Tough love from Tom Luginbill

I linked to the story this morning about the TAMU assistant coach who showed his ass on Twitter when a kid decommitted, which in turn lead to another kid withdrawing his commitment.  ESPN decided to take the matter up on Outside The Lines today and brought on its recruiting guru, Tom Luginbill, to weigh in.  Luginbill had some words of admonishment:

“Unfortunately, in today’s society with people and social media …” “Particularly with respect to coaches, these guys gotta toughen up, and they’ve gotta grow up, and they’ve gotta do it in a hurry.”

Who could argue with that?  Except that’s not what Luginbill actually said.  Here’s what really came out of his mouth:

“Unfortunately, in today’s society with young people and social media …” begins Luginbill, letting you know exactly how dumb the next words out of his mouth are going to be.“Particularly with respect to student athletes, these guys gotta toughen up, and they’ve gotta grow up, and they’ve gotta do it in a hurry.”

Oy.  Even Moorehead wound up apologizing for his stupidity.  I guess Luginbill would now advise him to grow up.

I’d love to toss a little more snark on the fire, but since the New York Times, of all folks, has done such a nice job of it, I’ll leave the field now.

Adult who publishes rankings of 300 teenage athletes rips them for caring about rankings. @Deadspin pounces: https://t.co/U1PFMxBq98

— NYT Sports (@NYTSports) May 5, 2016

Bert goes big.

Arkansas HC Bret Bielema says Hawgs are looking at some "global opportunities" with satellite camps.

— Matt Baker (@MBakerTBTimes) May 5, 2016

“Global opportunities”, eh?  On the surface that sounds like some Steve Patterson to Dubai-quality rebranding, but dig a little deeper – “Primarily he is looking at Bahamas and perhaps locations in Europe.” –  and it’s more like he wants to work on his tan and get Mrs. Bert a shot at some quality shopping time.

If you’ve got a recruiting budget, flaunt it, baby.

“Your winnings, sir.”

Hugh Freeze on Laremy Tunsil's draft night story/case: "I was shocked like everyone else living it out in real time."

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) May 5, 2016

Shocked at what he said, or just shocked that he said it?

 

Don’t Bogart that drug policy, my friend.

The sad thing is that UGA will likely see this Tony Barnhart post as a call to action for the SEC to adopt Georgia’s drug policy for student-athletes.

Nick Chubb watch: “I’m fired up.”

Kirby Smart digs his videos.

Is there a case for ten wins in 2016?, a continuing series

Georgia, some of you may recall, won 10 wins last year (seems like an eternity now, I know).  We’ve had a fairly lively on-and-off discussion in the comments about what the expectations for the win total in Kirby Smart’s maiden voyage might be.  I thought it might be useful to explore that topic in a series of posts over the offseason.

Today, I thought I’d start with the schedule.  According to Sagarin, Georgia wound up playing the 55th-most difficult schedule in the country last season, which was the second-easiest in the SEC.  No doubt that helped a little in getting to the ten-win mark.

How does 2016 shape up in that department?  Well, first, click here to review the schedule.  In comparison with what was lined up last season, Georgia plays the East, swaps Alabama at home for Ole Miss on the road and drops one non-P5 opponent for North Carolina.  Overall, it appears fairly similar, or maybe slightly tougher.  Is there much data to back that up?

At this point, not much.  One place to start is with Phil Steele’s compilation of what he refers to as “the NCAA method for strength of schedule”, which is simply to add last season’s won-loss totals of a school’s opponents together for a grand total.  Obviously, this doesn’t take into account the relative strength of schedule for each of those teams and thus is limited in value.

Anyway, based on that, Georgia’s 2015 strength of schedule was 10th.  This year, in significant part because of the collapse of Georgia Tech’s, South Carolina’s and Missouri’s records last season, that SOS ranking has dropped all the way to 84th.  Will all those schools perform as poorly again this season?  If so, that would be a reason for optimism about Georgia’s win total.

The other place to go, with an allegedly more robust approach to analyzing this, is ESPN’s preseason SOS rankings based on its proprietary FPI formula (I know, I know).  Before you judge me too harshly here, it’s hard to argue with this:

There are many ways to evaluate schedule strength; the traditional method sums opponents’ records from the previous season to determine the toughest schedules heading into the following year.

Although this measure of SOS is a decent starting point, it has some major flaws. First, opponents’ records in the previous season are not predictive of how strong teams will be going forward. For example, Michigan went 5-7 and missed a bowl in 2014, but many expected the Wolverines to improve under Jim Harbaugh in 2015. ESPN’s FPI expected Michigan to be the second-most improved Power 5 school entering 2015, and it doubled its win total from the previous season.

Another flaw of the traditional method is that not all teams with the same records are created equal. Would you rather play Appalachian State or Oklahoma next season? Both were 11-2 in 2015, but an average FBS team would have a 51 percent chance to beat the Mountaineers at a neutral site in 2016, and a 6 percent chance to beat the Sooners, according to ESPN’s FPI.

Finally, the traditional method fails to account for other factors such as game site, distance traveled and rest. For example, beating the 35th-ranked team (or Penn State, according to preseason FPI) on the road is about as difficult as beating the 15th-ranked team (Notre Dame) at home.

Further, playing a game after a cross-country flight or facing a team that is coming off a bye only adds to the difficulty.

FPI’s projected SOS ranks are designed to account for all of these factors to produce the truest measure of schedule strength entering the 2016 season. Opponent strength is measured with preseason FPI, which incorporates past efficiencies, returning starters, talent on the roster (with recruiting ranks) and coaching tenure.

Is the result accurate?  Me, you’re asking?  All I can do is paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld here and observe that you go to war with the stats you have, not the stats you might want or wish to have at a later time.  That being said, where does Georgia’s 2016 strength of schedule shake out in the vast scheme of things?  FPI sez 16th.  Before you gulp, that is only the eighth-most difficult ranking in the SEC.  (Before you smile, Tennessee’s is 35th and Florida’s is 49th.)

All in all, ESPN projects Georgia to finish with a 9-3 mark in the regular season.  I haven’t made my final projection yet – and won’t until we get much closer to the season’s start – but I don’t think nine wins is at all unreasonable.  It’s also not unreasonable to think that the schedule itself won’t be an insurmountable barrier to Smart notching that tenth win in his first season.

One last look at Georgia’s 2015 stats

I always enjoy Matt Melton’s postmortem take on conference yards per play numbers.  He’s just posted his take on the SEC here.  The picture may surprise you a little.

… here are the Yards Per Play (YPP), Yards Per Play Allowed (YPA) and Net Yards Per Play (Net) numbers for each SEC team. This includes conference play only, with the championship game not included. The teams are sorted by division by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.

Yep, that’s Georgia boasting the best net number in the division and third best in the conference.  Obviously nobody’s going to describe Georgia’s season in that way, so how to explain?  Well, first start with Matt’s general caveat.

College football teams play either eight or nine conference games. Consequently, their record in such a small sample may not be indicative of their quality of play. A few fortuitous bounces here or there can be the difference between another ho-hum campaign or a special season. Randomness and other factors outside of our perception play a role in determining the standings.

There are a few factors inside of our perception that can play a role, too.  Here are four:

• Georgia was twelfth in the SEC last year in offensive plays run in conference games.  With a couple of exceptions, that was a pretty steady reflection of Richt’s approach on offense over the years.
• Georgia was +1 in turnover margin in its eight 2015 conference games.  (It was +14 in 2014.)  That was good for fourth.  Unfortunately, Florida was first last season, at +8.
• Georgia finished thirteenth in third-down conversion rate last season.  Missouri was the only team worse.
• In 2014, Georgia was the top team in the country in Football Outsider’s field position rankings.  Last season, the Dawgs wound up 63rd on the list.  That was only good for eighth best in the SEC.  Florida and Tennessee finished in the top five.

All of that was a drag on a team that at least statistically generated respectable ypp numbers.

… As it is, we have to make do with the handful of games teams do play. In those games, we can learn a lot from a team’s Yards per Play (YPP). Since 2005, I have collected YPP data for every conference. I use conference games only because teams play such divergent non-conference schedules and the teams within a conference tend to be of similar quality. By running a regression analysis between a team’s Net YPP (the difference between their Yards per Play and Yards per Play Allowed) and their conference winning percentage, we can see if Net YPP is a decent predictor of a team’s record. Spoiler alert. It is. For the statistically inclined, the correlation coefficient between a team’s Net YPP in conference play and their conference record is around .66. Since Net YPP is a solid predictor of a team’s conference record, we can use it to identify which teams had a significant disparity between their conference record as predicted by Net YPP and their actual conference record. I used a difference of .200 between predicted and actual winning percentage as the threshold for ‘significant’. Why .200? It is a little arbitrary, but .200 corresponds to a difference of 1.6 games over an eight game conference schedule and 1.8 games over a nine game one. Over or underperforming by more than a game and a half in a small sample seems significant to me. In the 2015 season, which teams in the SEC met this threshold? Here are the SEC teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Aha, he said.  Suddenly there’s a little more to the perception of how the teams in the East finished.  Here’s more from Matt:

… The two teams that vastly exceeded their YPP results also happened to meet in the SEC Championship Game. A confluence of factors allowed the Gators to win the SEC East in their first season under Jim McElwain. Florida finished 3-1 in one-score conference games, boasted the best in-conference turnover margin (+8), and scored three non-offensive touchdowns. For Alabama, the results are more mystifying. The Crimson Tide lost only once all season (by six points), and won just a single conference game by fewer than thirteen points. The Tide were not especially buoyed by turnover margin either, finishing a respectable, but hardly superb +1 in SEC play. However, the Tide did take advantage of unconventional touchdowns. They returned four interceptions for touchdowns in SEC play, including three against Texas A&M.

Georgia, in essence, was what ypp showed it was and nothing more.  Richt didn’t exactly underachieve; however, Florida and Tennessee managed to overachieve.  Alabama did, too, surprisingly.  Are there lessons for Kirby to take from that and apply in Athens this season?

Thursday morning buffet

Haven’t had one of these in a little while.  Dig in.

• Florida hasn’t lost to Tennessee in over a decade, but that’s not stopping Jim McElwain from playing the lowered expectations card for all it’s worth.
• Speaking of Tennessee, if you’re a player in need of legal advice, the school would be happy to point you in the right direction.
• Judging from this fiasco, it looks like coaches can behave as moronically on social media as teenagers do.  Go figure.
• Kirby Smart likes the idea of beginning a season against a top opponent in a neutral site venue.
• Mark Richt thinks satellite camps constitute “illegal recruiting”.
• And while we on the subject of satellite camps, it sounds like a lot of SEC coaches are preparing to stay and see Georgia.
• Here’s a list of eleven characteristics of “outstanding high school and college offensive coordinators”.
• If you’re a receiver on the short side, it might pay to ask your coaches to let you switch to the other side of the ball.
• Pete Fiutak’s got his Georgia preview posted here.  Related pieces here and here.