Way back in 2014, the college football guru, Bill Connelly, wrote a little blogpost on the SBNation website Football Study Hall entitled, “The five factors: College football’s most important stats,” in which he laid out the keys to winning every college football game. Think of this as the college football equivalent to the sabermetrics revolution in baseball. Connelly later would turn this blogpost into an entire book, Study Hall: College Football, Its Stats, and Its Stories and a job at ESPN. I highly recommend his writings.
In short, the five factors are Explosiveness, Efficiency, Field Position, Finishing Drives, and Turnovers. (Field Position is always the one that I can’t remember.) Some of these factors bleed into one another, obviously, and some of them can be divided up into further sub-categories. However, they do provide a valuable lens through which we can analyze exactly why such-and-such of a college football game turned out the way that it did.
1) Iowa State Cyclones (3-0, 1-0, +203) - Amidst the wreckage that is the Big 12 Conference right now, Iowa State stands atop, waving their flag of red and gold. The Cyclones won their third El Classico in the last four years against rivals Iowa, in a 16-13 game that only the mother of an Iowa son could love. For example, in the third quarter, Iowa ran a 16-play, 77-yard drive that took 9:28 of gametime, and ended in a field goal, their only points of the second half.
Meanwhile, ISU’s win was one of the few bright spots for an otherwise disastrous weekend for the Big 12. The other Big 12 team that I thought could compete for a playoff spot, Arizona State, lost at Mississippi State. West Virginia lost to Ohio of the MAC. Kansas State lost to Army, who had just lost to FCS Tarleton State. Oklahoma State lost to Oregon sixty-nine to three. (More on that later!) The Cyclones are not a great team, but they seem to be the Best of the Rest, and their conference schedule seems manageable, despite some tricky late-season games at Colorado and TCU.
Explosiveness: Explosiveness is defined as the number of big yardage plays that your offense runs during a game, usually defined as 10 or more yards for a rushing play and 20 or more yards for a passing play. You’ll often hear commentators call these “chunk plays.” Getting as many explosive plays as possible is key to winning, because they usually end in scores or easy scoring opportunities, they avoid third-and-long situations, and they minimize the risk of turnovers.
Iowa-Iowa St was NOT an explosive game. Iowa ran a total of 4 explosive plays and Iowa St had 3. This is going to be a very, very big problem for both of these teams later in this season.
2) South Florida Bulls (2-0, 0-0, +191) - I owe South Florida an apology. I was not familiar with their game. After the Bulls Week One win over Boise State, I dismissed them, thinking that the win had more to do with Boise having a hard time replacing one of the greatest college running backs of all time than with anything that USF did. Their latest win - 18-16 over the Florida Gators - has changed my opinion. The Bulls now seem like the creme de la creme of the G5, and I would be willing to bet your mortgage (not mine) on the G5 playoff representative coming from the American Conference.
Meanwhile, I just do not understand how Florida head coach Billy Napier still has a job. The Gators took the lead 16-15 with a touchdown with 12 minutes left in the game. USF kicker Nico Gramatica (yes, of those Gramaticas) missed a 58-yard field goal, giving Florida the ball and a 1-point lead with only 2:56 left in the game. Florida should have been able to sit on the ball, grind out a few first downs, and ice the game. Instead, they call a timeout, throw an incomplete pass, rush for 2 yards, THROW A SECOND INCOMPLETE PASS, and then punt the ball - with 2:39 left in the game. 18 seconds off the clock. USF then marches down the field, aided by a 13-yard pass interference penalty and a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty when a Florida player spat on a dude, and sets up Gramatica to hit a game-winning 19-yard field goal as time expires. Seriously. Fire Billy Napier.
Finishing Drives: There were a lot of reasons why Florida lost this game, but one that they should particularly rue was their inability to finish drives. In the first half they twice had a 1st and 10 inside USF’s 20-yard line, and once they had a 1st and 10 inside the 30, and all three times Florida ended up settling for a field goal. The hallmark of a winning college football team is that, when they have the opportunity, they go for the jugular. Ironically, the Gators did not. As a direct result, Florida led this game at halftime 9-6 instead of 21-6, and ended up losing.
Seriously. Fire Billy Napier.
3) LSU Tigers (2-0, 0-0, +176) - I mentioned this on the podcast last week with Sam, but for some reason there has become this sort of media narrative that the SEC is struggling this season, with key non-conferences losses by Texas, Alabama, and Florida.
But that’s it. That’s the list. Outside of those three games, the SEC is 26-0 in non-conference games so far this year.
LSU beat Louisiana Tech 23-7. Good for them. Next week, they open SEC play at home against Florida in the ABC Primetime game of the week. I expect LSU to be pretty big favorites (I see the Tigers as 6.5 point favorites right now, which strikes me as favorable to Florida), but I look forward to the opportunities for some late-game time management shenanigans between Billy Napier and LSU coach Brian Kelly, who also sucks.
4) Texas A&M Aggies (2-0, 0-0, +168)
5) North Carolina State Wolfpack (2-0, 0-0, +159) - NC State beat the Virginia Cavaliers 35-31 in a game between two ACC teams that, strangely enough, does not count as an ACC game in the standings. The Wolfpack are part of a big ACC middle class that includes Cal, Georgia Tech, Louisville, and Pittsburgh, all of whom could realistically make a run for the conference championship just as easily as they could miss out on a bowl game entirely.
Turnovers: One of those ACC teams are the Duke Blue Devils, who are coming off of a 9-win season last year and a Gator Bowl loss to Mississippi. Duke has high hopes for this year, but lost on Saturday to Illinois 45-19. Now, that looks like a butt whooping, but the game should have been much closer. Duke outgained Illinois 438 yards to 419, averaged 6.9 yards per play to Illinois’ 5.7, and was more efficient on their third down conversions. The difference in the game? Duke turned the ball over 5 times, and Illinois had 0.
6) Mississippi Rebels (2-0, 1-0, +148)
7) Florida State Seminoles (2-0, 0-0, +137)
8) Ohio State Buckeyes (2-0, 0-0, +133) - Ohio State beat FCS Grambling State 70-0. Good for them. Now I want to talk about Oregon.
The Oregon Ducks beat the Oklahoma State Cowboys 69-3 on Saturday in Eugene. The Ducks are stuck at No. 28 in my rankings, because their two wins are against FCS Montana State and a bad Oklahoma State team. Oregon had 2 touchdowns in their first 3 plays from scrimmage. They led at halftime 41-3. They scored Pick Sixes on back-to-back plays in the second half. They did not score in the 4th Quarter. At one point, Fox Sports put one of the most hilarious stats on the screen that I have ever seen: “Yards per play: Oklahoma State: 1.8, Oregon: 43.3”. This was the second worst loss in Oklahoma State history, the other being a 67-0 loss to Oklahoma on November 9, 1907, which was exactly one week before Oklahoma became a state.
Having said that - and remember, I am an Oregon Ducks fan - we need to pump the brakes on all this Oregon to the National Championship talk that I’m hearing on Twitter. Oklahoma State is bad, and they might be really bad. I have them as the 8th worst Power 4 team in the country, right between Northwestern and UCLA. Bill Connelly had them at 50th coming into this game, roughly equivalent to Houston, Maryland, or Boston College. So we knew that this game was going to be one-sided. Just not this one-sided.
Oh, and remember what I said about “explosiveness”? In this game, Oregon had 16 explosive plays, 15 in the first three quarters, before they pulled their starters.
9) Miami Hurricanes (2-0, 0-0, +132)
10) Houston Cougars (2-0, 0-0, +121)
11) Pittsburgh Panthers (2-0, 0-0, +119) - Pittsburgh took care of business on Saturday, beating Central Michigan 45-17. Unfortunately for them, their opponents next week, West Virginia, lost to their MAC opponents, the Ohio Bobcats, 17-10. Therefore, ESPN has pulled GameDay out of Morgantown for next week, and is relocating to Knoxville for the Georgia-Tennessee game. That sucks for Pittsburgh.
Efficiency: Efficiency can be measured as “yards per play,” but it also means more than that. Efficiency means a team’s offense is able to gain yards in a constant and consistent manner; if you remember your middle school math, think not just “mean”, but also “median” and “mode”. During a broadcast, you’ll often hear the announcers talk about a team being “behind the sticks” or “behind schedule”. That means that they’re playing inefficiently, probably because they just took a sack or ran for a loss (which is bad!).
Ultimately, efficiency means avoiding third-and-longs, which are the ultimate drive killers. In their game against Ohio, the Mountaineers were not efficient. They had 13 first downs compared to 24 for Ohio, and went 2 for 13 on third down conversions. 8 of those 13 attempts were on “3rd and long” defined as 3rd and 7 or longer, but, to be fair, West Virginia went 0 for 3 on 3rd and 2, too.
12) Tulane Green Wave (2-0, 0-0, +117)
13) Missouri Tigers (2-0, 0-0, +117)
14) Auburn Tigers (2-0, 0-0, +112)
15) South Carolina Gamecocks (2-0, 0-0, +96)
16) Oklahoma Sooners (2-0, 0-0, +96) - Oklahoma beat the Michigan Wolverines 24-13 in the ABC Primetime game in a match-up that, to me, was one of two good defenses playing against two not-very-good offenses. Michigan’s much-hyped quarterback, Bryce Underwood, was held to 142 yards passing on 9/24 and 0 touchdowns, and the team ran for 146 yards on 32 carries. 75 of those yards came from 1 run by Justin Haynes, which also accounted for Michigan’s only touchdown of the game. Without that play, the Wolverines got 67 yards rushing on 31 carries, or 2.1 yards per play. Explosiveness matters!
17) Mississippi State Bulldogs (2-0, 0-0, +89) - In what was probably the most exciting game during the late night slab, Mississippi State outlasted the Arizona State Sun Devils 24-20. ASU had fought back all the way from being down 17-0 to take the lead in the Fourth Quarter, and then Mississippi State quarterback connected with receiver Brenen Thompson for a 58-yard touchdown with thirty seconds left in the game.
Field Position: Field Position means exactly what it says: The position on the field where your offense starts its drives. Field Position is mostly a result of special teams play, which people tend to forget is an entire third of the game.
In the first half of the MSU-ASU game, Mississippi State dominated the field position game. All of Arizona State’s drives started deep in their half of the field, with their best starting field position being their own 38. The Bulldogs, meanwhile, were able to start in ASU’s territory twice, and had two more drives begin outside of their own 40-yard line. That good field position led directly to 10 points, and turned out to be the difference in the ballgame.
And I don’t know if this means anything, but we just finished Week Two of the college football season, and 6 of last year’s 12 playoff teams have already lost a game.
18) Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (2-0, 0-0, +89)
19) Michigan State Spartans (2-0, 0-0, +89)
20) Utah Utes (2-0, 0-0, +88)
21) Nebraska Cornhuskers (2-0, 0-0, +86)
22) Maryland Terrapins (2-0, 0-0, +85)
23) TCU Horned Frogs (1-0, 0-0, +84)
24) Tennessee Volunteers (2-0, 0-0, +83)
25) Rutgers Scarlet Knights (2-0, 0-0, +83)
