Go, Nads… er, Knights!

I don’t think “had her MBA and all that” means [Note: NSFW] what George O’Leary thinks it means.

Of course, it’s not the first time he’s had problems with resumes.

Meet the narrative.

The WWL explains the SEC East to us:

… Florida isn’t alone. The SEC East is full of teams that could go in any direction. Tennessee, with Derek Dooley as the Vols’ third coach in three seasons, might head south faster than college kids at spring break. Georgia hasn’t won the East in five years. Kentucky and Vanderbilt are starting over.

The team best poised to take advantage of the flux is the veteran bunch at South Carolina. After five seasons of winning no more than eight games and no fewer than six, Steve Spurrier no longer resembles the evil genius of his days at Florida. If this Gamecocks team doesn’t challenge for the division title, Spurrier’s legacy as a ball coach will suffer a scratch no buffer can remove.

That’s per Ivan Maisel, who’s actually one of the more thoughtful pundits over there.

Mark May should be a real trip.

Sometimes, the simplest things are the best.

Marc Weiszer has a post up about true frosh safety Alec Ogletree (who’s looking good, by the way).  He’s spending a lot of time on special teams, about which he had this to say:

“Basically I just run to the ball,” he said of his role on kickoff coverage.

Sadly, that’s an improvement over what we saw at times last year.

Been around the block

Shorter Mark Bradley:  Al Groh is so old, he makes banal coachspeak sound profound to me.

Mumme Poll 2010 update

To answer the most obvious question first:  yes, the Mumme Poll will be back in all its glory this season.

And the second question:  yes, GTP will again partner with 3rd Saturday in Blogtober to bring it to you.

However, we do have a few tweaks and changes in mind, some based on what we want to do with the MP, some based on your feedback.  We’ll have more details and information as we get closer to Week Six, but in the meantime here are a few things to be aware of.

1. Signup. I’ve had this question a few times.  Everyone who wants to cast a ballot this season will need to register to do so.  It doesn’t matter whether you were a 2009 participant.  Once Tidefan has the site ready for that, we’ll let you know.
2. Fairer voting. By far, the greatest number of comments we received from folks was what to do about ballots with glaring omissions.  As I mentioned to some of you, we weren’t set up to track omissions, short of reviewing every ballot one by one.  Neither Tidefan nor I have that much time on our hands, quite frankly.  This year should fare better, though.  Tidefan has made some major upgrades to the site.  All ballots will be accessible for review by you.  We’re also going to institute some sort of rating system that will allow you to downgrade voters for posting questionable ballots.  Details are forthcoming, but it’s our hope that this will clean up the truly egregious misbehavior.
3. Revised ballot format. I’m aware that this will likely generate some controversy, but we’ve decided to simplify the vote by going from the previous twelve team total/five team tiebreaker format to a ten team total/one team tiebreaker format.  My reasoning about this is pretty straightforward.  The primary purpose behind the Mumme Poll is to find ways to address the perceived flaws of the Coaches Poll – the appearance of bias and conflicts of interest, as well as the general perception that the coaches themselves rarely prepare their ballots.  The format change results in a purer form of approval voting.  It should also be even easier and quicker to compile, which would encourage direct participation by coaches (if it ever got that far, of course) which in turn would enhance the poll’s credibility.  The objections I would expect to hear about this are the greater chances for ties and the fewer teams that may appear in the final results, but Tidefan’s review of last season’s ballots leads us to think that the anticipated level of participation makes those very minor issues, if issues at all.  (And if I’m wrong about that, there’s always next year’s tweak.)

We are excited about hosting another Mumme Poll.  Let us know what you think in the comments.

Beyond Crompton (plus a few other fun facts)

Over at Statistically Speaking, Matt Melton has posted his SEC 2010 Preview.  His projections are fine, but the really good stuff follows after that, as he mines stats from prior seasons to draw out some interesting points about teams and players.  Here are a few of his insights that I glommed onto:

Jonathan Crompton. Matt broke down Crompton’s stats and came up with this conclusion about his breakout 2009 season:

In 2008, the passing duo of Jonathan Crompton and Nick Stephens looked more like they belonged in the SAC rather than the SEC. Then, presto, Jonathan Crompton has the look of a 4th round pick.Crompton improved his numbers, drastically, in every area. But, how much did he really improve against the better teams? Tennessee played 13 games last season. 10 came against BCS conference foes, including 8 conference games and non-league dalliances with UCLA and Virginia Tech. Their other 3 games came against non-BCS opponents. 2 of those came against a pair of the worst teams in IA, Western Kentucky (0-12) and Memphis (2-10). The other came against a respectable Ohio outfit (9-5).As you can see, Crompton was still pretty good against the tougher competition he faced, but a good portion of his 2009 numbers (almost half his touchdown passes) came in the 3 games when his teammates were vastly superior to his opponents.

Yeah, well, unfortunately if you’re a Georgia fan, it’s worse than the tale he tells.  If you yank out the stats Crompton compiled against Georgia, here’s what you’re left with versus BCS teams:  145 completions, 268 attempts, 54.1 completion percentage, 1704 yards passing, 6.36 yards per attempt, 11 TDs, 9 interceptions and a 114.34 passer rating.  Not exactly what you’d call drastic improvement.

A low bar for Herb Hand. Vanderbilt’s new hire, previously Tulsa’s offensive coordinator, steps into a situation where it’s almost impossible to do worse.

… The table below lists Vanderbilt’s offensive touchdowns in SEC games since 2005.You may remember that in 2005, the Commodores were led by a senior quarterback, and future NFL draft pick, Jay Cutler. Without him, Vanderbilt settled into a consistent mediocrity on offense, scoring between 16 and 18 offensive touchdowns each season. For 8 league games, that equates to a little more than 2 per contest. Then last season, Vanderbilt scored 5. For the year! Vanderbilt never scored more than a single offensive touchdown in any league game…

I suspect the Commodores would happily settle for mediocre this season.

Catching up to Gus? This one surprised me.

… In their first 2 conference games, Auburn faced Mississippi State and Tennessee. The Tigers averaged 524 yards in those 2 games (breaking 400 both times) at a robust 6.3 yards per play. Not surprisingly, the Tigers won both those games. Over their final 6 league games, the Tigers managed to top the 400 yard barrier just once (their only win in that stretch). Over those 6 games, the Tigers averaged 328 yards per game at a much more meager 5.0 yards per play. of course, maybe the schedule just got a littler tougher. So let’s adjust for schedule strength.

Now, take a gander at the chart below.

What this means is that against Mississippi State, Auburn gained 589 yards. In SEC play, Mississippi State allowed an average of 365 yards per game (it ranked 7th in the league). Thus the Tigers gained 224 more yards than we would have expected if they had an average offensive performance. They are ‘in the black’ 224 yards. As you can see, in the first 2 games, the Tigers were nearly 350 yards in the black. However, the rest of the way, they were below average offensively twice as often as they were above average. They performed poorly against good defenses (LSU) and against bad defenses (Arkansas and Kentucky)…

Matt is quick to say that the data shouldn’t be construed as an indictment of Malzahn.  But it sure will be interesting to see how Auburn does in his second year.

Thank you, Woody McCorvey. More than anything else, Sylvester Croom isn’t a head coach any more because of his stubborn insistence that Woody McCorvey was a competent offensive coordinator.  The stats tell a very different story.

… Heck, since 2000, they have only scored 30 points or more 24 times (the same number of times they have been held below 10). But things could be changing. Against SEC teams, the Bulldogs posted their best recent offensive performance last season, their first under head coach Dan Mullen.The Bulldogs not only improved their offensive performance by over 100 yards per game in the league and finished outside the bottom two, but if you look at their SDPI number, they were very close to being average offensively!

In terms of wins and losses, he may have had less to show for it last year than did Kiffin and Chizik, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Mullen wound up being the best of the three 2009 SEC head coaching hires when the dust settles.

Time to get nervous.

Holy Mother of Crap, College Football News loves the Dawgs.  And when I say loves, I mean loves:

Team That’ll Surprise
Georgia – Aaron Murray. If any coach in America actually knew the name of the Georgia starting quarterback, the Dawgs might have been given more respect in the early Coaches’ Poll. The preseason No. 21 team has top ten, possibly top five, talent with the deepest, and possibly the best, offensive line in America, a loaded defensive front seven, fantastic running backs and receivers, and the best kicking game in college football. If Murray is merely serviceable, the Dawgs might be playing in Atlanta in early December.

CFN is predicting a 10-2, 6-2 type of year.  With a win in Jax, to boot.  Whoa, baby.

It may not be a kiss of death, but let’s just say that CFN’s projections have been less than reliable.