BAMANEWSBOT
Staff
Here is the Weekend Mailbag. As always, send your questions to me via Twitter to @BFeldmanCBS:
From @PaulPabst: How many teams can win the National Title in 2013?
Obviously, we never know which players could emerge as difference-makers and potentially change the course of a BCS title run or which vital players might go down to season-ending injuries, but I'll separate the legit contenders into two categories: decent shot and outside shot.
Decent shot: Alabama, Texas A&M, Stanford, Ohio State, Oregon, and I'll lump Louisville in with this batch because even though the Cards play such a weak schedule they'll probably still be ranked behind a few one-loss teams. There have been seasons in which power conferences have had two-loss champs. Charlie Strong's team has a talented QB in Teddy Bridgewater and some athletic WRs who will be a handful for anyone. Just ask Florida how dangerous Bridgewater is.
I almost included Georgia in the decent-shot group but feel like the Dawgs have too many key guys to replace on D especially with such a treacherous first few weeks of the season. Others in the outside-shot category with Georgia are Florida, Florida State, Clemson, LSU, Michigan, South Carolina and Texas.
UCLA, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, TCU, Miami, USC, Oklahoma State and Nebraska all have some intriguing pieces but have too many areas of big concern to say they are title contenders at this point. I'd have included the Irish in the outside-shot group before the news that Everett Golson wasn't going to be with the team this fall. I figured if Golson kept developing, he could provide that offense with a much-needed spark.
From @Backlineshow: sports are becoming more and more stat driven with sabermetrics, do you see that path working for a college football team?
I suspect what we see as "advanced" stats depends on whom you ask. To me, it felt like that meant the stats that weren't typically flashed up on the screen whenever a guy came to bat in baseball or what they put on the back of his trading card.
In terms of football, coaches have been using detailed statistically situational breakdowns in game preparations for years outside of the media's purview (both mainstream and non MSM). Walk into any offensive or defensive staff room, and you'll see so many grease boards covered with what an opponent does on third-and-two via formation, personnel grouping, etc., your eyes will bug. In the predictive sense, that kind of advanced analysis has been around for a very long time. In the quantitative sense of measuring a player's worth, it gets murkier with college football than other sports.
A few years ago, Texas DC Manny Diaz told me when he read Michael Lewis' book Moneyball, it really got him thinking.
"You can't read that and not try and find some ways that can relate back to our game," Diaz explained. "It's tough because the thing that's so different in college football is that the level of competition changes so drastically. You can play against I-AA teams, where people pad their own stats; you play against out-of-conference opponents, against in-conference opponents. Who you play has so much to do with what happens.
"The last thing that really makes it different from baseball is that the sample size is so small. You're trying to make assessments off of 12 games. Everybody laughs around this time of year with baseball stats when they say, 'So-and-so is on pace to hit so many home runs.' Well, 12 games isn't a lot of data, either, but that's the world that we live in."
What also makes it trickier to use as a gauge for a player is unless you're on the coaching staff, you probably don't know exactly what a guy's assignment was or what he was faced with on a given play, and that adds to the mix of reading a lot into a perceived outcome.
Tuberville's first year at Cincy and comments on Manziel here:
From @PaulPabst: How many teams can win the National Title in 2013?
Obviously, we never know which players could emerge as difference-makers and potentially change the course of a BCS title run or which vital players might go down to season-ending injuries, but I'll separate the legit contenders into two categories: decent shot and outside shot.
Decent shot: Alabama, Texas A&M, Stanford, Ohio State, Oregon, and I'll lump Louisville in with this batch because even though the Cards play such a weak schedule they'll probably still be ranked behind a few one-loss teams. There have been seasons in which power conferences have had two-loss champs. Charlie Strong's team has a talented QB in Teddy Bridgewater and some athletic WRs who will be a handful for anyone. Just ask Florida how dangerous Bridgewater is.
I almost included Georgia in the decent-shot group but feel like the Dawgs have too many key guys to replace on D especially with such a treacherous first few weeks of the season. Others in the outside-shot category with Georgia are Florida, Florida State, Clemson, LSU, Michigan, South Carolina and Texas.
UCLA, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, TCU, Miami, USC, Oklahoma State and Nebraska all have some intriguing pieces but have too many areas of big concern to say they are title contenders at this point. I'd have included the Irish in the outside-shot group before the news that Everett Golson wasn't going to be with the team this fall. I figured if Golson kept developing, he could provide that offense with a much-needed spark.
From @Backlineshow: sports are becoming more and more stat driven with sabermetrics, do you see that path working for a college football team?
I suspect what we see as "advanced" stats depends on whom you ask. To me, it felt like that meant the stats that weren't typically flashed up on the screen whenever a guy came to bat in baseball or what they put on the back of his trading card.
In terms of football, coaches have been using detailed statistically situational breakdowns in game preparations for years outside of the media's purview (both mainstream and non MSM). Walk into any offensive or defensive staff room, and you'll see so many grease boards covered with what an opponent does on third-and-two via formation, personnel grouping, etc., your eyes will bug. In the predictive sense, that kind of advanced analysis has been around for a very long time. In the quantitative sense of measuring a player's worth, it gets murkier with college football than other sports.
A few years ago, Texas DC Manny Diaz told me when he read Michael Lewis' book Moneyball, it really got him thinking.
"You can't read that and not try and find some ways that can relate back to our game," Diaz explained. "It's tough because the thing that's so different in college football is that the level of competition changes so drastically. You can play against I-AA teams, where people pad their own stats; you play against out-of-conference opponents, against in-conference opponents. Who you play has so much to do with what happens.
"The last thing that really makes it different from baseball is that the sample size is so small. You're trying to make assessments off of 12 games. Everybody laughs around this time of year with baseball stats when they say, 'So-and-so is on pace to hit so many home runs.' Well, 12 games isn't a lot of data, either, but that's the world that we live in."
What also makes it trickier to use as a gauge for a player is unless you're on the coaching staff, you probably don't know exactly what a guy's assignment was or what he was faced with on a given play, and that adds to the mix of reading a lot into a perceived outcome.
Tuberville's first year at Cincy and comments on Manziel here:
