Recruiting Football Talk VII

[GVol1966]

I think most teams would rather play Bama than Georgia in the playoff but that wasn't considered.

Should of been. I mean Bama won by 3.

Ladd not 100% ,
Bowers only about 70%
A big linemen hurt to I think.

They get healthy in a month UGA wins by 10.
Can’t believe the committee didn’t consider that

 

[OGbabyaviVol]

Lol…UK always trying to get the scraps to plug in at QB, instead of recruiting and developing their own.

 

[Jackcrevol]

Lol…UK always trying to get the scraps to plug in at QB, instead of recruiting and developing their own.

They will lay waste to that 5-6 game automatic bowl tie in they call a schedule.

How these peckerheads continually get easiest schedule east of the MS defies logic.

 

[OGbabyaviVol]

Hard pass on that one. My word I don’t like where this is all going!

 

[volbeast33]

And nobody wants to talk about that little tidbit.

that is who the discussion should have been between…. not Fla State and Bama.

 

[knoxvol52]

Neither should ratings but here we are

So you don't think ratings factor in...


Okay ask ESPN about last year's National Championship ratings...

All about the Cash these days....

 

[Jackcrevol]

Hard pass on that one. My word I don’t like where this is all going!

For sale by owner or the LI postin', Insta usin', ear to ear grinnin', jet plane flyin' sonuva gun?

Used car salesmen.

 

[mr.checkerboards]

 

[OrangenSC]

Everybody hated the BCS. No one cares what it thinks.

It provides what many are now screaming for; funny how that works.

And everybody hates the current system. And we'll find reason to hate the next one, and the next one after that. That's what we do.

The powers-that-be are loving this. And the media experts are eagar to stir the pot, while we oblige. We're giving them exactly what they want.

 

[JohnnyD1024]

 

[TheRain]

Hard pass on that one. My word I don’t like where this is all going!

I get it. However, it sounds like some of these players are signing with collectives and not getting paid or getting screwed by Longterm contracts.

Also, if you sign with a collective can you be sued for transferring? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[you]

I believe them bridges is burned.

Time heals… reminds me of Cade Mayes situation

 

[OrangenSC]

that is who the discussion should have been between…. not Fla State and Bama.

That would've been fun to watch.

 

[jpope9]

wait who the hell is slice bread? We talkin Bunny or Nature's Own?

 

[jpope9]

Vol Twitter for the win.

 

[feathersax]

Everybody hated the BCS. No one cares what it thinks.

The BCS worked every year, man. Roy Kramer's baby delivered.

 

[TrippieRedd]

So I picked both Browning and Trevor to score anytime tonight.

Etienne over 50 rushing yards
Ridley over 57 receiving
Chase over 55 receiving

 

[mr.checkerboards]

Whats the best present you can gift?

A broken drum.

Nobody can beat that.

 

[BigSteve09]

Bill Connelly

The most frantic and frankly frustrating week of the college football season is over. After a week of politicking and grandstanding -- and at least a little bit of actual football -- we have our conference champions, we have our bowl bids and we have the pairings for our final four-team College Football Playoff. (And for something new and different, the CFP committee decided to get its selection horribly wrong in a way that could damage its long-term credibility! So that's fun!)

Wrong or not, the show goes on, and the barge that is college football keeps drifting forward. But before prepping bowl picks and playoff previews, let's look back at the weekend one last time. Here are eight storylines worth revisiting from the maddening week that was.

Florida State got robbed, and the sport is worse for it​

Florida State athletic director Michael Alford wasn't exactly speaking objectively, with no skin in the game, when he put out a statement Sunday afternoon, minutes after FSU was left out of the College Football Playoff despite a perfect 13-0 record. Like all the other coaches, ADs and conference commissioners who talked to reporters and TV cameras or published statements online, he was playing to his base and letting them know he was on their side. But hey, when you're right, you're right.



"The consequences of giving in to a narrative of the moment are destructive, far reaching and permanent," Alford said of the Seminoles becoming the first unbeaten power conference champion of the CFP era deprived of a shot at the national title. Snubbing them was "an unwarranted injustice that shows complete disregard and disrespect for their performance and accomplishments. It is unforgivable."

"Today, [the committee] changed the way success is assessed in college football," he continued, "from a tangible metric -- winning on the field -- to an intangible, subjective one. Evidently, predicting the future matters more. [...] They have become a committee of prognosticators."

Alford was, of course, referring to Alabama being considered a better team, one supposedly more likely to play well in the CFP than FSU because of the season-ending injury to Seminoles quarterback Jordan Travis, and ranking ahead of the unbeaten Noles despite a 12-1 record.

Despite the fact that I've spent a good portion of my time as a college football writer trying to predict the future (and doing an occasionally decent job of it), I couldn't agree more with Alford's sentiment.

For most of the past decade, the CFP committee has gone out of its way to insist it is choosing the best four teams for the playoff, not the most deserving, and the only redeeming aspect of that was the fact that it was patently untrue. From 2022 TCU to 2021 Cincinnati to 2018 (and 2019) Oklahoma to 2015 Michigan State and even 2014 Florida State, the committee included plenty of teams that were in no way among the four best teams in the country. Some were closer than others, but to a team they all deserved to be there because of what they had accomplished in actually winning games on the field. Each of the first 39 teams the committee selected was justifiable. Then, with its 40th pick, it finally went "best" over "most deserving."

Well, sort of. This is the worst Alabama team in 15 years, one that ranks just seventh in SP+ and fifth in FPI and only sporadically looked like anything close to a playoff team. But hey, it has a healthy quarterback at least.

In two games without Travis, FSU's offense indeed cratered. SP+ projections are not adjusted for injury, so it can be a pretty useful tool for understanding the impact of a given injury. And the impact of Travis' injury was dire: Against Florida and Louisville, the Seminoles' offense scored a combined 30 fewer points than projected. (Second-stringer Tate Rodemaker also was injured and didn't play against Louisville in the ACC championship game, meaning the Noles had to face the No. 26 defense in the country, per SP+, with third-string freshman Brock Glenn. They would have had Rodemaker back for the postseason, however.)

In that same span, however, the FSU defense also allowed 19.5 fewer points. It held Florida to a season low in yards (232, 81 fewer than any other game) and yards per play (3.9), then did exactly the same thing to Louisville. The Cardinals' previous season lows were 306 yards and 4.8 yards per play against NC State in September; FSU allowed them 188 yards and 2.7.

Forced to step up due to the Seminoles' offensive struggles, FSU's defense suddenly became the best in the sport. And because of that, the Seminoles beat Florida by more points on the road (nine) than No. 9 Missouri had the week before at home (two), then beat Louisville (24th in SP+) by more than Alabama beat Auburn (37th) and Arkansas (58th) combined. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, had FSU been playing South Florida on Saturday night, the Noles would have won by more than the 14-point margin Alabama mustered in September, too.

But none of that matters. FSU's offense struggled, and in a sport that already has the smallest imaginable sample size, the committee therefore decided that only 1½ games should end up determining a playoff slot: Alabama-Georgia and the half of FSU-Louisville that happened when the Seminoles had the ball.

The committee decided to choose a team that could win -- and to be sure, Alabama could absolutely win the whole damn thing now that it's gotten a lifeline -- over a team that actually deserved to be there. And it fulfilled every seemingly unfounded conspiracy theory anyone has ever had about the power of TV ratings, the SEC and/or the sport's biggest brands in the decision-making process.

"For many of us, today's decision by the committee has forever damaged the credibility of the institution that is the College Football Playoff," Alford said. "And, saddest of all, it was self-inflicted. They chose predictive competitiveness over proven performance; subjectivity over fact."

This isn't how any other sport -- or, more importantly, any other level of football -- goes about choosing who gets to play for its title. And it's inexcusable.

Honestly, the committee should have just committed to its logic and ranked Florida State about seventh or eighth. Georgia and Ohio State, after all, would both be favored over FSU in a bowl game, right? Instead, it bumped the Seminoles down just enough to leave them out. That almost felt more disrespectful.

Obviously the system changes next year, when the playoff expands to 12 teams and begins handing automatic bids to conference champions. That will allow the committee to hedge its bets here and there -- like the basketball committee did in bumping Cincinnati to a 2-seed in 2000 after Kenyon Martin's injury -- while still assuring that actually deserving teams get a shot at the title.


With the excellent work Mike Norvell has done in rebuilding a broken FSU program over the past four years, odds are solid that he will craft another playoff-worthy team, one that the committee might deign to include even if the injury bug bites again. But that won't change what it just did to the Seminoles, and for virtually anyone outside of the very top of the college football oligarchy, it won't undo the damage it did to the reputation of the entire enterprise in the final year of the four-team era.

and now some thoughts on our bowl opponent:

The Brian Ferentz legacy (and a problematic Michigan offense?)​

In 2022, Iowa fielded an offense so bad, so detrimental to the cause of winning games, that even with the best defense in the country, the Hawkeyes went just 8-5. That earned offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz, the son of head coach Kirk, a pay cut and some unique new clauses in his contract. It also briefly introduced the "drive to 325" into the lexicon. (To fulfill Ferentz's incentives, Iowa had to win seven games and average a mere 25 points per game, or 325 over 13 games.) That was an embarrassingly low bar. And the Hawkeyes fell 109 points short.

Iowa ranked 91st in offensive SP+ last year; evidently those were the salad days. Without a single new idea -- and with injuries taking away top quarterback Cade McNamara and vital tight ends -- the Hawkeyes fell so much further. Granted, the defense was so good, and the rest of the Big Ten West was so bad, that Iowa won the division with almost no offense and earned the right to play in the Big Ten championship game. But after a dire and extremely predictable 26-0 loss to Michigan, Iowa ranks a cool 127th in offensive SP+. Only seven offenses in FBS are worse. And only Michigan's defense is better.

There is now a 125-spot difference between Iowa's offensive and defensive SP+ rankings. We have had a lot of one-dimensional teams in college football of late, and this one tops them all in its refusal to come anywhere close to scoring.

Biggest difference between offensive and defensive SP+ rankings for power conference teams, past 10 years:

• 2023 Iowa: 125 spots (127th on offense, second on defense)

• 2015 Missouri: 116 spots (120th on offense, fourth on defense)

• 2023 Nebraska: 115 spots (123rd on offense, eighth on defense)

• 2015 Texas Tech: 114 spots (third on offense, 117th on defense)

• 2015 Boston College: 108 spots (119th on offense, 11th on defense)

• 2023 USC: 106 spots (third on offense, 109th on defense)

• 2015 Vanderbilt: 105 spots (123rd on offense, 18th on defense)

• 2015 Northwestern: 102 spots (112th on offense, 10th on defense)

• 2018 California: 101 spots (119th on offense, 18th on defense)

• 2016 California: 101 spots (12th on offense, 113th on defense)

 

[Glitch]

Hard pass on that one. My word I don’t like where this is all going!

 

[butchna]

The BCS worked every year, man. Roy Kramer's baby delivered.

Tell the undefeated Auburn team that had to watch “the two best teams” play for the championship.

 

[chvy1986]

Pope just started following WR Chris Brazzell from Tulane.

Geaux is gonna be mad lol

What happened to him? He made some great edits

 

[WesTnVol]

My 2 cents. FSU was told like every other team win-win head to head-win your conference-go undefeated and you’re in………….unless you lose your starting QB-
you don’t ”look good” winning-the SEC may get left out OR your team is in the ACC
Its all the fine print that bites you in the A$$

 

[Mozdukemod]

@Mozdukemod @BenGrimm

You guys think 'bout 3X's' is a goodun?'

Must admit after reading the message I’d been tagged in a post, I logged in thinking, “…wuh yens better be ready fer me tuhday you sonuvabitch.”

 

[knoxvol52]

Tell the undefeated Auburn team that had to watch “the two best teams” play for the championship.

Wasn't that the year USC blew every team out they played...

Maybe it was for the best ,to save yourself the embarrassment...