2021 College Football Gameday Thread

I guess it also depends on if we think Baylor can jump them with a win like OKST just did. If not then I guess they are drawing really live which should never, ever be a thing here.

Baylor can’t jump them they lost to TCU and have 2.

I don’t think so at all.

They just need 2 of Cincinnati/Okla St/Alabama losing and they’re probably in.

Rankings something like this?

SEC champ Georgia
B10 champ Michigan
SEC champ Alabama
SEC runner-up Georgia
B12 champ Oklahoma St
AAC champ Cincinnati
Notre Dame
SEC runner-up Alabama
B12 champ Baylor
B10 runner-up Michigan
Ohio State

And, yes, I do think undefeated Cincinnati is getting left out if Bama/Okla St/Michigan all win.

When I saw @Riverman respond to this I was like 90% certain that it was because he was going to give you his signature Boglehead hate-reading treatment. I was disappointed.

I almost forgot:

I get that they were highly ranked coming in, but it now looks like Ohio State isn’t going to make the playoffs. Given that they’re not even a playoff team, does that really count as a big win for Jim Harbaugh?

I don’t really follow football, but I noticed that the osu players had a LOT of stickers. Way more then Michigan. So still a big win IMO.

2 Likes

Chaos scenarios are basically Cincinnati/Bama/Michigan/OK St all win or Bama/Michigan/OK St all lose

(1) Bama
(2) Michigan
(3) Georgia
(4) OK St

(1) Georgia
(2) Cincinnati
(3) Baylor
(4) Notre Dame

Just finding it hard to believe that the Committee would put in an AAC team, an Independent, and a 2-loss Big 12 team and exclude the Big Ten in that 2nd scenario.

We’ve seen enough shenanigans from this committee in the past to engineer big name matchups that there ain’t a chance in hell they’re allowing Cincinnati and Baylor to fill one of the 3 biggest time slots of the year.

Would say both are elite looking at their numbers this season. Not sure what you consider elite though.

Possible. I’d think Georgia/Cincy/ND would be locks though.

I’m not sure who gets that 4th spot if it has to be from the B10 in that scenario. A 2-loss Ohio St team that didn’t even win its division? A Michigan team that just lost the B10 championship? Iowa gonna jump from 13th?

They all seem unlikely.

Numbers aren’t a complete way of evaluating a player. Both are obviously productive. Both have not done well at key points this season. Both rely on overwhelming talent at other positions on their offense rather than being incredible themselves.

The best player this year in CFB is a DL. The heisman going to either one of those players would be incredibly lazy and not reflect the best player in CFB this year is on defense.

You’re probably right on scenario one, but 4 12-1 teams sitting right ahead of 13-0 Cincinnati is gonna be a fun shitstorm.

I don’t think “best” is even remotely possible for a DL or any defensive player for that matter given what we know about how WAR/WPA are distributed in modern football. The actual Heisman gobbly-gook criteria of “most outstanding…” is probably vague enough though.

WAR in CFB doesn’t apply like it does in the NFL. The talent gap between teams breaks that kind of analysis. For example, Tim Tebow wasn’t why those Florida teams were so dominant. It was the massive talent advantage they had. Take that talent advantage away, and he sucks.

Asserting Bryce Young is responsible for the WPA of that 40 yard pass he threw behind a 5 star line going up against a 3 star line to a 5 star WR covered by a 3 star CB isn’t valid. Your measurement system is broken if you’re doing it that way.

well that’s not true

And that’s not particularly relevant to the point being made. It’s a generalized statement about recruitment and talent differential dude.

Sure, but their ol is nowhere near the worst in the sec

Also, lol at the Owens talk. He was 187 as a guard in the composite with tons of major offers. Many schools do a lot worse than that for their right tackle.

I don’t think this is true though, and you’d more or less need to make a case that CFB is an extremely different game in order to completely break the relative values of positions. I’m not aware of any good evidence for that. In fact, see this:

POSITIONAL VALUE

Everyone understands the value of quality quarterback play, especially in the NFL. Comparing college to the NFL, though, quarterbacks are actually slightly more valuable compared to other positions, with their value over twice as much as the next closest position in college. The other interesting tidbit hidden within College WAA is that cornerback is the second-most valuable position and exceeds the wide receiver position, unlike in the NFL. The position value rankings are quarterbacks, cornerbacks, wide receivers then defensive linemen.

The reason I think PFF is probably reasonably close to the correct answer is because their distributions for NFL match up pretty well with other serious attempts I’ve seen. For example:

nflWAR: a reproducible method for offensive player evaluation in football

Again, I’m only talking about the distributions of various win equity metrics and their relative magnitude between positions. I’m more confident in this paper’s methodology since they are actual PhD statisticians at Carnegie Melon, but note that their density plots (WPA) are quite similar to PFF’s WAR (the PFF plots below don’t show QB but their distribution is known to include high values like the plot above; see table article and table below):

The models attempt to control for surrounding talent and don’t assign all of the value of a completion to a QB, but the point I’m making isn’t really about Bryce Young being better than advertised. It’s about the distribution of QB value dwarfing all other positions. Extreme outliers for all other positions in WPA/WAA/WAR would be merely decent QBs under these densities. In any given year, if you were to ask “what’s the probability that max(WAR among non-QB positions) > max(WAR QB)?”, the answer to that is basically zero based on the evidence we have.

At the same time, you’re correct that none of the QBs are great this year. My point is that the “best” player in terms of actual win equity is probably a QB every year regardless of how mediocre they may be. If we change the definition of best to something like “most standard deviations above the average player at their position” then obviously that produces different answers.

2 Likes

CN. Rooting for UM to go all the way (unless by some miracle they play the wife’s Bearcats). But if they lose, it’s needs to be as painful as possible.

I’m in the can’t lose scenario. :).