College Football - Early Season Fun

[rah]

It gets really silly when high ranking teams that lose the Conference Championship Game are sent hurtling back in the rankings behind teams that had the same final record but didn't have to play against the team that won the Conferance Championship Game.

DING DING DING DING DING DING

Yes, that is my biggest gripe.

[Ming]

I've never stated that the best team always win... I've also never stated that the best team isn't always the champion. There is really no major sport in America where the Best Team really matters or even gets much press.
It's all about the CHAMPION... the team that wins it on the field, as it should be. If the best team can't win when it has too, who cares if they were the "BEST"... what does "BEST" really mean at that point. It's all about the Champion, not the best.

Maybe you should learn to read or improve your comprehension skills. I've only stated that ALL other outside DATA combined with a victory by VT makes them the better team, while you have argued, while ignoring all outside data and the fact that they lost the game, the fact that they dominated for "most" of the game, but not at the end when it counted, that Nebraska is the better team.

Most of the experts agree with me... that VT is a better team. And that's a FACT!

[Drake Tungsten]

DING DING DING DING DING DING

Yes, that is my biggest gripe.

Teams drop too far in general after close losses to good opponents. If the #10 team loses to the #2 team by one score or less, for example, should they really drop that far?

[rah]

Agreed, but sometimes early in the season, that doesn't happen because the loyalists still aren't convinced yet that their team might just suck.

[Drake Tungsten]

Stewart Mandel has an interesting wrinkle on Hawkins-Petersen in his college football mailbag today...

About a decade ago, Gonzaga's basketball team shot into the national consciousness with a magical run in the NCAA tourney. Soon thereafter, its coach, Dan Monson, bolted for the "greener pastures" of Minnesota only to find failure. Meanwhile, Mark Few took the Zags from flash-in-the-pan material to a respected and perhaps even feared program. Here's the football angle: Look at the Dan Hawkins-to-Colorado situation. Is this a cautionary tale about loyalty?
-- Kyle Barhamand, Chicago

It's a fair parallel between Monson and Few at Gonzaga and Hawkins and Chris Petersen at Boise State. In both cases, the first guy put the program on the map while the successor -- who had already played a key role as an assistant -- took it to the next level. However, the subsequent downfalls of Monson and Hawkins probably have less to do with loyalty than fit.

Let's face it, jumping from one job to the next is part of the sport. Urban Meyer suffered no such comeuppance for jumping from Utah to Florida. Obviously, his skills translated just fine to the next level. Hawkins' have not. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Meyer, at the time, was universally regarded as a home-run hire by Florida whereas Colorado's choice of Hawkins raised doubts from the get-go.

Meyer was groomed by coaches like Earl Bruce and Lou Holtz and had experience recruiting players to major programs. Hawkins spent his entire previous career at outposts like Sonoma State and Willamette, where his unconventional ways obviously played well and where he worked with the type of "hidden gem" players with which he built the Broncos. When Colorado hired him, the single biggest question was whether he'd be able to recruit at the highest level. It's pretty clear he hasn't been able to do so. Colorado's talent level is abysmal.

That doesn't mean Hawkins can't coach. I just think he's better suited to a small-school environment. And that may help explain why Petersen has remained at Boise (despite interest from UCLA, among others) and Few at Gonzaga. They know where they're most comfortable.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/stewart_mandel/10/14/mailbag/1.html#ixzz0TvUhzlSk

[DanS]

Home field advantage should not trump head-to-head results, period. It doesn't matter where the game is played. If team A beats team B, and their records are otherwise the same, team A should finish ahead of team B, no matter whether they were playing at A, at B, or on the ****ing moon.

I fundamentally disagree with this. College football should be like other games, where a handicap is given to control for material factors. There are no return trips in college football to even some of this stuff out, unlike in the NFL or, say, chess.

By the way, this would make things fairer for the teams without storied traditions. ND has 7 home games out of 12, which is an unfair advantage. As I understand, some schools even schedule 8 home games a year.

[Ming]

A good piece... I hadn't seen it at SI yet.

Just more proof that College level coaching is made up of two totally different aspects. To be successful at the highest levels, you not only have to be a good coach, you have to be able to recruit. Both are totally different skill sets. Now granted, if you win it's easier to recruit, but there are always winning teams that will compete for the same quality players. A super recruiter can make the difference.

I also agree with his conclusion of why Peterson has remained at Boise. Maybe some day, somebody will offer him SOOOO much money that it will be hard for him to turn it down, but I have to respect what he has done and the decisions he has made so far.

[SlowwHand]

It's no wonder that no progress is made on this situation.

[Drake Tungsten]

College football should be like other games

[DanS]

They've figured out this stuff long ago for games like Go. This is not rocket science.

[Ming]

College football should be like other games, where a handicap is given to control for material factors.

HUH? You point to the NFL, but only teams in the same division get a home and home series, not other teams, so that is not the case in majority of their games. Granted, sports that have FAR more games try to equalize home and away games to have a balance, but that simply isn't feasible in Football, college or professional.

Are you advocating that away teams should be spotted 3 points

Because one more time... coaches coach to WIN games... Home coaches don't coach to win by 3.
I'm not discounting a home advantage, but at the end of the day, you still have to win the game. To claim a road team won because it didn't lose by more than 2 points is kind of silly.

[DanS]

Are you advocating that away teams should be spotted 3 points

This is precisely what I am advocating.

We know that the home team has an advantage, and we know the magnitude of the advantage. It seems like the right thing to do correct this advantage.

[Drake Tungsten]

They've figured out this stuff long ago for games like Go. This is not rocket science.

I just didn't like your justification. It's the same justification used to try to ruin college football with playoffs.

I do think you're underestimating the difficulty of assigning home-field advantage handicaps to college football games before they take place, however.

[Ming]

This is precisely what I am advocating.

We know that the home team has an advantage, and we know the magnitude of the advantage. It seems like the right thing to do correct this advantage.

No... we don't know the magnitude of the advantage. Some people attempt to estimate it, but it's still a guess using available data. It probably varies based on the stadium, number of people, their level of noise making, the length of the trip for the away team, the percentage of vistor attendence and other factors. And who will be the one to determine just how many points somebody gets, and how will they do it, and will it be acurate?

And what other professional sport provides such a handicap and why should college football be any different? What if a team has the flu bug, should we give the team some points because we know the other team will have an advantage? Should we give points to small conference teams when they play big conference teams since they can't compete in recruiting and are at a disadvantge? Should "handicap" points be awarded to teams based on their injured players... again, just by looking at the change in the spread, we can guess the magnitude of the advantage... Or maybe we should just consider all of these things the NATURE OF THE GAME, including that fact that one team gets to play on their home field, and expect somebody to actually win the game by scoring the most points

[Guynemer]

Oregon may very well end up as having a "better season" than Boise State.

Not unless Boise State loses a game along the way. The pollsters seem to look at record first when determining which team is the more deserving, so an undefeated Boise should stay ahead of a one-loss Oregon.

Ahem. You know as well as I do that, were that situation were to occur, "your" rankings would very likely have Oregon over Boise State. I'm not talking about pollsters in general. "Your" rankings. Smartass.