Top 25: Insufficient Data are a Cold Bitch

Pre-season polls are difficult to create and almost impossible to rationalize.  There isn't any data with which to make any attempt at a resume ranking; thus we are left to struggle with bogus intangibles such as "momentum" and meaningless quantifications such as returning starters and we ultimately end up with either a poorly contrived power poll or a futile attempt at projection.  

That being said, it may be even more difficult to rank teams within the first three weeks of the season.  The issue is no longer a paucity of data but of the relevance of what little data we have.   With so many teams scheduling FCS teams or their functional equivalents (Syracuse, Duke, Utah State, etc), how do sort out all of the 2-0 and 1-0 teams?  Florida State beat Western Carolina 69-0, Penn State has blowout wins over Coastal Carolina and (a clearly down) Oregon State, Oregon has hung a combined 110 points on Washington and Utah State.  Who really gives a shit?  How are we to judge monumental blowouts by perceived "good" teams against blowouts by teams who are clearly amongst the dregs of FBS (Baylor's 51-6 win against Northwestern State and and Minnesota's 42-17 win over Bowling Green readily come to mind)?  And even after all of that how are we to compare the gimme games to those narrow wins over assumed decent, or even great, teams?  What are we to make of Cal's narrow win over Sparty, Wake's clutch win over Ole Miss, and Alabama's obliteration of Clemson?  

Now we see what a total cluster fuck is on our hands.  

I scoured the interwebs this past week searching for a solution to the Poll conundrum and fell upon cocknfire's BlogPoll ballot over at Garnet and Black Attack (a fantastic site for South Carolina and general SEC discourse).  Cocknfire filled out his ballot by first creating a poll off of the top of his head, he then created a spreadsheet listing the merits of "28 credible teams", he assigned appropriate point values (25 pts for the top spot, 1 for the 25th, etc) to each team in both polls and took the aggregate as his official BlogPoll Ballot. Mimicry is the most sincere form of flattery cocknfire, and I am fully prepared to mimic you...with one slight change.  

I'm reluctant to arbitrarily assign values to a team's wins and losses, that lends itself to too many inconsistencies and subjective measures.  To solve that I'm adopted Jeff Sagarin's computer rankings as a team's hypothetical "worth."  

Top of the Head Poll

1. Oklahoma

2. Florida

3. Georgia

4. Mizzou

5. USC 

6. Ohio State

7. Cal

8. LSU

9. Penn State

10. Texas

11. Auburn

12. Oregon

13. Wisconsin

14. ECU

15. USF

16. Arizona State

17. Alabama

18. BYU

19. Texas Tech

20. Wake Forest

21. Kansas

22. Utah

23. GTech 

24. Fresno State

25. UCLA

Resume-ish Poll

1. ECU (83.145)

2. UCLA (83.04)

3. Utah (82.14)

4. USC (76.93)

5. Cal (72)

6. LSU (68.97)

7. Bama (68.085)

8. Fresno St. (67.965)

9. BYU (67.515)

10. Auburn (67.045)

11. Wake Forest (66.5)

12. Texas  Tech (64.69)

13. Wisconsin (64.345)

14. Arizona State (63.73)

15. Oregon (63.57)

16. Oklahoma (61.935)

17. Georgia (60.255)

18. Ohio State (58.815)

19. Penn State (58.37)

20. Texas (58.34)

21. UConn (57.225)

22. Arizona (56.31)

23. Kansas (55.105)

24. USF (54.21)

25. Mizzou (53.285)

*Again the number in parentheses is Team's "Value"; Value has been computed as being the avg. rating (according to Sagarin) of the teams that Team has beaten.

** Remember this is not a rating of the BEST teams.  Its just a rating of who has done what this season.

Quick Observations from Resume-ish Poll

-Apparently a win over Illinois (70.75) isn't as valuable as a win over Washingto (72.25)...huh?

-The most valuable wins thus far have been VT, Tennessee, Michigan, WVU, and BC.  Boston College...huh?

-I'm surprised to see Oregon State and UVA valued right around Cincy.

-Is Utah's win over a depleted Michigan squad really that valuable?  Was it really that impressive?  

Final Poll

1. USC

2. Florida

3. Cal

4. LSU

5. ECU

6. OSU

7. Oklahoma

8. Auburn

9. Georgia

10. Bama

11. Utah

12. UCLA

13. BYU

14. Wisconsin

15. Oregon

16. Penn State

17. Mizzou

18. Fresno

19. Wake

20. Arizona State

21. Texas

22. Texas Tech

23. Oklahoma State

24. Georgia Tech

25. South Florida

Quick Observations

- I'm somewhat surprised to see Auburn ranked that high, though I'm fairly certain of their talent, they have yet to really impress me.  

- I'm actually VERY surprised to see Cal below USC.  Cal's wins over Sparty in week 1 was very impressive while their win over Wazzu was, in my eyes, at least, just as impressive as USC's win over UVA.  

- I'll work on a formula that will include such factors as margin of victory and home/away  for next week.  Bama's win over Tulane should NOT have gotten them as many points as it did.  

Weekend Review, Week 2

To everyone's surprise, this weekend's slate of games, which was supposed to be tremendous weak, turned out to be fairly decent.  These games should not have been "fairly decent".  A weekend that should have been littered with atrocious, merciless blowouts was strangely competitive.  I got to watch BYU-Washington and was treated to both a tremendously tight game as well as a rare chance to watch UDub QB Jake Locker.  

Locker has been billed as Tebow-West: his combination of size/strength, cannon arm, and mobility make for a fairly easy comparison with the Golden Child.  After watching Locker in action, though, I'd sooner compare him to Matt Groethe than Tim Tebow.  Locker, like Groethe, is at his best on the move, improvising and salvaging busted plays with a dazzling command and artistry.  There were moments where I could swear I saw Locker give the camera a coy wink and mouth "Yeah, I meant to do that."  But, like Groethe, so Locker giveth, so Locker taketh away.  Faced with a 3 and 17 he can duck a sack, scramble out of the pocket, and throw a dart off his back foot as he's being dragged to the ground by three defenders for an "effortless" conversion...but on the next play he'll set his feet in the pocket and calmly throw the same dart into triple coverage for an easy pick.  

On to some of the week's observations.

Alabama playing down to their competition- Saban's bunch, coming fresh off a blowout win over, then, number 9 Clemson, plummeted back to Earth against Tulane in Tuscaloosa.  What was a ruthlessly efficient and powerful offense a week before became a sputtering and inconsistent mess against a CLEARLY inferior team.  Bama was handily out-gained 318-172 and tallied only one offensive touchdown and it only gets worse from there.  Looking at the drive chart, Bama had a single drive that went for more than 30 yards; their offense notched drives of 1, 27, 19, 1, -5, -1, 3, 23, 77, 17, 9.  Jesus that's ugly.  

This most recent performance seemed to fall in line w/ Bama's preseason expectations much better than their domination of Clemson, leading me to believe that, while unlikely to look that hideous, this is more the "real" Alabama.  

Penn State's Spread HD- Penn State looked many things against Oregon State that it never could have dreamt of resembling during the Anthony Morelli (disaster) era; namely efficient, explosive, completed more than half of its passes.  Darryl Clark's mobility has brought the PSU offense an element it lacked since Michael Robinson was busy finishing third in the Heisman voting.  Although Clark, much like Robinson, is a mediocre passer his mobility and knack for improvisation make one bitch of a Chimera-back.  

Clark, though, is not the whole story.  Evan Royster ran for 141 for an 8.3 ypc in essentially three quarters of work.  The Lions spent all of last season searching desperately for a back who could do what Royster has done thus far this season, Austin Scott was booted from the team for his well documented sexual assault charges and Rodney Kinlaw kind of sucked.  State looks like a legitimate B10 contender with the emergence of Royster as a top back and the departure of the aforementioned Morelli (lets face it: anyone would be a step up from Morelli, god-dammit he was awful).

The win itself bears little water, what with Oregon State losing to Stanford in week 1 and Stanford getting their head kicked in by Arizona State this past week.  We'll find out in a hurry whether or not PSU is for real or merely a product of a cheap win as they, after devouring back-to-back sacrificial lambs 'Cuse and Temple, dive headfirst into the thick of the conference slate: Illinois, at Wisconsin, at OSU, and at Iowa in a six week span.  

Locker's Celebration Call-  This has been beaten to all hell by now so I will touch upon it only briefly.  The call itself was garbage.  The NCAA's edict against "celebration" is garbage.  Pac-10 officiating, on the whole, is garbage.  And most importantly: UDub's PAT team is garbage.

Fifteen yard penalty or not, there is still no excuse for getting a PAT blocked in such a pivotal moment.  Ty Willingham, I hope you like daytime television.  

West Virginia, DOA- I liked the Jeff Mullen hire.  I figured that Mullen would make an effort to replicate his offense from Wake Forest.  While he was never Dan Mullen prolific at Wake Forest, Jeff's misdirection based offense was extremely successful given both the athletes he had at hand and the general state of offense in the ACC.  Mullen's game was based heavily upon counters, traps, moving pockets, screens, and the quick passing game; in short it should have been readily applicable to the talent on hand at WVU.  

...yeah.  About that.  3 points: the worst output by a WVU team since 2001 against Miami.  That Miami team had 5 players drafted in the first round, amongst those drafted such stars as Ed Reed and Jeremy Shockey and Clinton Portis.  That 2001 Miami was excellent and while ECU may well be the cream of this year's mid-major crop it is by no means on par with that Miami team.  

More disheartening than the final score is the drive chart.  WVU mounted a mere three drives that went for more than 3o yards, and even then those drives ended in a fumble, a FG, and a punt.  Only once (once.  Take a deep breath with me and count to three.  1...2...3...ONCE!) did WVU find itself in the red zone.  Note my word choice, dear read, "find itself."  By no stretch of the imagine did the Mountaineers "put themselves" or "drive into" or otherwise "assert themselves" deep into ECU territory, they were a confused and listless bunch and looked wholly lost whenever they had the ball.  

West Virginia did not lose because of some flukey statistical anomaly; they did not lose because of some freak turnovers or marvelous trickery on ECU's part.  They did not lose gracefully, they got curb stomped.  WVU was out played and they knew it.  As poorly as they played the first half, they were even worse in the second.  If they imploded in the first half, the second half was like the Death Star exploding.  The team came out flat, dull, utterly lifeless; and that, more so than the 386-251 yard advantage by ECU or the 4 yards per attempt by White, is the blackest omen for Bill Stewart's bunch.  

Beating a Dead Horse

The ACC's failures the past weekend have been well document.  So well documented as to become as cliche as OSU=EPIC FAIL and ess-eee-see speed.  The WWL has covered it, the Sporting News has it locked down, and every blogger on God's green earth has at least one post on the topic.  I, however, will not be celebrating (or lamenting) the misery that was ACC football (really Maryland, 14-7 over Delaware?  What the fuck was that?). 

Well...maybe not.  

Were it not for the ACC's poor showing everyone would be hopping on the "drop the Big East from the BCS" bandwagon again (likely with a passion and vehemence not seen since the aforementioned SEC-Lite made off with Miami, VaTech, and BC).  

Pittsburgh loses to BGSU, Syraucse gets handled by Northwestern, and Louisville...oy fucking vey, where to start?

Even the BE's wins seem gilded at best.  UConn had 5 turnovers against Hofstra and WVU was actually outgained by Nova (the 'Cats had 45 more yards and 7 more first downs than the 'eers).  While Pat White's aerial renaissance overshadowed the latter, its still worth noting that the Mountaineer defense gave up nearly 400 yards to Villanova.  

While Cincy and USF certainly dominated this weekend, the rest of the league was lackluster at best.  RU has a chance to redeem the conference this afternoon against a pretty solid Fresno squad.  

That being said: Go Knights!