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Good Mailbag this week for Stuart Mandell
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PirateMarv Offline
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Good Mailbag this week for Stuart Mandell
Stewart, What does East Carolina need to do to remain the pick for the Group of 5? Win out? And what are the chances Marshall or Colorado State jumps ahead of them?
-- Molly Pierce, Greenville, North Carolina



Yep, win out. Long made it abundantly clear how little respect the committee has for Marshall’s schedule. The Herd aren’t passing the Pirates. CSU, or even Boise, would have a better case than Marshall but I don’t know why either would move ahead of a one-loss East Carolina team. I suppose you might be a little nervous if both Virginia Tech and North Carolina finish worse in the ACC than the team Colorado State beat, Boston College. I’d be curious to know just how far out of the top 25 the Rams were. But their last four opponents are San Jose State, Hawaii, New Mexico and Air Force. Their overall schedule will go down, not up.


From Tuesday night’s column, you say "you’re going to see ADs rushing to beef up their schools’ future schedules" based on the committee's emphasis on SOS. While I agree with that to a degree, I also see a problem. It appears that the committee pretty much ordered teams by the number of losses they have. For example, most would agree that LSU (No. 19) is a better team than Utah (No. 17), but Utah's navigated a thus-far easier schedule to one fewer loss, so they are ranked higher. If this pattern holds, this would mean more teams scheduling weak non-conference opposition. Based on everything you know about the way the committee operates, does this worry you?
-- Mike, Ohio


It’s a valid concern. One of the first things Long said in his post-show press conference in Dallas was the decision to put undefeated Mississippi State and Florida State 1-2 was “clear-cut.” While I don’t have a problem with those rankings, I’d hardly call it clear-cut, as I wrote about in dissecting Florida State earlier this week. You could make a valid argument for Auburn above the ‘Noles. I can’t say I’d given much thought to LSU vs. Utah, and I don’t know that “most would agree” the Tigers are better, but they did just beat the committee’s No. 4 team, Ole Miss, and their losses were to Nos. 1 (Mississippi State) and 3 (Auburn), whereas Utah lost at home to 2-6 Washington State.

If I had another crack at that quick-reaction column Tuesday, I might have said the committee truly did stick to its intention to reward strength of schedule, but only after it sorted the teams by won-loss records.
Having said that, just because it fell that way in Week 10 doesn’t mean it will be quite so orderly after Week 15. When the teams have played only seven or eight games, the difference between 6-1 and 7-2 feels more significant than will 12-1 vs. 11-2. You can already see where one of the highly ranked SEC teams with one loss may lose again and still finish higher than one-loss Michigan State or Notre Dame just because they will have beaten more quality foes. The team to keep an eye on is Mississippi State. It’s the only one of those ranked SEC teams that didn’t play a soul out of conference.

Another team to keep an eye on is Auburn. The Tigers still have three remaining games against top-10 teams. If they win two of them on top of a victory over No. 9 Kansas State, and then win the SEC championship game to finish 11-2, will they still be rewarded for playing at K-State, or will they automatically drop below all remaining teams with fewer than two losses? If it’s the latter, then yes, all the talk of beefing up schedules is empty. Why bother if the committee is just going to mimic the pollsters and use number of losses as their starting point?


Stewart, Could you please explain to me the reasoning behind putting Michigan State at No. 8? I have no problem with my Notre Dame squad being behind a long line of SEC squads. However, if Jeff Long is questioning the Irish resume, why not question a Spartan team that has zero quality wins, a SOS rank of 77, and a loss to fifth-ranked Oregon by 19? If that win against Nebraska is a "quality win," color me perplexed.
-- Christopher Tamme, South Bend, Indiana



So far it appears the fan base with the biggest gripe is Notre Dame’s, and I don’t know if they banded together on a message board or something but they also seem to have universally zeroed in on Michigan State as their biggest object of criticism. But to me, that just says the committee places more value on who you beat then who you lost to. The Irish nearly won at Florida State and good for them, but they did lose. You’ve got to beat somebody. Notre Dame’s best win to this point is against a 5-3 Stanford team with a non-existent offense. And even that came on a last-second touchdown. I’m not sure why the sarcasm about Nebraska, but that did give the Spartans a win over a 7-1 team.

I’d also note that unlike the traditional polls or BCS standings, where once the pecking order was established there was no way to reverse it, the Notre Dame-MSU thing could change in an instant. For example, if Stanford goes up and knocks off Oregon this weekend, suddenly that win might look better than Michigan State’s over Nebraska. And while the Spartans will get a bump if they beat No. 16 Ohio State on Nov. 8, Notre Dame plays at No. 14 Arizona State the same day. Reason No. 3,347 why it’s silly to get too worked up over these rankings just yet. The committee could come back next week and have Notre Dame No. 8, Michigan State No. 10.

http://www.foxsports.com/college-footbal...bag-102914
10-29-2014 12:51 PM
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b0ndsj0ns Offline
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RE: Good Mailbag this week for Stuart Mandell
Sounds like there's zero reason for concern about Marshall going forward.
10-29-2014 01:01 PM
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