Here's To Hoping TCU Is Ranked
by Peter Bean on Jun 11, 2007 11:54 AM CDT
in Texas Longhorns Football
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PrintMack Brown arrived at Texas nine years ago. Obviously, that's nine games against OU.
Mack's record in those nine games? 4-5.
Not at all to my surprise (or my Dad's, who's been making this point for years), Texas' four wins came in years in which their non-conference schedule included a ranked opponent. In each of Mack Brown's five losses to OU, the 'Horns non-conference schedule hasn't included a Top 25 team.
We're talking about a small sample size here, and this isn't exactly a Rule, but it's worth noting. And while 54b and billyzane sort of closed the book on scheduling talk for now, I just hope TCU is a good team. And a ranked good one. If history is any indication, we'll be that much better off on October 6th.
--PB--
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Agree
I think TCU has a chance to be ranked. They also cme to fight. They have a record of upsets now.
Also, Lord knows I want to be OU. Stinkin' Land Theives.
by DestroyerUT on Jun 11, 2007 12:38 PM CDT reply actions
dammit.
JEEZUS! I cannot type.
They COME to fight. I want to BEAT OU.
I need to stop drinking so early and so often.
by DestroyerUT on Jun 11, 2007 12:41 PM CDT up reply actions
Wow
I am not in any position to comment on spelling or typing mistakes, but that was a big one.
You need to set up a macro on your computer so that "I want to be OU" can never be written.
it hurts...
It hurts badly. For the love of all things good make an edit button where I can remove my retardation.
by DestroyerUT on Jun 11, 2007 1:46 PM CDT up reply actions
And don't ever say
You need to stop drinking so early and often. Blasphemy I say. Better drunk and a poor speller than sober and Mr. Dictionary.
i agree
and i want TCU to be good....at the end of the year after we already beat them by 40.
but i will quibble slightly with you, as is my wont. this gets a little back into the back and forth 54b and i had going, but i don't want to start that back up again because it was both exhaustive and exhausting.
first of all, as far as i can tell, Texas didn't play a ranked OOC opponent in 1999. we did play #13 K-State (and lost) before beating OU, but that's in-conference and we also played #16 K-State in 2003 before OU and then promptly lost to OU the next week, so no correlation between playing an in-conference ranked team. so actually only 3 of the 4 wins against OU came after playing a ranked OOC team.
regardless, my guess is that people will claim that based on this statistic you've given us, it would seem texas is better served by playing a ranked OOC opponent every year. but i must note that of the 3 years that we played a ranked OOC opponent before subsequently beating OU, we lost two of those OOC games. and of the three times texas has played a ranked in-conference opponent before playing OU, texas has lost 2 of 3 times (all games against K-State).
the point is, while it's possible that playing a ranked OOC or in-conference team early prepares us to beat OU, it also leads to lots of early defeats to those same teams that are preparing us to beat OU (we're only 2-4 against those ranked teams), which isn't good either.
Shake out
I think the point here is that playing a ranked opponent gives the coaches a chance to see which players will stand up against good competition and which schemes will work against a competent opponent. Then they can make the adjustments, rather than having their weaknesses exposed by OU.
It occurs to me that you could get the same result by playing one opponent with a good offense and another with a good defense. You'd learn the same kind of lessons without the risk factor of an early loss.
I agree with BZ
That looks like the classic "you can use statistics to prove whatever you want."
Since he said it better (and with nice examples) that I was going to, I will just defer. Whether we are better off scheduling tough out of conference games (which, as has been discussed ad nauseum, most likely depends on your goals for the football team - entertainment or championships), the pre ou game statistic here is a non-sequitur.
Does anyone actually believe that our losses to ou in the early part of this decade have anything to do with our out of conference scheduling? I can point to numerous other reasons why we lost which have (at least to me) a much less attenuated correlation, starting with this: ou was simply better, and better coached in 00-04.
Oh I'm not trying to prove anything
Though it came across stronger than I intended.
Merely hoping to note that I think Texas benefits from a tough early-season game.
Hopefully, TCU's a good team. Hopefully we stomp them.
Most of all - hopefully we lick OU.
...TCU's a good team. Hopefully we stomp them
YEA...oh.
Damn.
by TCU Horn Fan on Jun 12, 2007 9:45 AM CDT up reply actions
what does a ranking mean in Sept. anyways?
A ranking the first weekend in September doesnt usually mean anything. Plenty of teams start high, then freefall as the season goes on. On the flipside, plenty of teams start the season unranked and move on up.
I guess you could argue that it's a confidence builder to play a ranked team. But how much of a confidence boost do you really get losing to the #13 Kansas St team at home 35-17 (pretty sure this was the "Apple Turnover" game)?
by the other Andrew on Jun 11, 2007 6:01 PM CDT reply actions
Your Dad is a smart fellow
The road to a BCS Bowl game leads through OU. Very rarely does the loser of the RRS make the CCG. To play for a Nat'l Championship, our Longhorns need an early season game to prepare the team to face the Sooners.
Going all the way back to the season after DKR's retirement, 1977, when our Longhorns played a RANKED opponent prior to playing OU, our record is 13-4-2, or (0.684).
In the same timeframe, when our Longhorns did NOT play a ranked opponent prior to playing OU, our record against the Sooners is 2-9, or (0.182).
Mack Brown's record is 4-1, or (0.800), when playing a RANKED opponent prior to playing OU. When Mack did NOT play a ranked opponent prior to being bitch-slapped by OU, his record is 0'fer 4!
it's funnny you should arbitrarily pick 1977
Let's, for instance, instead of choosing the beginning of Akers' stint as head coach choose the beginning of David McWilliams' tenure as our starting point. Also, let's not just look at what happens in the OU games when we play a ranked opponent before OU but also at what happens in those games against ranked opponents.
Since McWilliams took over in 1987, Texas is indeed 9-4-1 against OU when they played a ranked team prior to OU, and only 1-5 when they didn't. But over those 14 years that Texas played a ranked team before they played OU, the Longhorns actually lost to a ranked team in twelve out of those fourteen years. The only two years they didn't lose to a ranked team they played before OU were 2005 (when they beat OSU and OU) and 2003 (beat K-State, lost to OU).
So indeed, the road to a BCS bowl game does lead through OU insofar as it's easier to make the Fiesta Bowl if you beat OU in the regular season. And if that's all you care about, then good for you. But I will continue to argue that playing a tough team early in the season does absolutely nothing to help win national championships.
[Oh, and sorry for stealing your boldface method for making points, but it's just so damn effective. It really hits a point home, you know?]
OOC
Let's see........, we've won 1 Nat'l Championship in the past 37 seasons and in that NC season we defeated #4 Ohio State prior to our game with OU. Then we defeated the Sooners 45-12.
Here is a list of every OOC game played during Mack Brown's final 9 seasons at North Carolina.
VMI
(2)Kentucky
(2)Navy
(3)S.Carolina
Miami,(OH)
UConn
Cincinnati
(2)Army
William & Mary
Furman
(2)Ohio
UTEP
(2)Tulane
(2)TCU
SMU
(2)Syracuse
(2)Louisville
Houston
Indiana
Stanford
Oh, and his AD forced him to play an (8-5)USC team in a PigSkin Classic for the money.
See ANY tough opponents on that list? Of course not. Tell us Billy, how many Conference Championships did Mack win playing all those cannon fodder patsies? It didn't do him any good to play the kind of schedule you recommend! How many NC's? In 9 seasons at UT, he's only played 3 RANKED opponents in his OOC. Maybe he better learn how to win Conference Championships.
If our offense could score 13 measly points - 2004 OU and 2006 Aggie - our seniors would have left the 40 Acres with 3 consecutive Big-XII Championships!
hahahaha
I love that list, man. It doesn't matter that mack's scheduling at north carolina has nothing to do with what we're talking about, you still love to roll that out. Every. Single. Time.
Mack didn't fail to win ACC championships because he didn't play strong OOC teams, he didn't win them because after he was done rebuilding UNC into something resembling a real football team, FSU joined the ACC and won the conference championship every single year from 1992 until 2000, finishing the the AP top five every single year. FSU was the team of the 90's. UNC will never be a football school. It had nothing to do with Mack. No one could beat FSU.
And i never said my choice of beginning at the McWilliams era wasn't arbitrary. I'm just saying your choice was arbitrary, which it was. Any choice in this situation is arbitrary.
Also,
Let's see........, we've won 1 Nat'l Championship in the past 37 seasons and in that NC season we defeated #4 Ohio State prior to our game with OU. Then we defeated the Sooners 45-12.
That's the worst reasoning I've ever heard. First of all, in the vast majority of years we didn't win a national championship in those 37 years, we also played highly ranked teams before OU. That proves absolutely nothing. Oh, and also, watch this:
In the last 44 years, Texas has won 4 national championships and gone undefeated 3 times. In 2 of those 4 championship seasons and 2 out of the 3 undefeated seasons, Texas did not play a ranked out-of-conference opponent.
of course I'll be the radical who says
those years you lost badly to OU, they actually were that much better than you.
In the '03 game where you beat K-State, wasn't their QB coming back after being injured? Didn't have have some turnovers in that game that helped texas' win?
Didn't Mock start the '03 OU game, with Vince coming in and eventually playing the majority of the snaps, but making a bunch of turnovers that helped accelerate the blowout?
Meanwhile, OU was led by senior QB and eventual Heisman-winner Jason White. The Sooners were simply loaded that year, and it showed in the RRS.
These last two seasons, I don't think there is any doubt that OU was an inferior team to y'all, so you won on the field.
The problem with saying "You need to playm a strong non-conference schedule to prepare for the RRS" is that OU played TCU, Tulsa, and UCLA in '05, and still got blasted in the RRS, b/c they just weren't a very good team.
I'd say, if you want to win the RRS, simply bring the better team.
It is hard when an aggie makes sense
throws my whole perspective out of balance, but I think you are right.
The problem with trying to point out one stat that we can draw conclusions from is that the sample size is way too low and there are way too many other factors in who wins the RRS, the main one being who has the better team that year.
The best arguement for better schedule
is to throw out the national title implications and just say that I want to see UT play better out of conference teams every year for the entertainment value and because the athletic department owes the fans who pay ridiculous amounts of money to get tickets more than Arkansas State.
On a side note, while I was looking at the schedule for the next couple of years, we are at Colorado on 10/04/08 and then have OU on 10/11/08, who is down for a week vacation in Boulder followed by a drive down to Dallas?
i might disagree a little....
I definitely agree that sometimes one team is just better than another team. In 2005, UT would have beaten OU 9 out of 10 times; we were just better. OU was just better in 2000 and 2003 (the blowout years).
But I think if you look at the data, it's really hard to say that it makes NO difference. Basically what seems to happen is Texas very often loses the first big game it plays in a given year (a ranked team before OU or OU itself). Since 1987, Texas has gotten through the OU game undefeated exactly once. The national championship year (in 1997 Texas got through the OU game without losing to OU or a ranked team, but lost to 2 unranked teams). The only thing that changes is who Texas loses to. If Texas doesn't play a ranked team early, usually they lose to OU. If Texas does play a ranked team early, they usually lose to that team and then beat OU.
Of course this is a small sample size and thus is affected somewhat by chance (i.e. sometimes one team is just better than the other and it doesn't matter who they played earlier), but based on the numbers, I'm willing to say that Texas has a better chance of winning the second big game they play than the first. It's not simply a matter of who's better. It's also a matter of how well prepared you are.
Now, I still don't think scheduling ranked teams early in the season helps us win championships, but I do think that, at least somewhat, it helps us beat OU.
USC's Scheduling
- Auburn, #25 KansasSt, #7 NotreDame - Finish: #4
- #6 Auburn - Finish: #1
- VaTech, NotreDame - Finish: #1
- #9 NotreDame, #16 FresnoSt. - Finish: #2
- #19 Nebraska, #6 NotreDame - Finish: #4
FIVE(5) consecutive Top-5 finishes!! How can that be? They played all those ranked teams in their OOC (rolling eyes).
i'm going to take a wild guess
and say that having 3 heisman winners on those teams had a little something to do with them finishing in the top-5 every year.
also, USC, other than having the yearly ND game, has to schedule a tough OOC opponent because their conference is so weak. Occasionally, one of the others will be sort of good, but they don't have to play an OU every single year like Texas does, nor does Texas have to schedule big games in order to get on TV in the rest of the country. It's a different ballgame.
Time to ignore HornChamps
It's a broken record.
He thinks Mack Brown is lousy. He thinks Texas has underperformed.
He enjoys pointing out deficiencies in others.
It's his thing.
Don't feed the bears.
sigh, i've tried...
if i had to list the 3 things in the world that i'm worst at, "ignoring people who annoy the shit out of me" would be right up there in the mix along with throwing a frisbee and writing with brevity.
but yeah, you're right. i'll ignore him.
[see that hornchamps? when someone tells me how i might better interact with people, i accept that they're trying to help and don't say that their parents did a horrible job raising them........what? i had to get in one last shot...]
now that's amusing
I'm not a Mack Brown fan, obviously (but probably not for the reasons you might think), but I give him credit for two things:
- he got out of the way and let Vince lead the bus in '05, and it won him a national title
- despite getting absolutely f-stomped in '00 and '03 by OU, Mack was able to lead texas back to having good seasons. They didn't fall apart and collapse and implode after historical losses, and that is good coaching/people management.
Mack is a lot of things, but he's not lousy.
Okay, I feel dirty now. I need to go take a shower. **shudder**
I, for one
never get tired of this debate. Especially HornChamps and his lists, and patronizing, holier than thou comments about how none of us are old enough to know what we are talking about.
Let's go to school
The OOC talk is fun because let's face it, there ain't anything else to talk about right now...
But I think we've all missed the boat here. OOC is all about fulfilling the head coach's/AD's agenda, not about winning titles:
- Maybe you're like Bill Snyder in the K-State rebuilding days and you put cream puffs on your schedule to build your team's confidence and increase your chances at going to a 6-5 bowl.
- Maybe you're like Pete Carrol and you think the P in Pac 10 stands for Pussies and with no conference championship game, you're at a distinct disadvantage and you don't want to take a chance with the voters playing at 11pm EST so you schedule some heavy weights to fall back on.
- Maybe you're Guy Morris at Baylor and you schedule some intermediates because a decent win over any team with a nominal pedigree will help you with recruiting and alumni moral (ie, donations).
- Mayber you're like the New Mexico State coach and AD and you schedule the big boys because you're willing to lose all your self-respect in the name of a big pay-day and you know this is your only chance at decent exposure because your conference schedule rivals that of the WB's fall line-up.
- Maybe you're like Houston Nutt or Charlie Weiss and you try to schedule a Texas team in the name of recruiting this talent rich state.
The point here being that it's not about positioning yourself for a title or preparing yourself to play OU. You've either got the team to beat or you don't. If you've got weaknesses, they're going to be exposed regardless at some point in the season whether it's OOC or conference play. To quote the Big Tuna, "you are who you are."
For all we know, Mack scheduled TCU because he heard they had a 5:1 girl to guy ratio and figured he could boost Longhorn male moral by increasing our chances of getting laid.
Maybe Mack wasn't in favor of scheduling tOSU because it's a 50/50 proposition, but if he's truly all about assuring an undefeated OOC, where's the logic in scheduling Arkansas, a team he knows will play out of their minds to beat us because their state may spontaneously cumbust if they don't.
There is some truth to everything everyone has said on this forum, but forget the numbers, stats and historical references for a moment, and realize it's all an agenda driven by money, recruiting, and exposure. College Football is big business. Mack Brown doesn't maintain job security from winning titles, he gets it from filling seats and selling all things burnt orange. He may very well be protecting his players, but he's really protecting the bottom line.
Robert Joseph didn't take a permanent vacation because he hurts our chances of winning, he's gone because he's bad for business and not worth the risk.
Miss America isn't about discovering the fairest maiden in all the land, it's about creating a venture for generating giant revenue streams through TV ads and sponsorships.
Here it is in a nut-shell:
Arkansas State: No risk patsy that'll help the team dust off the cobwebs and the fans will show up regardless because they just spent 8 months in CFB purgatory and they're suffering from serious withdrawl.
TCU: Made for TV, David vs. Goliath that will generate decent national interest with the right spin control.
Central Florida: Recruit the Florida hotbed and give the Flying Longhorn faithful an excuse to hit Disney World.
Rice: Shout out to the Longhorn Alumni in Houston and a talent rich recruiting hotbed.
Titles and Red River Shootouts aren't won in September.
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