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TWIF Notes 12-11-23

Welcome Back! The Army-Navy Game was everything it promised to be! The atmosphere and pageantry of this game is like no other, and the game more than lived up to its billing. Let's get to the recap! FBS vs FBS Games Army  edged  Navy  17-11 in yet another exciting matchup between these 2. The Black Knights seemed firmly in control with a 17-3 lead, but Navy scored a TD (with a missed 2-pt conversion) with 2:47 left to pull within 17-9, and had a chance to tie the game late, but their 4th down attempt from inside the 5 fell short, and Army took over with 2 seconds left, and gave the Midshipmen a meaningless safety on the last play of the game. Army finishes 6-6 (with 2 FCS wins) while Navy tumbles to 5-7, their 4th losing season in a row. With only 1 game this past week, I thought it might be fun, or at least interesting, to revisit my preseason conference narratives. Here is what I had to say about each conference.  MAC Chances to make the playoff : Slim to none. Any...

Odds and Ends 12-7-23

Welcome Back! As I mentioned in my TWIF Notes, now that the regular season is over, I will start to scale back my posts, and will use them to give year-end analysis to the season. Today, I will cover how the conferences did against each other. Inter-conference results  This is how each conference did in non-conference games: Vs. P5 + Notre Dame 1) Pac 12 7-5 .583 2) Big 12 6-6 .500 3) ACC 12-13 .480 4) SEC 7-9 .473 5) Big Ten 6-8 .429 6) Independents 6-12 .333 7) Sun Belt 4-14 .222 T8) Mountain West 4-17 .190 T8) MAC 4-17 .190 10) CUSA 1-10 .091 11) AAC 1-20 .048 Vs. G5 1) Big Ten 20-1 .952 2) Pac 12 14-1 .933 3) SEC 24-2 .923 4) ACC 14-4 .778 5) Big 12 13-6 .684 6) Sun Belt 16-8 .667 7) Mountain West 9-6 .600 8) CUSA 9-9 .500 9) AAC 10-11 .476 10) MAC 6-9 .400 11) Independents 7-12 .368 Vs. FBS 1) Pac 12 21-6 .778 2) Big Ten 26-9 .743 3) SEC 31-11 .738 4) Big 12 19-12 .613 5) ACC 26-17 .605 6) Sun Belt 20-22 .476 7) Mountain West 13-23 .361 8) Independents 13-24 .351 9) CUSA 10-19...

TWIF Notes 12-4-23

Welcome Back! This week and next will be slightly different, as with the season all but completed, I will spend most of the time reviewing the season, and how my predictions played out. Speaking of predictions, I was a dismal 3-7 (30%) in my picks for the championship games. It seems that when I picked an upset, the favorite won, and when I picked the favorite, that was when we had an upset. Oh well. For the year I am still a respectable 652-215, finishing the season (pre-bowls) at 75.2%! There will be no Power Rankings tomorrow, as I will wait until after the Army-Navy game on Saturday to update those. To see my pick for that game, check out my picks from last Thursday's blog. Over the next couple of weeks, I will give final results from the regular season on how each conference did in their OOC games, review my preseason picks, and compare those predictions to the major preview magazines to see how I did. By the way, I was right on 2 of my preseason CFP picks (Michigan and Alabam...

The CFP Committee's Conundrum

Welcome Back! The College Football Playoff Committee is tasked with picking the 4 best teams for the College Football Playoff. But what exactly does that mean? Does it mean choosing the 4 teams with the best record, regardless of who they beat or lost to? Which matters more, who you beat, or who you lost to? Does it matter when those victories/losses happen? Is a loss at the end of the season worth more than one early in the season? Is a victory late, worth more than one early? Let's explore what's at stake here. The scenario the CFP Committee is presented with today is almost as bad as the one I presented about a month ago in one of my Odds and Ends blogs, and updated every week since. I think we can all agree that there are 6 teams that are worthy of the 4 spots: Michigan, Washington, FSU, Texas, Alabama, and Georgia. Their worthiness depends a lot on where you stand on the questions I posed in the 1st paragraph. If we begin with the assumption that wins matter more than anyt...