Three two one zero, all engine running looked off. We have a look job. Welcome back to the Celiverbal boys and girls. My name is ty hilden Brandt. Thank you for joining me. Bad news you are stuck with just me today. Dan's fine. He's fine, but he's off tending to a personal matter. He'll be back pretty soon. In the meantime, I dug through our deep, deep database of friends of colleagues, of reporters, beat writers, you name it to find someone who wouldn't mind blasting off into an
unexpected Friday orbit with me. And the good news is that we got Bill Connolly from ESPN. It's going to stop by here momentarily. We had him on as part of one of those social media live streams that we were doing with folks having trivia contests and whatnot. But we actually haven't had a chance to catch up with Bill since the season started to get his take on
what's been going down. And I have so many questions for him, as somebody who we all know has a deep appreciation for the stats, has been a pioneer in advanced analytics on the college football side. How do you grade out twenty twenty? How do you even keep track of stats in twenty twenty, so a bunch to get through with him. Don't forget. If you haven't already subscribed to the Solid Verbal, you can do so find all the information you need by going out to solidverbal dot com.
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info on that. So look, without further ado, let's just jump right into it. Appreciate you downloading the Unexpected Friday Orbit. Here's Bill Connolly from ESPN, all right joining us now, long time friend of the Solid Verbal. You know him well. His name is Bill Connolly. Sir, how are you.
I'm not too bad?
How are you doing good? So you are in Columbia, Missouri? Correct? Correct? How's Missouri football treating you this year. I know you're a missoo guy.
Yeah, I mean it's interesting. I mean it's it's this is clearly a flawed team. It's clearly, you know, not the most talent and not the most experienced anything like that. But they're pretty resourceful, and I think Eli Drinkwitz is pretty resourceful, and it's been kind of fun to follow. I was not even like my editor pinged me and mentioned that Missouri was going to be the first person named on the show, or I guess had just been the first team named on the show, and that was
not something I had on my radar. Like Lazaria's like number sixty something in my sp plus ranking, so it's not really top twenty five is not something I was really envisioning here. But they've been, whether that's deserving or not, they've been a really interesting team to follow. They can apparently they can win a rock fight with Kentucky, and then they can win a shootout with Arkansas and LSU two.
I mean, how much I'm curious, because you do the sp plus, which we've referenced on this show for god knows how long, how do you factor in a new coach coming aboard, because I know a fair amount of your calculations are based on returning production guys that are coming back. You look at all sorts of different factors, But the whole coaching thing seems like it'd be really difficult to try and game out in advance.
Yeah, I mean the way I factored in is I don't Yeah, they just has it's everything zero some so it really is kind of hard. Like I've tickered around. The best idea I've had is to sort of tick around with the concept of uh, kind of just historical averages, like you're you know, if you're overachieving as a program and you lose your coach, chances are you're going to regress towards your hysterical mean. If you're underachieving and you fire your coach and bring in somebody else, you'll probably
progress towards your historical mean. I haven't figured out the best way to execute that yet, and I haven't found anything.
Else to work.
So basically, they just have asterisks by them and here's the projection butt and that's about all I can do.
This has been a year of butts, though, hasn't it. I just butts all around just nothing, but butts man, I want to know more about how it's been on your end trying to keep track of all the advanced stuff, all the advanced stats that again we and love on this show. But I want to hear about some of those odd challenges that you've had, Like we've all the
entire world has had a litany of challenges. But as it relates to college football and your very specific corner of the college football ether and internet and statistical universe, what has it been like to try and match Team A up with Team B when they've played different games, when they're canceling games, when there are these extended breaks between games, Like I would imagine that's been an utter nightmare for you.
Well, it's it has.
I mean from one standpoint, I mean you just look at Prediction Tracker, and I referenced this in a piece I wad earlier this week. You look at Prediction Tracker, you look at the top team ratings, the top systems. I guess in Prediction Tracker, they're the best of the best. Their average is lower than it normally is. It's just like not dramatically so, but whereas the top ratings would normally average like you know, fifty three fifty four percent.
Now it's like fifty two fifty two and a half percent against the spread that absolute error that that average of like your projection versus reality. How many points did you miss it by? You know, that would normally be twelve, the twelve and a half of the best measures. Now it's closer to thirteen or a little over thirteen. So
there's just like a little bit of difference there. And I've definitely found in doing like best bets and stuff every week for ESPN chalk like, it's harder to come up with a system like these are the picks that it's that it's doing well on. You know, last year I had kind of a thing where you know, if it's if s P plus disagrees by more than three points and it's you know, a line in this range and blah blah blah.
There's none of that. This year.
I've been just flailing on those best best picks because I keep looking for trends that aren't there. So that's been weird, and that's had a lot to do. It's just the fact that I mean, number one, Vegas has better information than you do recording who's going to be out and the market you know, is going to adjust in a way that a computer system isn't going to you, but it is.
It's been a challenge.
The other part, though, is coming up that the biggest challenge is bowl season. If you know there's going to be a bowl season, I will see. But the like the hierarchy within a given conference. You know, I think i've you know, my system, and plenty of others have have have sussed that out pretty well. You know that Alabama's about this much better than everybody else in the SEC. You kind of know the Florida and Georgia are next A,
and M's in there somewhere. You so the hierarchy within each of the ten conferences kind of probably fits pretty well. And so you know, since you're only playing against your conference, that means the picks haven't been demonstrably worse because you know the hierarchy. But what's the How good is the SEC compared to the ACC, compared to the PAC twelve, compared to the Big ten?
No freaking idea, because you have you have none of that connective tissue this year, right.
Right, we have priors, and priors are very good.
Everybody hates priors, because you know, just judge just on this year, not on previous whatever. But they're in there for a reason. They make the predictions better. But I can't say with confidence that the SEC is exactly as good, no better, or worse than it was last year, or that exactly is good, no better, or worse than the preseason projection said. And so figuring out that balance is going to be really weird, and we're going to suddenly have a little a mini explosion of non conference games
here in another month or so. And I mean, I don't know the best way to avoid my system overreacting and all the ways that I tell everybody to never overreact to balls. It's just kind of like, if the SEC has three or four games that three or four teams that underachieved, suddenly it's gonna be the fifth best conference, and I'm going to have to figure out the best plan of attack for just kind of balancing that.
Speaking of overreactions, what kind of overreactions? What kind of weird reactions have you gotten to some of your work here in the twenty twenty season, Because you know, being with ESPN, your your fine work is front stage center, which obviously opens you up to a lot more fan criticism. I know you're but mindful of the kinds of feedback you get every year. But what what has twenty twenty brought to you this season?
Well, it has perpetuated ain't played nobody. First of all, that's that's not something that we can just use in September anymore. Or if a team has managed to have just the right conference schedule to where they don't really play anybody until November. No, it's been you know, as soon as a couple of leagues have had actual games between good teams, another one starts off and they ain't
played nobody. So that's been I've been yelled at all year because Ohio State was number one in SPPLUS still about mid November, you know, one to o Ohio State ahead of seven and oh Alabama or whatever, And you know that's been I think there's just been a visual disconnect in that regard that hasn't existed in previous season. How could you possibly say they're better. They've only played one game and all that stuff, So that's certainly been different.
I will say moving behind the paywall has gotten me yelled at well, has has resulted in me getting yelled at a little less for you know, whether that's good or bad is up to interpretation, I guess, but that has certainly changed. Now I just get yelled at for being behind the paywall, So that's all different.
Speaking of that bill, are the best four teams truly Alabama, Notre Dame, Clemson in Ohio State? Maybe not in that order, I know, not exactly in that order for the SP plus, But how often do you sort of compare your own eye tests with what your numbers are telling you? Or have you now merged into being one giant college football computer?
I definitely, I mean, I know what the ratings say, and I take that as a pretty hard suggestion to look at. Like, I don't have to believe that Virginia Tech's a top twenty five team. However, I can stray if I just can't justify something in my head. But yeah, I mean, if you're judging by resume, well, the resume conversation's weird with Ohio State right now. But the College Football Playoff rankin's top four is the s P plus
top four Ohio State. All the talk about sample sizes that we've made this week, bottom line is Ohio State has had enough of a sample to prove it's the best team in the East. Defense you know, hasn't quite lived up to projections, but it's I feel very comfortable thinking of them as one of the four best teams in the country, and so I don't I haven't minded.
I felt like a sellout, like I was selling out Indiana, a fellow underdog school, because I just could not get myself worked up at all this week about a highest taketing in the title game because there's the best, best team in the East and they beat Indiana.
Wow, what a weird circumstance we find ourselves in. And it's it's affected schools disproportionately. One of the talking points that Dan and I tried to examine a little more closely on one of our recent episodes was which teams do we feel have been disproportionately affected by the virus COVID? And I'm wondering if you've given any thought to that point, because again, numbers only tell you so much. Right, some of what you've got in your S and P system
is very accurate. I'm guessing there are other schools like LSU that maybe were affected in ways that we could not have predicted. Do you have any schools that come to mind for you.
Yeah, I mean you could kind of put Ohio State, for instance, in both of those categories really because they had a very experienced team with a lot of proven pieces, even if they had some guys to replace, especially on defense and I guess at running back. It took them a couple of games to really kind of get into a rhythm there. Like you could say that they were more ready than other schools to hit the ground running whenever they got the chance to hit the ground running.
At the same time, when you say who's been disproportionately affected by COVID, my first thought goes to these schools that had a small sample size to begin with and suddenly have half that sample size, you know, usc not getting every chance to prove what they're capable of. Right now, Ohio State got just enough to get the benefit of
the doubt. But obviously that's been a big point of discussion because they had to cancel one of their other games, and if I remember right, two other schools had to cancel a hot games with Ohio State.
If I got that all.
Straight, but you know you could that's you know, just having a limited opportunity to make an impression anyway, and then having even one game canceled, like USC I think has had one.
I think.
That I just I mean, I hate, just personally, I hate that we've got pretty much to the end of the season. Now we don't really know USC, we don't really know UCLA, who might be an interesting story. We don't know Utah at all. Like Washington and Oregon are both I think are both very good, but they both suffered those dumb losses where s pop plus treated it as a win and all that stuff, and then they're
off the field. So I mean, I do feel like obviously they had little margin for er anyway, but I can't That's where my brain goes first.
It's just like they've.
Been Any chance they had of putting together a playoff resume probably didn't exist anyway, and it definitely didn't exist the moment they had a game canceled.
I want to go back to LSU for a second, because we've spent I know, you spent a fair amount of energy trying to figure out exactly what's going on at LSU, and you know, at the risk of making a mountain out of a mole hill in a weird year where there was a ton of turnover. You lose a generational quarterback or quarterback after a generational season, it kind of does feel like there is a little bit more meat on the bone there. They switched defensive coordinators.
The defense was a mess early on. Seemed at one point like maybe it was starting to come together. Then suddenly it wasn't what's your read on LYC? What are the numbers tell you there?
Yeah? I mean, you're right, it is. You know, stuff happens sometimes.
There was obviously going to be a regression sometimes and you don't really know how much there's going to be. But especially as soon as Miles Brennan got hurt, Like, not only do you lose Burrow, you lose Burrow's successor after whatever that was three games or something like that was obviously going to hurt. They obviously weren't going to be a top ten caliber team. But like when I wrote the preview for the SEC West, whatever that was, I.
Guess I don't even remember what time to construct.
I guess just a contract.
Yeah, early September, we'll say early September. I didn't mention like I didn't love that he had these two up and comers. He inherited one in Dave Randa. On the defensive side, he brings in Joe Brady. He like young energy, creativity, He sees the impact that can have on his program, and when they leave, he hires two old friends.
That it didn't rub me the right way, especially.
When one of those was Bopolinia, who hasn't technically been a part of a good FBS defense in a while now. Like his reputation was, you know, generated from what like three to thirteen or something like that. The world's changed a little bit, so I didn't I didn't love that. It felt like a lesson that he didn't learn, and he could have tried to keep moving moving forward as a program, keeping new ideas coming in, and that he just kind of brought two old guys in to reinforce
what they already had. So that the fact that didn't really work out plenty. They really did improve defensively recently. I'm not going to judge anybody for what they do against Alabama. I mean, that's doesn't feel fair because Alabama is a nearly perfect offense. But the two games before that they both looked good or better, So maybe that
works out okay. But when you have an inkling that you don't like a certain higher and then that hire immediately just falls apart completely, it gives you the impression it's not just pure. They lost a bunch of players and they'll be back as soon as they get more experienced. There were some iffy decisions there in the same way that there were really good decisions one, two, three years ago.
Yeah, you know, your Alabama points are really valid one. And it's something Dan and I have grappled with a lot with respect to Texas A and M. Right because A and M's only loss on the year was that drubbing they took at the hands of Alabama. They're currently fifth in the rankings. They're knocking to get another crack
at Alabama. This whole notion of who is the next team up outside of that top four to me, again, we hesitate to frame everything within the soul context of the playoff, but who the next team up would be? Who that number four team is to me is the most interesting topic around that point right now. Because A and M's there, but so is Florida. They're going to get their crack at Bama pretty soon. Iowa State is beating down the door. They're going to have a matchup
with Oklahoma, which is interesting. Oklahoma is further down in the rankings, but they still kind of are trying to make their case. And then there's a team like Cincinnati, which, I gotta be honest, in a normal year, I think it would be a fairy tale to even consider them as part of this discussion. Rightly or wrongly, that's just the way this thing goes. But my point all along has been, hey, twenty twenty, a lot of weird stuff happened.
In any way, they have played really really well this season, and they've had their bouts with cancelations and postponements as well. But have you given much thought to who that next team up is in the event that presumably a Notre Dame or a Clemson drops out and there's another spot.
Yeah, Unfortunately, like the big Cinderela, scenarios probably required either Notre Dame Clemson or Florida I guess to lose again or in Notre Dames Cleanse to lose the first time, just to kind of open the door, because you can really easily see a scenario even if we assume that Ohios stake gets in, Like Alabama beats Florida, Clemson beats Notre Dame. There you go those of your four, and or Florida beats Alabama, they get in and maybe the
Clemson Notre Dame losers now out or whatever. Like you, it's hard to get past Florida in that instance. And you're right, I mean A and M's fifth. But Florida is the only team with the chance at a good win now, and so if they beat Alabama, they'll obviously jump A and M. A and m's only hope really is for what both Florida and Clemson to lose and
then nobody else jumps up. I get so mad at the Committee most of the time because it's kind of with my numbers, Like you know, since I get yelled at about my numbers, I'll usually root for whatever they pick, unless I have some other interests just because I like
not getting yelled at. But I hate it when something like the Committee makes me yell about Iowa State being overrated, like I love every bit of this Iowa State story, kind of the same way with Indiana, and the Committee now makes me have to stand up and shout that Iowa State has no business being as high as they are in the rankings that it's an absolute joke that Cincinnati's behind them at Iowa State did, after all, lose to Louisiana and they lost to Oklahoma State, which I
think the only purpose Oklahoma State has in the rankings right now is to give Iowa State another quality loss.
I have no idea how U still ranked either.
Another team that I usually say nice things about that they're making me say mean things about now. But I really that's been my biggest issue. I have no idea how Iowa States that high. They they're very good, and predictively they'd be a fifty to fifty draw with Cincinnati right now. But Cincinnati's blown out all but one team on their schedule. The other team is very good in UCF, and they beat them to Iowa Stay lost to Louisiana and Oklahoma State. What are we doing in that regard?
So I don't see any possible way Cincinnati possibly gets up to even fifth now.
And that's I hate that.
This is like they've done absolutely everything right and they're still not going to get rewarded for it, and the and the you know, the bottom five, the group of five never does.
Let's stay in the Big twelve for a second, because the storyline I suspect we're going to hear a lot more about over the coming days and weeks is Tom Herman and Texas. So Tom Herman pre covid took some drastic measures to try and retool the team. Texas is still in a position where it is not up to the levels that I think the Texas fan base, certainly
the Texas brass would want it to be. As you look at your numbers, as you try to evaluate what's gone on at Texas, do you have any conclusions what has gone on at Texas that needs to go better outside of just the standard win loss record. What where's the deficiency?
Well, defense is the most obvious answer.
No.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a thing we just called like the Mulligan Watch. Basically, like, of all the teams that are having disappointed seasons, you know what's the most like who are the easiest ones to explain and the most likely ones to bounce back and all that stuff, And I just the grouping kind of made Texas stand out because we're talking about LSU getting blown out every week.
You know, whatever their record is.
Now we're talking about Penn State starting zhe to five, Michigan just dreadful seasons, or at least starts to season. In Penn State's case, I think they're going to be I think they were mostly fine already and now they're going to be fine from here on out. But you know that we're talking about just drek on the part of how they started, the results they were getting and
all that. And Texas was five and three, you know, with a tight loss to apparently the best Iowa State team in one hundred years, with a tight loss to Oklahoma. Really the only semi unforgivable loss was TCU. So just including them in the list of underachievers, they were easily the best underachiever on the list. They're top twenty now in SP plus, they're six and three. After taking some anger out on Kansas State. They they have improved wording.
This is tricky, but they've improved a little bit from where they were. They've absolutely improved from where they were last couple of years under Mac where they were Charlie Strong. They just haven't proved enough. And so to me, I think what I said in that piece and the only thing I can think to say now is that if you can get herban Meyer, then sure, get rid of
Tom Herman. But if you're just going to start over again, because they only made you a little bit better, and it has been kind of a gradual weird results aside from twenty eighteen to nineteen, like it has just been kind.
Of a gradual improvement.
If you're going to fire somebody for not improving fast enough, you better go out and get urban Meyer and Nick Saban, like, I don't know that he's going to succeed there. And the defense, the defense has improved a ton this year, hasn't improved a ton this year. The offense he pushes out Tim Beck after their top ten and offensivesp plus and now they're not top ten anymore. So that was a little weird. But they just they're they're not fine,
but they're close to fine. They're not dreadful underachievers like some of the other teams we've talked about. So I would not make a move unless you know you can get an awesome coach to replace him.
And you can't.
Back to your point about priors and how they factor into calculations, how are you going to factor in priors from twenty twenty because you know, Michigan's not had a good year, Penn States not had a good year. If we just use those two schools as a means in comparison, but that data isn't pure, is it? Like? You have to wait that a little differently.
That data is going to have priors in it, and those priors are going to carry forward into other Yeah, it's going to be weird. I one thing I'm going to experiment with, hopefully between well I don't know, there's no separation between regular season and bowl seasons. Just hopefully whatever bowls exist while I'm watching that, I'll experiment just basically play with previous seasons, look at conference play only throwing like one like the easiest non conference game for
the Big twelve teams. Just try to craft a twenty twenty light schedule for previous seasons where I've got full data, and just kind of see what the differences are, what it looks like comparing those two How much of this weird sample that we get, how much of that is indicative of what that full number was going to be. I'm not going to share what that's going to tell me, but that's something I want to look into. Because I
really don't know there's a chance. Basically, yea, I come up with the final s P plus rankings for this year, and then whatever I end up actually using for next year's projections is like internally just completely different based on whatever I could figure out.
So it is absolutely weird.
Everybody is we should everybody should go to ten game conference schedules.
Now, it's so great.
No, no, no, please don't. We've got to have those connections otherwise this all falls apart.
Yeah, we need a baseline. It's it's almost like restarting completely for you with the kind of thing that you're doing. And I fear that, especially for the sp plus ball season, is not going to be kind. No because in the past on our show and people laugh at us, and of course it's an unscientific way to pick games, but there certainly is a factor with some teams going into bull season who care and others who are just trying
to get it over with. And I think the big difference we've seen this year is we've got teams who have formally said we don't care at this point, like we're cool. I think it was Boston College earlier today said yeah, we're cool. We're good. We're just not going to play in the Bulls this year. We've seen that happen in the past on a very limited basis, but usually bullseason is supposed to be the crown jewel at the end of the college football experience for seniors and
for underclassmen. It's something that teams really look forward to. It means a lot. Right this year, they're like, hell with it, we don't want to be here. And even the teams that do end up going, I would expect there are going to be a lot that fall into that category as well, like we are only here because they made us come.
I'm hoping that you know, now the Boston College has cleared the way, like some of those teams that would probably end up mailing it in just won't play well. Obviously, we'll still have some stragglers, but I would hope that maybe that helps out a little bit in that regard. But I mean, yeah, and just ball season in general.
Like I was talking about hierarchies within conferences and everything, like if SP plus or whoever system you want to talk about, if it's got a decent rate of that conference, like here are all the SEC teams, but are they down here or are they all up here?
Like where's that line?
It's going to like get every SEC game right, It's gonna get every SEC game wrong, depending on whether it kind of has the right read on that hierarchy.
But then like, yeah, like you said, I mean.
The some teams won't care or they'll think they care. And what often happens is with bulls is they don't know they're going to mail it intill they're suddenly down fourteen nothing five minutes in.
Yeah, I don't want to be here anymore.
We're done, We're done.
Yeah.
I think everybody when they run out on the field, they're like, yeah, we're gonna win this game, and then they find out if they're ready about five minutes in. But there will be some of that. I just hope that whatever duds are out there, they're evenly distributed duds so it doesn't hurt one conference that then turns around and hurts that conference in next year's projections too.
What surprises you so far from what you've seen, you know, maybe take COVID out of it, but yeah, every year there are stories that jump up, maybe not as dramatic as the Coastal Carolina story. Or the Grayson McCall story. But every year they are these things that I'm sure as you're sifting through your data, as you're just watching college football as a fan, you got those stories that you really latch onto as feel good stories. I think we're all in need of feel good stories in twenty twenty.
What have those been for you?
Yeah?
That was my entire Monday column, was trying to cheer myself up, Like we're all tired and cranky, so let's talk about fun things like BYU Coastal and Iowa State in Indiana and all that stuff. You know, from a pure number standpoint, first, I will say, you know, some of the bigger surprises number one, I mean BYU and Cincinnati are still like legit top ten SP plus and again we don't know the hierarchy how that plays out, if I get a better read on the conference power
and all that stuff. But that like, they've been legitimately awesome and my system didn't really respond all that much to BAU losing. I think that, you know, I have that post game win expectancy number where I basically toss up all the things that eventually go into SPPLUS, all the predictive stuff and throw them in the air and they land, And the number basically says, you know, with these stats, you could have expected to win this game x percent of the time. BYU was a sixty two percent.
Basically from an SPPLUS standpoint, it thinks BYU won that game by three or four points. So it docked them a little bit for that because they were supposed to win by like nine, but it didn't react all that much to it. Cincinnati is legit eighth right now. They've
dominated every team they played except UCF. Like, I think they are legitimately awesome, and I don't have as much proof for that because everything's so weird this year, but I think those are two of the better non P five teams of the last since TCU, you know, and all the in Utah went to P five.
Yeah, it's been fun to kind of watch that story develop. And how did you account for a game that got scheduled and was played seventy two hours later?
I mean, you don't you just say, well, it looks like by' is supposed to win this one by whatever that number was, nine point two or something, and they and they don't, And so there you go.
You know.
I mean you started realizing in the first quarter, like man of all the teams to agree to play sixty hours in advance, not being able to study Coastal Carolina or to the extent that the coaches could, And then they're like, hey, they're going to do this and not really being able to walk through anything or have the scout team run through it, like that is not the team you want to play on two like they were just they got to the edge a lot more than
I thought they would. They wrong foot at BYU a lot. BYU adjusted in the second half obviously, but still couldn't quite make enough stops. That was a tremendous game. And I do think like the lack of prep probably hurt BYU. But I mean, oh well, Coastal made a heck of a lot of plays too.
In this being such an asymmetrical year, it's even harder, as we've discussed here, to try and figure out who's good and who's not good, who's underrated right now? Yeah, I don't care if I don't care if that's per your sp plus or per the committee's rankings. We've already talked about Cincinnati, We've talked about Iowa State. What other teams are in that same conversation as either being really over really really underrated.
Notre Dame is technically fourth right now, but they are virtually tied with Oklahoma at fifth. Oklahoma is a very very good football team right now. Predictively, I'm not saying I'm not trying to make a playoff case.
They're out. They lost twice, they're out.
But from a predictive standpoint, if they played Notre Dame tomorrow on a neutral field, that's a straight toss up, I think they are in great shape. They obviously getting Ronnie Perkins, getting those suspended guys back midway through the year. We kind of forgot that that was part of their problem early on, and then they show back up and suddenly they're allowing like fourteen points a game or whatever.
This Rattler is not quite at the you know, the Baker Kyler et cetera, lovely yet, but he's a red shirt freshman. He's not throwing picks anymore, not many. He's doing well. The young receiving core, you can just watch them and realize what they're going to be next year, and that's pretty scary and really fun too. So I think they're a team that, you know, even more than I always say, whoever wins that game is absolutely a team playing at a top five to sixty seven level right now.
Even if you know, even if I.
Think they got disqualified from the playoff race with each of their second losses, they're playing very very well right now.
Let me go to the ACC for a second. You
mentioned Notre Dame. I won't zero in too much on them, but you know, we had a storyline a couple weeks ago with Clemson and Florida State with COVID and Dabbo and the game being called off, and you know, I'm not going to dive into the complexities of that, but Clemson and Florida State are really interesting to be Clemson because they're still sort of on top of the world, and I want to get your take on whether or not there are any kind of vulnerabilities there that maybe
didn't exist previously. And on the Florida State side of things, I guess I'm just curious to know if we think they're getting better, if we think they're getting better, because they've had to deal with a lot. Mike Norvell in the short time that he's been at Tallahassee has had to deal with a lot, both on and off the field. Take it wherever you want to take it, Bill, But are they Are they getting better?
So we'll start with Florida State. I mean this year they're not.
That's okay, Like this, I can't really you know, I'm glancing at their little profile here. I mean, the North Carolina win was fluky. I mean, good for them for coming out firing and scoring up points early to win that game, but it was still talking about post game win expectancy, it was thirty five percent.
North Carolina should have won that game.
Since then, their last three games that postgame win expectancy number was zero percent, four percent and three percent. Like they didn't. It wasn't a fluke that they lost by thirty two to Louisville or twenty four to or to Pitt or sixteen to NC State. They just got beat really bad. So in the in the context of this year, no, they're absolutely not getting better. They lost some players, you know, a lot of the a few of their best players
aren't playing right now. So really it's just about like the young guys, you know, can they can novel at least do well enough to not lose his job in the next couple of years so that he can bring in his guys and actually get some semblance of continuity there.
Their culture is dead.
You know, whatever winning culture they had, it was starting to crumble them under Jimbo, and you have two coaches in the three years after that. It's just not going to survive. And that's what they're dealing with right now. Nobody, nobody, there's one big at Florida State, and they have to start that over. So Noarvelle did an amazing job in Memphis.
I you know, I don't make coaching predictions at this point because every coach that I think is going to be good fails and everything I don't like does great, so whatever, but he did really well at his last couple of jobs. He has decent odds at least of doing it there.
They just have to.
I mean, they just have to not fire him before, you know, he has to hit a certain baseline so he can keep his job long enough. But there that's a culture issue. They just don't have anybody there that's one at Florida State. As far as Clempson goes. The two issues that I'm concerned about with Clemson and that most of the for the most part, they're overshadowed by all the stuff Clemson does obviously well, but they are
giving away big plays. My marginal explosiveness number that I use for a lot of explosiveness needs, they're ninety second in marginal explosiveness allowed when they allow good like they're you know, they don't allow many successful plays, but the ones they do are very big. We saw that against Notre Dame. We've seen that a few times. It's bitten them. Obviously,
the fun more return touchdowns have also beitten them. That's not really a sustainable issue, but they have been a little glitch yer, which I mean after what they lost, kind of makes sense. Defensive lines a little better this year than it was last year, so maybe that offsets it. But they could, you know, against against Alabama, for instance, if they can't get to mac Jones, and if anybody can get to mac Jones, it'll be Clemson. If they can't,
they're probably going to get burned deep a lot. That's going to be a very push and pull kind of thing that I'm curious about. The Other thing is, like Trevor Lawrence, his stats versus man defenses, the last couple of years are very, very mediocre. Even last year when he had T Higgins and Justin Ross. This year he hasn't neither obviously, like against you know, he's I don't.
I struggle to frame this in a way that makes it sound like I'm not just trying to bag on him or say he's an overrated prospect or anything like that. But for whatever reason, if you can play man defense on Clemson, they aren't going to be able to throw down field very well this year. And it seems to me between Alabama and Ohio State at the very least, maybe Notre Dame two.
That seems like a problem.
Yeah, so that that Alabama matchup really does I think come down to Clemson being able to rush mac Jones, because if they can't, I think Alabama rolls them.
So I have two questions, and then I'm going to let you go because I know you're a busy guy. Is a committee using your numbers? Now, No, they're not.
They proudly defiantly refused to use advancedatz they and I got to I got to go to the mock committee thing. And last year in twenty nineteen, you know, and travel was the thing and got to sit in there and look at the tools they use. I think it's what is it coaches by the numbers, I think is what they use to produce to provide for them, like comparison stats of your score versus other like resume type stats they have, like the total yardage stuff, they have, basic
stuff like that. There's nothing that really truly adjusts for opponents, so that will forever allow them to basically say, well, those stats are good, but I ain't played nobody next, you know, like that. They never they never have to ever take a G five team seriously because they can always just say, yeah, but who was that against? Even though we have ways to adjust for that. But that's I mean, that's that's college football.
Always.
We proudly, defiantly refuse to make too much progress. And that's where we're at there, and and to some extent, that's part of the charm.
Unless you're on the outside looking in.
Yeah, it's it's it's been less charming to me the last year, the ways we've proudly stuck to all of our all of our deficiencies.
It's worn a little thin on me this year.
I'm gonna get you out of here. On this. It's a question that has come up a couple times now in our inbox on our Discord server. What have you you got one coach to hire for your upstart? Let's say you're a mid level FBS school who has impressed you to the point that you might give him a phone call.
Mid level P five or mid level FBS.
Your mid level P five P five? Okay, what coaches are on Bill Connolly ad new ad at school X? What coaches are on your radar?
Yeah, eighties have so much fundraising to do, I would be so horrible.
We're gonna say, I'm looking at my list of teams over here to the left, just to make sure I don't forget anybody. Uh, I want to give a better answer than Jamie Chadwell, I'm trying because that seems too obvious. He's now one in a few different schools, different levels. I think he would be very good. But oh okay, well this this allows me to champion a small school guy too, Like, do we realize how athletic and talented Buffalo is right now?
Oh land slide pulled?
Yes, how he's been able to just he basically got to burn a foundation like just tear the house down to the studs and then just say okay, like that's that room's fixed. Now, that room's fixed. Now they are awesome this year. He would need a few years to get there maybe, but I have no reason to doubt him at this point.
All right, good answer. The bulls are always fun to watch and he's a good coach. So look, Bill Connolly, check him out. Hopefully by now you know of his fine workover at ESPN dot com. But if you don't already know, we'll make sure we post some links in the show notes here to go on and check out Bill's fine work. Of course, brought the sp plus over to ESPN and continues to make us on the show sparter.
We need these numbers to help us along. Bill Connelly, thank you so much and hope you and your family will do well.
Same to you.
Cool. So there you go. That's Bill Connelly from ESPN. It's been a friend of this show for as long as we've had it. Always love catching up with Bill picking his brain on what's going on in the SMP universe, how he's watching college football. Twenty twenty obviously a challenging
year for everybody, but appreciate his perspective. Don't forget. As you're out and about here in early December doing whatever it is that you can do right now, don't forget to check out the College Football Blitz, courtesy of our friends over at Learfield IMG College. Fifty six minutes of actual play by play coverage per hour. They do the show all day long, but it's like college football's red zone.
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little bit. But as always, appreciate you downloading, appreciate you listening, Give us a call if you're watching games four eight, Verbal one is reverblind. We'll cut that together on Sunday, But in the meantime, I gotta go prep for this call. We will talk to you all soon. In the meantime, stay solid,