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The case for Ohio State over Alabama as the nation's No. 1 team
Hey everybody. It’s Monday. Time for Immediate Recovery.
(Note: To send questions for my Wednesday Mailbag, email Stewart.Mandel@fox.com)
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Alabama won last season’s national championship, beat USC 52-6 in its opener and has won all five games since. So it should come as no surprise that the Tide remain the undisputed No. 1 team in the country.
But what if they’re not?
The Tide (6-0, 3-0 SEC) went on the road and pummeled a ranked Arkansas team 49-30 on Saturday, and if you believed from watching its previous games that Alabama was the nation’s best team coming in, there was little about that contest to merit changing your mind.
But if you’re one who believes as much, if not more, in stats and analytics, there’s mounting evidence that the best team in the country through six weeks is the one that handed Saban his most recent postseason loss -- Ohio State.
The Buckeyes (5-0, 2-0 Big Ten) on Saturday beat visiting Indiana 38-17, after which Urban Meyer fielded mostly nitpicky questions in his postgame press conference. Why didn’t Curtis Samuel get more touches? Why did quarterback J.T. Barrett carry the ball 26 times? Why so many penalties?
“We won by 21,” said Meyer. “It’s much easier to fix [issues] if you win than if you lose.”
The numbers say there’s not much for Ohio State to fix.
Through Saturday (before the rescheduled Georgia-South Carolina game), the Buckeyes ranked No. 2 nationally in total defense (3.7 yards per play) and scoring defense (10.3 points per game), No. 3 in scoring offense (53.2 points per game), No. 4 in turnover margin (+1.6 per game) and No. 5 in offensive yards per game (537.6)
Alabama’s got plenty of impressive statistics of its own, but none higher than Ohio State’s in any of those categories.
But why break it down by department when there are computers that rank the teams’ overall performances?
Jeff Sagarin has it Ohio State No. 1, Alabama No. 2. So does Bill Connelly’s S&P+ efficiency ratings.
The Tide have a better trio of wins (USC, Ole Miss and Arkansas) than any three on the Buckeyes’ schedule to date. On the other hand, Ohio State has by far the more impressive individual win, 45-24 at Oklahoma on Sept. 17.
At this point, you might be asking yourself – why does it matter? The only rankings that truly matter are the committee’s, which don’t come out for the first time until Nov. 1. Which is a fair point.
My counter: Everybody cares who the No. 1 team in the country is, whether in September or December, whether in the AP poll or any other.
But mostly, it’s a very timely conversation to have, because this week, both the Buckeyes and Tide play arguably their toughest games to date.
Ohio State takes its explosive offense to Madison for a primetime showdown with Wisconsin’s (4-1, 1-1 Big Ten) stingy defense. Camp Randall at night can be a buzzsaw, as Buckeyes fans know well from 2010, when, under very similar circumstances, Bret Bielema’s Badgers upset Jim Tressel’s top-ranked Buckeyes.
Meanwhile, Alabama visits Tennessee (5-1, 2-1 SEC), which suffered its first loss Saturday at Texas A&M but only after yet another frenzied comeback to take the game to overtime. The Vols have not won on the "Third Saturday in October" since 2006, the year before Saban took over, so you can bet 102,000-seat Neyland Stadium will be a simmering cauldron of pent-up frustration.
It’s not as if either team is untouchable.
“Were certainly not where we want to be, not in all facets of the game,” Saban said after the Arkansas win. “Sometimes we play pretty well on defense, sometimes we play great offense, but got to be more consistent when we play really good teams.”
Conference road games are often where you truly find out a team’s mettle. Two years ago, Ohio State foreshadowed its eventual national championship by going to East Lansing and routing a Top 10 Michigan State team. This year’s Spartans are struggling mightily, having now dropped three straight games, so this week and an Oct. 22 trip to Penn State will serve as the Buckeyes’ proving ground.
Last year, eventual national champion Alabama erased the damage from its early home loss to Ole Miss by going on the road and shellacking a pair of foes, Georgia and Texas A&M, both ranked in the Top 10 at the time of the game.
This time next week, we may be talking even more glowingly than we are today about one or both if they handle their respective formidable opponents and tough environments.
Or, we may be talking about someone else completely for No. 1 -- Michigan? Clemson? Washington? -- if one or both go down.
And now, a few more takeaways from Week 6 as we reset the landscape for Week 7.
The Pac-12 is heading toward a Big Apple (Cup)
Oregon and Stanford had been lording over the Pac-12 for what feels like forever. The Ducks won the conference in 2009, ’10, ’11 and ’14. The Cardinal won the other three in between (2012, ’13 and ’15).
But over the the past two weeks, Washington (6-0, 3-0 Pac-12) pummeled the duo by a combined score of 114-27, including a 70-21 Huskies rout in Eugene on Saturday to end an interminable 12-game losing streak in the series. Meanwhile, Washington State (3-2, 2-0) played the same two opponents in opposite order and beat them collectively 93-49.
Needless to say, the Pac-12 is going to have a different champion.
Washington, led by surging Heisman candidate Jake Browning, is so far and away the conference favorite right now that it’s more fun to try to guess who’s second-best. After all, if the Huskies go to the playoff, someone will go to the Rose Bowl, even if that someone is 9-3.
Mike Leach’s Cougars might be that team, despite losing their opener to an FCS team (Eastern Washington) for a second straight year. QB Luke Falk and WR Gabe Marks are still the headliners, but this particular Leach team also runs the ball decently well (No. 35 nationally) and, most notably, is playing some defense. It overwhelmed Stanford’s apparently woeful offensive line and held Christian McCaffrey to 35 yards on eight carries before he left the game with an injury.
Not since 2001 has the season-ending Apple Cup pitted two ranked teams. It could definitely happen in 2016.
Houston’s loss has widely felt ramifications
Tom Herman’s team hoped to become the first Group of 5 playoff team. Following a stunning 46-40 loss at Navy, the Cougars, who had risen to No. 6 in the AP poll, now need help to even make a New Year’s Six bowl.
With the win, the Midshipmen (4-1, 3-0 AAC) took over sole possession of first place in Houston’s (5-1, 2-1) division, holding a one-game lead and the tiebreaker. If the Cougars can’t win their division, they can’t win their conference. And that golden ticket to the Cotton Bowl goes to the highest-ranked Group of 5 conference champion.
Suddenly Boise State (5-0, 2-0 MWC), with wins over Washington State and Oregon State, is in better shape than Houston, not to mention MAC leader Western Michigan (6-0, 2-0).
The Cougars’ loss also hurts Louisville, which needs its Nov. 17 game at Houston to be as meaningful as possible to revive its own playoff chances. It also gives a slight sliver of hope to the Big 12, whose champ at least won’t be competing for a playoff spot against Houston (unless that champ is Oklahoma).
The SEC needs to make LSU-Florida happen. Now.
The decision last Thursday to postpone Saturday’s LSU-Florida game in Gainesville was absolutely the right one given there was a Category 4 hurricane bearing down on the state. Don’t tell me about the sunny weather there Saturday. Hurricanes are unpredictable. Better safe than sorry.
But there were perfectly reasonable, if difficult, alternatives for rescheduling or relocating the game -- moving it to Sunday (as Georgia-South Carolina did) or moving it to Baton Rouge (as others have done in the past). Florida declined all of them, and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey apparently could not or would not insist otherwise. In an interview on CBS during Saturday’s Tennessee-Texas A&M game, Sankey said, “This conference often describes itself as a family, and family has points of tension.”
He also said: “The game needs to be played.” Now it’s time for him to follow through.
It would be ludicrous for such a high-profile game to not be rescheduled given the ramifications not only on both SEC divisional standings but potentially the selection committee’s rankings. For example, if Wisconsin is in contention for a New Year’s Six berth come Dec. 3 will it be able to say it beat 8-3 LSU or 7-3 LSU? It could make a difference.
Mark Richt’s impact at Miami is noticeable
Miami had no shortage of talent during Al Golden’s five seasons but rarely showed it. On Saturday, only a blocked extra point marked the difference between Richt’s purportedly rebuilding Hurricanes and Jimbo Fisher’s well-established FSU program in a 20-19 defeat.
Miami’s defense in particular is playing well with little depth and three freshmen starting at linebacker. FSU quarterback Deondre Francois heated up in the second half, and Dalvin Cook had two huge gains (54 and 59 yards), but “the defense played extremely well most of the game,” said Richt. Credit coordinator Manny Diaz, whose nightmarish stint at Texas now seems like a distant memory.
Rutgers in the Big Ten is even more miserable than imagined
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany has made a career out of bold, brilliant moves, like landing Penn State and Nebraska and launching the Big Ten Network. But Delany did the conference’s existing fans a disservice in watering down the league’s football product in exchange for some East Coast TV sets.
Whatever perceived value Rutgers is supposed to provide the conference was not readily apparent the past two weeks as league powers Ohio State and Michigan pounded the Scarlet Knights 58-0 and 78-0, respectively. Saturday’s Michigan game was one of the sport’s most lopsided in recent history, as the Wolverines outgained Rutgers by the staggering margin of 600-39.
Most conferences hope to avoid non-competitive matchups. By contrast, Delany invited them when he added a program with almost no history of success. And the shame of it is, Michigan fans now go years without seeing their team play Nebraska, but one-fourth of their conference schedule is Rutgers and Maryland.
Just for fun …
Nearly 11 million viewers – the largest audience for any college football game so far this season – tuned in on the Sunday night of Labor Day weekend for Texas’ thrilling 50-47 overtime win against Notre Dame.
Five weeks later, the Longhorns are 2-3, the Irish 2-4. Neither can play a lick of defense (unless, in Notre Dame’s game, they’re playing NC State in the middle of a hurricane), which explains why that game was such an entertaining, though ultimately irrelevant, shootout.
Out of curiosity, I went back to see how the teams that play in the biggest game of opening weekend usually turn out.
In 2013, 8.1 million watched Todd Gurley and Sammy Watkins break 70-yard gains as Clemson topped Georgia 38-35. The Tigers finished 11-2, the Dawgs 8-5.
In 2014, 6.4 million saw Alabama beat West Virginia. The Tide went 12-2, the Mountaineers 6-6.
And in 2015, Ohio State’s Monday night win over Virginia Tech garnered 10.6 million viewers. The Buckeyes went 12-1, the Hokies 7-6.
So generally speaking, those opening week viewers should reasonably expect to be watching at least one BCS or CFP-bowl bound team. As of now it’s iffy whether Texas or Notre Dame makes any bowl at all.
