received a bye and possibly a home playoff game. Now they have to win two road games. Of course, the ACC Championship Game, which no one cared about on Saturday night, would have been significantly more relevant.
— Ditto the Big 10 Championship Game, well, at least for the first half. Meanwhile, Oklahoma would have known they would have needed to run the table to get in after losing to Notre Dame. Instead of the season essentially being meaningless, think how much more exciting the Sooners last-second wins over West Virginia and Oklahoma State would have been?
— And of course, think how much more exciting the rest of the season for A&M and Johnny Manziel would have been if they had a chance to make the playoffs?

First round of the playoffs:

The three conference winners and the top-seeded at large receive home playoff games, which would be played on Saturday, December 15th:

#1 Notre Dame hosts the worst remaining seed (either FSU or the A&M/Oklahoma winner)
#2 Alabama hosts the 2nd worst seed remaining (Georgia or the A&M/Oklahoma winner).
#5 Kansas State hosts the 3rd worst seed remaining (Florida)
#6 Stanford hosts the 4th worst seed remaining (Oregon)

[Note: If you want to have the committee switch the bottom two games so that Stanford does not “have to beat Oregon again” I am fine with that. KSU-Oregon and Stanford-Florida are just as acceptable to me, and I am willing to do the same to avoid a UGA or A&M rematch with Alabama if events unfolded that way.]

Notre Dame and Alabama had the best two regular seasons, and look at their rewards: they get a bye, they get a home game, and they play a team coming off a play-in game.

KSU and Stanford both won their conferences, so they are rewarded with byes and home playoff games. Florida State won their conference but their lackluster regular season did not merit the same reward. Wisconsin won the Big 10 and got nothing. So the regular season remains vitally important. Oregon and Florida had great regular seasons, and thanks to a second bite at the apple (which is instead only reserved for Alabama this year), their seasons weren’t meaningless after one loss. And the lowest two seeds played their win into the playoff.

This playoff format makes the regular season much more meaningful for many more teams, while only slightly taking away from the value of certain games (admittedly, the Kansas State and Oregon upsets on November 17th would have been less meaningful in this format; I’m okay with that — the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.)

The Final Four

We now break until the first weekend of January. At this point, we have four very deserving teams. They would play in a four-team playoff, rotated among the bowl sites, as currently envisioned. We might see Notre Dame and Oregon in the Rose Bowl and Alabama and Kansas State in the Sugar Bowl. Or perhaps A&M and Oregon in the Cotton Bowl and Florida and Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl. Who knows. The good news is that unless there are 11 deserving teams, everyone gets a shot (and even if all 5 autobids finish in the top 14, 4 non-conference champs are still eligible; no worthy undefeated team should get left out in this system).

There are six conference championship games this weekend. Here’s a short preview breaking down this weekend’s action. All times Eastern.

MAC Championship (Detroit, MI)

Friday, 7PM: Kent State vs. Northern Illinois (-6.0)

Weeknight MACtion doesn’t get better than this, and this is one of just two conference championship games featuring two 11-1 teams. The SRS hit the nail on the head, telling us that NIU is 6.2 points better than Kent State on a neutral field. The stars here are Northern Illinois’ quarterback Jordan Lynch and KSU’s running back Dri Archer. Lynch leads the MAC in Y/A, AY/A, TD/INT Ratio, and Passer Rating, and oh by the way leads the conference with 1,611 rushing yards and ranks third with 16 rushing touchdowns.

Archer, meanwhile, leads the MAC with 1,795 yards from scrimmage has scored 18 touchdowns. But here’s the killer stat: he averaging 9.7 yards per carry, the highest average of any player with at least 100 carries since at least 2000. In his spare time, Archer averages 38.2 yards per kick return, the highest average of any player with at least 12 returns since at least 2000.

Kent State lost to Kentucky, which didn’t seem odd at the time — because we’re talking about Kent State — but looks absurd in retrospect. The Golden Flashes received an SRS grade of 4.4 for that game. Northern Illinois’ one loss was on opening weekend against Iowa, an 18-17 loss in Chicago where NIU led most of the game.

My pick: NIU -6

Pac 12 Championship (Stanford, CA)

Friday, 8PM: UCLA @ Stanford (-8.5)

If we looked at the SRS standings from a week ago, we would set this line at Stanford -5.6. But the current projected SRS spread would be 8.6, mirroring the actual line. So how much do we take away from last week’s game, where Stanford had everything to play for and UCLA seemed content to walk away unscathed?

It’s tough to say. Jim Mora’s Bruins have been an exciting team to watch this year, but Stanford’s defense is well-equipped to stop any rushing attack. Runing backs Johnathan Franklin (UCLA) and Stepfan Taylor (Stanford) have been workhorse backs, each rushing for 11 touchdowns, ranking third and fourth in the conference in rushing, and chipping in in the passing game. And while freshman quarterback Brett Hundley has been outstanding for UCLA, I have a feeling he’s going to wind up very frustrated on Friday night.

My pick: Stanford -8.5

CUSA Championship (Tulsa, OK)

Saturday, 12PM: Central Florida @ Tulsa (-1.5)

These are the two best teams in Conference USA, but that isn’t saying too much. The SRS puts UCF as 3.1 points better than Tulsa, so this game should be a push in Oklahoma. The Golden Hurricane handed UCF their only conference loss two weeks ago in Tulsa, but UCF has the more impressive resume this year losing to just Ohio State and Missouri out of conference. Tulsa lost to Iowa State and Arkansas, and just lost on the road to SMU. So why am I going with the Golden Hurricane? Because Tulsa has gone 16-2 at home the last three years, with the only losses coming to teams ranked, at the time, 8th in the country (Oklahoma State and Houston, in 2011). The final score two weeks ago was misleading, as Tulsa outgained UCF by well over 100 yards rushing, average 1.9 more yards per pass, and won the first downs battle, 26-14.

My pick: Tulsa -1.5

SEC Championship (Atlanta, GA)
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I’ve got a real post ready for tomorrow, so Thursday is Rant Day this week. There’s been a lot of talk this week about how this would be a great year to implement the four-team playoff that’s coming to college football for the 2014 season. I suspect part of that reason is because people are recognizing that Florida boasts a more impressive resume than either Alabama or Georgia, and that Oregon is an elite team that lost an overtime game to a division rival. Therefore, a four-team playoff featuring Notre Dame, the eventual SEC Champion, Florida, and Oregon would be great.

On one hand, of course it would be great. I’d love to watch Notre Dame face Oregon and perhaps see Alabama and Florida face off (no, you couldn’t make me watch Florida-Georgia II). But that’s only because college football is great. In fact, this year — like almost every year — stands as a good example of why the four-team playoff system is doomed to create controversy and do little to increase fairness. Let’s start with…

Winning your division = Bad

We saw this last year, when Alabama ended the year as BCS #2 and therefore had locked up its spot in the national championship game, while LSU still had to go play in the SEC Championship Game. In this particular case, I don’t feel too bad about the fact that Florida would be given a free pass to the four-team playoff while Georgia has to go play Alabama, but only because Florida has faced a much tougher schedule.

But what if instead of what actually happened — Florida beating South Carolina, South Carolina beating Georgia, and Georgia beating Florida — the order was reversed, and Georgia beat South Carolina, South Carolina beat Florida, and Florida beat Georgia? In that case, Florida would likely be #2 or #3 in the BCS, while Georgia would sit pretty at 4. And Florida would go play Alabama for the right to win the SEC… with the loser being left out of the playoffs. That’s patently unfair. Being the third best team in your conference could be preferable to being the second best team. This is a lock to happen at some point during a four-team playoff. This is also going to be a bigger problem generally as conferences get bigger, because conference schedules will become unbalanced. The Big 12 has a round robin where everyone plays everyone, but in a 14-team conference, you can easily see a better team end up with a worse record than an inferior team due purely to scheduling.

Oregon-Stanford

It is being conveniently forgotten that Stanford actually won the Pac-12 North. In fact, we have an exact reversal of what happened last year, which many screamed was unfair to Oregon. Lest you forget….

In 2011, both Oregon and Stanford went 8-1 in the Pac-12. Oregon beat Stanford head-to-head in Palo Alto (but lost to USC), so they won the division and then the conference. Stanford had a soft nonconference schedule while Oregon traveled to Dallas to play and lose to LSU in the season opener. So Oregon was 11-2 (but Pac-12 champs) while Stanford was 11-1. After the regular season, Stanford was 4th and Oregon was 5th in the AP, Harris, and Coaches Polls, and also in the BCS. This struck many as unfair, because the Ducks were essentially the better team but had a brutally hard non-conference game, a de facto road game against the #1 team in the country.

Fast forward to 2012. Oregon and Stanford both went 8-1 in the Pac-12. This time, Stanford beat Oregon head-to-head — in Eugene — so they won the division and perhaps the conference (we’ll find out on Saturday.) Oregon had a soft nonconference schedule while Stanford went to South Bend to play the #1 team in the country. Stanford will finish 11-2 if they beat UCLA, while Oregon finished 11-1.

Should Oregon go to the hypothetical four-team playoff instead of Stanford? If not, why not?
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Lane Kiffin is not a very good coach, and that’s putting it mildly. He’s one of the most hated men in college football and he’s the face of a USC team that has had the worst season of any preseason favorite since at least 1964. With a 7-5 record, no one is defending Lane Kiffin. And given the various ways he mismanaged the clock against Notre Dame, nobody can defend his performance in that game.

But let’s puts everything aside — Kiffin for being Kiffin, the fact that USC had 1st and goal from the Notre Dame 2 with over 5 minutes remaining and then proceeded to waste over 150 seconds of clock — and look at one particular decision. Facing 4th and goal from the Notre Dame 1-yard line, trailing by 9 points with 2:33 left, Kiffin decided to go for it.

This clearly defies conventional wisdom, and when the move failed, it opened him up to even more criticism. But was it the right call? According to Brian Burke, if this had been an NFL game, the correct call would have been to kick the field goal.

That may not surprise traditionalists, but readers of this blog and Advanced NFL Stats may be surprised to find that, according to the 4th Down Calculator, when trailing by 9 with 2:33 remaining, you need an 87% chance of converting to make going for it the correct call. (I will note that if you are trailing by 10, things change dramatically and going for it is the correct play.)

But this was not an NFL game. Burke’s model is based on two assumptions that are relevant here: one, the team has an average number of timeouts remaining, and two, that the clock will stop with 2:00 to go. USC had one timeout left (which is probably below average for this situation) and there is no two-minute warning in college football. So it’s likely that using 2:33 is not the correct number to use the 4th down calculator for college.

If you use 2:33 remaining, you need an 87% chance of converting to make going for it the correct call.

But, according to the same model, if you use 2:03, it drops to 64%.

If you use 1:33, it drops to 13%.

Obviously figuring out which input to use is very important. However, let’s think about it in a different context.

If USC scores a touchdown and does not onside kick (which I don’t think they do), ND gets the ball at roughly the 25-yard line with 2:25 left. On 1st and 10, they run, USC calls timeout, and there is 2:20 left. On second down, Notre Dame runs, 40 seconds tick off, and there is 1:35 left. Rinse, repeat, and Notre Dame punts with 50 seconds left. This means USC gets the ball with roughly 40 seconds left at say, their own 45.

Here college football’s rules benefit the Trojans because the clock stops momentarily on first downs. At this point, it comes down to this:
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In connection with calculating my college football SRS ratings at the FBS level, I also calculate them at the FCS level but rarely publish them. But with the FCS playoffs underway, I figured, why not? Here are the FCS ratings as of November 25th, 2012:

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Florida-Florida State.

Georgia-Georgia Tech.

South Carolina-Clemson.

And, as a technical matter, Vanderbilt-Wake Forest.

I’m not exactly breaking any news when I tell you this, but the ACC is not having a very good year. In the abstract, it might seem like any other elite conference. It has two 10-1 teams and each team has at least four wins other than Boston College. The problem is that the ACC, like all conferences not named the SEC, is measured by how it does in non-conference play. And it has had a miserable year in that regard.

Each team in the conference plays four non-conference games; with four games remaining, that means 44 have been played, although 13 of those games — including three by the two powerhouses of the conference, Florida State and Clemson — were against FCS schools. How has the ACC fared in its first 31 games against other FBS foes? The table below lists each non-conference game, sorted first by quality of the ACC team (that’s the SRS grade on the left) and second by the SRS grade of the opponent:

Both FSU and Clemson at least gave it the old college try: the Seminoles scheduled West Virginia and one FCS opponent, but when the Mountaineers joined the Big 12 they backed out of the game, leaving FSU to place a second FCS school on its schedule. Clemson scheduled Auburn – two years removed from a national championship – in Atlanta on opening weekend. But at the end of the day, neither FSU nor Clemson played any team out of conference – or in conference, excluding each other – that remotely impressed anybody. Of course, these two teams face huge tests this weekend against their in-state, SEC rivals.

UNC scheduled Louisville, a terrible team just two years ago that now may win the Big East. But that game did not go according to ACC script.

Miami certainly couldn’t have expected that they’d face two teams who would be ranked 1st in the country at some point this year when they scheduled Kansas State and Notre Dame. The results were, in hindsight, predictably bloody, with Miami losing by the combined score of 93-16.

Georgia Tech saved its worst games of the year for nonconference play. While Georgia Tech embarrassed UNC (68 points scored), Virginia (36 point win) and Maryland (33-13 on the road), the Yellow Jackets’ worst two games of the season were inexplicable 21- and 24-point losses to BYU and Middle Tennessee State. BYU scored 6 points against Boise State, 6 points against Utah State, and 14 points against San Jose State, but exploded for 41 points in Atlanta. MTSU lost by 42 to Mississippi State and lost to McNeese State – an FCS school – but somehow won on the road against the Yellow Jackets 49-28. And Georgia Tech is going to be your Coastal Division champs.

The sixth and seventh best schools – Virginia Tech and NC State – didn’t fare any better. Virginia Tech shockingly lost to both Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, while North Carolina State lost by 14 points to a Tennessee team that may set a school record for losses.

This is why Florida State gets no love from the BCS computers. Out of conference this season, the ACC has been a joke. Consider:

• Overall, the ACC is currently 14-17 in non-conference games against other FBS schools. This is the most impressive stat you will read about the ACC today.
• Against Conference USA, the MAC, the Sun Belt, and the WAC, the ACC is 7-2. Against miserable Army — the 114th team in the SRS — the conference is 1-1. That means against the other BCS schools (the SEC, B10, B12, P12, Big East, Notre Dame, and BYU), the conference went a pitiful 6-14.
• This is not a joke: Ball State is the second best team an ACC school has beaten this year. Virginia’s upset over Penn State — a one-point home win when the Nittany Lions missed an extra point and four field goals — is the conference’s best win of the year. After PSU and Ball State, at least according to the SRS, the best teams defeated by ACC schools were Auburn, South Florida (twice), Bowling Green, East Carolina, Temple, and Connecticut.
• To put a bow on it, the ACC lost to the best six teams it faced out of conference, and according to the SRS, to 13 of the 14 schools they faced that have SRS ratings over 40.

I don’t know if much is going to change tomorrow, but for a conference that has zero signature wins this year, tomorrow is the only chance the conference gets. Clemson is a 4-point home favorite to a Marcus Lattimore-less South Carolina team; the SRS would make Clemson 2.2-point favorites, so that line seems appropriate. Florida State is a 6-point home favorite against Florida, while the SRS would make UF just a one-point dog. Florida State has beaten up on creampuffs while Florida struggles with everyone (but still defeated Texas A&M, LSU, and South Carolina). Because Florida State’s offense is very good and Florida’s offense is offensive, most expect the Seminoles to win. I think the safe bet is to expect a very ugly game.

Georgia is 15 points better in the SRS than Georgia Tech, and with the game in Athens, should be 18-point favorites. In fact, the Bulldogs are favored by only 13 points, perhaps a sign that Vegas doesn’t want to penalize the Yellow Jackets as harshly as the SRS for losing to MTSU. Vanderbilt is an 11.5-point favorite on the road against an awful Wake Forest team; the SRS would project the line to be 14.6 points.

The ACC is not in a particularly enviable situation. No one expects Wake Forest or Georgia Tech to win, because odds are they will get creamed. And while the Clemson and Florida State games favor the ACC squad, both should be very close. That’s a lot of downside for a conference that with a few bad bounces, could go 0-4 on the day. That would be a fitting finish to a dreadful season. For the conference to save any face, it will need victories by both of its heavy hitters and a respectable performance by Georgia Tech.

Your assumptions are no longer valid.

Kansas State entered the weekend as the most balanced team in college football. Through 11 weeks, Baylor ranked 120th in yards allowed and 118th in points allowed. But last night in Waco, the Wildcats were unable to do much of anything on offense. Collin Klein had never thrown more than one interception in a game in his career; he threw 3 against the Bears. Kansas State was averaging 213 rushing yards per game, but Baylor limited them to just 76 rushing yards. The Wildcats hadn’t allowed more than 30 points in a game this year; Baylor scored 52 points in the first three quarters and ended the game with 580 yards of offense. The most balanced and consistent team in the country was demolished by one of the most one-dimensional teams in college football.

At the same time, another surprise was happening in Eugene. If there was one thing we knew in 2012, it was that the Oregon offense was unstoppable. This has been the case for years — since Chip Kelly arrived in 2007, the Ducks had scored at least 24 points in every home game. Against Stanford, the Ducks were held to just 14 points in an overtime loss.

In their first years in the post-Andrew Luck and post-Robert Griffin III, the Stanford and Baylor programs dominated the college football headlines on the most important weekend of the season. For the first time in five years, the #1 and #2 teams in the BCS fell on the same day, rendering all of our national championship game assumptions moot.

This much is clear: if Notre Dame defeats USC at the Coliseum on Saturday, the Fighting Irish are going to the BCS National Championship Game. The winner of the SEC Championship Game is going there as well, barring an upset by Georgia Tech in Athens this weekend. ^[1]No, we’re not getting into hypotheticals that involve Auburn beating Alabama. I maintain that Georgia is far less deserving of its spot in Atlanta than Florida, who has the most impressive trio of wins this year by defeating LSU, Texas A&M, and South Carolina. Georgia lost to South Carolina but beat Florida, which gave them the tiebreaker and the division crown. But the real key for Bulldogs was that they faced Mississippi and Auburn in the West, not LSU and A&M; as a result, they are the SEC East Champions.

But now is the time for more relevant debates. Assuming an upset — either by USC, or by Georgia Tech coupled with a Georgia upset against Alabama — who is next in line? At that point, four teams will have legitimate claims for the other golden ticket: Florida, Florida State, Oregon, and Kansas State. Fortunately, the Gators and Seminoles play each other on Saturday, which would leaves us with just three promising candidates.

If they defeat Florida State, Florida is the clear “next team up” following a slip-up by Notre Dame or in the event of a two-loss SEC Champ. The computers would love them due to their strength of schedule, and the voters should love them for the same reason and the bump they would get for defeating Florida State.

If FSU wins, their case is much weaker. The computers hate them, and for good reason: they haven’t beaten any good teams. Defeating the Gators would give them a big bump, and they’ll get a chance to beat mediocre team in the ACC Championship Game, but consider: Outside of 10-1 Clemson, each of FSU’s other 9 victories have come against ACC, Big East, or FCS schools that have at least 5 losses. And how good is Clemson? Yes, they have a nice record, but their 10 wins have come against Ball State (#64 in the SRS), and ACC, SEC, or FCS teams with at least five losses.

According to the SRS, North Carolina is the 3rd best team in the conference and they rank 45th. FSU lost to a bad N.C. State team, while while Oregon (in particular) and Kansas State have much more palatable losses. FSU’s argument would be two parts “we lost earliest” and one part “we beat Florida and Clemson, even if Clemson hasn’t beaten anybody.” Florida State’s overall strength of schedule is far inferior to that both Oregon’s and Kansas State’s. In my opinion, even with a win over Florida, the Seminoles likely do not jump both Oregon and Kansas State in the BCS, nor should they.

And consider: if Stanford defeats UCLA this weekend, the Cardinal — and not Oregon — would win the Pac-12 North, which would deal a significant blow to Nike University. Kansas State still needs to get by Texas, but tonight might not end up being a season killer. At this point, they need to root for USC and Florida State, which is historically not a bad position to be in. My guess is Kansas State is next in line after an undefeated Notre Dame, a one-loss SEC Champ, and a one-loss Florida team. It’s possible only one of those three exist by the end of the season.

Let’s take a look at the SRS ratings after 11 weeks. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe. [continue reading…]

Note: There are many things theoretical issues with this post. That said, if I had to write down and explain all the drawbacks of the data I’m about to present, I wouldn’t have the time to make quick posts like this. So….

I thought it would be cool to take a slightly (emphasis on slightly) more nuanced look at team rushing and passing stats so far in 2012.

The first table shows how many “rushing yards over average” each team has this year. First, I calculated each team’s “Adjusted Yards per Carry” which is simply Yards per Carry with a 20-yard bonus for each touchdown. On average, teams are averaging 5.31 AYPC in 2012; to calculate rushing yards over average, I multiplied the number of carries for each team by the difference between their AYPC average and 5.31. As expected, Oregon ranks first.
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Before I get to the question of the day, below is a quick roundup of some good college football articles I read this week:

• Bill Connelly, of Football Outsiders and SB Nation, argues that Texas A&M’s victory proves head coach Kevin Sumlin was the right man for the job and that the spread works — even in the SEC.
• You may recall that Alabama’s last chance to win the game was ruined when they fell for a hard count on a 4th down play with Texas A&M lined up to punt. Chris Brown highlighted how Sumlin has a history of success with the hard count — the day before the game.
• Dan Wetzel, writing for Yahoo!, argues that the BCS is screwing over Notre Dame because of the Irish’s preseason ranking.
• Stewart Mandel over at Sports Illustrated discusses the far-reaching impact of the Aggies’ upset victory
• Matt Hinton at SB Nation provides us with the latest and greatest on the BCS race, including a terrifying-but-not-unrealistic theory on how we might get another All-SEC BCS title game.

As we move towards the final few weeks of the regular season, the picture is almost in place. We know that Oregon and Kansas State are atop the BCS standings, and if both remain undefeated, will end up facing off in the BCS National Championship Game. That would leave Notre Dame, as a potential 12-0, left out in the cold. Is this fair?

Of course not. Any system that is designed around a two-team playoff format is not going to be equitable when you have three teams finish a season undefeated. That’s basic math. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with the BCS for another 14 months. So the real question isn’t whether an undefeated Notre Dame would be getting screwed — they would be, just like countless other teams before them. No, the more interesting question is, assuming we are absurdly limited to the ridiculousness of choosing two out of three undefeated teams, should Notre Dame be one of those two teams?

The cast of characters in this case can easily be plotted a continuum, with “margin of victory” champs on one side and “strength of schedule” warriors on the other. On the left, a dominant offense; on the right, a dominant defense. It’s a case of “beauty contest winners” vs. “resume champs.” Or, if you prefer, the best predictive teams vs. the best retrodictive teams. In any event, you’ve got Oregon on one side, Notre Dame on the other, and Kansas State square in the middle. We’re left trying to magnify miniscule differences to figure out which two teams belong.

The case for Oregon

The Ducks lead the country in points per game and rushing yards per carry, giving them the most explosive offensive attack in college football. The Ducks are so prolific that they’ve managed to achieve these milestones despite largely shutting things down for large stretches of the game nearly every week: Oregon has had a lead of at least 32 points in nine of ten games, and in 8 of those games, they scored at least 4 straight touchdowns at one point (of the exceptions, in one they had two runs of three straight touchdowns and in the other, they broke USC’s school records for yards and points allowed).
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I’m a big fan of Mike Tanier, an excellent writer formerly of Football Outsiders and now with Sports on Earth. Yesterday, Tanier threw cold water on the idea that Chip Kelly is going to be the next great NFL coach. Tanier labeled him him this generation’s Steve Spurrier, and argued that it is lazy and unsophisticated to simply assume that “great NCAA coach = great NFL coach.” Unfortunately, his analysis only required the expenditure of one extra ounce of effort and intelligence:

Kelly is an offensive mastermind. He is guru of the modern college spread option. Marcus Mariota, his current quarterback, fakes a shotgun handoff, stands in the pocket while a file downloads, then floats passes to receivers who are open by five yards. Or, Mariota hands off to Kenjon Barner, who busts off 300-yard games against overtaxed defenses. Or, Mariota keeps the football himself. There are trick plays, wildcat packages, fake field goals, bells, whistles, onion rings and shakes. It’s fun, and the quarterback is always in the gun. Is your SpurriDar beeping yet?

Kelly runs an explosive college offense, but like Spurrier’s fun ‘n’ gun, it is distinctly and uniquely a college offense. It is built on the principle of littering the field with speedy young men who can outrun the opponent’s speedy young men in the wide-open spaces that only exist at a level of play where everyone is a step slower, an inch shorter and 15 pounds lighter.

Kelly’s offense is often mischaracterized as gimmicky, but Chris Brown did an excellent job explaining how traditional football principles are the key to Kelly’s offense at Grantland yesterday. Brown has also written a bit about Kelly’s zone-read running game, the way the Ducks teach reading the defensive tackle, and how Oregon’s attack compares to Nebraska’s old rushing offense over at his website, Smart Football; alternatively, you can read about Kelly’s offense straight from the horse’s mouth.

Can Kelly simply pack his playbook, spend a training camp with an NFL team, and turn them into the pro version of the Ducks? Of course not; even if his running game works perfectly, his runs will mostly go for 8-yard gains, not 40-yard sprints (unless he’s playing the Raiders). But reducing Kelly to an X’s and O’s guru incapable of adaption is unfairly harsh. Tanier credits the great Nike machine with providing Oregon with superior talent, but that’s not a fair criticism. Oregon has never had a top-ten recruiting class under Kelly, and Rivals generally ranks Oregon’s classes in the teens or early twenties. Spurrier, coaching in talent-rich Florida, not remote Oregon, was playing with a decked more favorably stacked than Kelly ever has. But more importantly, Kelly’s offenses were unstoppable when he coached at New Hampshire without any recruiting edge, and his success at Oregon happened immediately, even before Oregon truly became the nouveau riche of college football.
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For the second straight season, the game of the year took place in Tuscaloosa. A week after Alabama eeked out a victory over LSU, and 53 weeks after Alabama loss to LSU in last year’s “Game of the Century”, Johnny Manziel produced one of the performances of the season in leading Texas A&M to an incredible upset victory. I have been a believer in the Aggies — they ranked 4th in my SRS ratings last week and remain there this week — but make no mistake, this was still an incredible upset. For a true freshman, on the road, against a Nick Saban defense, to go 24/31 for 253 yards and 2 TDs and to run 18 times for 92 yards is outstanding.

For now, the upset means we’re likely headed towards an SEC-free national championship game. This will anger some in the South, so I’ll take this time to remind you that the SEC’s record this year against the other BCS conferences is an incredibly dominant 4-5. Yes, the SEC has a losing record against the other top conferences in college football in 2011.

The bottom of the SEC has struggled considerably both in and out of conference — Auburn lost to Clemson, Vanderbilt to Northwestern, Kentucky to Louisville (and also to Western Kentucky), Ole Miss to Texas, and Arkansas to Rutgers (and also Louisiana-Lafayette). The positive side of the ledger isn’t all that impressive, unfortunately. Sure, Tennessee beat N.C. State, which would be impressive if not for the fact that the Wolfpack are 68th in the SRS. Yes, LSU beat Washington at home, but it’s LSU against the 8th best team in the Pac-12. Missouri over Arizona State and Alabama over Michigan are basically the two nonconference games the SEC can hang its hat on.

If Oregon wins out, they seem assured of getting one of the two golden tickets to Miami. Who will get the other? Obviously an undefeated Kansas State or Notre Dame would take one of the other spots. For now, K-State is ahead in the polls and the BCS standings, and gets the benefit of playing a streaking Texas team after the Fighting Irish have hung up their cleats for the year. According to the BCS Guru, Notre Dame is the clear third wheel.

But what if both Kansas State and Notre Dame lose? At that point, a one-loss SEC Champ — presumably Alabama — likely rises to number two. To that end, Alabama’s biggest friend right now is Lane Kiffin, who could knock off both Oregon and Notre Dame if USC wins out, setting up a Kansas State-Alabama title game.

And with that, a look college football’s SRS ratings after 11 weeks:
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The game of the day is in Tuscaloosa, as the #4 team in the SRS tries to ruin the perfect season of the best team in the country. Here’s a look at the weekly results for Alabama and Texas A&M, sorted from highest to lowest SRS score:

Both teams blew out Arkansas in September and then embarrassed Mississippi State the last two weeks. Both Alabama and Texas A&M played their worst games of the year against LSU. The Aggies are a 13.5-point underdog, and it seems absurd to think that college football’s version of what it would look like if the Eagles and Chargers could have a baby could upend the mighty Crimson Tide, but it’s November. That generally means expect the unexpected.

Louisville @ Syracuse

The Cardinals look to keep their dream season alive in what looks to be an easy matchup on paper. Louisville is 9-0 and Syracuse is 4-5, so this should be a gimme, right? Except in Vegas, the line is just Syracuse -1.5. Many college football fans are calling this the oddest line of the week, but fans of the SRS would disagree. The SRS is predictive and doesn’t care about your record; it is intended to tell us how well teams will play in the future, and as a result, often mirrors the point spread in a game. Well, the SRS says Louisville should be favored by just 2.4 points despite the much more impressive record. You can view every college football game score here, which helps explain why Syracuse isn’t the pushover you might expect them to be. Syracuse has lost just one home game this season, a 42-41 game against Northwestern that ended in controversial fashion. Against the other cream of the conference, the Orange lost on the road by 8 against Rutgers and 11 against Cincinnati.

Meanwhile, Louisville beat Cincinnati at home by 3, and defeated North Carolina two months ago, but otherwise, doesn’t have any impressive wins on its resume. And it was only three weeks ago that Louisville was trailing in the final two minutes, at home, to South Florida. The Cardinals have played just three road games this season, against teams that are a combined 6-22. I think Vegas has this line appropriately placed; it’s close to a toss-up game, although I’d obviously favor the Cardinals.
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There were close calls in Baton Rouge and in South Bend, but all six undefeated teams escaped week 10 without a blemish. Ohio State is now the first team to win 10 games in 2012, although the Buckeyes are not eligible to participate in postseason play. Louisville ran its record to 9-0 yesterday, with winnable games against Syracuse and Connecticut before a season-defining finale in Piscataway on November 29th.

However, the eyes of the country are now focused on Notre Dame, Kansas State, Oregon, and Alabama. Last weekend, I said there was only a 10% chance that Oregon, Kansas State, and Notre Dame would finish the season undefeated. That was with 13 games left for those teams to win; now those odds are close to 17%. Kansas State has the easiest remaining path, although all three of its remaining opponents have realistic chances of pulling an upset. Oregon has a relatively easy game against Cal this week while Notre Dame shouldn’t have any problem with Boston College.

Alabama has another tough challenge this week in Texas A&M, although it is hard to imagine college football’s most inconsistent team of the last two years winning a close match-up against the country’s most consistent and brutal opponent. If Alabama can defeat the Aggies this weekend, a perfect regular season is all but assured, with the Crimson Tide’s final two games coming against Western Carolina (SRS of 11.6) and Auburn (37.6). The Iron Bowl this year should be more coronation than battle, which leaves just Texas A&M and Georgia — the likely opponent in the SEC Championship Game — as the two remaining hurdles for Alabama to clear.

Here are the week 10 SRS ratings: [continue reading…]

November 3rd has been circled on the calendars of college football fans for nearly a year. Unfortunately, the two biggest games of the day — Alabama/LSU and Oregon/USC — will compete for the eyeballs of the nation. The Ducks and Trojans kick off at 7PM on the East Coast, with the Crimson Tide stealing our attention one hour later. Making matters worse, the #3 team in the country will be playing in the 8PM time slot, too, as Kansas State hosts Oklahoma State. So with a lot of interesting games this weekend, I thought I’d take a look at my thoughts on each game involving an eligible, undefeated team on Saturday in relation to two key metrics: the SRS ratings and the Vegas lines. I’ll also make heavy use of the Game Scores page, which lists every game from this season for all FBS teams.

Temple at Louisville, 12PM (all times Eastern)

Louisville SRS: 43.7
Temple SRS: 31.5
Projected SRS line: Louisville -15.2
Actual line: Louisville -16.5

Temple had been respectable early this year (minus an ugly home loss to Maryland) but has been miserable the last two weeks, likely driving this line up. The Owls were up 10-0 at halftime being being routed 35-10 by Rutgers at home two weeks ago, and then last week lost by 30 at a terrible Pittsburgh team. Louisville is not great, but they should be able to handle Temple with ease. No thoughts on the point spread, though, which seems right to me.

Pittsburgh at Notre Dame, 3:30PM

Notre Dame SRS: 63.1
Pittsburgh SRS: 37.5
Projected SRS line: Notre Dame -28.6
Actual line: Notre Dame -16.5

Why is this line the same as Louisville-Temple? The only explanations I can think of are: (1) Pittsburgh just played its best game of the week (SRS score of 57.0) in a win over Temple and (2) Notre Dame hasn’t earned the public’s trust just yet. But with the exception of a squeaker over Purdue in week two, the Fighting Irish have been very good each week. They beat Michigan State by 17 (SRS score of 67.5), Michigan by 7 (58.2), Miami by 38 (73.0), Stanford by 7 (60.8), BYU by 3 (51) and Oklahoma by 17 (82.9). Maybe some of those scores are a little inflated — the Hurricanes have several drops and an injured quarterback, the Stanford game was in overtime, the Oklahoma game was closer than the score — but that’s picking nits, in my opinion. This is a ridiculously good defense playing a Pittsburgh team that scored 20 points in its last road game, which was at Buffalo. The Panthers were horrrrrrrrible with probably more Rs than that the first two weeks of the season, losing to FCS Youngstown State and Cincinnati by a combined 38 points. But even if we threw those games out, the SRS would still say the Fighting Irish should be favored by at least three touchdowns.

The pick: Notre Dame -16.5
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Neil once pointed out, that you can approximate a team’s odds of winning a game by using the point spread and the following formula:

p(W) = 1 – (1-NORMDIST(0.5,SPREAD,13.86,TRUE))+0.5*(NORMDIST(0.5,SPREAD,13.86,TRUE)-NORMDIST(-0.5,SPREAD,13.86,TRUE))

For college football games, there is research by Wayne Winston and Jeff Sagarin that the standard deviation in the above formula should be 16 instead of 13.86. One of the nice things about the SRS is that it comes very close to approximating the point spread in each game. If we give 3 points to the home team, we can then approximate each team’s likelihood of winning in their remaining games.

For example, here is a look at Oregon’s remaining schedule and their likelihood of winning each game. Note that for now, I am assuming that the Ducks host the Trojans in the Pac-12 Championship Game:

Winning five games in a row isn’t easy, even for a team as good as Oregon. With four difficult games left, the odds of them going 5-0 are just 29.9%. Things are much more favorable for Kansas State:

The Big 12 has some good teams, but Kansas State appears to be an elite one. My gut tells me the SRS is underrating the likelihood of one of those teams pulling off an upset, but there’s no doubt that Kansas State would be a double-digit favorite against each of those teams right now. Of course, one thing the SRS ignores in all of these instances is the possibility of a key injury affecting any team.

Notre Dame has a history of dropping games to bad teams, but I don’t think there’s much of a chance the Fighting Irish lose any of their next three games. That means the USC game should have national title implications:

There is only a 10% chance (29.9% * 54.1% * 60.1%) that Oregon, Kansas State and Notre Dame all finish the season undefeated, at least according to the assumptions in this post. If you want to look at how all three teams got here, you can check all the NCAA game scores here.

Oregon’s offense is ridiculous, and its defense and special teams aren’t far behind. Entering this weekend, Oregon had outscored opponents 234-46 … in the first half. Prior to their game against Colorado, Bill Connelly ranked Oregon as the third best defense in college football. Against the horrible Buffaloes, the Ducks didn’t disappoint.

Oregon jumped out to a 28-0 lead after the first quarter, and led 56-0 by halftime. Backup quarterback Bryan Bennett led the team with three touchdowns in the 70-14 rout. De’Anthony Thomas rushed for 97 yards on five carries and scored on a 73-yard punt return. Kenjon Barner had 9 carries for 104 yards and 2 touchdowns, and if not for the one-yard score, would have averaged 12.9 yards per carry; he also caught a 48-yard pass.

For the Ducks, this was a going-through-the-motions victory against a very overmatched opponent. Soon, though, we’ll find out a little more about the Ducks. On Saturday, they go to Los Angeles to face a talented but inconsistent USC team. And while California isn’t a serious threat, the Ducks close with games against Stanford and Oregon State, who may at least be able to slow down the mighty Ducks offense. For now, though, Oregon looks like the one hope to make for an exciting BCS National Championship Game.

We can assume Alabama will take one spot, with Oregon, Kansas State and Notre Dame battling for the other golden ticket. The odds of another all-SEC title game dropped with the Florida loss to Georgia. That’s because the Bulldogs now have the inside track on winning the SEC East, with a head-to-head victory over Florida. South Carolina beat Georgia, but UGA will essentially win the division due to luck of the draw. South Carolina drew Arkansas and LSU in Baton Rouge from the SEC West this year, while Georgia gets to play Ole Miss and Auburn — their final two conference opponents. Assuming the Bulldogs can take care of business against Ole Miss next week, their ticket to Atlanta should be secure. Considering Florida could have boosted their SOS against Florida State — and also faced and defeated LSU — replacing Florida with Georgia as the SEC East champion lowers the odds of that division sending a team to Miami.

Without further ado, below are the week 9 SRS ratings. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for publishing his game results.
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I didn’t think this was possible.

In 2009, Alabama had an incredible defense, ranking 1st or 2nd in points allowed, yards allowed, first downs allowed, completion percentage allowed and rushing yards allowed en route to a 14-0 season and a national title. In the 2010 draft, Rolando McClain and Kareem Jackson went in the first round, Javier Arenas and Terrence Cody in the second, and Marquis Johnson and Brandon Deaderick in the seventh. In 2010, a young Alabama defense wildly exceeded all expectations — how could they lose so much talent and still dominate? — but the team did regress and finished the year 10-3.

Last year, as the younger defense matured, Alabama had one of the greatest defenses in the history of college football. The Crimson Tide allowed a miniscule 8.2 points per game, by far the fewest in college football. Alabama’s defense also ranked 1st by large margins in rushing yards per game, passing yards per game, and first downs per game. But then Mark Barron, Dre Kirkpatrick, Dont’a Hightower, and Courtney Upshaw were top 35 picks in the NFL draft this year, while cornerback DeQuan Menzie and defensive tackle Josh Chapman were fifth round picks. With six defensive starters for the Crimson Tide getting drafted in 2012 — including five members of the first- or second-team All-SEC defense from 2011 ^[1]Upshaw and Barron were All-SEC first team selections by the AP, and Chapman, Hightower and Kirkpatrick earned second-team honors. — 2012 should have represented a significant step backwards for what was a historically dominant defense.

But the Crimson Tide death star is at full throttle now. After winning on the road at Tennessee and sucking the life out of another offense — and the Vols have one of the most explosive offenses in the SEC — Alabama continues to look invincible. While every other team in college football has question marks, Alabama has allowed just 8.3 points per game this year and has a mercilessly efficient offense. Quarterback A.J. McCarron still hasn’t thrown an interception in 2012.

Here’s a look at the SRS ratings after eight weeks. As a technical matter, two 7-0 teams square off in Tuscaloosa next week. But according to the SRS, Alabama should be expected to win by about 24 points.

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Last year, the computers loved the Big 12. The first BCS Standings will be released tonight, and I suspect the B12 will again be viewed favorably by the computers. As a whole, B12 teams have just three nonconference losses, and two of them were by Kansas (to Rice and Northern Illinois). As long as the other nine teams in the conference keep crushing the Jayhawks, those losses won’t matter. The other loss came by Oklahoma State in Arizona, which looks bad in retrospect but again the damage may be limited. With the exception of a blowout over Lousiana-Lafayette, OSU simply hasn’t looked good this season, falling short of a single-game SRS score of 50 in every other game. Yesterday, OSU won by just six points in Manhattan. For the purposes of Kansas State, Oklahoma, Texas Tech and West Virginia, as long as they also beat down on Oklahoma State (and Texas has already handed them one conference loss), I suspect the computers will continue to love them. And for purposes of the BCS computers, a win over the Cowboys is all they will need (as margin of victory is not included).

On the other side, the conference doesn’t really have any landmark victories, either. Mississippi (via Texas), Louisiana-Monroe (Baylor), Tulsa and Iowa (Iowa State), and Miami (Kansas State) are the most impressive heads hanging in the conference’s living room. We might not learn a lot about the Big 12 conference teams as they relate to the rest of college football — the 10 teams have already played 29 of their 30 nonconference games this season. Fortunately for us, that last remaining game is in two weeks, when Notre Dame travels to Oklahoma. If the Sooners win that game, the computers will likely love the Big 12 for the rest of the season.

Below are the SRS Ratings after seven weeks. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter Wolfe.
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Before today’s games, I figured we could take a second to look at the latest odds to win the BCS Championship:

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For the last couple of weeks, I noted that the SEC East was inching its way back towards respectability. In 2009, the West went 12-7 against the East; in 2010, the dominance was much more pronounced, with the West going 16-3, and Ole Miss being responsible for two of the three losses. Last year, the SEC West went 13-6 against the East, with Ole Miss and MSU being responsible for five of the losses. In all three years, the West was the clear dominant division: any uncertainly was eliminated in the SEC Championship Game, as the West won the three games by a combined 130-40.

But with Florida’s victory over LSU this weekend, the plate tectonics in the Southeastern Conference appear to have shifted. The Gators also beat Texas A&M, leaving the East Division 2-1 so far this season against the mighty West, with Mississippi State’s win over Kentucky being the West’s first interdivision win of 2012. But more importantly, according to the SRS, three of the best five teams in the conference reside in the East, along with two of the three highest ranked teams in all the polls. The two worst teams have been Auburn and Arkansas, both West members. Alabama may be the class of the conference, but we may not find out much more until the SEC Championship Game. In 2012, the Crimson Tide only face Tennessee and Missouri from the East, which may make it difficult to judge the conference’s elite until December. Florida already won both of its two interdivision games, leaving South Carolina’s trip to LSU being perhaps the last referendum on the top of the two divisions until the championship game (USC’s other East opponent is Arkansas).

Anyway, here are the SRS Ratings after six weeks. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter Wolfe.
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Like everyone else, the SRS now has Alabama atop its standings. Here are the full SRS ratings after five weeks ^[1]Note that I called the Oregon-Washington State game when Oregon was up 51-19 late in the 4th quarter.

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It’s still too early to really put a lot of faith into the SRS ratings, but hey, we’ve got enough games to at least give it the old college try. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter Wolfe for providing the game scores for all of college football. As a reminder, here’s the system.

1) For each game not played at a neutral site, 3 points are given to the road team. After that adjustment, all wins and losses of between 7 and 24 points are scored as however many points the team won by. So a 24-10 road win goes down as +17 for the road team, -17 for the home team.

2) With one exception, wins of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7-point wins and losses of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7 point losses. So three 4-point home wins (+3 before the adjustments, +21 after) is worth more than two 10 point road wins and a 1 point home loss (+19 before, +19 after). The one exception is that road losses of 3 or fewer and home wins of 3 or fewer are graded as 0 point ties. So a 21-20 home victory goes down as a tie for both teams.

3) Wins/Losses of more than 24 points are scored as the average between the actual number and 24. This is to avoid giving undue credit to teams that run up the score. So a 67-point home win goes down as a 44-point win.

After four weeks, what are the results?

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As a guy who loves the Simple Rating System, the start of the college football season can be frustrating. Until we get a few weeks in, we can’t really use the Simple Rating System to analyze results. A similar problem affects all computer rating systems. Jeff Sagarin notes in his rankings that that for the first few weeks of the season — until the teams are “well connected” — he uses a starting weight to help match the results to our expectations. By “well connected” Sagarin simply means we need the teams to play each other more frequently so we can have more confidence in our results.

So while it’s fun to watch the games, part of me is disappointed that I can’t run all the teams through the simple rating system. If only we could double the sample size of the games played — after six weeks, teams are fairly well connected — we’d be in business.

Well, I thought of a cheat to do just that. Each game has a point spread, a quantitative expectation of how each team will perform according to the best minds in the betting community. So when Florida plays Tennessee, there are two games that are happening. One is the result of the actual game, Florida winning by 17. The other is what we expected to happen, which is Tennessee winning by 3.

It might seem odd to use projected results as inputs into the SRS. And maybe it is. But why not? It’s similar in ways to using preseason projections, and I generally have faith in the betting community. Plus, what else I am supposed to do until a few more weeks.

So here’s what I did. I took every game where the point spread was less than 35 points (under the assumption that games with ridiculous betting lines or that don’t even have a line are just tune ups) and counted it twice. Once for the actual results, and once for the point spread.

Washington, for example, has played 3 games this year. They played San Diego State, were favored by 15, and won by 9 points. They played LSU, were 22.5 point underdogs, and lost by 38 points. And they played Portland State, were 32-point favorites, and won by 39 points. As a result, in six “games” this year, Washington won by an average of 5.8 points. Their strength of schedule was pretty tough, too — iterated, of course — so they will fare pretty well. How does the rest of college football look?
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The last few years, first at the PFR Blog and later at Smart Football, I’ve tracked the college football season with a modified version of the Simple Rating System. The SRS thrives on interconnectivity — we need each of the teams to play each of the other teams as many times as possible. You can’t create a predictive version of the SRS until after several weeks of results: an objective strength of schedule can’t be created until the system seems how teams perform against multiple teams.

But we can see how teams performed in week 1 compared to expectations, by comparing the actual results to what the SRS would have predicted if the same teams had instead met at the end of the 2011 regular season. For example, the 2011 Pittsburgh Panthers had an SRS of 39.9, while the 2011 Youngstown State Penguins — an FCS team but a very good one — had an SRS of 28.0. With YSU heading to Pittsburgh, we would project Pittsburgh to win by 14.9 points, factoring in three points for home field.

As it turns out, the Penguins beat the Panthers by 14 points, meaning YSU surpassed “expectations” by 28.9 points. At least according to this unusual definition of expectations. But that wasn’t the biggest upset of the weekend, and not just because Pittsburgh was mediocre last year. In 2011, YSU handed eventual FCS National Champion North Dakota State their only loss of the season — in Fargo — last November. No, the biggest upset of the weekend came at the expense of the 13th best team in the SRS last year…. to a team playing its first game at the FBS level.

You may recall that the Houston Cougars started last season 12-0, and were in the running for a BCS Bowl berth before losing in the Conference USA Championship Game to Southern Mississippi. Since then, Cougars coach Kevin Sumlin jumped to Texas A&M while star quarterback Case Keenum finally exhausted his eligibility. Regression was expected — assumed, even — but to see the Cougars lose to Texas State was astonishing. Texas State plays in San Marco, Texas, located roughly halfway between San Antonio and Austin, and joined college football’s highest ranks this season. The Texas State Bobcats were an FCS school last year and went 6-6; against their only non-FCS opponents in 2011, the Bobcasts lost 50-10 to Texas Tech and 45-10 to Wyoming. And coming into the game, Texas State was a 34.5 point underdog. Update: This morning, Houston offensive coordinator Mike Nesbitt “resigned”, and head coach Tony Levine announced that Travis Bush will now handle the play-calling duties.

Here were the biggest “upsets” of week 1 according to the 2011 SRS. The final column shows the difference between the actual results and the expected score:

Again, obviously not all of these were upsets. Boise State was expected to decline following the loss of Kellen Moore and a stellar senior class, and actually covered the spread in their loss to Michigan State. But this helps to at least give a hint of what were some possible upsets. The Pac-12 only went 2-2 in their games against the Mountain West this weekend, as Colorado and California came out flat against Colorado State and Nevada. In addition to McNeese State’s victory over MTSU, there was a 4th victory by an FCS school over an FBS team: but it doesn’t register as an upset on the SRS meter. Tennessee-Martin defeated Memphis 20-17 on a field goal in the final seconds; while UT-Martin was a 9.5 point underdog according to Las Vegas, they actually finished 6 points higher than Memphis in the SRS last year.

Impressive wins by Favorites

We can use the same formula to look at the most impressive wins by the SRS favorites in FBS games. Subjectively, it’s hard to top what Alabama did to Michigan on Saturday Night; if it’s possible for the #1 or #2 team in the country to look better than we thought, the Crimson Tide did just that this weekend. But looking at simple arithmetic…

Urban Meyer’s debut was about as good as he could have hoped, thumping a Miami of Ohio team that was solid in 2011. Notre Dame, excellent at disappointing its fan base, destroyed Navy in Saturday’s early game in Dublin. Nebraska’s Taylor Martinez had perhaps the best passing game of his career over Southern Miss, who is replacing head coach Larry Fedora (now in North Carolina). Baylor was only a 7-point favorite against SMU in its first game After RGIII; based on their success last year, the SRS projected Baylor as a 20-point favorite. Still, the Bears blew out Southern Methodist 59-24, in an effort to prove that they weren’t a one-man program. Not every school was as fortunate…

Honorable Mentions

San Jose State, a projected 32-point loser in Palo Alto, nearly pulled off a huge upset in Stanford’s first game After Luck. The Cardinal needed a last second fourth-quarter field goal to win, 20-17. Northern Iowa, a 25-point projected loser to Wisconsin, lost 26-21, a sign that the Panthers should be in for a good year. Maryland needed a 4th quarter touchdown to defeat William & Mary, 7-6, despite being a projected 15.5 point winner. In other depressing ACC news, Wake Forest got a scare from Liberty — a team they were projected to beat by 16.7 points — but won 20-17.

Bill Barnwell wrote an interesting article where he tried to identify the best running back in football. His article made me wonder: which player will gain the most rushing yards over the next decade?

It probably makes sense to start with a look at history. I suspect you would have been able to guess that LaDainian Tomlinson had the most rushing yards from 2002 to 2011, but what about from 1982 to 1991? Or from 1960 to 1969? The table below shows each leader in rushing yards for every ten year period, along with their age and NFL experience during their first season during the relevant period.

Tomlinson entered the league in 2001, but he was so productive in his first nine years that he also led the league in rushing yards gained from 2000 to 2009. O.J. Simpson, Eric Dickerson and Barry Sanders each led the league in rushing yards for ten year periods … when they spent the first three seasons of those decades playing college ball. Jim Brown was even more impressive, as he led the NFL in rushing yards from 1953 to 1962, even though he was just 17 years old in 1953 and did not enter the league until 1957.

But Steve Van Buren has them all beat: he entered the league in 1944, but led all players in rushing from 1938 to 1947. As you may recall, he’s still the Eagles franchise leader in rushing touchdowns. We can also look at the leaders over the last nine seasons, although obviously the ten-year windows are not closed in these cases:

So what can we make of the results? The average running back was just a hair under 22 at the start of his ten year period. Nearly half of all running backs were not yet in the NFL at the start of their ten year run, although that is likely to change now. Those players were in other football leagues, serving their country, or in college, but all three of those factors are less prevalent now. Star running backs leave college a year or two earlier than they did a generation ago, which will make it slightly less likely that a player will not be in the NFL at the start of the next ten-year run.

Fourteen players were rookies at the start of their great stretch, and another 10 were second year players, making nearly 80% of the players having just one year or less of experience in the summer before the start of their streak. What does that mean for the stretch from 2012 to 2021? Trent Richardson is the ideal candidate, as the new Browns running back just turned 21. Last year’s Alabama running sensation, Mark Ingram, was 22 in 2011, while Dion Lewis and Jacquizz Rodgers were the top 21-year-old running backs last season.

No running back started his 10-year stretch atop the leaderboard at the age of 26, and only Hall of Famers Steve Van Buren, Joe Perry, Jim Brown, Walter Payton, Eric Dickerson and Emmitt Smith were 25 at the start of a streak. That makes it pretty easy to rule out Maurice Jones-Drew, Matt Forte, Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson, all of whom will be 27 in 2012. Ray Rice (25 in 2012), Arian Foster (26), Marshawn Lynch (26) and Ryan Mathews (25) are probably suckers’ bets, too.

LeSean McCoy, Beanie Wells and DeMarco Murray all are entering their age 24 season, making them perhaps the best hope among the young runners with NFL experience. On the other hand, along with Richardson, Doug Martin, David Wilson, Ronnie Hillman and Lamar Miller made the 2012 draft strong at the position. In the NFC West, Isaiah Pead and Kendall Hunter (or LaMichael James) could be the future for their teams for the next decade. As always, it’s too early to say.

In the collegiate ranks, South Carolina’s Marcus Lattimore is expected to be the cream of the 2013 class, with Auburn transfer Michael Dyer and Wisconsin’s Montee Ball also in the mix. And based on past history, we can’t count out sophomores Malcolm Brown or De’Anthony Thomas. If you had to pick which player will lead the league in rushing yards from 2012 to 2021, Trent Richardson is the obvious choice. After him, I’d probably be pretty evenly split among McCoy, Martin and Lattimore.

This was not how I expected to introduce the “college” category to Football Perspective.

Following the release of the Freeh Report, the depth of college football’s ugliest scandal appears deeper and darker than ever before. For those who have not followed the story closely, Matt Hinton does his typical excellent job bringing us up to speed.

The full report into Penn State’s response to allegations of sexual abuse by longtime defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, following an eight-month investigation overseen by former FBI director Louis Freeh, fills 267 excruciating pages. But to put the finishing touches on the obliteration of a half-century of goodwill, it only took 163 words:

The evidence shows that these four men also knew about a 1998 criminal investigation of Sandusky relating to suspected sexual misconduct with a young boy in a Penn State football locker room shower. Again, they showed no concern about that victim. The evidence shows that Mr. Paterno was made aware of the 1998 investigation of Sandusky, followed it closely, but failed to take any action, even though Sandusky had been a key member of his coaching staff for almost 30 years, and had an office just steps away from Mr. Paterno’s.

At the very least, Mr. Paterno could have alerted the entire football staff, in order to prevent Sandusky from bringing another child into the Lasch Building. Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley also failed to alert the Board of Trustees about the 1998 investigation or take any further action against Mr. Sandusky. None of them even spoke to Sandusky about his conduct. In short, nothing was done and Sandusky was allowed to continue with impunity.

That is an excerpt from the seven-page press release summarizing the findings in the full report. It is a bombshell. The four men in question are former Penn State president Graham Spanier, former athletic director Tim Curley, former administrator Gary Schultz and former head coach Joe Paterno. All four lost their jobs and their reputations last November over their apparently negligent reaction to an allegation against Sandusky in 2001; Curley and Schultz also face serious criminal charges stemming from that incident. Now, in light of confirmation that the most powerful men on campus had been confronted with the same charges against one of their own at least three years earlier, negligence is the least of their sins.

First, the facts. In 1998, an allegation by the mother of an 11-year-old boy (later identified in court documents as “Victim 6”) who claimed Sandusky had sexually assaulted him in a locker room shower led to an investigation by Penn State campus police and local law enforcement. That investigation resulted in a 95-page police report – but no charges against Sandusky.

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Crucially, Spanier, Curley and Paterno later claimed to have no knowledge of the 1998 investigation into Sandusky, nor of the accusation that prompted it. By their accounts, they had no reason to suspect Sandusky of any wrongdoing (criminal or otherwise) prior to his retirement from Paterno’s staff in 1999. Freeh said today there is no evidence that Sandusky was forced out, and e-mails cited in the report indicate Paterno had no problem with his former player and longtime colleague continuing to serve as defensive coordinator. Following his retirement, Sandusky maintained “emeritus” status and regular access to university facilities. By all outward appearances, he remained a respected coach and upstanding citizen, venerated for his decades of work with troubled kids, and no one at Penn State – certainly not Joe Paterno, the most venerated man in American sports – had any reason to suspect otherwise. At least, until 2001.

Even by that account, the one in which everyone around Sandusky is completely oblivious to who he really was, there is no defense for the inaction that followed the 2001 accusation by then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary, who claims he personally witnessed Sandusky raping a young boy in a locker room shower. McQueary subsequently reported the incident to Paterno; Paterno ran it up the ladder to Curley, who consulted with Shultz, spoke with McQueary and ultimately let Sandusky off with a warning.

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According to the Freeh Report, “the only known, intervening factor between the decision made on February 25, 2001, by Messrs. Spanier, Curley and Schulz to report the incident to the Department of Public Welfare, and then agreeing not to do so on February 27th, was Mr. Paterno’s February 26th conversation with Mr. Curley.” In short, nothing was done and Sandusky was allowed to continue with impunity. What could possibly be more damning than that?

Only this: That Penn State had already allowed Sandusky to operate with impunity for years even before McQueary came forward. If today’s report is correct – if “the evidence shows that Mr. Paterno was made aware of the 1998 investigation of Sandusky, followed it closely, but failed to take any action” – Paterno had had every reason to suspect that Sandusky was a violent predator for at least three years when McQueary walked into his office. Yet did nothing when those suspicions were confirmed, and did nothing for the next decade. The report could not have leveled a more devastating charge. The old man already knew.

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In a sober, well-crafted response to the Freeh Report released this morning, Paterno’s family describes Sandusky as “a great deceiver,” and maintains that “many people didn’t fully understand what was happening and underestimated or misinterpreted events.” But after the report, there is only one possible interpretation. Joe Paterno and other Penn State officials continued to tolerate and to some extent shelter an alleged sex offender despite multiple, credible accusers over the course of more than a decade.

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