Ray's Rankings

Top 25 Week 3/4 (?) 2021

I'm calling this the "weekend of almost." So many games almost provided upsets that we all enjoy so much (and some actually did provide those upsets).

So how do we feel about our teams this week? I expect that the Bama faithful have to be at least a little concerned. After all, Florida is not Georgia.

And what about Georgia? Look, I'm a little biased in my opinion here. JT Daniels is an alum of my high school, and yes I am pulling for him to have an amazing season, then get drafted in the top 5. Bryce Young is also from my high school, but he has 2 more years to dazzle us. So, JT: 23/31 for 303yds, 3TD/1INT. Yes, the one interception was a poor decision. Other than that he looked utterly in command. Why Smart put Stetson in at all is a mystery, let alone in the 1st quarter after JT drove them to TDs on their first 2 drives. Maybe not-so-Smart?

And I do not understand why the media constantly overlooks Daniels. Yes, he had a rough first season at USC, but he's the only true freshman ever to start the season for the Trojans. He still ended with a 128+ passer rating. And they completely ignore that he was the 3rd rated QB in the class of '18 behind only Sunshine and Fields (and only barely behind them). I don't know if they just feel that he hasn't lived up to his potential or what? I say he hasn't had a real chance to show what he can do. Ok, off my soapbox for now.

Georgia's defense? 96 rush yards allowed; 214 pass yards allowed and most of that in trash time. The 4th qtr TD was the first they allowed this season. I think they're for real.

Ok, done oozing over Georgia. Let's take a look at the new Top 25 and break down their games this weekend. As per usual: no eye test, not voting, no feels. This is straight math, folks. And I have pulled out preseason and Massey's numbers; this is straight from my system alone.

25. SDSU - The Aztecs (interesting that no one seems to care if we name teams for other countries' native people) needed a little luck to beat a potentially underrated Utah, but they got the job done. They let the Utes back in the game in a very entertaining 4th qtr, then held on through 3 OTs. BTW, I do not like the new OT rules. Yet. It could grow on me.

24. Miami (FL) - I was scratching my head over this one. Still sorta am. One win vs a mediocre App State and got pounded by MSU. The algorithm moves in mysterious ways this early in the season.

23. Texas - Yes, I know. They are 2-1, though, and their 1st level points are not awful right now, and their 2nd and 3rd level are better than most. They beat Rice 58-0. Whoop de doo.

22. Minnesota - The GGs looked pretty good against OSU, and this week they beat up on a Colorado team that put the fear of the buffalo into TAMU.

21. Maryland - I don't care what anyone says, I love the state flag helmets these guys wear! The Terps scored twice in the last 2:13 to pull out the win over Illinois, and that's what winners do. Little Tagovailoa is pretty darn good.

20. Miss St - The Bulldogs lost in our first "almost" game. Leach's team almost doubled Memphis' total yardage, and lost on a failed 2pt conversion at the end. Not sure how long an SEC school will put up with that.

19. Florida - "Almost" game #2. To be honest, I didn't watch much of this game after the 1st quarter and so I'm not sure if Bama just has no running game or the Gators have a great rushing D? Anyway, that 2pt attempt at the end looked like Jone had never run the read option in his life. Great comeback that fell just short.

18. USC - Another game that I stopped watching at halftime (I really need to stop doing that). It really looked like Wazzu had the Trojans covered, and with the new coach and back up QB I did not expect much from USC. I was way wrong!

17. Oregon - Yes, the Ducks are 3-0. They are also a victim of the system. I don't know how else to say it: don't schedule FCS schools! They beat Stonybrook. So what. All they had to do is not lose. Lose one point, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

16. Stanford - the Tree is here because they beat USC. Beating Vandy this weekend earned them 0.015pts. That's how bad Vandy is.

15. Notre Dame - The Irish are 3-0 against all FBS schools, but Florida State is historically bad this year and Toledo isn't exactly UM. When Purdue is your best win, expect to be lacking points on all 3 levels.

14. UCLA - The Bruins lost to what appears to be a very good Fresno State. It was a close score, but UCLA needed 20 4th quarter points to make it look that way. Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, they played Cal Poly and so lost a 1st level point. That keeps UCLA here and Fresno State at 41.

13. Iowa - The Hawkeyes beat Kent State this weekend. Not really much to say about that.

12. Alabama - The Tide beat a scrappy Florida; you've already read about that game. So where is their pain? Mercer. They played Mercer.

11. Ohio State - I haven't read anything about Kerry Coombs being fired. I wonder why not? Tulsa hung 500+ yards on the Buckeyes, almost exclusively through the air. And while the OSU secondary is young, they were playing very well. The scheme was completely wrong, and there was no pressure at all on Tulsa QB Brin. Ugly.

10. Texas A&M - So far, the Aggies have beaten a dismal Kent State, a dismal Colorado barely, and a pretty dismal New Mexico. Don't buy into the hype just yet. The Lobos were only able to muster 122 total yards, so it's possible that TAMU has a great D. It's also possible that New Mexico isn't very good.

9. Wisconsin - The algorithm strikes again! No idea how this happens. The Badgers are 1-1 with a win against Eastern Carolina. Thing is, that nets them decent 1st level points this early, and their 2nd and 3rd level points are better than most.

8. Army - Go Army, beat Navy! Or in this case, beat truly awful UConn. Army is benefiting from 3-0 vs all FBS schools that are better than the schools ND has played.

7. Pitt - Pitt lost to WMU, with a ton of points scored by both squads. This is another weird system result. They've beaten 2 mediocre teams, but both are FBS and so Pitt reaps the 1st level points benefit.

6. Va Tech - The Hoakies lost a very fun game to watch. WVa looked very good in the first half, then VaTech showed up for the second half. Unfortunately, that was just a bit too late. 700+ yards offense combined made for an enjoyable spectacle.

5. Arkansas - Sooie! The Razorbacks dropped the hammer on Georgia Southern on Saturday, to the tune of 633 yards of total offense. 3-0 vs all FBS gives Arky 2nd most 1st level points so far.

4. Penn State - I really had higher expectations for this game. And I certainly did not expect Clifford to outplay Nix, but here we are. Truthfully, I was a little bored, and I blame Auburn. Penn State looked good, and their D is at least some of the reason Bo Nix did not. But really his decision making is not where it should be 3 years in. Yes, new system and such, but he's supposed to be able to handle that.

3. North Carolina - 2nd weirdest ranking on here. Anyway, Sam Howell brought the pain against UVa: 14/21 for 307 and 5TDs to 1INT. The Heels also gave up 553yds passing to the Cavs. Not good, defense, not good.

2. Michigan - I think this is the weirdest of them all. That said, 3-0 vs all FBS schools, top marks for 1st level points, and a rock solid SRS so far all take UM to #2 in the system. Yeah, they beat Northern Illinois, but they beat them they way you're supposed to. They gave up only 208 yards while rolling up over 600 for themselves.

1. Georgia - They have beaten 3 mediocre FBS teams (yes, Clemson is mediocre so far), but that's enough. Their OW% is high, their OOW% is high, their SRS is high. And that D! So far, the Bulldog D has given up a total of 16 points...and they've scored 16 points! They seem to spend as much time in the backfield as the opposing QB. South Carolina was supposed to be a bit of a test. They were more like a speed-bump.

So, there's my Top 25 for week 3/4. How do I compare to the AP biased voters, only 3 of which think UGA is #1?

	AP		RR	Diff
1	Alabama	SEC	12	11
2	Georgia	SEC	1	-1
3	Oregon	Pac-12	17	14
4	Oklahoma	Big 12	46	42
5	Iowa	Big Ten	13	8
6	Penn State	Big Ten	4	-2
7	Texas A&M	SEC	10	3
8	Cincinnati	American	52	44
9	Clemson	ACC	64	55
10	Ohio State	Big Ten	11	1
11	Florida	SEC	19	8
12	Notre Dame	Independent	15	3
13	Mississippi	SEC	38	25
14	Iowa State	Big 12	102	88
15	Brigham Young	Independent	30	15
16	Arkansas	SEC	5	-11
17	Coastal Carolina	Sun Belt	69	52
18	Wisconsin	Big Ten	9	-9
19	Michigan	Big Ten	2	-17
20	Michigan State	Big Ten	35	15
21	North Carolina	ACC	3	-18
22	Fresno State	Mountain West	41	19
23	Auburn	SEC	78	55
24	UCLA	Pac-12	14	-10
25	Kansas State	Big 12	32	7

We are very early in the season, so I expected this to look weird.

It does. I'm not even going to bother with the stats!

Hope you all have a great week!

RR Week 4 Preview

Howdy, folks!

We are nearly 25% of the way through the CFB season (yes, already). I don't know about you, but I still don't have a handle on who is actually good, who isn't, and who is riding reputation. That said, we do have some entertaining games coming up this weekend, so let's dive in. For clarity, the rankings I list will be AP/RR (e.g. (1/9) Bama):

First up in a possibly intriguing game is (8/56) Cincy v (~/103) Indiana. Penix is off to a terrible start, and the show that was Hoosier football last season is nowhere to be found. Yet. But if they've gotten back on track this week, Fickell and Ridder need to be ready. I expect the Bearcats are approaching this as a great tuneup for the Irish next week, so I don't think it will be close, but Cincy seems to have the Iowa State disease of inconsistency when it comes to "gimme" games.

Next we have (~/41) UVA v (21/20) North Carolina. Yes, Sam Howell looked like Brett Favre without the moxie and TDs (read: many interceptions) against VaTech. But he is too talented to let his team down again, plus I figure the coaching staff worked on his head a bit. Still, could be interesting. UVA has had 5 people throw passes so far, but Armstrong is having a great early season with 7TDs to 1INT.

(~/127) Tulsa @ (9/18) Ohio State. I know, ought to be a Buckeye Blowout. Have you watched the OSU D at all in the past 2 seasons? They played 1 solid game vs Clemson. That's it. The rest of the time they have looked like a DII squad: zero penetration or push on the line, linebackers being swallowed whole by guards, and a complete inability to stop the run. Tulsa almost beat OkSt. last weekend, and outgained them in total yards. If they hadn't given up 21 points in the 4th...

(~/95) Tulane @ (17/73) Ole Miss. Only because I want to see if Tulane is for real of if they were just playing out of their minds vs OU.

(~/69) South Carolina @ (2/5) UGA. Is Daniels healthy? Is the Dog D that good for real?

(~/71) Nebraska @ (3/57) Oklahoma. Because tradition. I'm old enough to remember when you only ever got to see your local schools on TV unless there was a huge national game. This was always a huge national game.

(1/9) Bama @ (11/7) Florida. Florida is throwing too many INTs, and Bama isn't. This may be the game see how good Bryce Young really is. And we may see an upset if Jones gets himself sorted. I doubt it, but that's why they play the games!

(19/94) ASU @ (23/22) BYU. This game feels like a potential momentum game for both teams. I can see the winner improving all season while the loser flounders. No hard evidence, just a gut feeling.

(22/67) Auburn @ (10/8) PSU. Potentially the most important game of the weekend, and of the season for both teams. Bo Nix is in year 3 and a dark horse for Heisman. Sean Clifford, on the other hand, has thrown for 477 yds total, and they played Ball State last week. This is really a game of PSU's D vs Auburn's O, neither of which have been tested this season. Grab a dog and a beer and enjoy!

What games are you excited for this weekend?

Case of the Mondays

I have a case of the Mondays

I think I've figured out the sliding scale, but it only works on wins. If I add it for losses, the whole thing just grinds to a halt.

I'm ok with that. It's better than nothing.

So I made another tweak by using Massey's current rankings instead of end of 2020 rankings as an anchor for my system not having enough data.

What did that do? Keeping in mind that I'm still penalizing teams for playing FCS schools, it got weird as heck:

1	Pittsburgh
2	Kentucky
3	Virginia Tech
4	Rutgers
5	Oregon
6	Georgia
7	Florida
8	Penn State
9	South Alabama
10	Tennessee
11	Texas A&M
12	Alabama
13	Army
14	Arkansas
15	Mississippi State
16	San Diego State
17	Iowa
18	Ohio State
19	North Carolina
20	UCLA
21	Purdue
22	Brigham Young
23	Miami (FL)
24	Stanford
25	Boise State

Alabama played the mighty Mercer and lost a point. This early in the season, that has an outsized influence. Auburn, Baylor, UCF, UC, Clemson, LSU, Maryland, Ole Miss, Northwestern, and Oklahoma all played FCS schools. All lost a point, and it kind of wrecked their scores. The Massey numbers helped add some normalcy, but I had to limit the effects or else why have my own system?

Why isn't Georgia #1?

Well, they beat Clemson, who is sitting down at 81, and UAB who is at 98. Why is Clemson 81? They lost to UGA for 0pt, and beat an FCS school for -1pt.

What about Oregon?

Yes, they beat OSU and Fresno State, but Fresno played Cal Poly and earned -1pt for it. So not only isn't it smart to schedule FCS schools, it is not smart to schedule FBS schools who schedule FCS schools!

Anyway, I kind of like this list.It's just strange enough to make people ask questions. Or just call me names. Either way, it's a topic for discussion!

Ray's Rankings Top 25 Week 2 2021

Well, that was interesting.

Quick housekeeping: my sliding scale points system broke the spreadsheet as soon as I added this week's games. Long story short: too many numbers to crunch for a simple spreadsheet. Not sure how to fix.

Anyway, on with the show!

Last weekend gave us a glimpse of the possibilities for this season. Upsets, close games that shouldn't be close, potential catastrophes and actual catastrophes. This weekend did not disappoint.

Upsets? Yes, please!

Obviously, Ohio State losing to Oregon was huge. I'll say it was surprising, but not super surprising if you watched OSU v Minnesota. Not sure how Kerry Coombs still has a job. That man has taken some of the best defensive recruits in the country and made them invisible. Hats off to Oregon's coaching staff; they wrecked OSU in every aspect.
Woooooooooo, Pig! Sooie! I would not want to be Sark today. But I told you guys he's been questionable as an HC, and here we are. The offensive genius put up 256 yards total. The Razorbacks put their foot to the floor and rushed for 333 yards. And Texas wanted to join the SEC?
BYU beat up on Utah from the get go. BYU was probably underrated, but they were ranked outside the AP Top 25. Utah has designs on the Pac12 'ship, but they'll have to be much better.
Iowa over Iowa State was only a sort of upset. Truthfully, I had Iowa winning and covering. The Hawkeyes looked great, possibly the class of the B1G if OSU doesn't get it figured out.
Stanford absolutely stomped USC. Clay Helton's days are numbered, no question. I'm not piling on; I feel that he's been given the chance to make USC relevant again and has not siezed that chance: losing winnable games, and Slovis' regression are just a couple of issues. I bet Luke Fickell got a phone call this morning.

Escape!

The Hurricanes needed some last minute help to keep App State at bay. Honestly, I was pulling for App State lol! I love underdogs like that.
Notre Dame should probably stay inside and lock the doors, because no doubt Brian Kelly is looking to execute someone. Toledo rocketed to an almost upset in a game they had no business being in.
Texas A&M needed it's own miracle to overcome Colorado on the road. Definitely a far more exciting game than they planned on.

Catastrophe

Florida friggin State. Not quite App State beating the Wolverines in the Boog House, but damn. How the mighty have fallen. 2013 champs, 2014 CFP semifinalists beaten by Jacksonville State, who had been shut out by UAB in week 1!

Honestly, I figured this weekend for a snoozeer and was more than pleasantly surprised by the ensuing chaos.

I'm still using the Massey end of 2020 rankings to add data to my system, but it is weighted very lightly. Ray's Top 25 is below. Keep in mind that I am still penalizing teams for playing FCS schools, and double penalizing for losing to one.

System Design Update

I'm writing this now so that I can refer to it in a few weeks when my system actually starts to work:

I've been thinking a lot about my system and my original goal in setting this up. A few things occurred to me whilst I was pondering the purpose of my proposed prognosticator.

The overarching goal was to create a 100% unbiased, 100% transparent system, and then to use that system to propose a playoff filled with deserving teams. That goal is still in place, but I feel that over the past couple of seasons I've been fiddling with it too much.

I started with essentially the same system that Ohio and other states use for their high school playoff seedings (I use Ohio because I live here and they publish their methodology). The main difference is that the Ohio system has multiple tiers of schools, from D-I to D-VII, and awards win points based on what division your opponent is in. While the FBS division could probably be broken down this way, it isn't, and so we would end up with Alabama beating East Carolina being worth the same as UGA beating Clemson. I think that we can all agree that these wins are not equal.

Also, losses in Ohio are simply treated as 0 points. I get it; they need to have a relatively simple system that can be explained to parents when little Johnny's team doesn't make the playoffs at 5-5. But to me, and I expect to a lot of you when a huge underdog wins, that losing team should maybe be downgraded a bit.

They also award points based on the opponents' opponents' records, which we call 2nd level points. I have that, too, and I've added another level (yes, opponents' opponents' opponents' records). More data is gooder.

Ohio modifies points based on number of games played. My system does that as well.

Lastly, Ohio also ignores margin of victory. Again, I get it, but we really should consider MoV in college ball, so I do that.

This season I am going back to basics, with a few tweaks:

As usual, teams get x points for winning games.

Instead of 1pt for a P5 team and 0.5 or 0.75 for a G5 team, I've added a gradient factor. Winning teams will earn the point differential between themselves and the team they beat. There are 130 teams in FBS this season, and there will be 130 rankings. The difference between 1 and 2 is 0.007692, inversely applied (#1 is worth 1pt, #2 worth 0.9923 and so on). So, if you beat #1 you get 1 point, and if you beat #130 you get 0.007692 point.
Instead of 0 points for a loss, you lose 0.007692 point for for every rank below #1 of the team you lose to. If you lose to #1, it costs you nothing; if you lose to #2 it costs you 0.007692, and so on. Losing to #130 costs you 0.9923 point.
This was the best way I could come up with to approximate the divisional point differentials in the Ohio system. Upsets reward the winner and penalize the loser based on the ranking difference.
As is usual and unique for my system, you lose a full point for beating an FCS school, and new for this year you lose 2 points for losing to an FCS school.

Ohio has 1st and 2nd level points

I have 1st level points as described above.
I have 2nd level points that are the sum of the 1st level points of the team you beat.
I have 3rd level points which are basically the 2nd level points of the team you beat.

Margin of victory matters. I will use the College Football Reference SRS number. Because that number gets so big (and small, as in negative numbers), I will be modifying it by a factor that reduces its overall influence. In other words, MoV matters but not as much as winning and losing.

I won't know the exact modifier until my first week of real rankings because I don't know exactly how many points the system will generate for 1st-3rd level points.

Add up the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level points for a master score. Add in the modified SRS number. Biggest number wins. That's it.

Things I've used that I won't be using:

My own SRS, as the iterative calculations were really killing spreadsheet performance and giving spurious results, plus I'm not sure I had the formula set correctly.
Average ranking within the different levels. I think the sliding scale of points will accomplish the same thing.
Any sort of weighting other than reducing the influence of the SRS.

As I mentioned in my earlier blog post, I have to use an iterative function on the rankings differences. Points make the ranks different, rank difference makes points change, points change make ranks change and so on. I found a good number of iterations with a point variance that gives repeatable results.

Anyway, this is how it will work starting week 4. For now, I am sticking with the weirdness that incorporates my fake pre-season numbers!

Ray's Rankings Top 25 Week 1 2021

Does anyone really take preseason and early season rankings seriously? I mean, besides the media who need some sort of controversy to sell ad dollars to our eyeballs.

As I've mentioned numerous times, my system is retrodictive. Briefly: it looks backwards and measures teams' relative performances. Because of that, it takes a few weeks of data for things to shake out.

In order to provide some sort of rankings in the early season, I figured I'd use my system's 1st level points and Ken Massey's Composite end of season rankings. It took a while to find a reasonable proportion/function for the two systems that sort of resembles what we've seen so far.

Of course, with my system still missing so much data, we're bound to get some incredibly strange results...

I've already discussed most of the interesting games from Week 0/1, so I think I'll just note the weird rankings for this week and go from there:

Oddities:

UTSA at 3. Weirdness meter is pegged at 100 here. UTSA beat Illinois which had beat Nebraska in Week 0. This makes Illinois a nice trophy in early season points.

Oregon at 4. They are in a similar situation to UTSA, beating Fresno St barely, and Fresno had a win over UConn in Week 0.

BYU at 8. Mostly due to last season's final ranking.

And all the others. It's always amusing to see the early season strangeness. Expect this to continue until around Week 4.

The math works in mysterious ways! When we get to having real data I'll lay it all out for us. 100% transparency!

Iterative Calculations will be the Death of Me

Just to be clear, I am a bit of a nerd. Not exactly BBT level, but I can completely relate. I am socially inept, but I can fake it to make it. I find formulas and math and statistics interesting (FYI, stats is not math even though it tends to be lumped in with math in most institutions) even when I don't fully understand it all. I like playing with spreadsheets. I wish I knew how to write VBA, and I think I can maybe learn it, but I don't really have time and I truly suck at coding of any sort.

My system is self-calculating in that all I do is download results from Sports Reference and paste them into a specific tab. The only manual manipulation involved is removing their rankings numbers so that my formulas are looking at clean team names.

What is an iterative calculation? Glad you asked! Putting it as simply as I can:

Team A is rated some # based on the ratings of teams they beat and teams they lose to. In the Simple Ranking System, it's all about scores. So, Team A is rated a number based on the rating of Team B whose number is based on Team A and so on. Now do that with 130 CFB D1 schools times 12 games. Every time you do the calculation, the numbers change and you have to do the calculation again. If you don't set some parameters, the calculations never stop.

You can find a much more detailed explanation here.

In a spreadsheet, you will get an error regarding a circular calculation in your formula if you try it unless you turn on iterative calculations. When you turn this on, you set the rules for how many times it will calculate based on a set size of change, or how many iterations of the calculations will there be. So I can set the sheet to calculate n number of times but only if the change between calculations is greater than x. My choices are the values of n and x. I must consider the numbers I'm working with (how many decimal places) and the system's capabilities (how fast can the sheet do the calculations).

If you do not perform enough calculations, it is possible that your numbers will not have settled down enough to stop changing rankings. You may have noted that my system generally operates on 4 decimal places (0.0000). If I tell the sheet to calculate 5 times, it is highly likely that the fourth, third, or even second decimal places will still be swinging wildly high to low and back. If I tell it to calculate 1 million times, Google sheets might actually break and we'll be waiting for the end of time to get a result. Also, if I set the calculation threshold to, say 0.1, then any calculation that results in a change less than that will stop the iterations. If I set the threshold too small, it may make irrelevant calculations and slow down the process too much.

What is the answer? There really isn't one hard and fast rule. For myself, I read a blog post from a guy who set up his sheet to calculate the SRS linked above. I then looked at my system and decided that the threshold should be 0.001 because anything smaller than that is unlikely to make enough of a difference to rankings. I set the number of iterations to 300 based on some trial and error, testing between 100 and 10,000. Google sheets just does not calculate very quickly with the amount of data I feed it. 300 iterations at 0.001 variance appears to work well, and sometimes I do change it to 1,000 at 0.0001 just to see if there are changes.

So, why will iterative calculations be the death of me? My sheet has 2 completely different yet interrelated sets of iterative calculations, and early in the season the swings are crazy big. Sometimes they break the sheet, and then I have to try to track down why I'm getting the dreaded #N/A or #DIV0 error in so many cells. Sometimes the calculations take so long I just hide the window and go do something else, and many times when I get back the results make no sense.

What's the answer? I am finding that I need to set the number of calculations much higher this season after adding my method of measuring for good losses and bad wins, which I will explain when I release my real rankings in a few weeks.

Best. First. Weekend. Ever.

What a spectacular weekend of football! Where do I start???

Thursday

I already talked about Thursday's games, but let's recap real quick:

2 FBS teams lost to FCS teams. Granted, Eastern Washington is a damned good FCS squad. But...Tulsa losing to UC Davis? If you recall, Tulsa gave OkSt and Cincy fits last season, and beat UCF and SMU.
Ohio State beat a very determined Minnesota who came in with 20 returning starters. OSU had a first time starter redshirt QB in Stroud who only threw for 4 TDs and nearly 300 yds. Their starting center was a first timer, sophomore Wypler, along with new starters at RG and RT. And of the back 7 on D, 6 were first time starters with RS frosh WIlliams and true frosh Burke on the corners. The D line did "ok", but I wonder how that game goes if Ibrahim doesn't get hurt. Get well soon, dude.

Friday

Friday I went to the movies with my son to see Shang-Chi - great movie! But I missed the Implosion of Sam Howell. It's not the end of his darkhorse Heisman run considering how the rest of the weekend went, but it sure didn't help. Here are some stats:

9/29, 219yds, 1 TD, 3 INT, loss to VaTech

17/32, 208yds, 1 TD, 3 INT, loss to VaTech

Which line belongs to Sam Howell in 2021, and which to JT Barrett from 2014? Hmm?

And MSU beat Northwestern pretty convincingly. That game was not as close as the score.

Saturday

I went car shopping, looking for a used C4 or C5 Corvette, so if you know anyone selling a C4 ZR1 or C5 Z06...?

Anyway, I got to watch enough Penn State v Wisky to know that neither team looked great. While the result was similar to the UGA/Clemson game, the paths were very different. PSU/Wisky looked like inept offenses vs normal B1G defenses. I was not at all impressed with either team, and I really expected more from Clifford.

Speaking of expecting more, boy did Miami stink up the joint! Bama looked great, as usual. That said, Bryce Young looked human, not that I expected anything less. But the 'Canes looked really just bad and completely over-matched. I had hoped for a more competetive game. Fortunately, when that became a snoozefest there were other games on!

I tried to watch Iowa and Indiana. Ugh. Penix Jr with 0 TD and 3 INT is not the guy we saw and enjoyed last season. Iowa played Iowa football: 158yds rushing, 145yds passing, and 20pts scored by the offense, 14pts by the defense. I expect Iowa to do very well this season, and Penix will probably get it figured out.

I missed the Oregon game, but their struggles with the Bulldogs of mighty Fresno State does not bode well for traveling to the Shoe without Thibodeaux and facing OSU.

So, how about the surprising games from Saturday?

#1 has to be Oklahoma. I had the Green Wave ranked 70th in 2019 and 76th in 2020. How does OU's vaunted and highly praised new-found Big 12 defense give up 464yds to Tulane? And they needed a 4th down stop to preserve the win. At home. The Chosen One had 1 TD and 2 INTs and was outperformed by Tulane's Pratt. I am not impressed, but apparently Joel Klatt feels that OU only deserves to drop one place in his rankings. I'm not buying it.

#2 for sure is UGA and Clemson. 10-3 might seem very similar to the PSU/Wisky 16-10 score, but this was a different game entirely. JT Daniels and DJ Uiagalelei are among the cream of the crop this season, and they had awful games, DJ especially. In this case, I will give credit to the respective defenses. Seriously, the UGA D line and LBs spent as much time on the Clemson backfield as DJ did. The Bulldogs had 7 sacks. Seven! No way was DJ having a good game. And while Daniels was misfiring all night, Clemson's D was also playing lights out. I usually prefer more scoring, but I truly enjoyed watching this game.

#3 Please see my Week Zero Thoughts post: "I'm calling it now: UCLA over LSU by 7+." Yup, nailed it.

Meaningful games at every turn is what made this a fun weekend. They should all be like this! Too bad next week all we have is Oregon-OSU. Pretty much everyone else is playing the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Ray's Heisman Watch:

QBs

Ridder
Stroud
Young
Rattler
Daniels
Uiagalelei

RBs

Zach Charbonnet
Kenneth Walker III
Mohamed Ibrahim (but this will not last)

WRs

Chris Olave
Jameson Williams
Garrett Wilson
Kayshon Boutte

Defense

No idea yet - need someone to dominate.

I'll have new rankings out tomorrow after Notre Dame v Florida State.

Let the Beatings...Begin!

If you get the reference, you get the reference.

Tonight, we get to see many games if we so choose. There's only one that matters, though.

Game of note:

Boise State v UCF - probably the most interesting game for those of us who believe that the 2006 Fiesta Bowl was the greatest CFB game ever (and who didn't really mind UCF claiming a national championship). Bachmeier might be the real deal for Boise, and Gabriel put up some huge numbers for UCF last season. I'm not familiar with Andy Avalos, though I know he played for BSU around 2004. UCF, on the other hand, has Gus Malzhan. I feel like this match-up had more going for it a few years ago. Still, ought to be fun for the first hour.

Ridiculous Beatdowns Coming:

Coastal Carolina v The Citadel

Utah v Weber State

ASU v Southern Utah

The Game That Matters:

OSU @ Minnesota - I remember Stroud's TD run. That's kind of all we have to go on, really. That said, I'm pretty sure my 5'4" widebody could play QB for the Buckeyes this season. All I'd need to do is get the ball in the general vicinity of the best receiving group in the country: Olave, Wilson, Smith-Njigba. And in case you're wondering about the run game, I've read that Williams is topping the depth chart:

Minnesota returns a ton of talent this season. Morgan and Ibrahim are an experienced duo of high caliber, and the Minnesota defense will have their ears pinned back as they come for Stroud. I don't know how many of you remember JT Barret's first real game (Navy is too strange to be real), but VaTech just plain attacked all night long and it was a miserable night in The Shoe. JT had 3 picks and looked lost while being sacked several times. I expect to see a similar game plan from PJ Fleck.

The line is heavy for OSU, but it seems that Vegas forgot about away night games being Buckeye kryptonite. I expect OSU to win; I expect it will be closer than Vegas thinks; it will not surprise me to see Minnesota pull of an upset.