Lucky ducks: Auburn, Vegas and the luck factor.
Hey, don’t take my word for it.
Of course, Auburn didn’t actually lose to those teams — you’ve surely seen the all-time great clips by now with Auburn radio man Rod Bramblett yelling over them, but here’s Georgia and Alabama if not — but White marks them as defeats for the power rating calculations because of the extraordinary fortunate involved.
“The bowls are based on wins and losses, but they weren’t supposed to win [those games],” White said. “Two unbelievable plays catapulted them.”
The point, as White or Fuhrman or Avello or anyone in Vegas would note, is not to knock Auburn. It’s just their jobs to discover the true talent level of teams so they can predict future performance as accurately as possible, and that process requires cutting the narrative layers that harden on top of each magnificent victory.
“In the end, winning is the name of the game, but beating Georgia took the hand of God, and beating Alabama also took some luck,” Fuhrman told me. “It makes for a good story.”
Again, I have a hard time remembering the last time anybody outside the fan base talked about a Georgia season like that. Your mileage may vary, of course.