Why these Yankees finally broke through the ALCS curse
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Bradford Doolittle, ESPN Staff Writer
CLEVELAND — Here’s the resume of one era for a certain big league baseball team.
It’s a 14-year period. The team had a .566 winning percentage during that span, most in its league and second-most overall. It never finished below .500. It had the second-most wins at home and on the road. No team had more comeback wins. Only one team scored more runs, and only one had a better run differential. Nobody hit more home runs, and it wasn’t particularly close.
Of course, that’s all regular season stuff — what about the playoffs? The answers aren’t as glowing, but they are still impressive. Only three teams played more postseason games. Only five won more postseason games. Only two teams hit more homers.
These are all facts from the New York Yankees‘ pennant drought, the period from 2010 through 2023, which finally drew to a close on Saturday night. The drought — a descriptor some woebegone franchises would dispute — ended thanks to one mighty swing by Juan Soto that punctuated one of his signature meat grinder at-bats. The Yankees are back, returned to the pedestal where their fans have a historical justification for feeling they belong: On top of the American League.
“It’s been a conversation every year,” ALCS MVP Giancarlo Stanton said. “We’re here now.”
The level of success outlined above would be impressive for pretty much every franchise, even if no fan base is ever going to be completely satisfied without the payoff of pennants and World Series titles. But for denizens of the Bronx, flags are the only currency that may be redeemed for respect or validation. Such are the standards of a franchise and fan base that has now celebrated 41 pennants and is four wins from a 28th championship.
Saturday’s win over Cleveland ended a streak of five losses in the ALCS during the drought, the last two of which came during the seven-year tenure of current manager Aaron Boone. The other three came under Joe Girardi, who is the only other skipper New York has had during the drought.
Meanwhile, the guy running the front office, Brian Cashman, has been around so long he might have been the guy who traded for Babe Ruth, though we’d need to check the historical record to see if that’s the case.
“I’m proud of these guys,” Cashman said amid the melee of the postgame trophy presentation. “And proud we have earned the right to go to the World Series.”
Behind Boone, and Girardi before him, and the even-present Cashman, not to mention ownership by the same family dating back to 1973, the Yankees, even during one of their dark ages, have been remarkably stable. It’s not like there was a major top-to-bottom housecleaning somewhere along the line.
What, then, is different about this bunch, the 2024 Bronx Bombers, that after so many recent October disappointments allowed them to finally break through on Saturday?
The Soto-Judge stack
Through the regular season, Aaron Judge enjoyed one of the best offensive performances in baseball history but, incredible as it is to say, he’s done this before. He’s also struggled all October to much hand-wringing and widespread theorizing. Yet, you could argue that even as he’s slumped, Judge has remained a fearsome presence in the New York lineup, and he’s been able to do that because he’s got Soto hitting in front of him.
The most tangible way to illustrate this is to simply point out that Judge hit 353 times with at least runner on base this season, second-most in baseball behind Atlanta’s Matt Olson. Judge drove in a career-high 144 runs this season — a product of his level of play, yes, but also because he was always hitting with someone on base. Often it was Soto, who chewed the opposing pitcher the same way he did Cleveland’s Hunter Gaddis on Saturday.
“I’m just telling myself, ‘I’m all over every pitch, I’m all over every pitch’,” Soto said of his pennant-winning blast. “So be ready. Be ready. He’s gonna make the mistake. He did. And I did get it.”
Soto took the spoils on Saturday but often, he’s just taking a walk — 129 of them during the season — to set the table for Judge and those behind him. Judge had an astronomical 1.237 OPS this season when hitting with at least one runner on.
The Soto-Judge stack, by some measures the most productive one-two single-season duo since the days of Ruth and Lou Gehrig, is a wearying prospect for every pitching staff to navigate four or five times a game, even if one of them (Judge in this case) isn’t hitting that well.
“He wears pitchers down,” Stanton said of Soto. “It doesn’t matter if he gets out. The stress of getting him out, then you gotta deal with Judge … then you gotta deal with everyone behind them.”
The runs created metric had Judge at 183, Soto at 147. The Yankees haven’t had two hitters top 140 in the same season since Jeter and Williams back in 1999. That is the single biggest difference between the Yankee teams of the past 14 seasons and this one. In other recent years they’ve had one mega hitter — but not two.
Stanton, for one, knew what the effect would be as soon as he heard that Soto was going to be his new teammate.
“I figured he was going to do something like he did tonight,” Stanton said. “And in pure Juan Soto fashion.”
The Stanton-Torres wrapwound
Stanton has had his ups and downs since coming to the Yankees but he’s often been at his best in October — and this October might be his best one yet. His four homers against Cleveland landed him that MVP award. He’s got five overall in the 2024 playoffs, one shy of the Yankees’ record. And only three Yankees have hit more playoff homers for the franchise — Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter and, gulp, Mickey Mantle.
“There’s the physical nature of what he does that’s different than just about everyone in the world,” Boone said Sunday before Stanton went out and homered yet again. “He’s just incredibly disciplined — his approach, his process, how he studies guys.”
Stanton doesn’t always hit cleanup, as Boone likes to get a lefty bat between Judge and Stanton most times. But this, too, ties into the Soto-Judge stack because when Stanton is hitting, and batting cleanup like he was on Saturday, those worn-down pitchers have got to feel the life being sucked out of them.
This also puts extra onus on getting out the batter who precedes all of this, Gleyber Torres. That hasn’t happened consistently this October. In fact, Torres has reached base in his first at-bat eight times during this postseason, a Yankees record. All of a sudden, there’s a runner on base, and here comes the smiling, nodding Soto striding to the dish.
“A lot of times for starting pitchers, maybe it takes them a hit or two to settle in,” Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt said. “And those are two guys you can’t settle in against.”
The Yankees didn’t light up the scoreboard getting through the AL bracket, but no one did. Runs were just very tough to come by in general. New York averaged 4.78 runs per game to lead the six AL postseason entrants, a group that otherwise averaged just 2.93. Through that prism, the Yankees’ offense was dominant — even without Judge putting up big numbers.
The scary question for whoever comes next for the Yankees — whether it’s the New York Mets or the Los Angeles Dodgers: What happens if Judge starts hitting, too?
The Astros are out
We won’t expand on this because there’s not much to say beyond pointing it out. But the Yankees’ last three ALCS losses — 2017, 2019, 2022 — all came at the hand of the Houston Astros, who were knocked out in the wild-card round this season by Detroit. New York might have beaten Houston this time around, anyway, and it’s fair to wonder if the ship has sailed on the Astros dynasty. But the fact remains — the biggest impediment to the World Series for the Yankees in recent years was not around this time to get in their way.
Patience
The tension is thicker in October. The moments are more intense, the crowds larger and lower, the consequences of every win or loss exaggerated. You might think that from a hitter’s perspective, that might lead to a little over-aggression. Not these Yankees.
New York drew just one walk during their clincher in Cleveland but have walked in 13.9% of their plate appearances this October. That’s more than any other playoff team this season and more than all but five of the 512 playoff teams in baseball history.
Plate discipline has been a hallmark of Cashman-constructed teams, and the Yankees also led the majors in drawing walks during the season. In October, they’ve taken it to another level.
“They’re a very tough lineup to navigate because of that,” Vogt said. “You have to come into the zone and you have to get them out in the zone, and they’re all very good hitters.”
An infusion of youth
The Yankees, at their most decadent, have featured too many high-dollar players on the wrong side of 30 with big names and shrinking athleticism. This has been the case for decades. But the Yankees’ position group has been getting younger the last couple of years, from a playing time-weighted age of 30.3 in 2022, per baseball-reference.com, to 28.5 last season and 28.0 this season.
Necessity has been part of this due to injuries to older stars such as Anthony Rizzo and D.J. LeMahieu. But New York has gotten meaningful contributions from young players on the hitting and pitching side alike. Game 4 featured an all-rookie battery — righty Luis Gil and catcher Austin Wells, both leading AL Rookie of the Year candidates.
The shortstop, Anthony Volpe, just completed his second season and was nominated for what would be his second straight Gold Glove. He’s improved his consistency at the plate as well, though he has plenty of work to do in that regard. He has a .459 OBP during the postseason.
The Yankees are still a star-driven team but they have better balance in the clubhouse. Going back through the history of baseball’s most successful franchise, that’s usually been the case when they win big.
“We’ve had some great groups, some great camaraderie, some great clubhouses,” Boone said. “This group is as close as I’ve ever seen, and they trust each other. They lean on each other. They love each other. They play for each other. Those are special things to have in a team sport.”
This team has won big so far but the ultimate goal hasn’t yet been achieved. And that goal — in the Bronx — is really one that matters, the one that will truly quench this drought.
“To get there doesn’t mean much,” Stanton said. “We need to win it.”
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Ryan S. Clark, NHL reporter
SALT LAKE CITY — There are two versions of Ryan Smith. There’s the public-facing 40-something billionaire tech mogul who answers questions in a way that can be direct, earnest and open to admitting he might not have the right answer … or an answer at all.
That’s the version most people see. But there’s also another version of Smith that’s unapologetically Utahn. That version comes out in the way he talks about Salt Lake City, the state of Utah and the preconceived beliefs many people have about a place that they’ve likely never visited.
While the first version of Smith is the reason the Utah Hockey Club exists, it’s the second version that is hell-bent on ensuring that the franchise is going to thrive in the most Utah way possible.
“I put everything in Utah. They said we couldn’t build tech here, and we’d have to move to the Bay Area,” Smith said. “We couldn’t get venture funding here. We couldn’t IPO a company from here. We couldn’t sell. We proved every single person wrong.
“Then I think that people started believing, ‘Holy cow. What’s going on in Utah?’ That’s incredibly gratifying when you’re fighting for a bigger cause.”
This is the mission facing the Utah Hockey Club when it comes to achieving success long term. While the UHC is a new venture, the team relocated from Arizona where they were the Coyotes. Before that, they were the original Winnipeg Jets, relocating to the desert in 1996.
The club is trying to prove that Salt Lake City and Utah as a whole can support the NHL. It’s trying to prove that it can make hockey a staple, just like the Utah Jazz have been doing in the NBA for several decades.
Perhaps the most important point the Utah Hockey Club could make is that as Salt Lake City keeps growing, so could the city’s professional sports landscape.
“Utahns especially want to show they are more than a flyover state,” said Josh Furlong, a broadcaster and the sports director for KSL. “They recognize they are not going to be Los Angeles, Seattle or New York. They want to showcase what Utah has to offer. You have a rabid fan base that will support your team. I think you have a bunch of people who want to showcase that. I don’t know if it is some type of FOMO situation where they feel like they’re not being included. But they want to be in that mix among the best places.
“You want people to feel what you see. You have this beautiful landscape, friendly people and a great atmosphere for sports culture.”
1:27
Clayton Keller: Today was a great day for Utah Hockey Club
Utah Hockey Club’s captain Clayton Keller joins “SportsCenter” to discuss what the team’s NHL debut felt like following a 5-2 win over the Blackhawks.
“Utah! Getting bigger and better. Utah! Always leading the way. New technology is here. Growing faster each year. This is the place!”
Those are lyrics from “Utah … This Is The Place.” Written in 1996, it later became the state song in 2003. At the time of the song’s creation, Utah was on the verge of announcing itself to more of the world, using sports and entertainment as a mechanism.
The Jazz reached three straight Western Conference finals from 1996 through 1998, with two NBA Finals appearances. Salt Lake City received international exposure during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. In 2005, the University of Utah was the first school to have the No. 1 picks in both the NBA and NFL drafts in the same year, with Andrew Bogut and Alex Smith. The state’s fortune was also extended to film in 2004 when a few graduates of BYU’s film school made the coming of age cult classic “Napoleon Dynamite.”
Decades later, it appears Utah could once again be following a similar path, but with more to gain.
Utah Hockey Club president of hockey operations Chris Armstrong didn’t quote the lyrics from the state song when asked about the future. But his words resemble a similar sentiment when he mentions Utah having the nation’s No. 3 economy and the youngest state based on median age (30.7 years old).
“It’s a unique moment in time where we’re building something new from the ground up and we get to do it with everybody here,” Armstrong said. “So that is why we see a successful and thriving future. It’s only continuing to grow that outpaces most cities in North America, and we think that’s a great opportunity for a new sports franchise.”
The history of sports fandom in Utah began with major college programs BYU and the University of Utah establishing athletic programs. Smaller schools such as Southern Utah, Utah State, Utah Valley and Weber State have also built followings in various sports.
Professional sports came on the scene in 1979 when the Jazz relocated from New Orleans and eventually became one of the NBA’s most successful franchises throughout the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s.
MLS came to the area in 2004 with Real Salt Lake, which averages 20,291 fans per game, and extends to the Utah Royals of the NWSL, a team that was revived in 2024. The Royals’ first game drew 20,370 fans which set a state record for the most fans at a women’s sporting event.
Both RSL and the Royals are owned by Smith, a BYU graduate, along with Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils managing partner David Blitzer.
In 2034, Salt Lake City will join Athens, Beijing, London, Los Angeles and Paris as one of the few cities to host multiple Olympics when the Winter Games return.
“Utah is crazy for sports,” said Eric Schulz, a senior lecturer in marketing and strategy at Utah State. “I think it will probably be the same pattern that Denver had. Denver just had the Nuggets and the Broncos for a long time. Then the Rockies came to town and then the Avalanche came to town. There’s been a lot of growth in Utah over the last 20 years with people who have come from other parts of the country. Look at Las Vegas. Who thought a hockey team in Las Vegas would do so well?”
Armstrong said the Utah Hockey Club received more than 30,000 season-ticket deposits. It’s a similar figure to that of the Seattle Kraken when they garnered more than 32,000 deposits ahead of their first season.
Armstrong also said that the franchise “feels very confident” in that it could finish this season as both a top-20 revenue team and a top-20 ticketing team in the NHL despite playing in at a basketball-first venue that has around 5,000 obstructed view seats.
“I don’t know too much about what the perception is, but I can tell you that on the ground that all you see is growth around you,” Armstrong said. “I think the culture of hockey lends itself to the community of Greater Salt Lake and of Utah. Hard-working, honest, passion, camaraderie, pride in team, pride in state. … I think that speaks to the response that we’ve received with season-ticket deposits.”
THERE WILL BE challenges along the way.
Those Jazz teams with Karl Malone and John Stockton created a generational fandom that has played a role in why the Jazz still continue to be such a massive draw.
Harnessing that fandom became an instant priority for the Utah Hockey Club. Exactly a week after the Coyotes’ last regular season game, the team was flown to Salt Lake City, where they were greeted by 12,000 fans at the Delta Center.
In the offseason, the club organized an online poll encouraging fans to vote on its future team name. In June, the SEG announced 520,000 fans had participated, before narrowing it down to six potential options.
Chris Barney, the Smith Entertainment Group’s president of revenue and commercial strategy, said the club will market to everyone. But they’re concentrating on attracting young people so that they can grow those generational fans.
Part of that plan is creating a youth hockey program. Many of the NHL’s teams playing in nontraditional markets — especially Western Conference teams — have used these programs over the past 30 years. The short-term goal is to drive new, young fans to the sport. The long-term goal is to make the youth of today the season-ticket holders of tomorrow.
What makes the Utah Hockey Club’s plan different is their connection to the Jazz. The Junior Jazz is the NBA’s largest youth basketball program, with more than 60,000 members spread across Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Idaho.
Barney, who grew up playing in the Junior Jazz, said that the Jazz designate 1,800 tickets every home game for program participants.
“Our goal is to develop a youth hockey program in which there’s an Auston Matthews playing somewhere in the NHL [in the future] that’s a product of Salt Lake City with the infrastructure that we have built,” Barney said. “That might be one of the most important things. It’s not right in front of our face, but we have a five-year strategic plan. Developing and building it out is darn near the top.”
Barney explained that there are county recreation departments that are incubators for youth who end up playing sports in the community. With SEG already having those relationships in place through the Junior Jazz, they hope to do the same with the Utah Hockey Club when it comes time to introduce ice hockey and street hockey throughout the community.
The most recent USA Hockey membership numbers show that Utah had a combined 4,869 players between males and females. Of those 4,869 registered players, there were 3,168 who were younger than 18, while 2,073 were under 14. In 2016-17 — the final period before the Golden Knights arrived — the state of Nevada had 1,699 combined registered players. In 2023-24, there were a combined 5,560 male and female players, with 2,861 of them being 18 and younger.
“We’re all in,” Barney said. “We’re not going to dip our toe in. We’re all in.”
ANOTHER CHALLENGE IN building a fan base is that while Salt Lake City and Utah as a whole are growing, growth does not come cheap, which sets up a dichotomy that exists for many franchises in 2024.
“Utah has a ton of rising costs. Especially in real estate,” Furlong said. “There is a real pain point here with things being overpriced, and the housing market being really tough. Utahns love to get things for free or for cheap. The cheaper you make it, the better it is going to be. That said, you have someone like Ryan Smith who is trying to appeal to other people in the tech world who have limitless amounts of cash.
“The general fan wants it to be as cheap as possible because there are other factors, but tech people want to showcase this as a premier destination.”
Chris Hartweg is the publisher and CEO of the Team Marketing Report, which produces the Fan Cost Index, a model that calculates what the cost would be for a family of four to attend a sporting event.
Hartweg said recent history shows that new teams — whether they be expansion or relocation — were more expensive than the league average when they debuted. He said that the Nashville Predators (1998-99), Columbus Blue Jackets (2000-01) and Minnesota Wild (2000-01) were all within 3% above the league average ticket prices in their first season. Those are the outliers in recent NHL history.
The Atlanta Thrashers (1999-2000) were 34% above league average. The Vegas Golden Knights (2017-18) were 30% higher, while the Seattle Kraken (2021-22) were 58% higher.
“With dynamic pricing, (teams) know where all the price points are,” Hartweg said. “They know they want to move this many more season tickets if they go to this level. They know going in what’s the most that they could get before diminishing returns. That’s business. It happened in Seattle.”
Hartweg pointed out that the Kraken lowered their prices for the second season, but were able to charge a hefty premium for two main reasons that could also apply to the Utah Hockey Club: a new team, and a new venue.
Hartweg said it’s possible that UHC’s fans could be in store for a pricey first season, with the possibility of an uptick in prices once the Delta Center renovation project is completed in 2027.
Then there’s the role of the secondary market. Hartweg said the average family looking to go to a game might purchase tickets on the secondary market, and they might not know where to find the strongest deals.
Utah’s upcoming three-game home stand against the Carolina Hurricanes, the Vegas Golden Knights and the Washington Capitals offers a wide range of price points for the cheapest available ticket.
A cursory glance across numerous secondary ticketing sites shows that the composite least expensive ticket at Delta Center for the Nov. 13 game versus the Hurricanes is $37, while the least expensive ticket for the Nov. 18 game against the Capitals is $58, should fans want to watch Alexander Ovechkin continue to chase Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record.
It’s a contrast compared to the demand ahead of the Nov. 15 game against the Golden Knights, a perennial Stanley Cup contender that could become one of the UHC’s chief geographic rivals. Those sites list the least expensive ticket for the game on Nov. 15 against Vegas as $119.67. The composite cheapest lower-bowl tickets with an unobstructed view is $248.
“When a new team comes in, it’s Christmas Day,” Schulz said. “They can come in and buy the best seats and put in orders for blocks of a hundred and resell them on the secondary market. If they can get their hands on them, they only have to resell a quarter of the season and they already have their money back. If a team goes to the playoffs, it’s like 12 Christmases having those tickets.”
Barney said the franchise has a “multiyear strategy” when it comes to how ticketing will work for fans from various economic backgrounds.
He said that adding 6,000 unobstructed seats once the Delta Center renovation is completed will help with making the UHC more accessible. Another step is to work with community partners to ensure they’re getting UHC tickets in the hands of fans from underrepresented groups so they can also have access.
They’ll also continue to sell those obstructed view seats that Barney also called the “partial ice” seats or “single-ice seats” — in reference to the steep angles behind each goal — that will start at $19 per game.
“We want to make sure we’re being strategic about how the tickets are being distributed,” said Barney, who grew up in nearby Kaysville. “I think the move to make sure that concessions are also more affordable for people was also really important.”
Hartweg said it’s common for teams to provide more cost-effective food and drink offerings to help offset the price of a game ticket. He said there are places that offer $5 beers, but it might come with the caveat that it’s in the 700 section of the arena.
Delta Center has what’s called a “Mountain Menu” which is a fan-friendly pricing option in which a bottle of water is $2 while hot dogs, ice cream, nachos and popcorn are $3. There were also other options such as Chick-fil-A, with 30 nuggets for $30, while a chicken sandwich and waffle fries cost $16.
“It’s worth the price,” said Christian Priskos, who grew up in Salt Lake City. “We have a Tier 1 NHL team that’s in downtown Salt Lake City. It’s not only boosting the local economy with local business, local bars and local restaurants and everything you want to do. But it’s also boosting the social scene as well. People want to say ‘Salt Lake is a sleepy town.’ But, we’re not. We’re a Tier 1 city and the Utah Hockey Club is another step toward showing that.”
WHILE THE FOOD and drink prices might be new to Utah Hockey Club fans, those are the prices that Jazz fans have grown accustomed to paying over the years. And the SEG can take components of its playbook from running the Jazz to serve Utah hockey fans.
On the ice, they are boosted by a strong collection of young talent — and the ninth-best prospect pipeline. A playoff appearance in Year 1 is a real possibility.
From a fan engagement perspective, both Armstrong and Barney shared how going to the Delta Center for a Utah Hockey Club game could be a first for a number of people in the area. At present, the Jazz are in a rebuild yet have sold out for 296 consecutive games. Delta Center, which holds 18,306 fans for basketball, had more than 14,000 fans attend a preseason basketball game less than 24 hours before the first game in UHC history.
Armstrong said that element of demand coupled with how historically engaged fans across Salt Lake City and the state of Utah have been could also play a role in the Utah Hockey Club having long-term success.
“There’s a lot of Utahns who haven’t been able to experience a live sporting event in the building because the Jazz have sold out so many consecutive games,” Armstrong said. “It gives people another opportunity to be part of this world-class venue in Salt Lake they have not been able to access with the Jazz. … Now we’ve given them that new product that gives them that chance.”
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
It’s a new era for the College Football Playoff, with the field growing from four to 12 this season. That means three times as many programs will gain entry, but, beginning with Tuesday’s initial playoff rankings, there’s three times as much room for outrage, too.
Under the old rules, there was a simple line of demarcation that separated the elated from the angry: Who’s in?
Now, there are so many more reasons for nitpicking the committee’s decisions, from first-round byes to hosting a home game to whether your supposedly meaningful conference has been eclipsed by teams from the Group of 5.
And if the first rankings are any indication, it’s going to be a fun year for fury. There’s little logic to be taken from the initial top 25 beyond the committee’s clear love for the Big Ten. Penn State and Indiana make the top eight despite having only one win combined over an ESPN FPI top-40 team (Penn State over Iowa). That Ohio State checks in at No. 2 ahead of Georgia is the most inexplicable decision involving Georgia since Charlie Daniels suggested the devil lost that fiddle contest. Oregon is a reasonable No. 1, but the Ducks still came within a breath of losing to Boise State. Indeed, the Big Ten’s nonconference record against the Power 4 this season is 6-8, just a tick better than the ACC and well behind the SEC’s mark of 10-6.
But this is the fun of early November rankings. The committee is still finding its footing, figuring out what to prioritize and what to ignore, what’s signal and what’s noise. And that’s where the outrage really helps. It’s certainly not signal, but it can be a really loud noise.
This week’s Anger Index:
There are only two possible explanations for BYU’s treatment in this initial ranking. The first is that the committee members are too sleepy to watch games beyond the Central time zone. The second, and frankly, less rational one, is they simply didn’t do much homework.
It’s certainly possible the committee members are so enthralled with metrics such as the FPI (where BYU ranks 28th) or SP+ (22nd) that they’ve determined the Cougars’ actual record isn’t as important. This is incredibly foolish. The FPI and SP+ certainly have their value, but they’re probabilistic metrics, designed to gauge the likelihood of future success. They’re in no way a ranking of actual results. (That’s why USC is still No. 17 in the FPI, despite Lincoln Riley spending his days wistfully scrolling through old pictures of Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray and wondering if Oklahoma might want to get back together.)
To look at actual results paints a clear picture.
BYU (No. 4) has a better strength of record than Ohio State (No. 5), has played roughly the same quality schedule as Texas and has two wins against other teams ranked in the committee’s top 25 — as many as Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, Tennessee and Indiana (all ranked ahead of the Cougars) combined.
Indiana’s rags-to-riches story is wonderful, of course, but how can the committee compare what BYU has done (wins over SMU and Kansas State) against Indiana’s 103rd-ranked strength of schedule?
And this particular snub has significant effects. The difference between No. 8 and No. 9 is a home game in the first round, of course, though as a potential conference champion, that’s a moot point. But what if BYU loses a game — perhaps the Big 12 title game? That could not only doom the Cougars from getting a first-round bye, but it could quite likely set up a scenario in which the Big 12 is shuffled outside the top four conferences entirely, passed by upstart Boise State.
What’s clear from this first round of rankings is the committee absolutely loves the Big Ten — with four teams ranked ahead of a subjectively more accomplished BYU team — and the Big 12 is going to face some serious headwinds.
There’s a great, though little watched, TV show from the 2010s called “Rectify,” about a man who escapes death row after new evidence is found, only to be constantly harassed by the same system that fraudulently locked him away for 20 years. This is basically the story of SMU.
Let’s do a quick blind résumé here.
Team A: 8-1 record, No. 13 strength of record, two wins vs. ranked opponents, loss to SP+ No. 22, .578 opponent win percentage
Team B: 7-1 record, No. 15 strength of record, two wins vs. ranked opponents, loss to SP+ No. 91, .567 opponent win percentage
OK, you probably guessed Team A is SMU. The Mustangs have wins against Louisville and Pitt — both relatively emphatic — and their lone loss came to No. 9 BYU, which came before a quarterback change and included five red zone drives that amounted to only six total points.
Team B? That’s Notre Dame. The Irish have the worst loss by far (to Northern Illinois) of any team in the top 25, beat a common opponent by the same score (though, while SMU outgained Louisville by 20 yards, the Cardinals actually outgained Notre Dame by 115) and have played one fewer game.
The difference? SMU has the stigma — of the death penalty, of the upstart program new to the Power 4, of being unworthy. Notre Dame is the big brand, and that results in being ranked three spots higher and, if the playoff were held today, getting in, while the Mustangs are left out.
There are three two-loss SEC teams ranked ahead of Ole Miss, which seems to be a perfectly reasonable consensus if you look at the AP poll, too. But are we sure that’s so reasonable?
Two stats we like to look at to measure a team’s quality are success rate (how often does a team make a play that improves its odds of winning) and explosiveness. Measure the differentials in each between offense and defense, then plot those out, and you’ll get a pretty clear look of who’s truly dominant in college football this season.
Explosive Play differential vs. Successful Play differential
Auburn & Ark make no sense
Iowa & Iowa St are twinsies!
Is Ole Miss undervalued? pic.twitter.com/h87SKCdOtr— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) November 3, 2024
That outer band that features Penn State, Texas, Miami, Ohio State and Indiana (and notably, not Oregon, Alabama, LSU or Texas A&M)? That’s where Ole Miss lives.
The Rebels have two losses this season, each by three points, both in games they outgained the winning team. They lost to LSU on the road and, yes, somehow lost to a dismal Kentucky team. But hey, LSU lost to USC, too. It has been a weird season.
SP+ loves Ole Miss. The Rebels check in at No. 4 there, behind only Ohio State, Texas and Georgia.
The FPI agrees, ranking the Rebels fifth.
In ESPN’s game control metric, no team is better. Ole Miss has the third-best average in-game win percentage. That suggests a lot of strange twists, and bad luck was involved with its losses. These are things the committee should be evaluating when comparing like teams.
But how about this comparison?
Team A: 7-2, 23 points per game scoring margin vs. FBS, 1 loss to unranked, three wins vs. SP+ top 40
Team B: 7-2, 19 points per game scoring margin vs. FBS, 1 loss to unranked, three wins vs. SP+ top 40
Pretty similar, eh?
Of course, one of them is Ole Miss. That’s Team A this time around.
Team B is Alabama, ranked five spots higher.
Sure, this situation can be resolved quite easily this weekend with a win over Georgia, but Ole Miss starting at the back of the pack of SEC contenders seems like a miss by the committee, even if the math will change substantially before the next rankings are revealed.
Oh, thanks so much for the No. 25 nod, committee. All Army has done is win every game without trailing the entire season. Last season, when Liberty waltzed through its weakest-in-the-nation schedule, the committee had no objections to giving the Flames enough love to make a New Year’s Six bowl. But Army? At No. 25? Thirteen spots behind Boise State, the Knights’ competition for the Group of 5’s bid? Something tells us some spies from Air Force have infiltrated the committee’s room in some sort of Manchurian Candidate scenario.
Sure, the Seminoles are terrible now, and yes, the committee this season has plenty of new faces, but that doesn’t mean folks in Tallahassee have forgiven or forgotten what happened a year ago. Before the committee’s playoff snub, FSU had won 19 straight games and averaged 39 points. Since the snub, the Noles are 1-9 and haven’t scored 21 points in any game. Who’s to blame for this? Mike Norvell? The coaching staff? DJ Uiagalelei and the other struggling QBs? Well, sure. But it’s much easier to just blame the committee. Those folks killed Florida State’s playoff hopes and ended their run of success. The least they could do this year is rank them No. 25 just for fun.
Also angry: South Carolina (5-3, unranked), Vanderbilt (6-3, unranked), Georgia (7-1, No. 3), Louisville (6-3, No. 22), everyone who is not in the Big Ten.
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