Forde-Yard Dash: Which teams have best chance at College Football Playoff?
Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football (BB gun safety goggles sold separately, because you’ll put an eye out, Ralphie):
In this Dash: Scenarios | Coaches on move? | Oddball news | Offensive explosion | More
PLAYOFF ELIMINATION SCENARIOS
There are five undefeated teams not named Marshall left in college football. (Apologies to the Thundering Herd, but no.) The most we can end up with is three, because either Notre Dame or Florida State will lose Saturday in Tallahassee and one of the Mississippi schools will lose Nov. 29 at the latest. Baylor is the only unbeaten remaining that does not have a game remaining against a fellow unbeaten.
So we will have at least one team with one loss in the four-team College Football Playoff, and quite possibly more than that.
After looking over scenarios with Wendell Barnhouse of the Big 12, The Dash sees a group of undefeated or one-loss teams numbering 12 at the absolute most. Unless the carnage is significant the rest of the way (not a small possibility), that debatable dozen will constitute the playoff pool for the selection committee. And given the attrition rate thus far – we have fewer than half the number of unbeatens than we did at this point last year – that number probably will be too high.
But in an effort to keep from turning this into the Human Genome Project, let’s discard the premise of two-loss playoff candidates and look at how the field could whittle itself down over the coming weeks:
Atlantic Coast Conference: In a weird way, the ACC is a potentially bloated league. Florida State (1) is unbeaten in the Atlantic, while in the Coastal both Duke (2) and Georgia Tech (3) have one loss and already have played each other. If the Blue Devils and Yellow Jackets both win out, then Duke shocks an unbeaten Florida State in the ACC title game – thus making David Cutcliffe the Coach of the Millennium – the conference would have two teams at 12-1 and one at 11-1. Max teams in the pool: three. Odds of it happening: astronomical. Most likely: Florida State wins out and both Duke and Georgia Tech lose at least once more each. Which would put the Seminoles in the playoff and the other two out of consideration.
Big 12: Baylor (4) could finish unbeaten and TCU (5) could finish with one loss, if both find a defense somewhere and win out. Or Baylor, TCU and Oklahoma (6) could rekindle 2008 nostalgia by all finishing with one loss against each other, if the Sooners beat the Bears in Norman on Nov. 8 and otherwise all three win out. Other possibilities: Baylor and Kansas State with one loss; Baylor and Oklahoma State with one loss; Baylor undefeated and everyone else with two losses. Max teams in the pool: three. Elimination games this weekend: Kansas State at Oklahoma, Oklahoma State at TCU. Odds of three teams in the pool: slim, but not crazy. Of the five teams still in contention, Oklahoma State is the longest shot with four road games left against the group and zero at home. Kansas State is similarly challenged with one home game and three on the road. Oklahoma has three games left against the group, all at home. TCU has just two left, both in Fort Worth. Baylor travels to Oklahoma and hosts the Cowboys and Wildcats. With the Sooners and Horned Frogs having the most manageable slate in terms of home/away, three teams at 11-1 and all in the playoff discussion is conceivable.
Big Ten: The possibilities are many at this point, but the upside is limited. In the East, Michigan State, Ohio State and Rutgers all have one loss and all play each other – with the Buckeyes and Scarlet Knights meeting in an elimination game Saturday. In the West, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska all have one loss and all play each other – but their meetings don’t start until Nov. 8. Max teams in the pool: one. Given the rankings, the ideal scenario for the league would be one-loss Michigan State (7) meeting one-loss Nebraska (8) in the conference championship game, with the Spartans emerging victorious. That could happen, but it still wouldn’t guarantee Michigan State a spot in the bracket. The Big Ten seemingly will need some help from upsets in other leagues.
Pac-12: Like the Big Ten, the Pac-12 has played itself into something of a tight spot. In the North, Oregon, Oregon State and Washington all have one loss and all play each other – with the Huskies visiting the Ducks in a likely elimination game Saturday. In the South, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah all have one loss and all play each other. Utah and Oregon State meet in a cross-divisional elimination game Thursday. Max teams in the pool: one. Odds of it happening: Iffy. Can any team actually win the rest of its games? Best scenario would be one-loss Oregon (9) meeting one-loss Arizona State (10) in the title game. The winner would have a 12-1 record that includes nine conference victories and a big non-conference win (Ducks over Michigan State, Sun Devils theoretically over Notre Dame when the two meet Nov. 8). That should be enough to get in the playoff.
SEC: The league that holds the keys, as usual. There are two unbeatens and four teams with one loss, and plenty of crossfire still to come between them. In addition to the Ole Miss-Mississippi State battle of unbeatens, the Rebels still must play one-loss Auburn and the Bulldogs must play one-loss Kentucky and one-loss Alabama (both on the road). Then the Bulldogs and Rebels must play each other Nov. 29. One-loss Georgia plays both Auburn and Kentucky. One-loss Auburn and one-loss Alabama play each other as well. There will be blood. Max teams in the pool: three. Best scenario for the SEC in its quest for worldwide domination may be this: undefeated Mississippi State (11) vs. one-loss Georgia (12) in the SEC title game, with one-loss Ole Miss (13) watching at home after an epic Egg Bowl defeat against State. Or the other way around, Magnolia State-wise. If a Mississippi team goes undefeated and the other one has one loss, that’s a strong sell for two in the playoff. Or if Georgia wins the title game at 12-1 and both Mississippi schools have one loss, you’d have three teams to consider for one or two spots. Or – cue the Armageddon music – for three spots.
Then there is the potential 12th team in the mix, Notre Dame (14). If the Fighting Irish win out, they’re in the playoff – and anyone who shudders at the memory of Notre Dame’s BCS Championship Game performance two years ago will have to deal with it. If they lose a game – say, to Florida State on Saturday – and win the rest, it gets interesting. What if, say, Stanford and Arizona State or USC meet in the Pac-12 title game and Notre Dame has beaten all three of them? The Irish probably still would require some mayhem elsewhere to thin the herd, but that could happen. And it would certainly add spice to the stew if one-loss Notre Dame is lurking around the periphery.
The Dash’s best guess at who will be the top teams in consideration: unbeaten Florida State; one-loss Baylor, TCU and Oklahoma; one-loss Michigan State; one-loss Mississippi State and Mississippi. The champion of the Pac-12 and Notre Dame will have at least two losses. The easy choices would be the SEC champ and the Seminoles. After that? Good luck to the committee.
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS – AND VICTORIES
With unexpected victory totals piling up at four traditional non-elite programs, it’s worth wondering whether their coaches believe they can make it last there – or whether it will be time to leave. The list:
Hugh Freeze (15), Mississippi. Tenure: third year. Record by year: 7-6, 8-5, 6-0. Current salary: $3.2 million. Age: 45. Why he would be an attractive candidate for other jobs: extraordinary and rapid recruiting success brought the talent to Oxford, and he has coached them up into a top-five team. Why he might want to stay: He’s a Mississippi native, so this was a destination job of sorts. Why the job is scary: Winning consistently in the SEC West wasn’t easy for the three coaches who preceded Freeze and were fired – Houston Nutt, Ed Orgeron and David Cutcliffe. Only coach since 1970 to leave on his own terms: Tommy Tuberville, who upgraded to Auburn in 1998.
Jerry Kill (16), Minnesota. Tenure: fourth year. Record by year: 3-9, 6-7, 8-5, 5-1. Current salary: $2.1 million. Age: 53. Why he would be an attractive candidate for other jobs: Has steadily lifted the Gophers out of the Tim Brewster malaise by maximizing modest talent. Why he might want to stay: Minnesota has stuck by Kill through the epileptic seizures that complicated his first three years, and at 53, he might feel settled. Why the job is scary: Since Lou Holtz left in 1985 for Notre Dame, the next four coaches of the Gophers all were fired.
(An aside: the comparison of Kill with another Big Ten coach hired at the same time is rather dramatic. As Kill’s victory total has steadily risen, Brady Hoke’s has plummeted annually from 11-2 in 2011 to 8-5, 7-6 and now 3-4. And it’s not because Kill has better talent. The Rivals average rating of Kill’s four recruiting classes is 58th nationally. The Rivals average for Hoke’s is 16th.)
Dan Mullen (17), Mississippi State. Tenure: sixth year. Record by year: 5-7, 9-4, 7-6, 8-5, 7-6, 6-0. Current salary: $3.2 million. Age: 42. Why he would be an attractive candidate for other jobs: The Bulldogs are No. 1 in the nation for the first time ever. That about sums it up. Why he might want to stay: Administration has been supportive while gradually building toward this breakthrough season, and his young family has put down some roots in Starkville. Why the job is scary: The last coach who left Mississippi State on his own terms was Darrell Royal. In 1955. After two years.
Mark Stoops (18), Kentucky. Tenure: second year. Record by year: 2-10, 5-1. Current salary: $2.25 million. Age: 47. Why he would be an attractive candidate for other jobs: Recruiting dynamo who has immediately upgraded the talent in Lexington after the program had slid to the bottom of the SEC under Joker Phillips. Last name doesn’t hurt, either. Why he might want to stay: Kentucky gave him his head-coaching start, and it would be fun to coach all the young talent he’s acquired for the next few years. Why the job is scary: Last football coach to leave this basketball-centric school with a winning record was Blanton Collier, in 1961.
There could be some very attractive jobs coming open at places like Michigan and Florida. There could be easier jobs coming open in less murderous leagues than the SEC. There could be more money and more fame waiting out there.
But none of these men may find himself in the no-brainer position James Franklin was in last year, when Penn State plucked him from Vanderbilt. At schools like the ones listed above, given the current media-rights revenue flowing in, the landscape is a little different. There are more schools than ever that can make a coach a multi-millionaire, build him swank facilities and get him a good assistant-coach salary pool. Everyone can build their own version of a destination job.
Case in point, Oklahoma State. There were a couple of decades of futility, followed by sporadic success, but now they’re working on a school-record ninth-straight winning season. The difference between what the program was under Les Miles (19) from 2001-05 is huge compared to what it’s been under Mike Gundy (20) ever since. The facility upgrades are drastic, and Gundy’s $3.5 million salary is a lot more than Miles was making.
Of course, T. Boone Pickens has a lot to do with that, and not every program has a billionaire benefactor. So there is a danger of staying too long at a place where success is tough to sustain. Recent cases in point:
Jim Grobe (21) at Wake Forest, 2001-13. He won 20 games in 2006-07 and took the Demon Deacons to the Orange Bowl, but retired last winter after five straight losing seasons.
Jeff Tedford (22) at California, 2002-12. He had 10-win seasons in 2004 and 2006, but was just 15-22 in his final three seasons and now is an assistant coach in the NFL.
On the opposite side of the equation, there are coaches who left a good fit for a really bad fit:
Greg Schiano (23) left Rutgers after 11 years for the NFL and failed spectacularly, getting fired after his second season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Rich Rodriguez (24) was at West Virginia for seven years and went 32-5 the last three. In three years at Michigan he went 15-22.
Bottom line: successful coaches at traditional non-winners can find good precedent for leaving, and they could cite solid reasons for staying. It will depend on the specific jobs available and the men asked to fill them.
CALL IT IN THE AIR – CORRECTLY FOR ONCE – AND CALL IT OFF ON THE SIDELINES
Tennessee (25) halted a streak off 11 straight game-opening coin toss losses against Chattanooga on Saturday. The streak actually was 12, if you count an overtime loss of the toss last year against Georgia.
Clearly, the Volunteers’ captains are not a group of guys you want to vacation with in Vegas. Charlie Brown has better luck than they do.
Or had. Maybe things are turning around on Rocky Top.
According to Tennessee quarterback Justin Worley, who was present at midfield for this momentous occasion, Chattanooga’s captains called the toss and went with tails. The coin landed heads up, and the Volunteers were victorious at last. Undoubtedly the Mocs are facing heavy media criticism this week for failing to win the toss against a team with such a long losing streak.
(It’s been a tough year in coin tosses for teams that wear orange. You may recall that Texas had to kick off to start both halves against UCLA after butchering the call on the opening coin toss.)
Speaking of UCLA: things have not gone well in October. The Bruins are riding a two-game losing streak, both at home, and things got testy Saturday while losing to Oregon.
Head coach Jim Mora (26) wound up placing his hands upon the bearded cheeks of defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich in an apparent attempt to calm Ulbrich down. The two had an extended disagreement on the sideline after the Ducks took a 15-3 lead, and at one point Ulbrich gave Mora his play sheet and took off his headphones – looking like he might have been telling the boss to take this job and shove it.
That’s when Mora applied his touching gesture, which likely came with this underlying message: “Shut the hell up and figure out how to slow these guys down. We’ll scream at each other in the locker room later. And I will do most of the screaming then.”
Still, that was only the second-strangest sideline moment of the year in the Pac-12. USC athletic director Pat Haden crabbing at the officials during the Trojans’ game against Stanford remains the gold standard.
THIS WEEK IN BB GUN HEADLINES
North Carolina State (27) suspended seven players for the Wolfpack’s game at Louisville on Saturday, including two defensive starters. The reason: an off-campus BB gun battle. Last week East Carolina suspended three players for firing BB guns near a school. And that came after four players toting BB guns were suspended at Kentucky for the Wildcats’ game against South Carolina on Oct. 4 – an incident that put the entire campus on lockdown after a report of shots being fired in the dorms.
And so it seems clear that BB gun usage is both popular among college football players, and frowned upon by college administrations.
Except – and this may shock you – there is no frowning at Florida State.
You probably read about the Seminole BB gun battles that reportedly caused $4,000 of damage in 2012, and have continued into 2014. Mr. College Hijinks Himself, Jameis Winston, was involved in the 2012 incident. The June 2014 battle resulted in three players being charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief, according to The New York Times.
But suspensions at FSU? Not so much.
THIS WEEK IN LINEMEN BLOCKING BADLY
An epidemic rivaling the Ebola breakout takes us to The Swamp, where LSU sophomore offensive tackle Jerald Hawkins (28)sacked his own quarterback while attempting to block a Florida Gator. Following the tip-over of Nebraska left guard Jake Cotton and the Nittany-on-Nittany blocking crime at Penn State against Northwestern, The Dash continues to be concerned about the big uglies in the game.
Someone who is neither big nor ugly: Dashette Amanda Seyfried (29).
OFFENSE IS UP … AGAIN
In a season when we’ve seen losing teams score 59, 58, 52, 49, 46, 45, 43, 42 (three times) and 41 (three times), in regulation, this news may not come as a shock: scoring and offensive yardage production is on a record pace.
Eighteen teams are averaging 40 points or more per game. Last year the total was eight. Over the previous six years, the annual average was 7.7.
Nineteen teams are averaging 500 yards or more per game. Last year the total was 12. Over the previous six years the annual average was 6.8.
The scoring-orgy numbers figure to shrink some in the coming weeks, as competition increases. But they almost certainly will still be a significant increase over last year.
Among the biggest year-over-year movers: Michigan State has exploded from 29.4 points per game last year to 45.5 this year. Mississippi State has gone up from 27.7 to 41.8. TCU, with new coordinators brought in from Houston and Texas Tech, has juiced up its scoring from 25.1 to 45.8. UAB (30), in its first year under new coach Bill Clark, has morphed from 26.3 to 40.2.
Why the continued splurge? Three partial explanations.
Offense (31). With the proliferation of spread offenses and seven-on-seven leagues and camps, young players continue to become more advanced in the passing game by the time they reach college. Thus teams continue to pass the ball more efficiently. They also are embracing no-huddle tempo in greater numbers. That leads to more plays, which leads to more yards, which leads to more points.
Defense (32). Tackling is alleged to be a lost art, according to some coaches. And more great athletes may be gravitating to offense than defense at younger ages.
Rules (33). Defenses have been handcuffed a bit by the rules, with major penalties for illegal hits resulting in ejections. More defensive players are tentative and unsure about how to hit receivers and quarterbacks without drawing a flag.
The saying about offense selling tickets and defense winning games is not aging well. Of the current top-25 teams in total offense, 15 have one or fewer losses. Of the top-25 teams in total defense, the number is eight.
RETURN OF THE LIP
The Last Interception Pool is back, and it is exclusively a Pac-12 affair.
For the uninitiated, The Dash annually tracks the race to see which Division I quarterback can go the longest into the season without throwing the ball to the wrong team. The final three contestants, per the NCAA top 100 in pass efficiency:
Marcus Mariota (34), Oregon. Zero picks in 155 pass attempts. His overall streak is now 205 passes without a pick, dating back to the second quarter of the regular-season finale last year against Oregon State.
Cyler Miles (35), Washington. Zero picks in 129 pass attempts. Miles, who was a backup last year as a freshman, has 158 consecutive attempts without an interception dating to a loss last Nov. 15 to UCLA.
Travis Wilson (36), Utah. Zero picks in 101 pass attempts. His last oskie was Nov. 9, 2013 (Wilson missed the Utes’ final three games last year due to injury).
In a dramatic development, two of the three LIP finalists will play each other Saturday: Miles and the Huskies visit Mariota and the Ducks. But Wilson will be the first at risk, since the Utes play Thursday night at Oregon State. However, Wilson may not even be Utah’s starter; coach Kyle Whittingham went with dual-threat QB Kendal Thompson for most of the game when the Utes upset UCLA in their last game. Whittingham isn’t telling anyone outside the program which quarterback he will start in Corvallis.
This year’s grand prize: three Slim Jims, a copy of Phil Steele’s 2007 preview magazine and a complimentary subscription to FarmersOnly.com. May the most accurate man win.
COACH WHO EARNED HIS COMP CAR THIS WEEK
Dan Enos (37), Central Michigan. His Chippewas did what hasn’t been done in a long time in the Mid-American Conference: they beat Northern Illinois at home and during the regular season. Central Michigan’s 34-17 win at DeKalb ended the Huskies’ 28-game home winning streak and 24-game MAC regular-season winning streak – and it was a no-doubter. CMU led by two touchdowns at halftime and three touchdowns in the third quarter, riding a 40-carry, 270-yard rushing performance by running back Thomas Rawls. And that followed a 40-carry, 229-yard effort the previous week in a victory over Ohio. (It should be noted that Rawls is a Michigan transfer who couldn’t get on the field in Ann Arbor. No further comment is necessary on that.) Enos hasn’t had the most glorious of head-coaching tenures, but this could be the best team in his five seasons.
COACH WHO SHOULD TAKE THE BUS TO WORK
Gary Patterson (38), TCU. He’s a good coach, zero doubt about that. But he’s also a spectacularly sore loser. Saturday offered the latest evidence of that.
After coughing up a 21-point lead in the fourth quarter at Baylor, Patterson took a second annual postgame shot at the Bears. Last year, he ripped Bears safety Ahmad Dixon for a targeting shot at TCU's Trevone Boykin, playing receiver at the time, and ripped coach Art Briles in the process.
“Number six [Dixon] beats a guy up at the beginning of the season and doesn’t get suspended,” Patterson said last year. “He takes a shot and I want him kicked out. The head coach came across the field to me. I’ve got a guy [Dixon] who’s laughing into the camera on the sideline. … That’s not what I call class.”
This year, while discussing what Patterson said was a pregame apology to Briles for the 2013 outburst, the TCU coach stirred the pot again. “I had a player kind of threaten me on the field after the ballgame over the same situation,” Patterson said, then declined to say who the player was or what the threat was. Baylor defensive coordinator Phil Bennett told ESPN.com that he pulled the Baylor player away from Patterson but that there was no threat.
Feuding with an in-state school isn’t new for Patterson. There was this tantrum in 2011 after a loss to SMU:
"All we've ever tried to do here at TCU is help SMU. At some point in time we were going to get beat by them, so we got beat by them. We've helped them, let them come over and talked to them about how we do things academically, how we do things at the stadium, how we do everything to try to make their program better and their way of thanking us for that is to cut us down.
"SMU has had a lot of help from us over the last three or four years to improve their program," Patterson said. "I don't appreciate being treated the way it is; that's how we got reciprocated. We're going to go on about our business, but they're not going to get the same help anymore – not about a ballgame, not about conferences, not about anybody. They're getting no help from Gary Patterson, period.
"They shouldn't ask me at SMU about going into a conference, they shouldn't ask me about how they play, they shouldn't ask me about their players, they shouldn't ask me about anything because they're not getting any help, period, anymore.”
Here’s a suggestion for Patterson after losing to an in-state school: take your medicine without taking any shots.
POINT AFTER
When thirsty and looking for a hidden oasis of good beer and football viewing in Birmingham, The Dash recommends a visit to Black Market Bar (39). Unobtrusively tucked into a shopping area, it’s a good alternative to surrounding chains. You may have to endure the occasional death metal song on the sound system, but it was a solid locale for The Dash to watch Arizona and USC dramatically cap off the most recent football Saturday. Try a Revelator Pale Ale (40) from local Trimtab Brewing Co. and thank The Dash later.
