The most improbable meaningful game this week

[bwgood77]

#22 Washington St at #10 Colorado, Saturday, 11/19, 3:30 PM ET, FOX





These two have been BY FAR the worst two teams in the PAC 12 for years, and now they could be the best (Utah, UW, USC maybe) but still, for any PAC 12 fan, just so interesting.

Who do you think wins this game?

[El Turco]

i think this tells more about state of pac 12 than those programs

[Wannabe MEP]

i think this tells more about state of pac 12 than those programs

Yeah, you mean that crazy depth? Like how the CFP has six Pac-12 teams -- literally half the conference -- in the top 25? And then Massey has six Pac-12 teams in the top 14.

[bwgood77]

i think this tells more about state of pac 12 than those programs

Yeah, you mean that crazy depth? Like how the CFP has six Pac-12 teams -- literally half the conference -- in the top 25? And then Massey has six Pac-12 teams in the top 14.

Yes, it is competitive from top to bottom for the most part, except for a couple of teams like my alma mater and their opponent this week. Oregon a little down too.

Then you have the other conferences with a bunch of patsies like the SEC (but what can you do with that many teams?) And then the Big 10 with Michigan St down and only handful of teams good.

Those latter two conferences just top heavy now.

[El Turco]

yeah they are competitive, only competitive against each other. washington didnt even have the balls to schedule anybody but results of those that did schedule reputable programs out of conference were embarrassing. washington st lost to boise(and eastern washington lol), oregon lost to nebraska, cal lost to sdsu, oregon st lost to boise and minnesota, colorado lost to michigan, usc lost to alabama by 7 touchdowns, ucla lost to a&m etc. stanford over notre dame and cal over texas are the only wins from pac 12 against decent programs and both those texas and notre dame are dumpster fires right now.

when you can not find one good out of conference win from an entire conference, it is a sign that conference is a joke. but hey somebody gotta win those intra-conference games and have a winning record.

[bwgood77]

yeah they are competitive, only competitive against each other. washington didnt even have the balls to schedule anybody but results of those that did schedule reputable programs out of conference were embarrassing. washington st lost to boise(and eastern washington lol), oregon lost to nebraska, cal lost to sdsu, oregon st lost to boise and minnesota, colorado lost to michigan, usc lost to alabama by 7 touchdowns, ucla lost to a&m etc. stanford over notre dame and cal over texas are the only wins from pac 12 against decent programs and both those texas and notre dame are dumpster fires right now.

when you can not find one good out of conference win from an entire conference, it is a sign that conference is a joke. but hey somebody gotta win those intra-conference games and have a winning record.

Sure the good teams in the conference (Colorado, USC, UCLA) lost to some either elite or very good teams from out of conference, and Wazzou had a rough start (though Boise St is pretty good)...Eastern Washington, SDSU and Boise St are all 9-1, so it's not like they suck.

Plenty of teams in other conferences had bad losses...maybe not the elite ones. Sure there may not be any elite teams in the PAC12 but the top half or so are pretty tough. It's been a rougher year for the conference than the last few, but that doesn't mean Colorado vs Washington St isn't an interesting game.

Colorado is ranked higher than LSU, Texas A&M, Florida, Florida St, Auburn, Arkansas, Ole Miss, etc.

The only SEC team, for example, ahead of Washington, Utah, Colorado and USC is Alabama. PAC 12 has 6 ranked teams while the Big 10 and SEC only have 5, and those are bigger conferences.

[El Turco]

yeah they are competitive, only competitive against each other. washington didnt even have the balls to schedule anybody but results of those that did schedule reputable programs out of conference were embarrassing. washington st lost to boise(and eastern washington lol), oregon lost to nebraska, cal lost to sdsu, oregon st lost to boise and minnesota, colorado lost to michigan, usc lost to alabama by 7 touchdowns, ucla lost to a&m etc. stanford over notre dame and cal over texas are the only wins from pac 12 against decent programs and both those texas and notre dame are dumpster fires right now.

when you can not find one good out of conference win from an entire conference, it is a sign that conference is a joke. but hey somebody gotta win those intra-conference games and have a winning record.

Sure the good teams in the conference (Colorado, USC, UCLA) lost to some either elite or very good teams from out of conference, and Wazzou had a rough start (though Boise St is pretty good)...Eastern Washington, SDSU and Boise St are all 9-1, so it's not like they suck.

Plenty of teams in other conferences had bad losses...maybe not the elite ones. Sure there may not be any elite teams in the PAC12 but the top half or so are pretty tough. It's been a rougher year for the conference than the last few, but that doesn't mean Colorado vs Washington St isn't an interesting game.

Colorado is ranked higher than LSU, Texas A&M, Florida, Florida St, Auburn, Arkansas, Ole Miss, etc.

The only SEC team, for example, ahead of Washington, Utah, Colorado and USC is Alabama. PAC 12 has 6 ranked teams while the Big 10 and SEC only have 5, and those are bigger conferences.

forget bad losses, pac12 doesnt have a good out of conference win, in entire 12 team conference. which means whatever rankings they attain largely come from beating each other, not because they have superiority over any conference.

[bwgood77]

yeah they are competitive, only competitive against each other. washington didnt even have the balls to schedule anybody but results of those that did schedule reputable programs out of conference were embarrassing. washington st lost to boise(and eastern washington lol), oregon lost to nebraska, cal lost to sdsu, oregon st lost to boise and minnesota, colorado lost to michigan, usc lost to alabama by 7 touchdowns, ucla lost to a&m etc. stanford over notre dame and cal over texas are the only wins from pac 12 against decent programs and both those texas and notre dame are dumpster fires right now.

when you can not find one good out of conference win from an entire conference, it is a sign that conference is a joke. but hey somebody gotta win those intra-conference games and have a winning record.

Sure the good teams in the conference (Colorado, USC, UCLA) lost to some either elite or very good teams from out of conference, and Wazzou had a rough start (though Boise St is pretty good)...Eastern Washington, SDSU and Boise St are all 9-1, so it's not like they suck.

Plenty of teams in other conferences had bad losses...maybe not the elite ones. Sure there may not be any elite teams in the PAC12 but the top half or so are pretty tough. It's been a rougher year for the conference than the last few, but that doesn't mean Colorado vs Washington St isn't an interesting game.

Colorado is ranked higher than LSU, Texas A&M, Florida, Florida St, Auburn, Arkansas, Ole Miss, etc.

The only SEC team, for example, ahead of Washington, Utah, Colorado and USC is Alabama. PAC 12 has 6 ranked teams while the Big 10 and SEC only have 5, and those are bigger conferences.

forget bad losses, pac12 doesnt have a good out of conference win, in entire 12 team conference. which means whatever rankings they attain largely come from beating each other, not because they have superiority over any conference.

Yes, so if they beat each other, someone must consider that impressive, therefore the rankings, despite your thoughts on the matter. Most of the conferences don't have more than one or two big out of conference wins, and since their conferences feature so many weak and putrid teams, their conference wins don't amount to much.

[El Turco]

Sure the good teams in the conference (Colorado, USC, UCLA) lost to some either elite or very good teams from out of conference, and Wazzou had a rough start (though Boise St is pretty good)...Eastern Washington, SDSU and Boise St are all 9-1, so it's not like they suck.

Plenty of teams in other conferences had bad losses...maybe not the elite ones. Sure there may not be any elite teams in the PAC12 but the top half or so are pretty tough. It's been a rougher year for the conference than the last few, but that doesn't mean Colorado vs Washington St isn't an interesting game.

Colorado is ranked higher than LSU, Texas A&M, Florida, Florida St, Auburn, Arkansas, Ole Miss, etc.

The only SEC team, for example, ahead of Washington, Utah, Colorado and USC is Alabama. PAC 12 has 6 ranked teams while the Big 10 and SEC only have 5, and those are bigger conferences.

forget bad losses, pac12 doesnt have a good out of conference win, in entire 12 team conference. which means whatever rankings they attain largely come from beating each other, not because they have superiority over any conference.

Yes, so if they beat each other, someone must consider that impressive, therefore the rankings, despite your thoughts on the matter. Most of the conferences don't have more than one or two big out of conference wins, and since their conferences feature so many weak and putrid teams, their conference wins don't amount to much.

how do you know your conferences teams are not weak and putrid if they can not beat any good teams from other conferences? just leap of faith? sounds to me it is just weak teams beating each other but cant measure up when they step out of their own group.

[bwgood77]

forget bad losses, pac12 doesnt have a good out of conference win, in entire 12 team conference. which means whatever rankings they attain largely come from beating each other, not because they have superiority over any conference.

Yes, so if they beat each other, someone must consider that impressive, therefore the rankings, despite your thoughts on the matter. Most of the conferences don't have more than one or two big out of conference wins, and since their conferences feature so many weak and putrid teams, their conference wins don't amount to much.

how do you know your conferences teams are not weak and putrid if they can not beat any good teams from other conferences? just leap of faith? sounds to me it is just weak teams beating each other but cant measure up when they step out of their own group.

Same with other conferences outside of a handful of teams that have high rankings.

[bleu]

yeah they are competitive, only competitive against each other. washington didnt even have the balls to schedule anybody but results of those that did schedule reputable programs out of conference were embarrassing. washington st lost to boise(and eastern washington lol), oregon lost to nebraska, cal lost to sdsu, oregon st lost to boise and minnesota, colorado lost to michigan, usc lost to alabama by 7 touchdowns, ucla lost to a&m etc. stanford over notre dame and cal over texas are the only wins from pac 12 against decent programs and both those texas and notre dame are dumpster fires right now.

when you can not find one good out of conference win from an entire conference, it is a sign that conference is a joke. but hey somebody gotta win those intra-conference games and have a winning record.

Penn State didn't have a single good OOC win and they lost to Pitt, but still beat the mighty mighty OSU. Iowa lost to an FCS school and still went and beat Michigan. Northwestern lost to FCS Illinois State but still beat Iowa. Therefore the conference is garbage.

See how that works? No, of course I don't believe that the B1G isn't a good conference. But things can be twisted.

[Wannabe MEP]

how do you know your conferences teams are not weak and putrid if they can not beat any good teams from other conferences?

College football always has the problem of small sample size: a team plays ~3 out of conference games, & often only one of them is a Power-5 team (e.g., OSU & Michigan each only played one out-of-conference Power-5 team this year), and they don't control how good that team happens to be that year. It's not necessarily the #1 vs #1, #3 vs #3 per conference. Not a lot of information we can draw from that.

In 2014, the top 3 Big Ten teams were 0-3 against out-of-conference Power-5 opponents: losses to Virginia Tech, LSU, and Oregon. Sample size.

[El Turco]

yeah they are competitive, only competitive against each other. washington didnt even have the balls to schedule anybody but results of those that did schedule reputable programs out of conference were embarrassing. washington st lost to boise(and eastern washington lol), oregon lost to nebraska, cal lost to sdsu, oregon st lost to boise and minnesota, colorado lost to michigan, usc lost to alabama by 7 touchdowns, ucla lost to a&m etc. stanford over notre dame and cal over texas are the only wins from pac 12 against decent programs and both those texas and notre dame are dumpster fires right now.

when you can not find one good out of conference win from an entire conference, it is a sign that conference is a joke. but hey somebody gotta win those intra-conference games and have a winning record.

Penn State didn't have a single good OOC win and they lost to Pitt, but still beat the mighty mighty OSU. Iowa lost to an FCS school and still went and beat Michigan. Northwestern lost to FCS Illinois State but still beat Iowa. Therefore the conference is garbage.

See how that works? No, of course I don't believe that the B1G isn't a good conference. But things can be twisted.

penn st didnt but ohio st, wisconsin and michigan all beaten good teams out of conference, which is at least three more than what pac 12 can say. so no, you cant really twist this.

[El Turco]

how do you know your conferences teams are not weak and putrid if they can not beat any good teams from other conferences?

College football always has the problem of small sample size: a team plays ~3 out of conference games, & often only one of them is a Power-5 team (e.g., OSU & Michigan each only played one out-of-conference Power-5 team this year), and they don't control how good that team happens to be that year. It's not necessarily the #1 vs #1, #3 vs #3 per conference. Not a lot of information we can draw from that.

In 2014, the top 3 Big Ten teams were 0-3 against out-of-conference Power-5 opponents: losses to Virginia Tech, LSU, and Oregon. Sample size.

funny all of the sudden you care about sample size but we are talking about entire conference not individual teams, there is plenty of sample size to determine pac12's out of conference performance and it aint good. and you can control the quality of teams to a point, scheduling programs with a pulse gives you infinitely better chance of playing a good team rather than scheduling perennial losers like baylor and washington.

[Wannabe MEP]

funny all of the sudden you care about sample size

I always care about sample size, which is why I value advanced statistical analysis that incorporates more information than what Arda can fit in his [biased] brain.

we are talking about entire conference not individual teams, there is plenty of sample size to determine pac12's out of conference performance

Yes, exactly, and by advanced stats, looking at the conference as a whole, Pac-12 had a better out-of-conference showing than the Big Ten, which is why all the statistical ratings programs rate the Pac-12 better as a whole than the Big Ten. You're the one cherry-picking and only looking specific examples that support your opinion.

For example...

Out of conference losses by teams in the Pac-12's top half

• @Michigan NOTE: Colorado led in the second half, but senior QB got injured -- replacement freshman QB went 0-7. Colorado is 2-2 when their QB has been injured; otherwise undefeated.
• Alabama (in Texas) NOTE: This was prior to QB change that transformed USC's season.
• @Boise State
• Eastern Washington

Really only one bad loss.

Out of conference losses by teams in the Big Ten's top half

• @Pitt
• Western Michigan
• Illinois State
• North Dakota St

That's definitely more than one bad loss.

scheduling programs with a pulse gives you infinitely better chance of playing a good team rather than scheduling perennial losers like baylor and washington.

Michigan scheduled one Power 5 program, Colorado, which hadn't had a winning record in a decade. In that time, Rutgers had had a winning record seven times. So Michigan did the same thing that Washington did (except worse), but then got lucky that...

1. Colorado's QB got injured, otherwise Michigan was tracking to lose at home
2. Colorado turned out to be better than they'd been since before...the SEC's streak of titles; the U.S. had had a black president; Twitter

[El Turco]

nobody in big ten's top half lost to illinois state or western michigan, and pitt just beat a playoff team on the road so they are hardly a bad team. putting aside the fabricated stats, top half of big ten did go 3-0 against pac 12.

still havent explained why entire conference doesnt have a single good out of conference win, did all the qbs in the conference brake their nails during out of conference games?

[studcrackers]

personally i wouldnt count north dakota st as a bad loss, but that's me

[Wannabe MEP]

did all the qbs in the conference brake their nails during out of conference games?

Is this kind of trash necessary, man? I commented that a player, the Colorado QB, got injured. Injuries happen, and they affect games...even in the uber-manly Big Ten, where they eat nails (steak?) for breakfast. Why the pre-teen-maturity-level comment?

still havent explained why entire conference doesnt have a single good out of conference win

Define "good". What were the *good* out of conference wins for the Big Ten in 2014? The Pac-12 out-of-conference resume this year is quite clearly better than the Big Ten's in 2014 by this point in the season. But it's such a small sample size, which is why I advocate for an 8-team playoff: I don't want to exclude a conference, even a conference that has such a terrible out-of-conference showing as the Big Ten did in 2014, where their champion lost to a team that went 3-5 in the ACC, and no one had any *good-according-to-Arda* wins.

The Pac-12 is 6-5 this year against the Power 5 conferences + Notre Dame. Some of those 6 wins were against pretty *good* teams. No one's arguing that any of those wins were as *good* as Oklahoma or Colorado. If we're talking that type of level of *good*, then we're talking about really really small sample sizes; maybe four Pac-12 teams that could beat that level of opponent, most of which are gonna play just one Power 5 opponent. So looking at the top 4 Pac-12 teams according to Massey:

• Washington beat Rutgers. That home-and-home was set up in 2014 –– that year both teams won 8 games. Not sure who was supposed to know that Washington would rise to the top of the Pac-12, while Rutgers would rise to the top of the Bottom 10.
• Colorado lost to Michigan on the road. But they played them tough (and in fact led most of the 1st half and into the 2nd half) until their quarterback got injured. Flip that scenario: @Colorado, & Michigan has the injured QB, and I don't think it's crazy to think Colorado wins that game. Neutral field with both quarterbacks healthy? I don't know. Based on name-brand? People would say Michigan. Based on how that game was going before Liufau got injured? People might have to say Colorado.
• USC lost to Alabama. The whole country knows USC is a lot better team now than they were at the beginning of the year. A huge reason we know was the QB switch. Perhaps there are others as well.
• Stanford beat Kansas State and Notre Dame. Both of which are mediocre teams that have been top tier in recent years.

That's it: that's your sample size. I agree that it's not amazingly wonderful, but I think the sample size is too small. It's just not enough info to conclude as much as you think we can conclude, which is that "that conference is a joke".

Once again, when you include a lot more information, like Sagarin does, it shows the Pac-12 as a whole as a better conference than the Big Ten, and it's not close.