I'm Really Upset about the 19th Spot in the AP Poll

I still have to work on a post on Frozen Fenway.  I'll get there, but first some final thoughts on the 2013 college football season.

Last night's game was really good, but I will always hate Florida State for 1993.  Notre Dame deserved the National Championship that year.  If you don't know the history, we beat them and both schools finished with one loss.  They had the good fortune of losing first so they were given the championship.

Florida State's football team's graduation rate is 58%.  That is shameful.  They're good, but they don't have 42% of their players leaving early for the NFL.

I did really like Florida State's game winning touchdown.  They had guys coming out of the backfield running toward the sidelines and opening up the middle for their big tall wide receiver for the touchdown.  Brian Kelly loves the fade and empty backfields too much.  That throw was so much easier for a quarterback to make than the fade.

But the real reason for this post is that the final AP rankings had me upset.  Nope, I don't care about the top 5 or the top 10.  I'm upset about spots 19 (USC), 20 (Notre Dame), and 21 (Arizona State).  I'm not going to tell you that Notre Dame was underrated, but these rankings don't make sense.  I happened to see Notre Dame play those other two teams in person.  Notre Dame went 2-0 in those games.  Arizona State beat USC.  Now, there's a lot more to the season than just those three games among those three teams.  In fact, I wouldn't have ranked Notre Dame the best out of those three.  Let's review.

USC:  10-4 (got to play an extra game because they played at Hawaii), 1-3 against teams that finished the season ranked (teams that finished with an average ranking of 17), impressive wins against Stanford and Fresno State, really bad loss against Washington State.

Notre Dame:  9-4, 3-2 against ranked teams (teams that finished with an average ranking of 12, wins over Michigan State, Arizona State, and USC), really bad loss against Pittsburgh, bad loss against Michigan.

Arizona State: 10-4 (played an extra game because they won the Pac-12 South, but played an FCS team also), 4-3 against ranked teams (teams that finished with an average ranking of 17.7, wins over Wisconsin, USC, Washington, and UCLA), bad loss against Texas Tech.

Based on all of that, Arizona State was the best of those three teams and USC was the worst.  Arizona State won its division, played the most ranked teams, and spanked USC.  Sure, some bad officiating at the end helped them beat Wisconsin, but there's no guarantee that they would have lost if the game had been properly officiated.  Notre Dame played more games against ranked teams than USC and won two more games against ranked teams.  The ranked teams that we played were clearly better than the ranked teams that USC played.  USC had a good win against Stanford and we lost to Stanford, but we beat USC, so don't give me any transitive property nonsense.  Out of USC, Notre Dame, and Arizona State, Notre Dame was the only team with a win against a top 5 team (or a top 10 team for that matter).

So Notre Dame was properly rated.  The problem was that USC was overrated and Arizona State was underrated.  We'll just have to beat USC again next year.  Go Irish!