College Football: Bearcats Still on Top Going into Week 11

The old phrase, “What is popular isn’t always right, and what is right isn’t always popular,” might just be the mantra here at The Game on Paper. While the talking heads on ESPN are worrying about whether Florida or Alabama will get to play Texas in the National Championship game, the

On paper, and on the field, some teams just keep winning. Cincinnati is one of them.

TGOPoll has nothing but faith in the Cincinnati Bearcats. Brian Kelly & Co. got past a UConn team that has dealt with a number of emotional losses on and off the field. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t pretty. But it was a win. Congratulations to the Bearcats, and Huskie Nation, you are in my prayers.

So, as we close in on the end of the Big East season, the Bearcats really have to step-it-up against their competition. Given how fickle the polls could be the could wind up in the Top-2 or the Top-22. #10 Iowa only dropped two spots for losing to Northwestern, while #21 Oregon dropped 10 spots after losing to Stanford. I guess the lesson is one loss hurts, two losses maim, and three losses kill — unless you are Northern Illinois (whose coach is named Kill).

The only other notable WTF in the poll this week is that TCU only moved up one spot despite winning while OK State and Northern Illinois both shot up six. Talk about a team that the math just has no love for. At least for TCU, the BCS is much more favorable, and they don’t have to worry about their TGOPoll ranking — yet.

On paper, the TGOPoll confirms what every Big 10 fan thinks: "The Big 10 is better than the PAC-10 even if USC does win the Rose Bowl every year."

From a Conference perspective, the only notable change is another flip-flop of the Big XII and the Big 10. The TGOPoll still continues to favor the Big East despite the SEC having two Top-5 teams averaging a higher ranking than the leaders of the Big East. Nonetheless, the Big East continues to have a strangle-hold on the TGOPoll Top-25 with 5/8 teams ranked in the Top-25.

The more curious situation is the poor showing from the Mountain West. They too have the advantage of being a “smaller” conference in terms of the number of teams competing. Further, #19 TCU, #30 Utah, and #38 BYU are all top teams, so what’s the problem? Well, to put it in perspective, the respectable showing from the faith-based schools is not being replicated by their secular counter-parts. The combined TGOPoll ratings of Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, UNLV, Utah State, San Diego State, and Wyoming don’t even add up to the same total of points as #38 BYU. I guess we can point to Strength of Schedule for why the TGOPoll is so down on TCU.

Finally, for those of you who actually care, this weeks “Others Receiving Votes” is rounded out with: #26 Clemson, #27 Notre Dame, #28 California, #29 UNC, #30 Utah, #31 South Carolina, #32 Oregon State, and #33 Troy. As a word of advice, keep an eye on the site, because in the next few weeks, these spots may actually matter . . .

The Men Who Would Be Coach

On paper, these candidates sound like they could be running for city council in South Boston

Based on the stats in the previous article, and based on websites like this one, I think it is fair to say that Mr. Weiss is on the hot seat. Not only are the stats against him, but the fans are too. Any time that a coach appears to be losing his grip, fans begin to speculate on the next man who would be king. Based on the small group of Domers I associate with, the popular choices are Urban Meyer, head coach at the University of Florida, and Brian Kelly, head coach at the University of Cincinnati.

At first glance, these guys both pass the “name test.” The name “Brian Kelly” is about as Irish as Paddy’s pig so he is a clear fit for the program based on name alone. At the same time, what name could be more pointedly Catholic than Urban Meyer? So based on that alone, they seem like decent enough fits with the program.

Yet, given the performance that both coaches are showing this year (#1 and #2 in the TGOPoll), it is no wonder that Domer Nation is hoping for one of these two men to take over if Weiss gets canned. The question is, who do you want more? Meyer? Or Kelly?

Since it is “Coach Appreciation Week” here at The Game on Paper, let’s break out our old standard of coaching evaluation. Up the Y-Axis we’ll plot the number of Rivals.com “stars” per player that each coach recruits as a proxy for recruiting. Along the X-Axis, we’ll plot each coach’s winning percentage. The ideal coach would be one who recruits well and has a high winning percentage. Further, because we know that Notre Dame has a short-fuse for coaches in their first three years, we’ll only take a look at Meyer and Kelly’s first three years at their respective schools to see if there is any likely improvement over the Weiss regime.

On paper, most people would take either one over Weiss

Taking a look a this graph, there are a couple of interesting things to notice. Let’s start with Kelly’s stats. Of the three, Kelly is apparently the weakest recruiter. In his first three seasons, he went 8-5, 10-3, 11-3. Over that time, his average recruit was bringing in 2.69 stars. Additionally, during that time frame, Kelly did not land a single recruit rated higher than three stars by Rivals.com. Said another way, Kelly has yet to land a 4-star or 5-star recruit despite two seasons with wins in the double digits. At the same time, his winning percentage is better than Weiss’, and is only a few games away from Meyer’s. The lesson here is that the man is incredible at developing talent, and he clearly has a system that is successful at molding his kind of players into a winning team. Less Talent + More Wins = One Hell of a Coach If You Need to Build a Program.

Having taken a look at Kelly, let’s turn our attention to Meyer. Everywhere he has gone, the man has crapped gold and pissed excellence. Super Bowl ring or not, Meyer’s average recruits are still indexing a 104 v. Weiss’, and a whopping 164 v. Kelly’s. It’s clear the man can recruit, but unlike Weiss, he hasn’t squandered the talent he has drawn to Gainesville. In his first three years, Meyer went 12-1, 9-4, 12-1 and won two National Championships. The man brings in talent, the man develops talent, and the man can develop talent. The only question is, can the Irish lure him away from Gainesville? According to the fountainhead of all modern knowledge, Wikipedia, the answer is “maybe.”

So, if I were the AD at Notre Dame and just showed Weiss the business side of my shillelagh, who would I hire. In my mind, the answer is Meyer. Now, hiring Meyer would require that I was able to drive a bigger dump truck of money up to his house than Florida, which would be a big “IF,” but given the deep pockets of the Irish boosters, I bet I’d find dollars before I found lint if it were for Urban Meyer.

The question is why Meyer and not Kelly? For all Kelly’s ability as a coach, and he is an incredible coach, he is the wrong guy for what Notre Dame needs. Sure, Kelly would be walking into a program with talent indexing a 158 over his previous team, but they wouldn’t be his guys. Could he win with them eventually? Sure. But. But. Converting a team rich with talent over to a new system that they are not useful has been a dismal experiment in other college towns in the Midwest. Additionally, the fact that Kelly has yet to land a 4 or 5 star recruit at Cincinnati raises questions over the sustainability of his system at a school that has an up-or-out policy for its coaches. A final knock on Kelly is the ability to win big games (e.g. Ohio State, Louisville, Virginia Tech). Considering that the Notre Dame football schedule is basically nothing but storied rivalry games, this might be reason to pause.

So, now that I have fired Charlie Weiss, it looks like I have two calls to make. The first one is to Urban Meyer. The second one is the to the City of Gainesville Public Works Department to see if I can rent the biggest dump truck they’ve got.

College Football: University of Cincinnati Ranked #1 in First-Ever “TGOP Poll”

Ever since the BCS opened the door to letting the Division I-A (I hate the FBS/FCS terminology) National Title be decided on paper, nerds everywhere have been trying to come up with their own, “better” computer ranking system. There are some good ones out there (I’ll highlight them over the next few weeks), and some not so good ones out there, but until the teams decide it for themselves, anyone’s opinion is just as legit as anyone else’s on who deserves to play for all the marbles. So as long as the national title isn’t decided on the field, and is decided on paper, TGOP will be crunching numbers and polling along with Harris, AP, the coaches, and the rest of them.

So here it is, “The Game on Paper” has released it’s first-ever College Football Poll. Shockingly, the University of Cincinnati is ranked at the top of the heap. Congratulations to the Bearcats who have not gotten much love this season. Perhaps its because they have the stigma of playing in “The Big LEast,” or maybe the AP and coaches are too brand name-focused to recognize talent (hell, even the BCS computers are picking the somewhat off-brand IOWA as #1, c’mon people). Anyhow, cheers to Brian Kelly and crew for debuting at #1. And for those of you who are wondering, no, this isn’t a fix. My wife is a die-hard Xavier fan, and I am a graduate of Iowa, so there is no way I would cook this one for Cincinnati. Credit where credit is due — congratulations Bearcats.

Some notable WTF’s in the rankings include Central Michigan in the Top 5, Penn State ranked ahead of Iowa (who won 21-10 in this year’s meeting), and the team that nobody loved (Temple) cracking the Top 25.

The team ranking system (and we rank all teams from 1-120) relies on four key measures: TGOP calculated Strength of Schedule (SOS), Dominance Index (DI), Wins/Loss Record, and VATI (Versus Average Team Index) which is another unique measure calculated by the TGOP model. Last year, I piloted this ranking system for fun, and correctly projected 22 of the “actual” Top 25 teams prior to going into the Bowl Season. Florida was picked as the National Champion by the model. At least that played out on the field.

Lastly, for those of you who care about “Others receiving votes,” the rest of the top 35 are rounded out with: Northern Illinois, Ohio State, LSU, California, Utah, Missouri, Wisconsin, BYU, Clemson, and Tulsa. Yes, Tulsa.

We’ll see you next week for our next installment of “TGOP Poll.”