it's not just PI, any kind of facemask/horsecollar/targeting/unnecessary roughness around midfield (on either the kick return or lateral type of play) would give ND a FG try. kneeling on the XP probably still correct but i don't think it's as slam dunk as everyone is saying, probably does not even make it in the top 5 worst decisions Ryan Day made yesterday.

Gentlemen gentlemen neither Michigan nor Washington has played anyone at all. Why fight about who’s cupcake schedule had more frosting?

4th and 1 and the run the offsides play and then call a TO is infuriatingly dumb. and ofc its made worse by the play after the TO being a handoff on a WR sweep that its easily stuffed.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯



enough hasn't been said itt about what Penn St. did to Iowa last night

28 first downs to 4

Iowa 1/9 on third down conversions

PSU 4/4 on fourth down conversions

Iowa 76 total yds

PSU 45:27 TOP

there's a very real chance that the pride of this season's B1G resides in Happy Valley and not Columbus (or Ann Arbor)

FG52 subscribes to SRM's newsletter i see

these takes are some of the worst SE forum takes of all-time

In the immortal catchphrase of some sunglasses at night hack

I keep receipts

The TCU win was pretty good although I suspect that’ll get diluted to a mediocre accomplishment by the end of the season. Other than that colorado has done nothing impressive. Corn sucks, they tried hard to lose to CSU and then yesterday

They’re gonna get butt****ed back to reality the rest of the way and finish with at least 6 losses and people will be like BETTER THAN 1-11! COACH OF THE DECADE

GB, for my money, is one of the top cfb posters on 2+2. he has wisdom in much of what he says

interestingly, ESPN's CFB Efficiencies rankings line up w what he's trying to get across. that current top 10:

1 - Washington
2 - Oklahoma
3 - Oregon
4 - Texas
5 - Ohio St
6 - Miami
7 - Penn St
8 - Michigan
9 - FSU
10 - USC

There is also a very real chance that Brian Ferentz knows less about football than a kid playing his first game of PeeWee and that Iowa has less talent on offense than West Des Moines Middle School.

The good news is we get to find out on October 21 and November 11.

Doesn't Ferentz have a clause requiring him to average 25 PPG?

Washington is -21 at Arizona
Michigan is -18.5 at Nebraska

S&P Has Michigan 1.6 points better than Washington, but S&P has Arizona 2.6 points better than Nebraska

Do this across every team, every week and then build a model that backs out vegas lines, and you'll see that Vegas has Washington better than Michigan

You'll also see that they have Ohio State as = to Michigan (which you can see more obviously from literally being able to bet the OSU/Michigan line right now)

You'll also see that (this one doesn't really make sense to me) USC is also rated ahead of Michigan. i.e. USC is -25.5 at Colorado, i.e. the team that already beat the living daylights out of Nebraska.


Georgia, Washington and somehow USC have also played weak schedules, but they're actually better than Michigan and would be favored on a neutral field against them.

Ohio State is equal to Michigan and has played a substantially tougher schedule

Then there are the 10 or so teams listed earlier that would be dogs to Michigan on a neutral field, but still have much, much better resumes


Washington scheduled a P5 road game. Michigan scheduled the little sisters of the poor. It's not Washington's fault that Sparty sucks, and Washington gets to make up for it anyway by playing the toughest conference in the country, while Michigan has 9 consecutive pillow fights to warm up for their two games that actually matter.

For years, people discredited the Boise States and Utahs and TCUs of the world when they played these schedules with 2 tough games and 9 absolute creampuffs, and kept them out of the playoff even when they went undefeated.

Penn State possibly being the best team in the B1G isn't a revelation to most people. All preseason, the B1G East has been billed as the big 3 in Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State. If you were somebody who was skeptical of Penn State, then yeah it may be surprising. But most people projected the B1G East to be settled by the games involving the big 3.

Yeah I mean people get it, all of us would probably come up with different rankings. But in history of rankings it’s not really the way it works. They started with Michigan at 2 and are not going to drop them to 8 or something simply because they haven’t been running up the scores

people are primarily getting annoyed on the constant hissy fit thrown Michigan’s way.

1) Rankings don’t matter…at all
2) Michigan has left themselves no room to mess up, thus they are facing real consequences of easy schedule

R-E-L-A-X

Michigan is averaging over 30 points per game and it's defense has given up 3, 7, 6, and 7 points in the 4 games so far. I think we are going a little overboard on them here.

And on topic of Michigan scheduling, the next several years have teams such as Texas and Oklahoma on there

In 2021 they had Washington. In prior two non Covid years they played a home and home with Notre Dame. Before that, Florida

So let’s stop acting like it’s a decade long strategy of always scheduling cream puffs. It’s a two year hiatus of sorts.

This could be due to many reasons, perhaps AD demanded three home games for max revenue. It also takes two to tango, scheduling is tough. Perhaps they couldn’t find a willing partner. Maybe the turned down a home and home with a team like West Virginia and just took max home games.

Regardless, it seems like we can knock it the fook off with the narrative

PSU schedules home and home with somewhat mediocre P5 opponents such as WVU and Syracuse

Looks like Michigan only does so with premium OOC such as Notre Dame, Texas, and Oklahoma. And if they can’t get it, take the three home games

At any rate, it seems like it’s about money and prestige, not about being a cowardly lion or whatever

Jacknodding.gif

Nobody is saying Michigan is a joke or that they're not a top-25 team or something.

It's just my personal continued frustration with the dumb people that run college football consistently doing completely incoherent things.

It is literally impossible to come up with any sort of justification or framework where Michigan is ranked ahead of Ohio State, for example.

Ohio State has a better resume by a huge order of magnitude. Ohio State has better recruiting rankings. And, Vegas rates the teams as equal. How can you possibly have Michigan ranked higher? It's just so weird.

Washington is currently a point or two better than Michigan, or maybe roughly even, though I wouldn't expect casualfan.jpg idiots to know that, although I suspect Michigan will improve a lot by the end of the season. It's why what they're doing is smart, because nobody is punishing them for it. If they'd played Utah or Notre Dame, they probably would've lost and been ranked ~15th, and would've gained nothing by winning. But ranking OHIO STATE behind Michigan at this point in the season is just batshit insane.

And whatever you think Michigan did to impress against Rutgers, Penn State did that and more against Iowa, a vastly superior opponent. On top of that, they've gone and won two extra P5 games against ~50th is ranked teams by solid margins, one of which was a road game. Michigan instead was beating sub-100 teams.

I am sure the committee will get this directionally better than the idiot pollsters as usual, so I am not really worried about it. But to everybody saying "it's week 4 who cares, the games will sort themselves out" - maybe? Inertia is a real thing. If Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State all go 1-1 and Michigan finishes ranked ahead of either and/or within sniffing distance of the playoffs, it will be the biggest joke since TCU and Baylor got left out for Ohio State.

I get what you are saying but what happens in those games between the three B1G East opponents will ultimately dictate where they end up ranked, not what's happened so far so for that reason I don't really think it matters what the rankings are this week.

Plus, you're right that we know most of the voters are idiots with egos. It doesn't matter to them that Vegas would make team Y over Team X a favorite if the pollster has already decided Team X is better in their minds. They want to be able to control the narrative.

The B1G situation is extremely clear cut, particularly with regards to PSU and Michigan. They both need to win the B1G with at most one loss. If they do they are in, if they don’t they basically don’t have a shot. It’s easy.

Not worth worrying about.

By remembering the score the last two times Michigan played Ohio State.

Efficiency is an annoying stat that penalizes misfortune. If you drive 99 yards in 9 plays and fumble into the endzone, it says you are very inefficient.

Depends on your reference point as always. How about opening with the eventual #1 and current #1?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_M..._team#Schedule

Yeah Michigan has a history of scheduling big games OOC. These two years have been the exception for whatever reason, scheduling is complex.

Next four years they are doing home and homes with Texas and Oklahoma.

nsis

(1) yes data over a small sample size (like a single drive) will tell you less than data over a large sample size (UM has had 38 drives so far this season, throwing out the kneel down at the end of BGSU)

(2) this is football. obv red zone efficiency matters ... a ton

want to give a shout out to our local guys UNLV who have looked somewhat competent so far under new HC Barry Odom. 3-1 SU and (equally important) 4-0 ATS!