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Today in college football news, your music rec of the week is Particle House. Every song by anyone should have synths and saxes.
Cycles: Bring back the computers
Remember years ago, when coaches and broadcasters in various sports still thought of advanced stats as deceptive witchcraft? (I say this as if many of them aren’t still of that mindset. Bear with me.)
The contemporaneous subplot that still feels surreal: Despite having an especially old-school power structure, college football had long entrusted a handful of computer ratings with helping to decide which two teams got to play in its most important game.
That BCS system’s computer formula — originally based on ratings by Jeff Sagarin, the New York Times and the Seattle Times — started in 1998, five years before “Moneyball” was a book, let alone a movie. College football! Wildly progressive somehow!
And then those two perspectives flipped. As most sports people slowly realized there is more to life than what can be gleaned by a single pair of human eyeballs, college football fans went the opposite way, growing tired of the BCS computers — for reasons that often had little to do with the computers themselves. In 2011, for instance, the machines tried to steer us clear of the reviled Alabama-LSU championship rematch that killed the BCS, but human polls overruled them.
Now in the College Football Playoff era, we’re headed back in the other direction. You often hear (and/or say), “The BCS was actually fine,” or even, “We should bring back the BCS,” whenever the CFP’s human committee ranks your team one spot too low. That felt especially valid during the committee’s only actual disaster, the 2023 robbery of undefeated Florida State, when the computers would’ve had the Noles in the field of four.
Technically, the committee has used lots of stats since its inception in 2014, but not anything “advanced.” Eleven years ago, Bill Connelly criticized the committee’s usage of lackluster math (in a post edited by your boy, of course), and now he appears in a new article by The Athletic’s Ralph Russo on the state of the committee, still making a similar argument … because nothing has really changed.
In a time when the ground-and-pound SEC is out here promoting itself via fancy numbers, why is the committee still stuck pretending its basic statistical comparisons are all the numbers college football fans can handle?
We’re way past the BCS backlash by now, man. These days, everybody knows Vegas spreads are punishingly predictive only because they’re informed by computer ratings. It’s long been time to empower the committee to use and cite Connelly’s SP+, Brian Fremeau’s FEI, ESPN’s FPI, the Massey Composite and all the other great tools out there. (Besides, unlike the BCS’ mysterious computers, the public can actually learn details about how most of these actually work.)
Anyway, that’s just one rant spinning off of Ralph’s article, which also has a lot of stuff about other potential changes coming the committee’s way in the 16-or-whatever-team era of the CFP.
(Usual note, because I mentioned FPI, the rating that some people believe is nothing but a devious ESPN propaganda tool: FPI is solid. Against Vegas, it typically holds up about as well as any other rating. When evaluating teams, look at a bunch of rankings, which irons out each rating’s individual quirks.)
Quick Snaps
💰 “His dad said other schools reached out to see if he was interested in transferring, and the biggest offer he heard was for $8 million for two years.” Bruce Feldman on South Carolina redshirt soph QB LaNorris Sellers, one of my favorite players to watch last year.
〽️ How to attempt to stop Michigan five-star freshman QB Bryce Underwood, according to his high school opponents: “We wanted to … force them to throw (laughs). That sounds crazy.”
🧢 Florida! USC! Pitt! UCLA! Stanford! Cal! Lots of schools with grumbling fan bases have some significant recruiting hope right now.
🎭 Former NFL players who were once bullied by Bill Belichick are now having a good chortle at him being an offseason sideshow.
🌎 Texas State is teasing a move to the Pac-12, potentially joining the impending crowd from the Mountain West. (Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State, in case you’ve forgotten. In addition to Oregon State and Washington State, that’s so many states! Plus Gonzaga in non-football. Gonzaga State!)
🏆 Texas won its fourth Directors’ Cup in the last five years, having officially taken over for Stanford as the school that constantly wins the award for the best all-sports athletic department. Speaking of all sports:
- “Did baseball fans and a national audience on ESPN witness the greatest pitching performance ever at the College World Series on Monday?” Yep.
- On the question of college baseball‘s best rivalry, five experts listed five different answers — all of them in the SEC.
- In the new Schools Can Pay Players era, women’s basketball should draw greater investment. Can other teams finally catch up to UConn and South Carolina?
The Video Game: Your pick for CFB’s best fixer-upper challenge
Last week, during Until Saturday’s slapdash preview of Conference USA and the MAC (part of a chaotic series that debuted with a glance at the FCS, Division II and Division III), I asked which FBS straggler you’d take over, if you had a chance to build one of them for years into a College Football Playoff power.
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This was of course inspired by the upcoming entry in EA Sports’ college football series, where for decades now, people have enjoyed overhauling the little guys. But it’s a fun thought exercise regardless.
In your survey responses, your most popular pick: UMass. Some of you chose the woebegone Minutemen because you attend there (hello, Zach) or have family there (hello, Kathy’s niece), while others simply crave the benevolent masochism that goes along with attempting to make UMass football matter (hello, various freaks).
Otherwise, Tulane was your No. 2 pick (even though they’re way too good to qualify for the question), thanks mostly to their blue uniforms. Among your other responses, this one from Carter jumped out as a really fun reason to take charge of Hawaii:
- “The cost increase of long-distance recruiting in this year’s game makes this into something similar to Athletic Bilbao, and how they only sign players from one region of their country.” This has been Spanish soccer’s Until Saturday debut.
For more on the massive challenge that is Making Something Of UMass, read this story by Matt Baker on exactly how hard that has been.
OK, that’s all for today. Email me at untilsaturday@theathletic.com with any thoughts!
Last week’s most-clicked: The ranking of college football’s 25 biggest storylines since 2000.
(Top photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
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