THE POWER RANK

Les Miles and college football rankings after week 4, 2016

By Leave a Comment

ncaaf2016_w5Careful what you wish for.

LSU fired Les Miles on Sunday. The Mad Hatter won 10 games a year in college football’s toughest division during his tenure as coach. The law of large numbers thinks that’s an impressive result.

Sure, LSU started 2-2 this season. Yes, the offense has looked awful, not just this year but even in 2011 in which LSU made the BCS title game.

But good coaches don’t grow on trees, and there’s no guarantee LSU will find a new coach that can keep the program at it’s current level.

Georgia fired Mark Richt last year, a coach that won 145 games in 15 years. The Bulldogs are struggling this year. They are 43rd in my most recent rankings after a 45-14 beat down at Ole Miss.

Richt landed on his feet at Miami, his alma mater. The Hurricanes destroyed a good Appalachian State team on the road this year and have risen to 9th in my current rankings.

And what about Tennessee? The program still hasn’t recovered after firing national title winning coach Phil Fulmer in 2008.

Careful what you wish for.

To see the full college football rankings after 4 weeks of college football, click here.

Tyrann Mathieu wins the September, 2011 Heisman Trophy

By 3 Comments

Mathieu, or Matthew
Tyrann blows up plays, scores points
No brainer, Heisman

If the season ended today, Tyrann Mathieu should win the Heisman Trophy for most outstanding college football player. Mathieu, pronounced “Matthew” if you believe the cultured commentators on ESPN and ABC, plays cornerback and special teams for LSU. At a pint sized 5-9, 185 pounds, he has a propensity for making game changing plays. Against West Virginia this week, he forced two turnovers in the first half, including a play in which he tipped a pass, caught it and ran back to the West Virginia one yard line. Two plays later, LSU punched the ball in for a touchdown to take a 27-7 lead into halftime, effectively killing any hopes of a close game. LSU won 47-20 on the road in Morgantown. During the first week of the season against Oregon, Mathieu stormed down the field on a LSU punt, striped the Oregon returner of the ball, scooped up the ball after a single bounce on the turf, and ran in for a touchdown. The play gave LSU a 9-6 lead and started the Oregon turnover fest that led to a 40-27 LSU win. His knack for creating turnovers doesn’t seem to be an aberration, as Mathieu was a part of 10 turnovers last year as a freshman. Moreover, he starts at cornerback on an LSU defense that many consider one of the nation’s best.

Mathieu’s play resembles that of Lakers guard Derek Fisher, a player whose strips and turnovers changes games. Of course, these hard nosed plays don’t get much attention next to Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal. At LSU, Mathieu gets overshadowed by mammoth defensive linemen and the even bigger personality of LSU coach Les Miles. But make no mistake, Mathieu has been the most outstanding college football player this year. Want to vote for Landry Jones of Oklahoma for the Heisman? He has a 5-4 touchdown to interception ratio. How about Stanford’s Andrew Luck? Against San Jose State (108), Duke (86) and Arizona (62), he’s completing 67% of his passes, less than the 70.7% from last year. Well, Luck is still a strong candidate, but Mathieu is making plays against Oregon (3), Mississippi State (25) and West Virginia (35). Kellen Moore? No one one in the east or south is voting for a quarterback from Boise State. Voters tend to cling to the numbers that quarterbacks and running backs produce, statistics that are largely dependent on strength of schedule. We’ll have a lot to say later this season about how statistics depend on schedule. But it also helps to watch the games. Tyrann Mathieu has been the most outstanding player in college football this September, but he will have to score 3 touchdowns in a 21-19 win at Alabama later this season to even enter the Heisman discussion.

With their win over West Virginia, LSU remains at 4th in The Power Rank. The algorithm tends to penalize teams that do not score a lot of points, as margin of victory matters. However, LSU has plenty of opportunities to beat highly ranked teams like Alabama and move up. The Tigers look particularly scary with a competent quarterback in Jarrett Lee. Late in the second quarter against West Virginia, LSU faked a run on 3rd and short, and Lee threw a pass towards Odell Beckham. While Beckham had to jump to make the catch, Lee’s pass was accurate enough that Beckham never broke stride and beat the West Virginia defense to endzone. Lee’s zero interceptions in this game must seem remarkable to a fan base that saw him throw 16 interceptions in 2008. In general this season, LSU has enjoyed large turnover margins against Oregon (4-1) and West Virginia (4-0). Perhaps we should revise our thoughts about Les Miles and his lucky ways?

1. Boise State. Boise State led Tulsa 34-0 in the middle of the third quarter when they pulled quarterback Kellen Moore. The won 41-21 but left room to wonder whether the margin of victory could have been larger. In the end, it doesn’t matter this week, as our rolling one year window of games dropped a win against Oregon State last year. While this win was solid against last year’s Oregon State team, the Beavers are having a terrible season, losing to Sacramento State at home, going 0-3 and dropping to 67th in The Power Rank. Boise State remains on top.

2. Alabama. With the help of both a special teams and a defensive touchdown, Alabama rolled over Arkansas 38-14. Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron threw for 10.0 yards per pass attempt with 20 attempts, and the Tide had zero turnovers. This ability to take care of the ball seems characteristic of Nick Saban’s teams, as Alabama has always ended the year with a positive turnover margin since Saban took over in 2007 according to College Football Stats.

3. Oregon. The Duck’s road game against Arizona provided a chance to compare Oregon with Stanford, who beat Arizona 37-10 last week in Tuscon. Oregon won 56-31, and the 25 point margin of victory is very similar to the 27 point margin of Stanford. However, Oregon’s offense scored more points while Stanford’s defense held Arizona to fewer points. Oregon accumulated 8.8 yards per rush attempt for 415 total rushing yards against Arizona.

4. LSU. Urban Meyer joined the ABC crew late in the game against West Virginia. They reminded him about the miracle fake field goal attempt that Les Miles called against Meyer’s Florida team last year. Watch how the ball just bounces right into the kickers hands, one of the huge reasons we asked last year whether Les Miles has sold his soul.

5. Oklahoma. The Sooners avenged last year’s loss to Missouri with a 38-28 win in Norman. However, Oklahoma didn’t come close to covering the 20 point spread. The defense allowed Missouri quarterback James Franklin to throw for 8.8 yards per attempt while running back Henry Josey racked up 9.5 yards per carry, including a 48 yard touchdown run. This wasn’t the performance of a national championship team, and The Power Rank rightly places Oklahoma at 5th.

6. Stanford. Take a week off and drop 3 places? For these early season rankings, we’re using a one year window of games and counting this year’s games twice. This system dropped a definitive 37-14 Stanford win over 21st ranked Notre Dame from the games used in the rankings. However, in rankings that only consider this year’s games, Stanford is 2nd behind Alabama. The Cardinal must wait awhile before getting any top ranked competition, as they face UCLA (90), Colorado (73) and Washington State (74) over the next 3 weeks.

7. Wisconsin. Despite the weak competition against UNLV (110), Oregon State (67) and Northern Illinois (52), Wisconsin has moved from a 15.4 rating at the start of the season to 18.4. This rating is inflated a bit since the ranking considers Oregon State and Northern Illinois games from last year when these two teams were much better. However, we’ll find out more about Wisconsin when Nebraska visits Madison this weekend. Bet against quarterback Russell Wilson throwing for 12.5 yards per pass attempt against Nebraska.

8. Oklahoma State. In one of the strangest plays ever, stellar Oklahoma State receiver Justin Blackmon just dropped the ball a yard from the endzone. Oklahoma State led 24-20 at this point in the 3rd quarter and luckily didn’t need this score to prevail 30-29 against Texas A&M. In our preview, we noted that Texas A&M held Oklahoma State to only 6.8 yards per pass attempt last year in Stillwater. This year, Brandon Weeden threw for 438 yards but still only managed to get 7.3 yards per attempt. However, it wasn’t enough in this close game.

9. Auburn. Are the Tigers still in the top ten? Rankings are never perfect, and Auburn remains in the top ten based on last year’s games in the moving one year window of games. For rankings with only this year’s games, Auburn is 44th with a 3.78 rating.

10. TCU. The jury is still out on this TCU team. In the last two weeks, they have beat up on Louisiana Monroe and Portland State. Louisiana Monroe did take a 17-14 lead in the 1st quarter before the Horned Frogs steam rolled them 38-14. In rankings with only this year’s games, TCU is 26th, which is not an unreasonable guess at where this team will end the season.

Oregon’s Darron Thomas could have been LSU’s quarterback

By 2 Comments

Les Miles, charming
Could use a good quarterback
A few words swing game

Darron Thomas was going to LSU. He was a quarterback, not the athlete that most people see in a tall, black teenager playing football, and he was going to play football at the school of his mother’s wishes. To seal the deal, the quarterback and his high school coach Bob Jones went to Baton Rouge for a visit in November, 2007. Jones mentioned to LSU coach Les Miles not to call Darron an athlete, some simple advice to a college head coach whose success depends on charming teenagers into playing for him. Of course, one of the first things Miles says to the recruit is “Darron, you’re a great athlete. You can do a lot of different things.” Thomas changed his mind and want to Oregon.

This story, as told by Austin Murphy in Sports Illustrated last fall, will almost certainly impact the game between Oregon and LSU this weekend. Let’s look at how The Power Rank compares these two teams over the last 6 years. Using the scores of all games played in Division I each year, the algorithm assigns each team a rating that estimates its strength compared to the average bowl subdivision team. LSU’s rating of 15.6 last year means they would have an average margin of victory of 15.6 against an average team.
A graphic of Oregon and LSU.
Les Miles has fielded a consistently strong team at LSU, with 2008 as their only down year. The 2007 Tigers, who won the National Championship despite two losses, wasn’t even the best team over this period. Despite the strength of LSU over the last two years, one can always wonder how much better they might have been with a competent quarterback. Even if starting quarterback Jordan Jefferson hadn’t been suspended for Saturday’s game for allegedly kicking someone in a bar fight, let’s not forget how he struggled last year. When Darron Thomas took over the starting quarterback job last year, Oregon became a much better team. Of course, Thomas doesn’t get all the credit, as the offense clearly made huge strides in coach Chip Kelly’s second year. But the athletic quarterback did throw for 363 yards in last year’s National Championship game loss to Auburn. He would have been a huge upgrade for LSU.

College Football Rankings, Week 6

By 6 Comments

Let’s look at a coaching resume. The coach has been with his present team for the last five years, producing win totals of 11, 11, 12, 8 and 9. Even without a ten win season the last two years, this team finished a very respectable 25th and 11th in the Power Rank. With a 6-0 start to the current season, the coach has won 56 of 71 games, a 72 percent winning percentage. In addition, he has one conference and one BCS national championship to his resume. While the lone conference championship seems paltry, it’s only because a team from this conference has won the national championship 4 of these 5 years. So how can a fan base possibly want to fire this coach?

The coach is Les Miles of Louisiana State (LSU), a team in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). People give two reasons for wanting him fired. The first is poor clock management. The final 30 seconds of last weekend’s game against Tennessee provides a perfect example; this video show how only a Tennessee penalty for too many men on the field saved LSU from an ugly loss. It’s tough to make a decision on a coach when he’s dealing with 18 to 22 year old kids, particularly when practice time is limited in the name of “getting an education.” So let’s consider the second reason people can’t stand Miles: luck. In the year of his national championship, the top two teams in the BCS standings both lost the last weekend of the season, opening up a spot for a two loss LSU team in the national championship game.  But the best example of Lucky Les comes from this Saturday’s game at Florida. With about a minute left and down 29-26, LSU faced a 4th and 2 at the Florida 35. LSU ran a fake field goal play in which the holder flipped the football over his head to a streaking kicker. The football bounced off the turf and right into the hands of the kicker. The bounce was so perfect that the kicker never broke stride and scurried the two yards for a first down. With a less perfect bounce, the Gators would have easily stuffed the play. In the remaining time, LSU marched down the field and scored a touchdown to win the game.

Two weeks, two “lucky” wins for LSU and Les Miles. It’s pretty easy to think he has signed a pact with the devil, as multiple people have suggested over the last week. Here at the Power Rank, we have a different perspective. Let’s assume Les Miles had no control over the two extra Tennessee players or the exact trajectory of the flipped football. These two lucky plays were random, so they could have happened in any game at any time. Suppose Miles gets 10 breaks over the last five years. If these 10 breaks are random, their distribution in time might look like this.

Fooled by Randomness
To the human eye, it doesn’t look random, especially since the two points furthest to the right are almost on top of each other. But these numbers are random, produced by the same piece of computer code used in my statistical physics research. Each of these ten points had the same likelihood of landing anywhere along that line. The human eye sees patterns in randomness.

So make your own decision on the Miles brand of clock management. But when it comes to luck, remember that streaks of good fortune can result from randomness. In the most recent college football rankings, LSU comes in at 21st, a respectable position but certainly not where one expects the SEC champion. There is a lot of football left to be played, a lot of luck yet undetermined.

1. Nebraska (4-0) 31.38. Thursday’ game at Kansas State was the most exciting second half blow out ever. When Nebraska got the ball, it was only a matter of time before they ripped off another long play for a touchdown. Gotta love the DVR; fast forward through Kansas State possession, watch Nebraska explode. With this decisive road win, the Cornhuskers deservedly take the number one spot. Isn’t this more fun than the AP poll?

15. Stanford (4-1) 15.15. The Cardinal faithful were sweating at the prospect of losing to USC because of a mixed extra point. USC took a late one point lead because of the earlier gaffe. But in the remaining minute, Stanford marched right down the field and kicked a game winning field goal. However, they still drop in the Power Rank for letting a weak team hang around. Told you these rankings weren’t fixed.

17. San Diego St. (2-2) 14.51. The Aztecs lost a close game on the road to BYU and continue to hold on to their high ranking. Is this a team that might give conference powers Utah and TCU a run for their money? If they can pull out a win against Air Force at home this week, it might be time to start believing.

20. Utah (5-0) 13.44. If I had more time, I would tell you the last time a non BCS school went on the road to a BCS school and scored 68 points. That’s not a typo: 68. After a slow start, Utah blew away Iowa State on the road. For their fine efforts, they dropped one spot in the AP rankings because of LSU’s last minute heroics. This week might be the first and last time I mention the AP poll.

Top 25:
1. Nebraska, 4-0, 31.38
2. Oregon, 5-0, 29.94
3. TCU, 4-0, 25.91
4. Boise St., 5-0, 25.14
5. Nevada, 5-0, 24.23
6. Virginia Tech, 4-1, 21.27
7. Ohio St., 6-0, 21.20
8. South Carolina, 3-1, 18.31
9. Alabama, 5-1, 18.08
10. Oklahoma, 5-0, 16.93
11. Florida St., 4-1, 16.53
12. Missouri, 4-0, 15.84
13. Oregon St., 3-2, 15.48
14. Auburn, 6-0, 15.35
15. Stanford, 4-1, 15.15
16. Arizona St., 1-3, 15.02
17. San Diego St., 2-2, 14.51
18. California, 2-2, 13.74
19. Air Force, 4-1, 13.69
20. Utah, 5-0, 13.44
21. LSU, 6-0, 13.17
22. Iowa, 3-1, 12.49
23. Miami (FL), 3-2, 12.44
24. Arizona, 3-1, 12.31
25. Arkansas, 3-1, 12.16