Alabama is, no doubt, a legit team. They're undefeated, have looked good getting there, and have played a real schedule (#26 in the country in SOS).
But other teams at the top right now haven't played anybody. Literally. These teams are paper tigers that could very easily drop games against decent competition, or willd fall in the BCS Rankings as the computers become part of the equation. (Humans just think they know if teams are good, and seem to disregard SOS a ton) Maybe some of them are as good as advertised and they haven't had the chance to really show it yet (which is their own fault for scheduling Podunk U by the way), or maybe they're just False Prophets predicting their own success by beating Fake State and Directional U.
When we look at the top 25 in the Coaches' poll, a few of these Paper Tigers become glaringly obvious:
#2 Ohio State. Ohio State has played the 99th most difficult schedule according to Sagarin. They're 5-0 sure, and they have a good coach and some good players and Pryor looks like he can actually play QB. But they look good against a relatively weak schedule. They played Miami, a decent squad, and then they played....Marshall. Ohio. Eastern Michigan. Illinois. And the Illini, a Zooker team, actually hung around a while. Is OSU bad? No. Are they #2? I don't know.
#5 TCU. One of the biggest offenders/pretenders out there to date has to be TCU. 5-0 against the #78 SOS, they've played one decent game against #24 Oregon State. Then? Tennesee Tech, Baylor, Southern Methodist, Colorado State. How do you get to be #5 by beating 1 team? Cuz the rest don't count.
# 7 Nebraska. These guys are the worst fakers to date. 4-0 against the 134th (!!!!!!!) most difficult schedule in the country. Nebraska has just IMPRESSED the voters with convincing wins over such stalwarts as WESTERN Kentucky, Idaho (YOUdaho!), Washington, and S. Dakato State. So that's a directional in Kentucky, a team from Idaho, a Washington team with barely a heartbeat, and a Dakota? #7 fuh sho!
#10 Utah. If the Utes were a bit higher, they'd take the cake from TCU. I put extra weight on TCU bc they've climbed into the Top 5 having played nada. But Utah is only 'better' because they're just 'less fake', coming in at #10. They've played the 137th (!!!!) most difficult SOS to date. They beat a pretender in Pitt early in the year, and got a ton of credit. Turns out Pitt is nothing special, and then Utah beat UNLV, New Mexico, San Jose State. WOW! So impressed with these guys. Gotta be top 10. Lord.
#17 Michigan State. MSU is looking good at 5-0 and #17, but MSU hasn't played much either. ND and Wisconsin are by far the toughest games on the resume, and it took overtime and a ballsy call that got kinda lucky to beat a middling ND squad. MSU has played the 135th (!!!!!!) most difficult schedule, beating a gauntlet of Western Michigan, Florida Atlantic and N. Colorado. And Wisconsin is looking like a bit of a paper tiger itself, with their 114th ranked SOS. So that's not all that impressive at this point either.
#20 Wisconsin, #21 Nevada, #22 OK St., and #24 Mizzou are also playing really weak competition to date, but we leave them off as they haven't really gotten pushed up that far not having cracked the Top 20.
The point? It's way too early to declare that these teams are legitimate. Maybe they'll finish as Top 10 teams. Maybe they'll start dropping like flies once they play someone that doesn't look like a JV Middle School squad. I don't know. The BCS comes out this weekend, and that will start the real race for the MNC. Some of these teams don't deserve to be where they are. Half of the Top 20 are suspect at this point, and we need more information before we can get to a more firm conclusion.
ND could be much closer to a Top tier team by the end of the season - if ND had played the 130th most difficult schedule thus far rather than the 8th, I'm guessing we'd be 5-0 or 4-1 and we'd be getting hyped as a Top 15 squad. Which would be just as meaningless.
But, true. Let's see these teams earn it.
By TLNDMA October 6, 2010 - 10:20 pm
You won’t see this logic on ESPN.
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By tjak October 7, 2010 - 2:02 pm
Using this logic would be an admission that college football is a farce, without a true play-off system
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By StewVee October 7, 2010 - 7:23 am
You forgot UMich, who’s had close games w/ every team they’ve played except for powerhouse Bowling Green.
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By the biscuit October 7, 2010 - 9:51 am
Thought about UM, but I arbitrarily picked SOS’s that are 70+ and UM came in just under that…plus, they haven’t risen all that high in the rankings due to the complete lack of defense.
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By Danno27 October 7, 2010 - 7:25 am
Great piece, so true. So I’m curious – when you say they’ve played the 137th (or 135th, or whatevs) most difficult schedule, do you mean their entire season schedules or just their schedules till now? b/c MSU has played a couple of decent teams, right? I mean, that can’t have been the 135th most difficult schedule to this date, right?
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By the biscuit October 7, 2010 - 9:49 am
According to Sagarin, yes it is, thus far. And the reason is that those decent teams are ND (2-3) and Wisconsin (who has looked ok, but hasn’t played anyone either). Sagarin’s not perfect, but I think its fair to use his SOS directionally at least (top 25 is top tier, 100+ means you’ve not played much).
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By Danno27 October 7, 2010 - 10:54 am
Wow that’s surprising – thanks. Makes sense now that I look back at Wisconsin’s schedule thus far. For some reason I thought they had played somebody good, but their only blowout is against something called austin peay, whatever the hell that is.
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By DeepTeaKup October 7, 2010 - 9:02 am
Just for fun Biscuit, if you had a vote, what would your top 25 look like?
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By the biscuit October 7, 2010 - 9:45 am
Was starting that last night as a result of this. I still think the 1st poll shouldn’t be out til next week but gonna take a shot.
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By DeepTeaKup October 7, 2010 - 11:07 am
I tend to agree that polls are useless until about 6-8 weeks into the season. I think including a poll of your own is a key part of this “paper tiger” argument.
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By The Biscuit October 7, 2010 - 12:44 pm
it’s impossible to keep all teams that are playing weak-ass schedules out of the top 25, but i think there should be some kind of logic outside of ‘well, we know Ohio State is good bc we know it’. I’ll whip one up just for you DTK. And I’ll bump UM down a bit just for sucking.
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By canuck75 October 7, 2010 - 9:56 am
Good points. Where I disagree is about MSU and ND. MSU was clearly better than Wisconsin, and we were a bit better than MSU. Thus, I think it is MSU who is about right and we could be around 20 in the woulda shoulda rankings.
On second thought, TCU earns some benefit of the doubt from last year.
Finally, it is now in our interests for Utah to win until we play them, and we might get that elusive win over a top 10 team!
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By the biscuit October 7, 2010 - 10:17 am
I understand the logic, but I am trying to (and tend to) take an approach that’s much less around what I think and much more around Record+SOS.
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By Trey October 8, 2010 - 4:02 pm
Imo the big prob here are preseason rankings & the idiot media who get into the ‘omgomgomg i might be wrong, but cant show it’ mindset. Once youre in a certain ranking spot, it’s nearly impossible to drop that team out until they lose. It’s stupid & we need a playoff
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By The Biscuit October 8, 2010 - 7:18 pm
I see them as two separate problems. I would like a 4-team playoff (Top 4 in BCS standings at the end of the year, 1v4, 2v3 then winners play). But I would want polls to start after game 5 has been played by some large majority (90%+) of teams. I’d take just that step w/o a playoff though – that would help. But, it would hurt the hype.
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