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General NCAA thread

Toledo and Bowling Green gonna have a nice matchup on 11/19.

It's interesting though because both teams could be in position to handle a conference loss at that point.

BGSU will play Kent State (terrible team) next week and their nearest competitors in the MAC East not only have 3 losses, but BGSU beat all of them (Ohio, Akron and Massachusetts). So basically even if BGSU lost the Toledo game AND the Ball State game the following week, they should probably still be secure to represent the MAC East in the Championship Game.

Toledo has a tighter competition going in the MAC West with two teams with only 1 loss, but next week Toledo will face one of those teams (Northern Illinois) and have a chance to deal them not only a loss but a tiebreak advantage. So they could head into the BGSU game 6-0 in the MAC, with one win and a tiebreak advantage over Western Michigan who will likely be 5-1, and so even if Toledo drops the BGSU game they would still be in the lead for the MAC West and all they'd have to do is beat Eastern Michigan (terrible team) in the final week to represent the MAC West in the championship.

So this BGSU-Toledo game in a few weeks will not only be a preview of the MAC Championship Game, it could also be sort of semi-meaningless for both teams. Means both coaching staffs will likely try and hold some things back for when it really counts.
 
Florida State blows.

Notre Dame is getting their ass handed to them by ASU. :lol:

Texas A&M also doing a number on Auburn, but I would not call this game yet. An 18 point lead is not too much in college ball.

If the Tide can survive the corn dogs tonight, I like their chances at running the table.
 
Flip Tanneflop said:
Florida State blows.

Notre Dame is getting their ass handed to them by ASU. :lol:

Texas A&M also doing a number on Auburn, but I would not call this game yet. An 18 point lead is not too much in college ball.

If the Tide can survive the corn dogs tonight, I like their chances at running the table.
Click to expand...

Love it! We managed to lay it on them a second time after Graham's little Sparano moment in the 3rd and half of the 4th quarters.
 
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PredictionMachine.com ran some simulations and had some interesting results.

First off they put Florida State through Mississippi State's schedule and after 50,000 simulations found that their most likely outcome would be 8-4.

But then the question about 9-0 Marshall came up and they put them through the 50,000 simulations with Mississippi State's schedule, and found that they'd go 7-5 with the schedule. So they ran Marshall and Florida State together head to head and found that really Florida State only wins 55% of the matchups and the average score is 31-28.

Marshall has not played any Power Five teams. But they have played teams that went up against Power Five and even Top 25 opponents. A Top 25 team has faced the same team that Marshall has faced five times this year, and adjusting for homefield, Marshall did better against the team 3 out of 5 times. A Power Five team has faced a Marshall opponent 15 times this year and Marshall did better against the opponent than the Power Five team did on 12 of 15 of those instances.

You may scoff at this line of reasoning but the fact of the matter is the college football playoff committee, the old BCS rankings, the computer rankings, even the AP and Coaches Poll use similar lines of reasoning in order to determine conference strength. It's not just about how each team does against its opponent, it's also about how those opponents tend to do against others. So there are already indirect comparisons being used.

The CFP committee said they had five teams from the Group of Five in mind for the access bowl bid. They refused to order them. Marshall is one, Colorado State another, Boise State, East Carolina and Northern Illinois. With tonight's loss to Cincinnati, East Carolina is a joke. They don't belong in the conversation and they'll be out of the conversation next week. It's crazy that Northern Illinois could be considered for this conversation considering their loss to Central Michigan.

It's going to come down to Boise State, Colorado State and Marshall. But Colorado State literally cannot get into the picture unless Boise drops a game before the Mountain West Championship. Boise owns the tiebreak over Colorado State and therefore CSU can't even play for the MW Championship. The access bowl bid rules stipulate that the G5 team given the bid must be a conference champion.

So assuming Boise wins out, it will be between a two-loss Boise team that has lost to Ole Miss and Air Force, or an undefeated Marshall. Should be an easy question. But who knows.
 
The reality is that Florida St. should have 4 losses right now with their own schedule, much less Mississippi State's. They would if it wasn't for Winston. The Winston factor is difficult for a simulation to account for.

The problem for teams like Marshall the way I view them is the games against the FAU's at home where they don't measure up to a legitimate Power 5 team. FAU was leading Marshall at halftime 16-14... at Marshall. Alabama beat FAU 41-0 with backups and 3rd stringers. I think Nebraska beat em by about 50 points.

SEC folks know and have always said that FSU wouldn't have been playing the title game last year if they played in the SEC. The grind is just too difficult unless you're stockpiled with SEC caliber recruits. The schedule tests your depth to an extreme degree.

Depth or lack of, is another thing simulations like this can't account for. A team like Marshall or Colorado St., or Boise St., etc... sure their starting 22 are good enough to compete with a lot of Power 5 teams in a game here and a game there. But they can't do it week in and week out. They don't have the depth. Furthermore, they don't really have the size even among their starters.

Florida St. has the depth. Marshall doesn't. Basically, that simulator is saying that Marshall would have 7 wins against Southern Miss, UAB, South Alabama, Tenn.-Martin, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Texas A&M off of Mississippi St.'s schedule so far. However, I'm going to bet high that Marshall loses one of those SEC games. Matter of fact, I'm going to guarantee it. 7-5 is generous for Marshall. 6-6 is more realistic and likely. The same applies to any of the other top Group of Five programs.

8-4 for Florida St. sounds about right to me with Miss. St.'s schedule due to the Winston factor. They have much better depth and quality than Marshall to compete with that schedule. I think there's more separation between those two teams than this simulation suggests.... particularly when you stretch it out over an SEC schedule.

Now, get these two teams in a head-to-head matchup and the 31-28 score in favor of FSU is more reasonable. It's not about depth then as much as it is about the starters and coaching. Perhaps the simulator learned what the Winston factor is about after all.
 
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I think Marshall has more depth than you may be crediting them for and it's because they have such a strong (and strange, in my opinion) foothold in Florida and especially Miami-area recruiting.

Devon Johnson sits out this weekend against Southern Miss and his backup Remi Watson (Lakeland, FL) goes off for three touchdowns and they have their best offensive performance of the season. And Devon Johnson himself was only a backup last year, physically gifted but completely unknown. Gator Hoskins goes to the NFL and Eric Frohnapfel is ready to replace him, looks nearly as good.

They legitimately run four-deep at wide receiver with Tommy Shuler (Miami, FL), Angelo Jean-Louis (Wellington, FL), Davonte Allen (Belle Glade, FL) and the most talented receiver of them all might well be the fourth guy on that depth chart, Deon-Tay McManus (not from FL). They have a fifth receiver from Hialeiah that is 6'1" and 180 lbs, runs in the low 4.5 to 4.4 range and has produced as well.

They’ve got a young secondary full of sophomores like A.J. Leggett (Miami, FL), Corey Tindal (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) and Tiquan Lang. If Leggett isn’t the best player in the secondary then it’s Darryl Roberts whom they got from Lakeland, FL.

One thing I have been curious about is the NCAA rule change regarding the feeding of players. I think a lot of bigger programs have been notoriously finding ways to feed their players and control their diets despite the rules saying they can only give them one training table meal per day and only during the season. There were team dieticians already in employ by teams like Alabama and Ohio State. Smaller programs didn’t really bother with that kind of stuff.

But now that the handcuffs have been taken off, smaller programs are controlling what their athletes eat and so they’re able to develop them better physically. They’ve got all these Muscle Milk products and protein shakes waiting for them after workouts, etc. Before you were recruiting a bunch of poor kids from inner city Miami that don’t have a pot to piss in and you could have them work out and train with your strength and conditioning program but good luck getting their diet to cooperate.

The thing that makes me wonder about that is the fact that the high school recruiting and rating system has been shown to be so flawed, outside of 5-star recruiting. I respect 5-star recruiting, but there are really only so many 5-star players every year. Once you get beyond them, the significance drops off a cliff. Being able to better control the way players develop their bodies through their diet in addition to the strength program could go a ways toward equalizing this even more.
 
Just saw that Watson, QB for Clemson, tore his ACL. That sucks, the kid is very talented.
 
Its all about the U!

Whoopin' that Seminole ass!!
 
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