Thursday Thoughts - Braindroppings

Today, we want to jump all over the landscape and ask a ton of questions, point out a ton of interesting thoughts, and...well, if George Carlin were still around, he'd call these "Braindroppings"! So, here goes!

What makes a team a dynasty? Three titles in a row, like Hawthorn just achieved in the AFL? Does five in fifteen years count, like the NBA's San Antonio Spurs? What about the Patriots, who've won four and been to seven Super Bowls in the Belechick/Brady era (about fourteen years)? Certainly the 1950s-60s Boston Celtics count - they're the very definition of a dynasty! Eight in a row, eleven in thirteen years...but which of those is more important? Is winning over a long period of time, even if you missed a couple in between, "better" than the string over three or four years? What do you think?

Concussion protocols...without question, better than it's been in previous years, when you could convince your coach you were good to go play even when the other team seems to have twice as many players as they legally should have. But please, footy, football, every other kind of real contact sport - don't assume the problem's fixed! The iffy nature of concussions to begin with makes dealing with them nebulous in the best of times, and as we learn more and more about how much time it actually takes to recover from the hit, we have to change how we deal with it. Opinion?

Specials... which is what many coaches call "trick plays". Washington pulled a good one last night, a double pass which scored their first touchdown and led to an upset of USC in LA. SC State had a great one that I first saw the Rams pull on Seattle last year, where you have a punt returner fake like he's getting the punt, when in reality it's the guy on the opposite sideline who's catching the ball and (in last night's game) scoring a touchdown on the runback! (Bethune-Cookman won anyway, however, in a game which may have decided the MEAC.) So, the question that bugs some people is this - are "specials" basically cheating? If you can't win playing "correctly" (or "like men", if you want to really get machismo on this), you have to "resort to trick plays" to try to "cheat" your way to victory! My response - first of all, the plays are legal, so it's not cheating. Second of all, it's the brain versus brawn argument, and football has room for both. If you're okay with a team using the forward pass to win, which many in the early days of the AAFC and NFL weren't for the same reason (c'mon! Be a man and run at me!), you really can't complain about the double pass, or any other "trickeration", as our idol Chris Petersen would say. Petersen, of course, was the one who called the double pass that beat USC last night, and famously brought the house down in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl with a host of trick plays at the end of the game to pull out the Boise State victory over vaunted Oklahoma. What most people forget is that, until a great OU drive and a brainfade interception, Boise had OU soundly beaten (28-10, late in the third) with old-fashioned, hard-nosed, "my linemen are better than yours" football. You've gotta have the guys who can pull it off, too. Your thoughts?

Speaking of Boise v Oklahoma, the perpetual argument over whether a school from outside the Power Five conferences should ever play for a national championship rages, and will continue to until one gets in and then wins the tournament. The CFP folks threw the Group of Five conferences a nice bone by guaranteeing their best team a spot in the high-paying bowl games in the New Year's Six, which is more than they've had. But what if (to choose a team besides Boise, our personal favorite!) Temple or Toledo, both of whom look spectacular this year, goes undefeated in 2015, looks phenomenal in doing so, and two of the power conferences fail to produce any team the committee feels is worthy of a playoff bid? Who's to say that an undefeated Temple isn't a better choice than, say, a three-loss Florida State? What would be wrong with that? Think back to that 2007 Fiesta Bowl, which some say was the best game of all time (as much as I love Boise St, I'd go with USC/Texas in the BCS title game the year Vince Young won it for the Longhorns). Utah had been the first "mid-major" to qualify for a big bowl, but they played a five-loss Pitt team from a pathetic Big East, won, and proved nothing. Boise was the first mid-major to play in the spotlight against a top ten team - and not just any, but 7-time national champion Oklahoma, Big 12 champs, one loss, Adrian Peterson at RB. Somehow the screwed up rankings had BSU #7 and OU #9, but the Sooners were absurd betting favorites - David and Goliath was referenced multiple times in the intro. BSU dominated the game, and if it weren't for a Bronco punt coverage mistake late in the 3rd, Oklahoma was ready to give up. In fact, over the span of games that mid-major teams played in BCS bowl games, their record was 5-2. (And one of those losses was to another mid-major, when they pitted TCU and BSU against each other the year they both qualified. The other was Hawaii's debacle loss to Georgia, proving there's an exception to every rule.) Why can't a Boise St, a Houston, a Memphis, a Toledo, a Temple, a Navy, a Northern Illinois play for the title?

Bodybag games...New Mexico State is getting about a million dollars towards balancing its athletic budget ($4.4 M over, last year) to go to the University of Mississippi and be a forty-three point underdog to a top-notch SEC team. Basically, they're being paid to be the Washington Generals. Remember the Generals? The Globetrotters' perpetual opponents? Name anything about them besides that. Thought so... Ole Miss wants a week off from the gauntlet of the SEC, wants to fill their stadium, give their fans a "guaranteed win" (as LSU will tell you about Jacksonville St, "no such thing"!), and is giving about a one-seventh share of the profits to the opponent for the privilege of being beaten badly. Some teams are notorious for needing these games to stay afloat - Following Football's favorite team, the MEAC's punching bag Savannah State, played Oklahoma St and Florida St in consecutive weeks two years ago, lost the first one 88-0, and would've lost the second to the national champs by worse if they hadn't gone to a running clock in the second half to finish early and avoid a storm coming in. Up here in the Northwest, I always pity the Idaho Vandals, who moved to the big-time because Boise St did, but in little Moscow, Idaho, they don't have the fan base or the resources to afford the lifestyle of an FBS football program. So instead of being the top-notch FCS program they were for decades, rivals with the Montanas of the realm, they're stuck as a bottom-feeder in the lowly Sun Belt conference, taking two payday games a year (this year at USC and Auburn) to financially survive another one-win season. Where's the shame in moving to FCS before your entire program disbands (see UAB)? Why don't schools like NMSU, Idaho, and several others improve both their bottom line AND their competitive results and return to the FCS where their school setting suggests they should be anyway? Your thoughts?

Thursday Thoughts on the FCS Football landscape!

As our oldest son is now in residence at an FCS university (in Pocatello, Idaho, thank you very much!), plus we have a college degree with a rival school from the same conference (in Sacramento, CA), and family ties with a THIRD school in the same conference (in Missoula, Montana), we have a particular fondness for the Division 1-AA "championship subdivision " level of sports, football in particular, and of course that affection radiates from the northwestern sector of the United States, Big Sky country, home of multiple national champions Montana and Eastern Washington, former home of Boise State University (which has since moved on to conquer larger kettles of fish), and the University of Idaho (well, you can't win them all...).

So, without delving into conference and overall records as we did with the FBS last week - simply because we frankly don't know enough about many of the programs except what we read in the box scores - we're game for doing a little more forecasting this week in the twelve FCS conferences: eight who compete for a national championship in a 24-team playoff (hence the name "FCS"); two conferences of erudite Eastern schools who simply have BETTER things to do on a Saturday afternoon in December than watching sweaty men hurl spheroids down a chalk-lined parkway field; and two conferences of historically black colleges (not MY name - they refer to THEMSELVES as "HBCs"!) who choose to playoff against each other instead.

So, in only a vague sense of order of ranking, strongest down...here we go!

MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE: 1. North Dakota St . 2. Illinois St. 3. Northern Iowa, South Dakota St, and Youngstown St. 6. Indiana St. 7. Southern Illinois and Western Illinois. 9. Missouri St. 10. South Dakota. 

BIG SKY CONFERENCE: 1. Eastern Washington. 2. Montana St. 3. Montana. 4. Idaho St. 5. Cal Poly SLO and Northern Arizona. 7. Sacramento St. 8. Southern Utah and Weber St. 10-13. Portland St, North Dakota, UC Davis, and Northern Colorado.

COLONIAL ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION: 1. New Hampshire / Villanova. 3. James Madison. 4. Richmond. 5. William and Mary. 6. Stony Brook. 7. Albany. 8. Maine. 9. Delaware. 10. Towson. 11. Elon. 12. Rhode Island. 

SOUTHLAND CONFERENCE: 1. Sam Houston St. 2. Stephen F Austin. 3. SE Louisiana. 4. Central Arkansas. 5-8. McNeese St, Northwestern St, Abilene Christian, and Lamar. 9. Incarnate Word. 10. Nicholls St. 11. Houston Baptist.

BIG SOUTH CONFERENCE: 1. Coastal Carolina. 2. Liberty. 3. Charleston Southern. 4. Presbyterian. 5. Monmouth. 6. Gardner-Webb. 7. Kennesaw St (in its first year playing football!).

OHIO VALLEY CONFERENCE: 1. Jacksonville St, 2. Eastern Illinois and Eastern Kentucky. 4. UT-Martin. 5. SE Missouri St. 6. Tennessee St and Tennessee Tech. 8. Murray St. 9. Austin Peay.

SOUTHERN CONFERENCE: 1. Chattanooga. 2. Wofford. 3. Samford. 4. Western Carolina 5. The Citadel. 6. Furman. 7. Mercer. 8. VMI. 9. East Tennessee St. (in its first year playing football!)

NORTHEASTERN CONFERENCE: 1. St. Francis-PA / Bryant (winner gets the playoff bid). 3-5. Wagner, Sacred Heart, and Duquesne. 6. Central Connecticut. 7. Robert Morris. 

PIONEER FOOTBALL LEAGUE: 1. Jacksonville. 2. San Diego. 3. Dayton. 4. Drake. 5-8. Marist, Campbell, Morehead St and Stetson. 9. Valparaiso. 10. Butler. 11. Davidson.

The 24 underlined teams are projected to receive bids to the FCS national championship tournament, which has eight teams passing through to the second round with byes. Those eight top-seeded teams are anyone's guess, but here's ours: North Dakota St, Illinois St,  Northern Iowa, Eastern Washington, Montana, Sam Houston St, Coastal Carolina, and the winner of the New Hampshire/Villanova clash. The three bottom conferences will get their champions in only, and here's hoping that for the first time in its three year history, the Pioneer League champ will be able to participate without infraction penalties preventing it!

There are also four other conferences in Division 1-AA: two comprised of elite prep universities in the northeast which choose not to spend December playing football during finals, and two comprised of "Historically Black Colleges" (HBCs), which have their own arrangement with NBC and ESPN for the Grambling/Southern game and the new "Celebration Bowl" title game matching the two league champs. Here are projections for these four leagues:

IVY LEAGUE: 1. Harvard (again!). 2. Dartmouth. 3. Yale. 4-6. Brown, Princeton, and Penn. 7. Cornell. 8. Columbia.

PATRIOT LEAGUE:  1. Fordham. 2. Lafayette. 3. Colgate. 4. Bucknell. 5. Holy Cross. 6. Lehigh. 7. Georgetown. 

SWAC EAST: 1 Alcorn St. 2. Alabama St. 3. Alabama A&M. 4. Mississippi Valley St. 5. Jackson St. 
SWAC WEST: 1. Southern. 2. Grambling St. 3. Prairie View A&M. 4-5. Texas Southern and Arkansas Pine Bluff. (Alcorn St over Southern for the title.)

MEAC: 1. North Carolina A&T / South Carolina St. 3. Morgan St. 4. NC Central. 5. Bethune-Cookman. 6-8. Hampton, Howard, and Norfolk St. 9. Florida A&M, home of the biggest band scandal since Stanford! 10. Delaware St. 11. Our favorite team in the world, good ol' Savannah St, who takes on Florida St and Oklahoma for the paycheck and the 88-0 routs. 

Here's our predictions for the rest of the FBS conferences!

Having just posted our predictions for the Power Five conferences (the ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, Pac-12, and SEC), it's time to take a look at the other five conferences in the Bowl Subdivision - the American, Conference USA, the MAC, the Mountain West, and the Sun Belt Conference. Here we go!

The American Athletic Conference (formerly the Big East):
*Six teams will vie for the title, so the champ may have two or even three conf losses!
*In the West, Memphis looks the class, although Houston will host them on Nov 14 and could steal the division with a win there.
*Navy's joined a conference for the first time in their 135 years of football! Looking at 3rd...
*Tulane should beat Tulsa at home and lock up 4th, while SMU will be better than last year, even if it doesn't get them out of the basement.
*In the East, it's easier to start at the bottom: UConn 6th, and South Florida 5th.
*All four of the others should thrash each other into a 5-3 logjam! We'll wager on East Carolina 1st, Central Florida 2nd, and Cincinnati 3rd with Temple in 4th. But who knows?
*Given that, we'll take Memphis to win the title game.

Conference USA:
*The winner of the Marshall at Western Kentucky game wins the division and the title.
*As of this moment? We'll lean on the revenge factor and pick the Thundering Herd.
*Middle Tennessee heads a distant pack behind them in the East.
*Pencil in Old Dominion, FIU, FAU, and newcomer UNC-Charlotte in the 4/5/6/7 spots.
*Nobody in the West can punch with WKU or Marshall, but Louisiana Tech should get the chance.
*If not, it'll be Rice - they've developed a good system there.
*UTEP should be able to rise to third, and then it depends on some ball bounces: 
*We're thinking Southern Miss rises to 4th, North Texas 5th, and UTSA falls back to sixth.

Mid-American Conference (the MAC):
*They've marketed a marginal conference well - the Tuesday and Wednesday night games on ESPN, the "#MACtion" tweets, and all the exciting play from clever coaches. 
*The power division here is the West, where by throwing their names in a hat I came up with:
*Northern Illinois winning the division (most experience winning).
*Toledo 2nd, Western Michigan fighting a tough schedule for third, and Ball St in 4th.
*Central Michigan is an easy 5th place pick, because the top 4 are significantly better, and...
*Eastern Michigan is conceivably the worst team in football, at least this year in the FBS.
*In the East, Bowling Green is the class of the division (though they'll lose the title game).
*Only Terry Bowden's Akron has a shot to dethrone them, with Frank Solich's Ohio team in third. 
*Four bad teams round out the MAC-East: U-Mass (bad), Buffalo (bad), Kent St (really bad), and Miami of Ohio (so bad Miami-FL makes them distinguish that they are not the same school). 

Mountain West conference:
* This year, it should be Boise State and the eleven dwarves, but that remains to be proven. 
*Boise's rating numbers are so far above everyone else's that they should be 8-0 in conference, with only a tough out-of-conf schedule to manage. If they goes 3-1 there, they should be playing in a major bowl again. 
*Utah St figures to give them the best battle, although they've hit some rocky stretches here.
*CSU, Air Force, Wyoming, and New Mexico round out the Mountain division, in that order.
*In the West, six mediocre teams fight for the division title, with San Diego St looking like the best candidate for the job,
*Nevada's coming up on the rail for 2nd, and Fresno St's struggling this off-season. 
*San Jose may still be 4th, but not for lack of trying. Meanwhile, Hawaii will put some wins on the home field, and UNLV won't.

Sun Belt Conference:
*I know - this should've been in yellow...but Appalachian St and Georgia Southern are the 1-2 teams here...Only the two of them, plus maybe 3rd place Arkansas St and maybe 4th place Louisiana Lafayette would have a chance to win even one game in any other conference. Even the MAC or Conf-USA!
*Texas State is the best of the rest, and should be able to pull off a .500 or better record in league.
*After that, it's turtles all the way down. 
*Depending on how South Alabama takes to its 10-15 new players who were with UAB last year before their one year hiatus, they could be as high as sixth (maybe fifth?). Or UL-Monroe will slide from 7th up to 6th...
*Below that are four of the five Bottom Five teams to start the season (most likely): Troy in 8th; New Mexica St (9th), Idaho (10th), and Georgia State (11th).

So, to recap - the Bottom Five would be Troy,  NMSU, the Vandals, Georgia State, and Eastern Michigan, along with their intern, newbie Charlotte from the C-USA. (If we're counting Army as a non-Power conference team, then the Cadets from West Point will be in that Bottom mix as well.) Boise State should repeat as the Power of Five rep in the New Year's Six bowl games, and the conference champs will include Appalachian State, Northern Illinois, Marshall, and Memphis.

Givin' a little love to the Broncos...

While we cover football on a national international level here at Following Football, we're really just a very small contingent based in Idaho, USA - and when you talk football in Idaho, you have to start with the Little Engine that Could, the Boise State Broncos college football team. From its roots as Boise Junior College in the 30s through the early 60s, through the BSC years in Division II, and then as a university moving into what was then called "Division 1-AA" (where they won a national title in 1980), and finally moving up into Division 1A in the lowly Big West, then to the WAC, and finally (so far) into the Mountain West conference...Boise State's football program has been amazingly and consistently successful at every level. 

For most non-potato-bred fans, their familiarity with the Boys on the Blue starts with arguably the Best College Football game of the Century (at least it's in the conversation) - the 43-42 "upset" of Oklahoma in their first Fiesta Bowl appearance on New Year's Day, 2007. (We say "upset" because most folks fail to remember that while OU was a huge betting favorite, Boise was undefeated and actually two spots ahead of the 10-2 Sooners in the polls.) Watch the game again - Boise actually dominated the game, controlling the line of scrimmage on offense AND defense, and led 28-10 in the third quarter, looking to put away the disgruntled Sooners with ease...when they muffed a punt return, giving OU the ball for a short field, a quick TD, and the game was on. From there, re-invigorated, Oklahoma kisked a FG to bring themselves within eight at the start of the fourth quarter, and scored a TD with less than two minutes to play, followed by the wackiest set of two-point attempts you'll ever see (they succeeded - called back on OU penalty; they failed - called back on a BSU penalty; they succeeded the third time to tie at 28-28).

Then the fun began.

Given the ball with 1:06 to go, Boise QB Jared Zabransky immediately threw a pick-six and "lost" the game, 35-28. The narrative became, "The plucky little team held fast against the big bad seven-time national champs all game long, but eventually it was just too much for them." And then, first-year coach Chris Petersen started in on his bag of tricks. (Until then, he'd not needed them - as I said, they'd been winning 'conventionally' all game long.) Facing fourth and eighteen at midfield, down to under twenty seconds to play, they called the "hook-and-ladder" play: Zabransky to Drisan James, who tossed it to Jerard Rabb running full speed the other way and barely made it into the corner of the end zone for the tying TD.

Still not over. Tie game: Overtime.

Oklahoma's Adrian Peterson (great college running back - wonder whatever happened to him?) sliced through the exhausted Bronco defense like warm butter. Uh-0h, thought coach Petersen. We can't keep going like this. So when the Broncos scored their touchdown (on a halfback pass on fourth down, of course...), Petersen went for two and the chance to win or lose right there. One play, for the Fiesta Bowl championship.

The Statue of Liberty.

Famously, receiver Legadu Naanee, standing on the sideline when the play was called, immediately said, "We just won the game." The combination of the audacity of the call, as Pat Forde puts it, and the upset victory itself drove the stadium (and the country) into pandemonium...ratcheted up one more notch a few minutes later when, during an interview on national TV following his game winning two-point scamper, running back Ian Johnson proposed to his cheerleader girlfriend and shocked the poor interviewer. I love Johnson's casual explanation for the timing: "There's no better time than on national TV after the game-winning two-point conversion."

After that game, the Bronco legend took on steam. They went 12-1 and 11-1 in back to back seasons without returning to the BCS (but while watching Hawaii go and fail completely), until they returned in 2010, as the first team to "earn" a berth from an 'inferior' conference (rather than get the automatic non-power conference bid for being top 12)...only to play the OTHER non-power conference team, TCU (at the time, still a Mountain West member, while BSU played in the WAC), and win 17-10. 

As you'll read in this article from long-time ESPN Bronco writer Andrea Anderson, that Fiesta Bowl legacy is what drew many of the current players to Boise State. It's a heritage that they're eager to live up to. Personally, although Arizona will be higher ranked and essentially playing at home, although this 11-2 Bronco team objectively isn't as good as the previous BCS teams they've sent, I won't bet against the Boys from the Blue. The Wildcats probably don't realize what this game means to Boise St. They'll think of it as a home game.

A home-away-from-home game. 

What is a rivalry?

A rivalry is NOT someone you compete against every season.
It is NOT just proximity.
It is NOT hatred, enmity, or animosity.
It is NOT sharing a conference, a city, or a state.

What a rivalry IS...is a pair of teams who can literally "throw out the records" whenever they play.

Consider the games today: Ohio St v Michigan, which was 17-22 points in the Buckeyes' favored column...way too much for a rivalry game. Currently 28-21 OSU, back and forth all game long....Kentucky v Louisville, in which UL was favored by 9-14, but which was at 28-26 in the fourth last check....Georgia Tech v Georgia, where underdog GT leads 21-17 with under three to go...and apparently the two teams brought into the Pac-12 together, Utah v Colorado, where the Utes should have won rather easily but the Buffaloes lead by two in the third quarter. Watching the Civil War tonight (Oregon v Oregon St) or the most fascinating intersectional rivalry in football, Notre Dame v USC, or either of the SEC  matchups: Mississippi St/Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl (games w names usually are trying to be rivalries!) and the Iron Bowl which cannot top last year's everevereverever, Auburn v Alabama.

There are certainly other examples: Arizona/Arizona St (42-35 yesterday), Stanford/Cal, UCLA/USC, Harvard/Yale, Florida St/Miami-Fl, and you can probably name many of your own. Sometimes they arise from personality meshes: in the NFL, New England v Indianapolis were big rivals because they were both top of the division teams, but more because they had Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, the two great quarterbacks of their generation.

And sometimes, rivalries are manufactured - rarely successfully, but once in a while... For example, Nebraska entering the Big Ten, they're playing new teams up and down their schedule, and so there are several teams who might serve as a rival for them. But, watching the wild game against Iowa yesterday (which went to overtime before UN won 37-34), they may have found a rival after all!

Sometimes, rivalries can die, too: it used to be that Boise St v Idaho was one of the great unsung rivalries in the nation, through there D2 days, then the Big Sky days, then they move up into the Big West together in the FBS, and finally into the WAC....but as the Broncos continued to improve, winning conference championships left and right, the Vandals sputtered to losing seasons, fell out of conferences altogether for a year before scrambling back into the low-level Sun Belt and a 1-10 season again this year. When Boise won its tenth or twelfth straight over U of I, it became clear that the critical element of "any given day" was long gone. And therefore, so was the rivalry. There were still sports where the two teams are rivals, but not in football.

Looking at the new FOLLOWING FOOTBALL tier rankings...

...our Top 4 are Alabama, Mississippi St, Florida St, and Oregon. As we noted Saturday, we're not likely to punish a team for losing by the amount expected (the Vegas spread was seven; they lost by five), especially on the road against another Tier A school. Sure, we'll move the Tide above them, but was the Seminoles' performance against an unranked, Tier G Miami squad more impressive? No. Certainly, we're much less impressed with TCU's debacle at Kansas than anything the Bulldogs did in Tuscaloosa. If you thought they'd lose at Alabama, and they do, no worse than expected - how can you punish that? To us, this is a classic case of the loss being more impressive than TCU's win.

...We made some adjustments based on some external rankings this week, in particular Peter Wolfe and Jeff Sagarin's work, but also looking through the Massey Index we linked to last week as well. If there were virtual ties within a tier, for example, we'd often turn to those sources for a second opinion (sorting out the middle of the ACC North, for example), but on a few occasions a consensus of opinions different from ours made us re-evaluate our rankings. The most blatant example was Western Kentucky, whom we had within three tiers of the bottom all year but whom every list we consulted had up in the 80's or so. Given their recent body of work (they're up to .500 now) and those opinions, we concurred and moved them up to tier O, number 88 on your radio dial...

...Looking at the list with conferences attached (yes, that's what the lower case letters after the overall record are!), a fairly clear pattern emerges: The SEC gets the benefit of the doubt if there's an extra loss on the record, particularly the West, over the closely regarded Pac-12, Big-12, and Big-10. The ACC is probably not quite as well regarded, or schools like Duke would be higher. Then there's a bit of a gap, because it takes about a two-game better record for a school from the Mountain West or the old Big East, the AAC, to match a school from one of the Power 5. (#37 is Maryland at 6-4; #38 is Boise St at 8-2.) Then, you drop down to the MAC, Conference USA, and the Sun Belt, all of whom lie essentially in a second division as it is (and the MW/AAC are fighting to stay above that). That's why Marshall sits in #25 with a 10-0 record: the schools in that "division" can't run with the "big boys" because they can't play the big boys. Rankings are determined first and foremost by one simple question: if these two teams played on a neutral field, who would win? The winner is ranked higher, the loser lower. Marshall's beaten everyone it's played...but would it beat any of the 24 teams above it? Arizona? Duke? Notre Dame? Oklahoma? It might even be generous to say that they'd beat the teams immediately below it...Utah? Clemson? Louisville? Miami-FL? We'd love to see them against West Virginia, given their proximity! 

...In fact, here's an interesting tidbit: The "strength of schedule" parameter for FCS defending champion North Dakota St is actually HIGHER than that of FBS Marshall! It's hard to argue that they're playing opponents that are comparable to what even Florida St is facing, much less the SEC!

...These tiers make for some strange bedfellows! Seeing Texas moving all the way up to #40, right below...East Carolina? And finding 6-4 Nevada at #59, right between North Carolina St (6-5) and North Carolina (5-5)! 

...Towards the bottom, in our attempt to keep our six-team tiers consistent (for a change, right?), we ended up with a "Bottom Two" - Georgia St and SMU. Despite the Mustangs' winless record, Georgia St is rated below them in many of the computer systems we looked through. Nevertheless, only a true #128 could lose the game Saturday the way they lost it - giving up a near-legendary twenty-one play drive over the course of the last six minutes of the game, including three fourth down conversions with the game on the line, and letting the opponent you've held scoreless for 3 1/2 quarters score the touchdown they had to score in the last six seconds to win. Amazing. (Admittedly, Idaho is close, though - losing to Tier T Troy, at home, by 17 points, when they'd been favored going in. That's impressive.)

Week 9 - the Basement Tiers (P through U, not that "P-U" is implied...)

Here are the lowest six tiers for Week 9, our "bottom 37", if you will...

Tier P: Colorado (2-7), Indiana (3-5), Ohio (4-5), Purdue (3-6), South Florida (3-6), and Alabama-Birmingham (5-4).

Tier Q: Buffalo (3-5), Florida International (3-6), Iowa St (2-6), South Alabama (5-3), Vanderbilt (3-6), and Wake Forest (2-6).

Tier R: Four-win Akron, three-win Appalachian St, Ball St, and Southern Miss, and two-win Army and Kansas.

Tier S is the other grouping with seven teams this week, including the following two and three win teams from the Group of Five conferences: Hawaii, New Mexico, Old Dominion, Tulane, UNLV, UTSA, and Western Kentucky.

The "Bottom Twelve" begins with Tier T, which features the following familiar names: Eastern Michigan (2-7), Miami of Ohio (2-8), North Texas (2-6), Tulsa (1-7), U Conn (2-6), and U Mass (2-7).

And finally, the "Bottom Six" (aka Tier U), the same six as last week: Georgia St (1-8), Idaho (1-7), Kent St (1-7), New Mexico St (2-7, but wins against other Bottom Six teams), Troy (1-8), and the only winless team in the Football Bowl Subdivision, SMU (0-7).

Here's the definition of a BOTTOM SIX team!

The Idaho Vandals, down 37-28 to Arkansas St (at home, mind you) with seven minutes to go in the game, has the ball on their own 25, first and ten, with a chance to make a drive and a statement. Here's their drive chart for this pivotal drive:

1st and 10 on the 25: False start, five yard penalty.
1st and 15 on the 20: Offensive holding, ten yard penalty, replay first down.
1st and 25 on the 10: Offensive holding (again), half the distance, replay first down.
1st and 30 on the 5: Jerrel Brown runs for 3 yards, fumbles, recovered by Ark St.

Needless to say, the Red Wolves scored two plays later and won 44-28. Sad.

And let's not forget the Bottom Eight!

The Bottom Eight is represented by SMU of Conference USA, who at 0-5 seems without hope of a win this year; three teams from the MAC: Miami of Ohio (1-5), UMass (1-5), and the current loser du jour, Kent St (0-6, 40-17 victims of Massachusetts). The master of the Bottom Eight, however, is the Sun Belt conference, whose mediocrity is so profound that we have to expand to 8 1/2 for the week to accommodate it! Definitely in are winless Idaho (0-6, who managed to fail against the wide spread they faced this week) and newbie Appalachian St (1-5, who managed to lose to FCS Liberty). The other two spots are shared by three other SBC schools: New Mexico St (2-5), Troy (1-5), and Georgia St (1-5), who are beating each other up for those coveted final Bottom Eight spots!

Also waiting for a table... Ball St (1-5), UConn (1-5), and the Pointer Sisters of the Poor: Southern Miss, North Texas, and Eastern Michigan (all 2-4, by sheer will power and patsy FCS scheduling).

Games in American Football for Week 6...

The weekend starts on Thursday night, as the Indianapolis Colts go to Houston to play the Texans in the game of the night (BYU at UCF is a yawner - sorry, boys...). As much as the Following Football crowd loves JJ Watt (he who proposed to a six year old girl who swooned over him on YouTube last year!), you cannot bet against Andrew Luck in a prime time game (not that you should ever bet on football - especially pro football! WAY too unpredictable - even we so-called 'experts' are correct against the spread about as often as a coin flip!). We like the COLTS over the TEXANS by more than the 3 point spread.

Friday
San Diego State should beat New Mexico handily (by more than six), and we don't see Washington State allowing Stanford to beat them by the seventeen points the oddsmakers suggest. Take the Aztecs and the Cougars (for recreational purposes only!).

SATURDAY
 The games we like: Cincinnati won't lose by two touchdowns to Miami of FL...Expect West Virginia to go to Texas Tech and handle the Red Raiders easily...Texas Longhorn fans should watch something else Saturday than their game against Oklahoma: go cruise the State Fair, have a corn dog, or (gag!) deep-fried sweet tea (how do you even do that?). But the Sooners will demolish them sooner rather than later... Georgia Tech by more than four over Duke, thanks to the work of their chaplain's pre-game speeches...Kent State, despite being winless, will beat up UMass, who can't figure out how to win a game when the opposing team hands it to them (as Miami-OH did last week)...Not a no-brainer, but we like Baylor to win against the TCU Horned Frogs by more than the 8 1/2 point spread at home...Oregon will be quacking mad, and ready to rush right through the paper-mache offensive line of UCLA Saturday; expect a big Duck win...Idaho won't break their winless streak at Georgia Southern this week, but they will hold it closer than three TDs...We absolutely cannot believe that Michigan is favored over Penn State Saturday night; the Nittany Lions will make cat food out of them...LSU should be more than a 1 1/2 point favorite at Florida, but most bettors can't believe that the SEC West is as weak as the SEC East is strong. Literally, the first place team in the West would lose against all but Arkansas in the East, and even Arkansas would be 4-3 or better in the West. Take the Tigers.

SUNDAY
Again, betting on NFL games in the age of parity is like playing roulette, but here's a couple of games we think we can guess the way the chips will fall: The Broncos should end up ten or more points clear of the Jets, but Peyton'll wait until being back in Denver to break the TD record...We like the Panthers to keep close to the Bengals, and the Steelers to stay close to the Browns, although we have no confidence on victories in either case... The Redskins, Raiders, and Giants are all expected to lose (to the Cardinals, Chargers, and Eagles, respectively), but we think the line-makers are too conservative. Take the favorites and the points.

And on Monday night, it's hard for us to see the Rams staying closer than a field goal to the Forty-Niners, even at home.

How did we do on last week's predictions? Let's find out...

Places We Looked Brilliant:
    Arizona not only covered at Oregon... Louisville handled Syracuse with ease...Utah State not only  covered, not only defeated BYU, but basically eliminated their chances of success this year by breaking Tayson Hill's leg...we looked prescient picking Air Force over Navy, and California winning a WILD game over Washington State, in which the Wazzu QB threw for a record 744 yards, and was undone by a missed 19-yard last second field goal!...We also projected FCS losses for UC Davis and (surprise, surprise!) Savannah State, and a tight game between Montana State and my alma mater Sacramento State, which turned into a really exciting, back-and-forth 59-56 Bobcat win.

Places We Looked Like Stevie Wonder Judging A Beauty Contest:
   San Diego State failing to cover against Fresno State...neither did Texas A&M against Mississippi State, or LSU versus Auburn...Florida barely scraped by Tennessee after switching quarterbacks (probably for good), East Carolina couldn't annihilate SMU after all, who scored 24 points, tripling their season total!...TCU was much better against Oklahoma than expected, and so was Idaho (congrats, Vandals!).

And, Somewhere In The Grey Area Where We All Spend Most Of Life:
NCAA,    Florida State 43, Wake Forest 3...Notre Dame/ Stanford had the same three point spread Vegas predicted, as did Oregon State/Colorado. After the Charlie Weis firing, Kansas did as expected and played inspired football...for a while, before West Virginia put them away 33-14. Michigan did indeed play Rutgers close before losing 26-24. Finally, the Boise State / Nevada game was back and forth, as expected, with the Broncos winning a wild game 52-47.