(01-16-2020 04:56 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-16-2020 03:45 PM)slhNavy91 Wrote:  

(01-15-2020 05:04 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-15-2020 03:32 PM)slhNavy91 Wrote:  

(01-15-2020 03:06 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  How do you determine who is "deserving" vs. who is the "best"? How do you know an 8-5 P5 school is better than a 10-3 G5 school, particularly one that has beaten a couple P5 schools?

What you are really saying is that the schools that have the right name and are in the right conference should be the only ones that get ranked.

My first take got buried way back on page 1, but the conversation based on a presumption about Navy continues, so...

It wasn't buried, at least not with me. I just don't know the usefulness of the Massey Widget. We know that (pre-bowl) Massey has Navy as the #21 team in the country, which is ahead of all the SEC East teams save for Florida and Georgia, so presumably Massey thinks they would lose to those two but beat Mizzou, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

I don't buy that, I think if Navy had to play those teams, all of whom have better athletes, they'd get beat up pretty bad and there would be a negative carry-over week to week that they don't experience in the AAC.

E.g., I looked at last year's (2019) recruiting rankings, and South Carolina had seven four-star recruits. Tennessee had twelve. Not only did Navy not have any four-star recruits, the entire AAC had zero four-star recruits. Navy plays teams in the AAC that don't have a real talent advantage over them - Navy had 3-star recruits just like other AAC teams, in the SEC East they would, even against the bad teams.

There's nothing magical about Navy - you play the triple-option, which teams don't see a lot of. But once bigger/stronger/faster teams started to see it, they'd get used to it, and they would wear you down and out. Your smaller guys would get hit and banged up and knocked out. There would be a cumulative wear-tear effect that Massey can't capture.

The only team Navy regularly plays that has a significant talent advantage is Notre Dame, and we know how that goes - in the last 9 seasons, Navy is 1-8 vs Notre Dame and they won that game by a point.

So I think that after a season playing AAC teams, Navy very likely could beat UT, SC, Mizzou, or Kentucky in a bowl game. Likely go 1-0 versus each of them. Outprepare and scheme and hustle each of them in a single game, like they just did to K-State. But having to play those four, plus Georgia and Florida sequentially as part of a season? They couldn't last.

Just my opinion.

In 2012, everyone opined that Navy would never survive week-after-week in the Big East of Rutgers and Louisville.
In 2015, everyone ALSO opined that Navy would never survive week-after-week in the American Athletic Conference.
Somehow Navy won 67.5% of AAC games in the five years since then.

I wouldn't bet on Navy vs the LSU, Auburn, UGA end of Florida's schedule, or even Florida.
But comparing the bottom of the East to the AAC teams Navy played this year...

On 247, I see:
2019 -- This year's freshmen or redshirts
S.Carolina one 5*, five 4*, seventeen 3*
Kentucky three 4*, nineteen 3*
Missouri three 4*, nineteen 3*
Vanderbilt zero 4-5 *, twenty-one 3* score of 182.42, #57
Memphis twenty-two 3* score of 172.84, #67
SMU seventeen 3* #68
Houston seventeen 3*
USF nineteen 3*

2016 -- This year's seniors or rs juniors
S.Carolina six 4*, twenty 3*
Kentucky three 4* twentythree 3* score of 204.7, #34
Houston one 5*, three 4*, fourteen 3* score of 201.5 #36
Missouri two 4* eighteen 3* score of 188.37 #43
Vanderbilt one 4* eighteen 3* score of 171.54 #54
Memphis eighteen 3* score of 165.98 #61
USF one 4*, fifteen 3*
SMU seventeen 3*


You really think that Navy can play half that group week after week after week and not the other half?
That those couple of guys with a fourth star make that much difference and would break all twenty-two of Navy's starter?

And more to the point, that Houston (when they're not tanking in their red shirts), Memphis, UCF (omitted on these because I started with games Navy played this year, but would have rasied the AAC profile), USF, SMU couldn't play them week after week and do better than 6-6?

Sorry, I'm not buying it.

It is plain that the TOP of the autonomous conferences - the CFP contenders - are a level above the best of the AAC this year. But the bottom half (or more than half) just aren't. Not in performance and results, and not in recruits/athletes.

I noticed you threw Vanderbilt in there, who I never mentioned. I concede you would regularly beat Vanderbilt, LOL.

As I said, just in this recruiting class, the entire AAC has no 4-star players, Tennessee alone has a bunch of them. Doesn't that close the door on the talent discussion?

But since you mentioned earlier classes, I checked Rivals for 2018: Tennessee had 8 four-star guys, SC had 9, UK had 3, Mizzou had 2, even Vandy had 4.

The entire AAC? Cincy had 3, UCF 1, everyone else, meaning the entire AAC West ... zero. Vandy had as many 4-star recruits in 2018 as the entire AAC. The *lowest* rated SEC East team was #42. The highest AAC West team was rated #58.

In 2017, the SEC East teams not counting FLA and UGA ranged from 15 to 58 in the recruiting rankings. The best AAC West team was #64.

The only year of the last five years, 2015 - 2019, when *any* AAC West team was ranked higher than *any* of the lesser 5 SEC East teams was 2016, when Houston had a monster recruiting year by their standards. They were #41 that year, ahead of #47 MZ and #56 Vandy. Those latter two were still ahead of all other AAC West schools. I also noticed that Navy is 2-3 during its time in the AAC vs Houston, a team that typically has more athletes than it has coaches. Athletes trouble Navy.

And all of that is not counting Florida and Georgia, both typically loaded with big rangy fast NFL-bound athletes, both of whom would get to blast Navy and soften them up for games vs the lesser teams in the SEC East.

That's the thing - it's a cumulative effect of getting banged up.

As for performance, looking at the Sagarin rankings, the SEC East has been ahead of the AAC West all of the past 5 years, with a range of 4 - 16 Sagarin points. Even this year, a banner year for the AAC West, in which it finished ahead of both ACC divisions, the SEC East was better.

The talent gap is big, and IMO Navy would just get beat up and knocked out, worn down week after week playing bigger/stronger/faster guys.

Who knows? Maybe Navy will join the SEC one day and we will find out?

My point wasn't that the AAC is better than the SEC, or even equivalent. Definitely a gap from the Bama, LSU, tOSU, teams in all the autonomy conferences. But we are going to disagree on the gap between the bottom half of the SEC East and the top half of the AAC.
It isn't a slam dunk looking at recruiting, even before reminding onesself that every fan of a non-contract-bowl-conference team has a story about a 4* getting down graded to 3* upon signing with their school, or a commit getting upgraded after flipping to an autonomy conference school.

My other point is that the talent gap is already big between Navy and other AAC teams. From 2019 and counting back, Navy recruiting was 12th, 12th, 9th, 9th, and 12th.

Again, we're supposed to get beat up playing ND and these eight AAC teams. Navy is out-athleted 9 games out of twelve, in size across both lines and in speed all over the field. You want me to believe Kentucky's, Missouri's players are going to be harder for Navy to play than Ed Oliver or Shaquem Griffin or Zay Jones, and I don't.

I'm pretty sure we won't ever find out what Navy as an SEC member ends up doing, and I am quite all right with that, too.