College football 2023 🏈

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
301

I couldn’t be happier with Bama win last night, but hate that they got in. Was really pulling for FSU.

302

Bingo!!! Roll Tide and Hook’em!
We are a divided fam. :blush:

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303

ESPN/Mickey Mouse really stuck it to DeSantis, lol.

304

Our household is extremely disappointed.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo didn’t make the CFP.

SLO’s best lost (of the 8 losses) was to Portland State 59-21. And Oregon beat Portland State 81-7.

:rofl:

305

I’m not a big fan of any college sport, but I pay attention and watch around this time of season
far from claiming to know much about the sport.

I don’t understand the philosophy of valuing head-to-head matchups during the regular season, key wins, etc. It seems the assumption of the selection committee is to find the best team on their best day. To me, the best team is who can beat anyone on their worst day.

Using this approach would have either weeded out or re-seeded many teams in recent history. In last year’s playoff, TCU had no business being in the playoff, Ohio State should have been #2 seed instead of Michigan (Michigan almost lost to Illinois, but the Mich-OSU head-to-head determined Michigan’s higher seeding), and the final would have been a competitive Ohio State vs Georgia matchup.

Earlier years would have seen teams like Cincinnati and Notre Dame weeded out.

For this year’s top 8, Georgia, Oregon, and Ohio State are probably better and more deserving of being in the playoff than Alabama, Washington, and Texas. Those latter three, who made the playoff, all have close calls against mediocre teams, even though they ultimately won the games.

The eventual champion typically does not have any close calls during the regular season to lower-tier opponents. Michigan’s only such game this year was against Maryland, but that can possibly be explained by the coaching flux at that time. Just comparing game results across seasons, this year’s team appears to be much better than last year’s. And they easily have the cleanest victories across all games this season compared to the other three teams in the playoff.

It seems Michigan has a moderately clear path to the title this time around. Probably competing against Alabama’s reputation more than Alabama’s team in the semifinal, and then will roll over one of the two upstarts from the 2-3 game, neither of which are ready for prime time.

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306

And of course, JJ McCarthy had an injured ankle.

20/20 hindsight is beautiful though.

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307

My daughter’s Post Bac was at PSU. She didn’t even know they had a football team :football::thinking:

308

Michigan cant just rely on the running game. Theyre going to have to throw the ball and Bama has 2 really good corners.

Michigan is -2 favorite. This thing will move quickly to Bama.

309

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I can’t find the tweet, but last night someone mentioned the SEC’s record this season against other Power 5 teams was not good. Alabama struggled against Auburn. And Alabama lost to Texas.

The line will probably change a very small amount, but nothing major. Generally, the lines don’t change much after the initial opening line, unless there’s a new injury.

310

We’ll find out.

Hopefully your team is a lot better than last year because TCU (who beat Michigan) was curb stomped by Georgia. They werent even in the same zip code.

This Bama team isnt as good as last year’s Georgia team but they are very difficult to run against.

If you look at how Texas beat Bama, Texas has multiple future NFL players at WR and TE. They were able to throw over the top of the Bama defense. That’s the recipe to beat them.

311

Bama’s defense and offensive line have matured exponentially over the last 2 months. They are not the same team that lost to Texas.

312

Texas has improved in those two months, too.

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313

With respect to defense, The Athletic publishes a list of the best defenses by “stop rate,” defined as:

Before this past weekend’s games:

  1. Michigan
  2. Penn State
  3. Iowa
  4. Ohio State
  5. Troy
  6. FSU
  7. SMU
  8. Clemson
  9. JMU
  10. Miami (Ohio)

14 Texas

16 Georgia

17 Alabama

36 Washington

If you can’t stop Michigan from running the ball, and they had 32 straight rushing attempts against Penn State’s D, I think IIRC, then they do have TE’s and WR’s to receive passes.

314

Here is Colley’s summary of conference wins and losses against each other:
https://www.colleyrankings.com/foot2023/rankings/conf12.html

SEC was:

  • 0-3 vs. Pac-12
  • 2-1 vs. Big 12
  • 3-4 vs. ACC
  • 2-1 vs. MWC
  • undefeated against Sun Belt, CUSA, FBS independents, American, MAC, and FCS
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315

Thank you!

316

Im not shocked Michigan and some of the Big 10 teams have great “defenses” because many of the league’s offenses are terrible and they play each other. Didnt Penn State and Iowa both fire their OC during the season? And these are 2 of the best teams in the conference outside Michigan and Ohio State.

I think the Iowa/Nebraska game was the lowest under in this century.

317

Here is a low scoring college football game:

But there was an even lower scoring game:

318

Tech vs wake forest was only 6-3 because it went to double overtime. It was 0-0 at the end of regulation and weather wasn’t to blame. It was horrid to watch!

319

Or maybe the offenses are “terrible,” because the B1G’s defenses are that good. Nonetheless, Iowa still found a way to be a 10-2 team. And Michigan held them to ZERO points in a league championship game w/o their best defender, Will Johnson, playing last night.

But all will be settled on the field in January.

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320

Right. All the talk doesnt matter because games will be played.