GoldenBlogs Top 25 - Week 4
by ragnarok on Sep 23, 2008 8:58 AM PDT
in California Golden Bears Football
Email
PrintI honestly didn't change my ballot very much this week; more movement from Yellow Fever and CBKWit caused a lot of these 1- and 2-point moves. After 4 weeks of play, we're starting to get a clearer picture of how good some of these teams are, so wild swings should be less and less common. Only 3 teams move more than 4 spots this week, and only 2 teams move more than 6.
In any case, here's our (preliminary) ballot for Week 4:
| 1 | Southern Cal |
-- |
| 2 | Oklahoma | -- |
| 3 | Florida | -- |
| 4 | Georgia | -- |
| 5 | LSU |  1 |
| 6 | Missouri |  1 |
| 7 | Texas | -- |
| 8 | Wisconsin | -- |
The top 8 stay the same this week, with the only movement being LSU and Missouri changing places. LSU moves up after escaping Auburn, while Georgia can't gain ground after a solid cross-country beating of Arizona State? Well, it probably has more to do with the teams above them. Missouri probably got dinged for letting Buffalo (the college team!) hang around for a while, whilst Florida looked dominant in embarrassing a Tennessee team that, frankly, doesn't need much help embarrassing itself right now. At this point in the poll, it's all about style points right now, and this early in the year, it doesn't really matter much anyway.
| 9 | Texas Tech | 4 |
| 10 | Penn State | 1 |
| 11 | Brigham Young | 3 |
| 12 | Alabama | -- |
| 13 | South Florida | 3 |
| 14 | Auburn | 4 |
| 15 | Kansas | 2 |
| 16 | Ohio State | 1 |
| 17 | Wake Forest | 3 |
| 18 | Illinois | 1 |
Lots of shuffling, but no real significant movement. A couple teams dropped out from the top of this range (more on them in a second), so everyone else pretty much gets to move up a couple. Yes, Auburn gets to move up a few after losing at home to LSU; no shame in falling to the other SEC West Tigers. I'm still not a huge fan of their offense, but their defense is better than I gave them credit for last week. As for Penn State and Ohio State dropping? I couldn't say. Troy's a good Sun Belt team, but they're also the sort of team that past Buckeye squads would have put away early. But Penn State was never challenged by Temple, so I don't know why Texas Tech's beating of a I-AA squad (UMass) would move them above the Nittany Lions. Don't ask me, I just work here.
Finally, for those of you despairing about how terrible the Pac-10 is right now, take heart; the ACC is still worse. At least the Pac-10 has one good team. Wake Forest staged a field goal kicking contest at Florida State last Saturday, and it was not pretty. Remember when this was supposed to be a power conference? I say the Mountain West should get their automatic bid this year.
| 19 | Utah | 2 |
| 20 | Boise State | 6 |
| 21 | Vanderbilt | 4 |
| 22 | East Carolina | 11 |
| 23 | TCU | 1 |
| 24 | Clemson | 2 |
| 25 | Fresno State | 2 |
OK, how many of these teams do you think will still be ranked at the end of the season? Two? One? Any of them at all? This far down, we're dealing with suspect résumés here, and the imposters will be found out sooner rather than later.
Oh, East Carolina, how quickly your BCS bubble burst! As meteoric as their upset rise was, the Pirates came crashing down to Earth at NC State, a team, I might remind you, that had yet to score a touchdown vs. a I-A opponent this year. It also hurts that West Virginia really does not look very good, and Virginia Tech doesn't yet look like a Top 25 team. I still say ECU is a Top 25 team, but just barely.
Oklahoma State did nothing to warrant falling off our ballot; it's just how the points worked out this week. Oregon, on the other hand...well, we gave them the benefit of the doubt last week, crediting them with a gutty win on the road (albeit against suspect competition) and giving in to Duck assurances that their QB situation was completely under control, and would be just fine. Well, they nearly managed to come back against Boise State with their 5th-string quarterback, so there's something, but I honestly felt like Boise tried to give them the game back and failed. Oregon may yet be a Top 25 team again before the season is through, but right now, you'll have to forgive me if I remain skeptical.
24 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Siiiigh...
…for two weeks, we’ll be sitting pretty =)
(Although watching Tennessee sink beneath the waves is almost as good as being ranked.)
If you combined the ACC and Big East, you might get one legit football conference. But then, they tried that when they nicked Va Tech, Miami and BC and look how well that turned out. If Cal played in the ACC we’d be booking rooms at the Orange Bowl already (Maryland notwithstanding).
No kidding
After we beat Ole Miss, I called that GameDay will be coming to Nashville for the game against Auburn. Still seems like it might happen as the only other interesting game is Ohio St. vs. Wisconsin that weekend. Of course, that’s the weekend I’ll have come home to watch the Cal vs. ASU game. Some luck.
SEC, ugghhh
Weak nonconference schedule.
Tennessee’s embarassing loss.
Surprisingly unimpressive offenses for Florida and LSU.
And you guys still have 3 SEC teams in the Top 5.
I was countin’ on ya’ to correct the entrenched Southeast bias with a little Western bias. How ’bout showing a little love to Missouri (offense is simply unstoppable) and BYU (has been just dominating BCS conferences)?
I'd like to have done that
But BYU barely slipped by Jake Locker and Missouri hasn’t beaten anyone outside of Illinois either.
I'm still wondering why the Nets didn't draft Leon Powe.
by yellow fever on Sep 23, 2008 11:35 AM PDT up reply actions
Florida has beaten Miami and dominated Rocky Top (TN’s not a great team, but still).
Georgia struggled against a bad South Carolina team but did go into the desert and beat ASU.
LSU might have figured out their offense (probably not), and they did go on the road to win Auburn. Although Les Miles scares the crap out of me.
All of these wins are more impressive than anything Mizzou and MormonNation have contributed.
by BearsNecessity on Sep 23, 2008 2:30 PM PDT up reply actions
Mizzu ranked too high...
Mizzu will lose, they always do. They are kind of like the Bears, anytime they get ranked really high, the lose a game they have no business losing. Mark my words, they will finish the season ranked no higher than 15.
BYU...
will also lose. They have no business being in the top 25. I’m still enraged at UCLA for playing such a pathetic game against them. BYU will get smashed by the Air Force when they play.
You better hope they don't
That makes the Pac-10 look even worse.
by BearsNecessity on Sep 24, 2008 1:31 AM PDT up reply actions
Maybe I missed it...
But is there a page where you initially explained what these rankings were intended to show?
I see lots of different rankings, like the quantitative methods designed to measure achievement up to this point, which fairly describes most computer ranking systems, and then the human pollsters, who seem to start the season predicting the finish and slowly through the season blend in the respective achievements. What I’m asking then is are you casting your ballots on the impression that at the end of the season Vanderbilt will be 21st in the country? Or are you casting your ballots based on the impression that up until now, Vanderbilt has accomplished more than all but 20 other teams? And so on through the rankings…
So basically...
You’re asking if these are “predicted finish” polls or “power polls.” I’m pretty sure the three voters on this site, Rags, Yellow, and CBKWit have been treating this poll as a power poll.
www.californiagoldenblogs.com
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was asking. Thanks for the clarification.
At least in my mind, the opinions of college football pollsters are a little too opaque. I think that fan comprehension would benefit from a clear recitation of the criteria upon which pollsters vote, either at the beginning of the year or after the first weekend’s games. Then again, argumentation might be the goal, in which case everything appears to be going fabulously.
Separate question: In order to minimize the effect of pre-season expectations, anyone else think ‘official’ polls shouldn’t be released until the games of the first weekend in October?
Separate question: In order to minimize the effect of pre-season expectations, anyone else think ‘official’ polls shouldn’t be released until the games of the first weekend in October?
Yes. The Harris Poll (used in the BCS standings) actually does this, but no one actually pays attention to the Harris Poll. The AP and Coaches poll, however? Not gonna happen. I mean, in a world where ESPN releases a preseason top 25 the week after the previous seasons’ bowl games are finished, getting the AP poll to hold off until 2 weeks before the season starts is a monumental feat in itself.
So, basically, you gotta Go Bears!
This is actually an interesting topic...
…that deserves more time than I’m going to devote in one comment. I’ll go into more depth for next week’s ballot.
Now, I don’t know what YF and CBKWit use as their criteria, but for my own part, I try to come up with something that ‘looks’ reasonable. I suppose you could call it a Power Poll, though I certainly use résumé elements in ranking the teams. I suppose it’s more a snapshot of how the college football landscape looks now, as opposed to an end-of-the-season prediction, though obviously I’m ranking teams that I think are good, and therefore I expect that many of them will be in our final poll as well.
So, Vanderbilt? I’ll admit, I’ve only seen them play once this year, vs. South Carolina, and I saw only parts of that game while in a bar, so I don’t have the clearest impression of how good they are. I certainly am not very confident about much of the bottom half of this ballot. Admittedly, they’re going to have a tough time in the SEC, but I think I’d like Vandy’s chances to finish near the top of, say, the ACC or the Big East. Résumé-wise, they’re certainly among the more impressive teams out there. Finally, in a who-would-beat-whom challenge, I think they’d probably split against a schedule consisting of Utah, Boise State, East Carolina, and TCU, so while I certainly would argue if you wanted to put them a few spots higher or a few spots lower, but #21 seems about right to me.
So, basically, you gotta Go Bears!
Thanks for the illuminating response.
I asked about Vanderbilt because they were the most recent, unusual inclusion in this week’s poll. A better topic would’ve related to Auburn or Kansas though, due to their 1 loss.
I don’t have a better method than the one you describe, so don’t take this as second guessing, but I wonder whether the W-L record ought not to be seen as the first tiebreaker. There are obvious problems to only ranking teams based on their W-L record, most notably that doing so would’ve put Hawaii at #1 last year when they might not have been even worthy of a #21 ranking. Still, at least as far as BCS conference teams are concerned, where there’s a bit of "quality control" in their schedule, it seems plausible to argue that an undefeated team ought to be ranked above any defeated teams until that fact changes. Not because I believe a Vanderbilt is better than an OSU, KU, or Auburn (though that one will be settled on the field), but simply because at this point, they have accomplished more.
I do agree that you’re right to compare SOS as it were, looking at whether an above average team in the SEC or Big XII with perhaps 1 more loss might not actually be significantly better than a team from the ACC or Big East, assuming that the ACC/Big E. teams earned their loss in conference and not at the hands of, say, Florida or USC.
I look forward to reading your thoughts about this topic next week after Cal hopefully rights the ship in impressive fashion.
Regarding Won-Loss records
I tend not to put too much stock into straight won-loss records, as the quality of competition can vary to a large degree even amongst teams from the same conference. While a 10-win team is almost always better than a 6-win team, it would be foolish to not even look at who those wins (and losses) have come against.
I’ll tend to put more stock into a team’s won-loss record vs. quality competition. A 3-loss team with all three losses against top 10 competition, and with several wins over top 25 teams to boot, probably has a better argument than a team with only one loss that hasn’t played anyone significant at all. Undefeated teams can pose more of a problem, as Hawai’i certainly demonstrated last year; good teams often do play down to their opponents, and until Georgia exposed them in the Sugar Bowl, it was hard to compare them to a major conference team with a major conference schedule. You’re right, in that one can usually give credit to undefeated major conference teams, although I’ll stand by my belief that Kansas was never a top-10 team last year.
Regarding losses in general, you’ll notice a number of teams with a loss on our poll: Auburn, Kansas, Ohio State, Illinois, East Carolina, Clemson, and Fresno State. In general, I subscribe to the theory of a quality loss, in that a team can look good even in defeat, if the loss was close and the competition was good. Each of the teams listed lost to another team higher up on our poll, with the exception of East Carolina, which had two wins better than anyone else had at this point in the season.
A fine example of a quality loss is Kansas, whose only loss was at South Florida by virtue of a last-second field goal. To me, after watching that game, I came away convinced that Kansas and South Florida were roughly as good as each other, and that South Florida won the game had more to do with luck than with any discernible difference in skill. Thus, Kansas right behind South Florida. Now, how good is South Florida? I don’t really know. If they turn out to be a bust, Kansas will drop along with them. If, however, they turn out to be a top 5 team, I won’t hesitate to move Kansas up along with them, unless, of course, Kansas turns out to be a bust.
Ohio State is also a curious exception, as they’re the only team on this list to have gotten blown out so far this season. They’ve beaten teams that we know aren’t that good, and they lost to a much better USC team, which gives us a lot of room to work with. You could rank them anywhere from 9th to not at all and I would have trouble coming up with a convincing argument against you. At some point, when making a Top 25 ballot, you have to use your judgment and do a fair amount of guesswork, knowing that, in some instances, you’re going to be wrong.
So, basically, you gotta Go Bears!
by ragnarok on Sep 24, 2008 1:28 PM PDT up reply actions 5 recs
This comment is long. It thus deserves to be rec’d.
by BearsNecessity on Sep 24, 2008 3:50 PM PDT up reply actions
I can't find much to disagree with at all
It thus deserves to be rec’d.
The quality loss is not something you have to spend much time explaining to me. I don’t think there’s a better example than the 2004 USC vs. Cal game.
Likewise the number of games against a quality opponent ought to count for something significant. When the games occur also matters. The 2004 USC game is again a perfect example. Cal benefited from the strong performance against a great team on the road, but more importantly had 7 additional games to make up any ground they lost in the polls as a result of their loss. While quality wins are always impressive, losses are (deservedly) less damaging earlier in the year. And this brings me to my sole point of disagreement.
Winning consistently should be rewarded. I’m not sure a three loss team should ever be ranked ahead of a one loss team if they’re both from a BCS conference. I say this even if the conditions you specify apply and you assume a quality loss in each instance. Few teams, if any, play three top 10 opponents in the first few games and late losses, even to quality opponents, do not show the type of improvement characteristic of the best teams. This ought not disqualify them from a ranking, just place them behind a one loss team. Of course, if your hypothetical one loss team is from the Mountain West, WAC, or, MAC, or if it’s two losses instead of three, then we’re in business.
On the whole though, I find your logic clear and cogent.
thanks
Concerning my hypothetical one-loss team, I was assuming a WAC or a MAC team. Most any BCS conference team is going to have a pretty decent strength of schedule, to the point where one-loss teams should outrank three-loss teams in almost every case.
I do agree that playing at a consistently high level should be rewarded. I don’t think very highly of teams that look like world-beaters one week, then lay an egg the next. I also like to see improvement as the season goes on. All of these are factors I use in ranking, and as the weeks go on and we see more data points, I’d like to think our ballot will get more logical and less haphazard.
So, basically, you gotta Go Bears!
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
GoldenBlogs' FAQ and Community Guidelines
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recommended FanPosts
Recent FanPosts
About Us
• About the Golden Bloggers
• Our previous site @ Blogsome
• Avinash @ Bears Necessity
• Best of the Golden Blogs
• Golden Blogs Interviews
• HydroTech's Cal Football Analyses
• Ron Fimrite's Anatomy Of A Miracle
• CGB Weekly Guides
• GoldenBlogs' Community Guidelines
• GoldenBlogs' FAQ
• CGB GIF Army
Learn More About The California Golden Blogs Clothing Store
Pac-12 On SBN
Pacific Takes (Pac-12) NORTH AddictedToQuack: (Oregon)
UW Dawg Pound: (Washington)
CougCenter: (Washington State)
BuildingTheDam: (Oregon State)
Rule Of Tree: (Stanford)
CaliforniaGoldenBlogs: (Cal)
SOUTH
BruinsNation: (UCLA)
ConquestChronicles: (USC)
HouseOfSparky: (ASU)
Arizona Desert Swarm: (Arizona)
TheRalphieReport: (Colorado)
Block U: (Utah)
Golden Bears Football Schedule
| Fresno St. | Sat 09/03 | W 36 - 21 |
@
Colorado
|
Sat 09/10 | W 36 - 33 |
| Presbyterian | Sat 09/17 | W 63 - 12 |
|
@
Washington
|
Sat 09/24 | L 23 - 31 |
|
@
Oregon
|
Thu 10/06 | L 15 - 43 |
|
USC
|
Thu 10/13 | L 9 - 30 |
|
Utah
|
Sat 10/22 | W 34 - 10 |
|
@
UCLA
|
Sat 10/29 | L 14 - 31 |
|
Washington St.
|
Sat 11/05 | W 30 - 7 |
|
Oregon St.
|
Sat 11/12 | W 23 - 6 |
|
@
Stanford
|
Sat 11/19 | L 28 - 31 |
|
@
Arizona St.
|
Fri 11/25 | W 47 - 38 |
|
@
Texas
|
Wed 12/28 | L 10 - 21 |
Pacific-12 Conference Standings
(updated 1.2.2012 at 11:12 PM PST)
| North | Conf | Overall | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W | L | W | L | |
|
Oregon Ducks
|
8 | 1 | 12 | 2 |
|
Stanford Cardinal
|
8 | 1 | 11 | 2 |
|
Washington Huskies
|
5 | 4 | 7 | 6 |
|
California Golden Bears
|
4 | 5 | 7 | 6 |
|
Oregon St. Beavers
|
3 | 6 | 3 | 9 |
|
Washington St. Cougars
|
2 | 7 | 4 | 8 |
| South | Conf | Overall | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W | L | W | L | |
|
USC Trojans
|
7 | 2 | 10 | 2 |
|
UCLA Bruins
|
5 | 4 | 6 | 8 |
|
Utah Utes
|
4 | 5 | 8 | 5 |
|
Arizona St. Sun Devils
|
4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|
Arizona Wildcats
|
2 | 7 | 4 | 8 |
|
Colorado Buffaloes
|
2 | 7 | 3 | 10 |
Certain photos copyright © 2012 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
