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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 arenât 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 systemâs computer formula â originally based on ratings by Jeff Sagarin, the New York Times and the Seattle Times â started in 1998, five years before âMoneyballâ 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 â 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, weâre headed back in the other direction. You often hear (and/or say), âThe BCS was actually fine,â or even, âWe should bring back the BCS,â whenever the CFPâs human committee ranks your team one spot too low. That felt especially valid during the committeeâs only actual disaster, the 2023 robbery of undefeated Florida State, when the computers wouldâve had the Noles in the field of four.
Technically, the committee has used lots of stats since its inception in 2014, but not anything âadvanced.â Eleven years ago, Bill Connelly criticized the committeeâs usage of lackluster math (in a post edited by your boy, of course), and now he appears in a new article by The Athleticâs 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?
Weâre way past the BCS backlash by now, man. These days, everybody knows Vegas spreads are punishingly predictive only because theyâre informed by computer ratings. Itâs long been time to empower the committee to use and cite Connellyâs SP+, Brian Fremeauâs FEI, ESPNâs FPI, the Massey Composite and all the other great tools out there. (Besides, unlike the BCSâ mysterious computers, the public can actually learn details about how most of these actually work.)
Anyway, thatâs just one rant spinning off of Ralphâs article, which also has a lot of stuff about other potential changes coming the committeeâs 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 ratingâs individual quirks.)
Quick Snaps
đ° âHis 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.â Bruce Feldman on South Carolina redshirt soph QB LaNorris Sellers, one of my favorite players to watch last year.
ă˝ď¸ How to attempt to stop Michigan five-star freshman QB Bryce Underwood, according to his high school opponents: âWe wanted to ⌠force them to throw (laughs). That sounds crazy.â
𧢠Florida! USC! Pitt! UCLA! Stanford! Cal! Lots of schools with grumbling fan bases have some significant recruiting hope right now.
đ Former NFL players who were once bullied by Bill Belichick are now having a good chortle at him being an offseason sideshow.
đ 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 youâve forgotten. In addition to Oregon State and Washington State, thatâs so many states! Plus Gonzaga in non-football. Gonzaga State!)
đ Texas won its fourth Directorsâ 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:
- âDid baseball fans and a national audience on ESPN witness the greatest pitching performance ever at the College World Series on Monday?â Yep.
- On the question of college baseballâs best rivalry, five experts listed five different answers â all of them in the SEC.
- In the new Schools Can Pay Players era, womenâs basketball should draw greater investment. Can other teams finally catch up to UConn and South Carolina?
The Video Game: Your pick for CFBâs best fixer-upper challenge
Last week, during Until Saturdayâs 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 youâd 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 Sportsâ college football series, where for decades now, people have enjoyed overhauling the little guys. But itâs 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, Kathyâs 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 theyâre 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:
- âThe cost increase of long-distance recruiting in this yearâs game makes this into something similar to Athletic Bilbao, and how they only sign players from one region of their country.â This has been Spanish soccerâs 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, thatâs all for today. Email me at untilsaturday@theathletic.com with any thoughts!
Last weekâs most-clicked: The ranking of college footballâs 25 biggest storylines since 2000.
(Top photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
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