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And now, back to something I've been (mercifully) lazy about, my updates on the FCS (minor-league college football) and the KHL (Russian major league hockey). Last week, I must admit, I laid off my FCS stuff because many of the teams I rank did horribly. Fortunately, they were by-and-large the same ones that the coaches ranked, so I really didn't do THAT bad. The coaches, however, sometimes I wonder if they pay ANY attention to anyone else's scores before voting. For example, I counted 24 teams that as of this morning have winning records but not even a single vote on the coaches poll. This includes 5 teams that are at least 3 games over .500- Dayton (6-3), Georgetown (7-2), Alabama A&M (6-2), Duquesne (7-2), and Drake (7-2), which makes for a combined 33-11. Now I give you that many of these are from weaker conferences and I don't even rank them. However, compare it to the 8 sub-.500 teams that DO get votes (such as Missouri State, who got enough votes to rank 30th while sporting a 1-8 record) and are a combined 22-44. Missouri State has been clubbed by every halfway decent team that's come their way- including losing to big boys Arkansas and Oregon by a combined 107-14, and lovely competitive games against #2 Northern Iowa (42-7), #26 Illinois State (38-13), and #3 North Dakota State (51-21), leaving them outscored on the season 157-353. For this tremendous record of success they got 23 votes in last week's poll. If I were an AD, I'd want to know if I employed one of those 23 coaches that think 1-8 is rewardable success.
Anyhow, here's my rankings this week- and it shifts quite a bit after former #1 Georgia Southern fell to former #11 App State 24-17, and former #6 North Dakota St. beat former #2 Northern Iowa 27-19. NDAKST goes to #1 with their big-boy-less 8-0 record. Montana St. (8-1) pulls into 2nd with a 54-13 win over Idaho St. Wofford rebounds in to 3rd (6-2), after pasting slumping Elon 48-28. GaSo drops to #4 (still 7-1 ain't bad), and Lehigh (who I got to watch against Colgate yesterday) keeps their 7-1 record in 5th for a second week. Sam Houston St. (8-0) won a conference game 66-0 over Lamar and rises to 6th; App State's victory brings them fro 11 to 7. NIU falls all the way to #8 at 6-2, while Montana at 7-2 holds at 9 after a 45-10 rout of Weber St. Rounding out the top ten is the Black Bears of Maine, who go to 7-1 after pasting Villanova 41-25 (2 years from a national championship, the Wildcats are now 1-8).
Old Dominion (7-2) won a hard fought 23-20 game against then-#8 JMU (5-3) and rise to 11th, while James Madison drops to 18. New Hampshire... well, they did win, 31-24, over doormat Rhode Island to go to 6-2 and move up one spot to 12th. Jacksonville St. (5-3) has seen the wheels fall off of late, and fall another 3 this week to 13th after losing to Tennessee Tech (which the coaches actually had at 17th, and stubbornly I have yet to rank) 21-14. A battle royal between then-#12 Towson and then-#17 Delaware ended in a 35-30 win for Delaware; therefore, the Blue Hens (5-4) rise to 14th while Towson (6-2) slips to 15th. I had to nudge Liberty (6-3) down a notch to 16th when it took them 2 OTs to top Presbyterian 27-20. Harvard ( 7-1) continues to do the Ivy League proud after whopping Dartmouth (sorry, KC) 41-10, and they move up to #17.
William AND Mary (4-4) had a week off together and slip to 19th, just behind JMU. The next five spots did well enough to stay right where they are (and thus keep Tenn Tech and Dayton off my chart)- #20 Jacksonville (6-2), #21 Stony Brook (5-3), #22 Illinois State (6-3), #23 Indiana St. (5-3, and like W&M and J'ville, took the week off), and #24 UMass (5-3). I did have one spot for a newcomer, and with reservations I gave it to Jackson State (7-1) at #25.
This week, we have a handful of ranked games: NDAKST tries to keep its new #1 ranking against #23 Indiana St.; #10 Maine vs #15 Towson; #12 UNH vs #18 JMU. Others facing tough contests are GaSo vs surprisingly 4-4 Citadel; Lehigh has conference rival Holy Cross; App State has to follow up their big win against Furman; NIU tries to recover against resurgent Youngstown St.; J-Ville State tries to stop their slide against Eastern Kentucky; Jacksonville faces Drake in an all-or-nothing for the Pioneer League lead; and Jackson State faces rival Grambling.
Montana St. gets its turn with Weber St. this week; Wofford gets cupcake Western Carolina; Sam Houston gets SE Louisiana; Montana moves on to cupcake Western Oregon; ODU faces struggling Richmond; Liberty may have a little trouble with VMI; Harvard gets Ivy doormat Columbia; W&M, who's been making everyone look good this season, plays URI; Stony Brook gets Charleston Southern, Illinois St. gets state rival Western; UMass gets to clobber 'Nova; and Delaware gets to watch it all on TV.
Very briefly on the KHL, the teams are beginning to spread out just a bit. In the west, SKA has taken the lead with a 10-2-4 record (for simplicity's sake I just combine all the various OT results into one third column). They and Dinamos Minsk and Moscow make up the top pack; Lev and Vityaz (who actually had a 2-0-1 record this week) make up the bottom rung, and the remaining teams range in a 6 point span in the middle. Over in the East, Amur (13-5-2) continues to surprise, pulling out to a 6-point lead over Traktor. Ak Bars and Avangard trail the first group; everybody else is caught in a 3-point spread... Except my poor Avtomobilst, who at 3-12-2 trail the next guy (Barys Astana this week) by a full dozen points. Ah, well.
Showing posts with label FCS poll voters suck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FCS poll voters suck. Show all posts
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Sunday sports stuff
Okay, praise and worship the Lord? Check. Clean up last night's mess? Check. (AKA the second round of the beer tasting. Lesson: if you grew up with lager, amber beers aren't significantly different from dark beers.) Take walk? Rain shortened, but check. Good, now let me do my FCS and KHL stuff.
First off, let me begin by explaining why I do a FCS football ranking. (FCS is the second tier of College football.) This week, I had ranked 6 teams in my top 25 that the official coaches poll did not. These teams went 5-1 with an average victory margin of 10.3 Saturday. On the other hand there were 6 teams that the coaches ranked and I did not. One of them, Richmond, was off this weekend. The remaining 5 went 1-4 with an average loss margin of 24.8. Hooray for me!
I still have Georgia Southern at my #1 spot, as do the coaches. In fact, the one thing that the coaches and I differ on in the top 4 is in our choices of 2 and 3, with the coaches putting Northern Iowa at 2 and I put Wofford in the runner up. We agreed on Montana State 4th. All won by at least 17 this weekend, with the only real competition being faced was Northern's 31-14 win over a South Dakota State team that "also received votes" from the coaches.
My top seven remained the same, with Lehigh #5, followed by Jacksonville St., and North Dakota St. But I am at last giving up on Appalachian St. being as good as last year. After a 49-42 win over a Citadel team that all the good teams- even punchless William AND Mary- beat easily, I dropped them out of the top 10 to 11th. Also falling from the top ten was New Hampshire. A team that both I (9th) and the coaches (6th) apparently overrated, they got clubbed by that same "punchless" W&M team 24-10 and fall to 14th. Taking advantage were: James Madison, which moves up 2 to 8th after blowing out woebegone Villanova 34-10 (which, being a "punchless" W&M fan I enjoyed thoroughly); Sam Houston St., who beat a halfway decent Nichols St. team 47-7 to take 9th; and Montana, whom I hate to move up because everytime I do, bad things happen to them. Nevertheless, they came back to beat tough Portland St. 30-24 and slide into 10th.
Norfolk St. moves up into 12th, and with last week's #16 Towson topping last week's #14 Old Dominion 39-35, Towson moves up to 13, while ODU falls to 18. Liberty was 17th on mine and "also receiving votes" on the coaches last week; they played Coastal Carolina, who was ignored for good reason by me and ranked 20th on the coaches poll. Result? Liberty 63, CC 27. Liberty moves up to 15th on my list, while CC sinks into obscurity. Indiana St.'s mighty Sycamores roll over Western Illinois 46-24 and move up to 19th. Oh, and Delaware, much higher ranked by the coaches last week (8) than me (13) got drubbed 21-10 by UMass a team I had at 21 (and still do) and they had "also receiving votes." I suspect that this week the coaches might have the Blue Hens a little closer to the 17th I dropped them to than last time.
Maine, after a tough win over JMU last week, struggled to beat CAA doormat Rhode Island 27-21 and slip to 20th; #22 San Diego, #23 South Carolina State, and #24 North Dakota (which last week I rechristened North Bakota for whatever reason- probably the same reason that once every Saturday Northern Iowa becomes Northern Ireland) were victims of the numbers game and held their positions despite impressive wins. And finally, little Elon lost its brief grip on the last spot on my poll after getting schwacked by Samford 43-31. Taking their place is Jacksonville, who shellacked Morehead St. 50-14 to get back to 5-2.
Next week features two top 25 games- #13 Towson against hopefully resurgent #16 W&M, and #14 UNH looking for redemption against Hen-slaying #21 UMass. #6 J-ville St. has a big boy game against Kentucky; Sam Houston faces McNeese St., one of those teams that they ranked (17) and I didn't and got beat; Maine faces the well-rested Richmond Spiders; and Lehigh and JMU take the week off.
Moving on to the KHL update.Dinamo Moscow and SKA continue to dominate the west, despite Dinamo getting blanked Friday by Canadian goalie Michael Garnett and his Traktor team 2-0.Moscow started the week with a 6-5 win over Magnitogorsk in which they trailed most of the game and score twice in the last 5 1/2 minutes to win. That was enough for the Magnitogorsk team- favorites in the East but struggling at 5-7- and Coach Alexander Garkov got the axe. SKA kept pace with wins over Red Army 4-2 and Salavat Yulaev 4-2 (despite being outshot 39-24) to go to 7-1-2 and tied with Moscow (8-5-1) for the top with 26 points. Dinamo Minsk had the only other winning record in the west at 6-3-4 after a 5-2 win over Barys Astana. The third Dinamo, Riga, has started to recover from a horrible start with a 4-2 win over Poprad and a 2-0 blanking of my still-struggling team from Ekaterinburg. They still lead only Vityaz (who got a rare point with a shootout win over Severstal
In the East, the battle is between Traktor (who won twice this week, also topping Ak Bars 2-1) and Amur, who posted a 6-1 rout of Spartak and a 5-2 win at Vityaz. Not far back is Avangard, who had just a shootout win over Torpedo to their credit this week. Dropping back was Ak Bars, who also lost surprisingly to Poprad 4-1. More surprisingly is the continued schnide that Salavat is on. In addition to the previously mentioned loss to SKA, they also fell to Sibir ( on Vladmir Taraseko's hat trick) 6-3, and to Metallurg Novkutnesk 1-0. Sibir is working its way up, though, with Tarasenko striking for a goal and two assists in a 3-1 win over Severstal. The woes slightly abated for Salavat today, though; in one of the games already complete when I began this, they had at least gotten a point in a 3-2 OT loss to Red Army. Ekaterinburg split this week, with a 1-0 win over Neftekhimik behind Evgeny Lobanov's 28 saves which puts them at 3-9 for the season.
So the actual standings coming into this morning's games had Moscow and SKA both at the top of the West with 26, followed by Minsk at 24, Torpedo at 20, Spartak and Atlant at 19, Severstal and Red Army at 18, Poprad at 15, Riga at 14, and Vityaz thugging along at their usual clip with 8. In the East, it was Traktor at 28, Amur at 26, Avangard at23, Ak Bars at 22, Salavat 19, Sibir 18, Yugra and Novokutnesk at 17, Magnitogorsk and Neftekhimik at 15, Barys at 13, and Ekaterinburg at 9.
Looking over at the scoreboard one more time, there's still just the four games finished- Salavat's OT loss to Red Army; Amur won again, 4-3 against Severstal; Novokutensk took out Vityaz 6-3; and Sibir lost to Avangard in a shootout. And among the four games going on, Ekaterinburg is down 4-1 to SKA in the third. Whatcha gonna do?
First off, let me begin by explaining why I do a FCS football ranking. (FCS is the second tier of College football.) This week, I had ranked 6 teams in my top 25 that the official coaches poll did not. These teams went 5-1 with an average victory margin of 10.3 Saturday. On the other hand there were 6 teams that the coaches ranked and I did not. One of them, Richmond, was off this weekend. The remaining 5 went 1-4 with an average loss margin of 24.8. Hooray for me!
I still have Georgia Southern at my #1 spot, as do the coaches. In fact, the one thing that the coaches and I differ on in the top 4 is in our choices of 2 and 3, with the coaches putting Northern Iowa at 2 and I put Wofford in the runner up. We agreed on Montana State 4th. All won by at least 17 this weekend, with the only real competition being faced was Northern's 31-14 win over a South Dakota State team that "also received votes" from the coaches.
My top seven remained the same, with Lehigh #5, followed by Jacksonville St., and North Dakota St. But I am at last giving up on Appalachian St. being as good as last year. After a 49-42 win over a Citadel team that all the good teams- even punchless William AND Mary- beat easily, I dropped them out of the top 10 to 11th. Also falling from the top ten was New Hampshire. A team that both I (9th) and the coaches (6th) apparently overrated, they got clubbed by that same "punchless" W&M team 24-10 and fall to 14th. Taking advantage were: James Madison, which moves up 2 to 8th after blowing out woebegone Villanova 34-10 (which, being a "punchless" W&M fan I enjoyed thoroughly); Sam Houston St., who beat a halfway decent Nichols St. team 47-7 to take 9th; and Montana, whom I hate to move up because everytime I do, bad things happen to them. Nevertheless, they came back to beat tough Portland St. 30-24 and slide into 10th.
Norfolk St. moves up into 12th, and with last week's #16 Towson topping last week's #14 Old Dominion 39-35, Towson moves up to 13, while ODU falls to 18. Liberty was 17th on mine and "also receiving votes" on the coaches last week; they played Coastal Carolina, who was ignored for good reason by me and ranked 20th on the coaches poll. Result? Liberty 63, CC 27. Liberty moves up to 15th on my list, while CC sinks into obscurity. Indiana St.'s mighty Sycamores roll over Western Illinois 46-24 and move up to 19th. Oh, and Delaware, much higher ranked by the coaches last week (8) than me (13) got drubbed 21-10 by UMass a team I had at 21 (and still do) and they had "also receiving votes." I suspect that this week the coaches might have the Blue Hens a little closer to the 17th I dropped them to than last time.
Maine, after a tough win over JMU last week, struggled to beat CAA doormat Rhode Island 27-21 and slip to 20th; #22 San Diego, #23 South Carolina State, and #24 North Dakota (which last week I rechristened North Bakota for whatever reason- probably the same reason that once every Saturday Northern Iowa becomes Northern Ireland) were victims of the numbers game and held their positions despite impressive wins. And finally, little Elon lost its brief grip on the last spot on my poll after getting schwacked by Samford 43-31. Taking their place is Jacksonville, who shellacked Morehead St. 50-14 to get back to 5-2.
Next week features two top 25 games- #13 Towson against hopefully resurgent #16 W&M, and #14 UNH looking for redemption against Hen-slaying #21 UMass. #6 J-ville St. has a big boy game against Kentucky; Sam Houston faces McNeese St., one of those teams that they ranked (17) and I didn't and got beat; Maine faces the well-rested Richmond Spiders; and Lehigh and JMU take the week off.
Moving on to the KHL update.Dinamo Moscow and SKA continue to dominate the west, despite Dinamo getting blanked Friday by Canadian goalie Michael Garnett and his Traktor team 2-0.Moscow started the week with a 6-5 win over Magnitogorsk in which they trailed most of the game and score twice in the last 5 1/2 minutes to win. That was enough for the Magnitogorsk team- favorites in the East but struggling at 5-7- and Coach Alexander Garkov got the axe. SKA kept pace with wins over Red Army 4-2 and Salavat Yulaev 4-2 (despite being outshot 39-24) to go to 7-1-2 and tied with Moscow (8-5-1) for the top with 26 points. Dinamo Minsk had the only other winning record in the west at 6-3-4 after a 5-2 win over Barys Astana. The third Dinamo, Riga, has started to recover from a horrible start with a 4-2 win over Poprad and a 2-0 blanking of my still-struggling team from Ekaterinburg. They still lead only Vityaz (who got a rare point with a shootout win over Severstal
In the East, the battle is between Traktor (who won twice this week, also topping Ak Bars 2-1) and Amur, who posted a 6-1 rout of Spartak and a 5-2 win at Vityaz. Not far back is Avangard, who had just a shootout win over Torpedo to their credit this week. Dropping back was Ak Bars, who also lost surprisingly to Poprad 4-1. More surprisingly is the continued schnide that Salavat is on. In addition to the previously mentioned loss to SKA, they also fell to Sibir ( on Vladmir Taraseko's hat trick) 6-3, and to Metallurg Novkutnesk 1-0. Sibir is working its way up, though, with Tarasenko striking for a goal and two assists in a 3-1 win over Severstal. The woes slightly abated for Salavat today, though; in one of the games already complete when I began this, they had at least gotten a point in a 3-2 OT loss to Red Army. Ekaterinburg split this week, with a 1-0 win over Neftekhimik behind Evgeny Lobanov's 28 saves which puts them at 3-9 for the season.
So the actual standings coming into this morning's games had Moscow and SKA both at the top of the West with 26, followed by Minsk at 24, Torpedo at 20, Spartak and Atlant at 19, Severstal and Red Army at 18, Poprad at 15, Riga at 14, and Vityaz thugging along at their usual clip with 8. In the East, it was Traktor at 28, Amur at 26, Avangard at23, Ak Bars at 22, Salavat 19, Sibir 18, Yugra and Novokutnesk at 17, Magnitogorsk and Neftekhimik at 15, Barys at 13, and Ekaterinburg at 9.
Looking over at the scoreboard one more time, there's still just the four games finished- Salavat's OT loss to Red Army; Amur won again, 4-3 against Severstal; Novokutensk took out Vityaz 6-3; and Sibir lost to Avangard in a shootout. And among the four games going on, Ekaterinburg is down 4-1 to SKA in the third. Whatcha gonna do?
Monday, November 22, 2010
Football odds and ends
Just looking over the new coaches poll FCS rankings vis-a-vis the playoff bracket, and it is clear that the selection committee pays about as much attention to the poll as I did. The new #1 team, Eastern Washington, got the #5 seed; #2 SF Austin did not get one of the five seeds (though they did get a first round bye); #3 App State got the #1 seed; #4 William AND Mary got the #2 seed; #5 Delaware got the #3 seed; #6 Wofford got a first round bye but no seed; and it was #7 Montana State who grabbed that last remaining seed, the #4.
Considering that Ivy League champ Penn, ranked #13, doesn't accept playoff bids, that means that if the selection committee went by the poll, that the top 21 teams minus Penn would get in. But since they don't, #15 Liberty (who cheesed themselves getting beat by CC two weeks ago), #17 Montana (who cheesed themselves in the Great Divide game loss to Montana State), and #19 Jacksonville and #25 Dayton (who got cheesed because the elitist contingent of the selection committee thinks that a Pioneer League which contained FCS's leading offense is inferior to the Patriot League whose champ lost to the two other playoff teams it played 66-10) get to watch on TV. The other two ranked teams that don't go are #23 Grambling (whose conference plays their own championship game- and besides, are a combined 1-18 over the years in the playoffs) , and the amazingly still-ranked Cal Poly. Mind you, this is a team who had the meltdown against rival UC-Davis two weeks ago, and did not play this week, and WENT UP 3 SPOTS, from 23 to 20! There is obviously a sizable contingent of west coast writers involved in the poll who are ABUSING THEIR OFFICE AND SHOULD BE EXPELLED. This is the main reason I got involved in this in the first place.
Joining the list in these teams' place are Western Illinois (#24), Robert Morris (#28, and an auto qualifier from yet another league that is so obviously superior to the Pioneer League), #22 Georgia Southern, and Big South AQ Coastal Carolina who DID NOT GET A SINGLE VOTE! (nor should they have; at least there is some common sense among the voters.
In the meantime, I'm watching Monday Night Football, and this week's NHFFL report will have a record amount of scoring- with things not over yet, we have TWO (2) teams that have 70+ points and another TWO (2) teams that have 60+ points! We are currently at a league average for the week of 44 points even, and I would assume that is a new league record. Not to mention that we have 3 teams getting beat with 41 points or more.
And finally, congrats to Ziggy Wulf, Minnesota Vikings co-owner, who finally had wisdom fall like manna from heaven upon him and fired coach Brad Childress. I would have fired him when he started making major personnel moves behind my back, but I suppose some people have a higher tolerance for insubordination than others.
Considering that Ivy League champ Penn, ranked #13, doesn't accept playoff bids, that means that if the selection committee went by the poll, that the top 21 teams minus Penn would get in. But since they don't, #15 Liberty (who cheesed themselves getting beat by CC two weeks ago), #17 Montana (who cheesed themselves in the Great Divide game loss to Montana State), and #19 Jacksonville and #25 Dayton (who got cheesed because the elitist contingent of the selection committee thinks that a Pioneer League which contained FCS's leading offense is inferior to the Patriot League whose champ lost to the two other playoff teams it played 66-10) get to watch on TV. The other two ranked teams that don't go are #23 Grambling (whose conference plays their own championship game- and besides, are a combined 1-18 over the years in the playoffs) , and the amazingly still-ranked Cal Poly. Mind you, this is a team who had the meltdown against rival UC-Davis two weeks ago, and did not play this week, and WENT UP 3 SPOTS, from 23 to 20! There is obviously a sizable contingent of west coast writers involved in the poll who are ABUSING THEIR OFFICE AND SHOULD BE EXPELLED. This is the main reason I got involved in this in the first place.
Joining the list in these teams' place are Western Illinois (#24), Robert Morris (#28, and an auto qualifier from yet another league that is so obviously superior to the Pioneer League), #22 Georgia Southern, and Big South AQ Coastal Carolina who DID NOT GET A SINGLE VOTE! (nor should they have; at least there is some common sense among the voters.
In the meantime, I'm watching Monday Night Football, and this week's NHFFL report will have a record amount of scoring- with things not over yet, we have TWO (2) teams that have 70+ points and another TWO (2) teams that have 60+ points! We are currently at a league average for the week of 44 points even, and I would assume that is a new league record. Not to mention that we have 3 teams getting beat with 41 points or more.
And finally, congrats to Ziggy Wulf, Minnesota Vikings co-owner, who finally had wisdom fall like manna from heaven upon him and fired coach Brad Childress. I would have fired him when he started making major personnel moves behind my back, but I suppose some people have a higher tolerance for insubordination than others.
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