krindor

With the exception of last season (massive injuries and Rising unexpectedly out all year), preseason predictions seem to be pretty accurate for Utah. Here’s every year Utah was preseason ranked

• 2023: Started 14, Ended Unranked (#32) – Difference of -18
• 2022: Started 7, Finished 10 – Difference of -3
• 2021: Started 24, Finished 10 – Difference…

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Yeah, I go back and forth on which I prefer. I generally like this arrangement more…but with the importance of finishing top 2 in your division I hate throwing Penn St, Ohio St, and Michigan all into the same division. Either one would work though

And yeah, Utah would barely be in for either setup, but I based it on what teams have drawn the…[Read more]

Alternate division arrangements (less balance between divisions but more respect for history)

FOX Conference
West: Oregon, USC, Washington, Utah
Central: Oklahoma, Nebraska, Oklahoma St, Colorado
North: Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota
East: Ohio St, Michigan, Penn St, Michigan St

ESPN Conference
West: Texas, LSU, Texas A&M, TCU
Central:…[Read more]

Gets tons of money to networks ✅
Keeps regionalism and fosters rivalries (especially in division) ✅
Gives objective criteria for postseason participation ✅
Emphasizes importance of regular season while keeping playoffs an end-of-season ratings bonanza ✅

This is really interesting. I hadn’t seen this, but I did spend yesterday (this morning for most of you) putting together a 32 team superleague based on the highest drawing brands.

And it looks almost the exact same. Every team he listed is included, but a few others sneak in (Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, and South Carolina).

Mine would be…[Read more]

I don’t work in media, but I do a fair amount of work in data analytics. I pull the data from sportsmediawatch, and have every game from the last 6 years in a nice spreadsheet to organize it different ways.

As to the Utah brand, I think it’s definitely grown, but if you’re expecting it to just come up in random conversations, it’s certainly not…[Read more]

If you go simply by average in rated games, then yes, Army and Navy show up (though Navy is normally based on two games – Army and Notre Dame).

Which is why I don’t like those metrics. I use Viewership Score which is the last thing I have listed there and which I’ve developed specifically to account for those issues.

Ignoring unrated games or…[Read more]

So I made adjustments for everyone to keep them on equal footing. Here’s an easy hypothetical example of what I’m talking about.

Imagine in a particular season Utah were to draw 2M against USC, Washington and Oregon, and 1M each in the other 7 games on rated channels (with the FCS game and the game vs Arizona on unrated PAC12 Network). That’s…[Read more]

Over the last 5 years (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023), theres a few different ways to rank teams, here’s where Utah finishes in each (among P5 and selected high-profile G5 teams who have been tangentially mentioned in expansion talks)

All Games (including CCG, bowls etc)

• Counting unrated games as zero viewership: Utah is #20 with 1.871M…

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The Colorado game wasn’t actually Nielsen rated, so there was zero benefit from that.

There are some issues with this ranking of teams though. The big question is what to do with games that aren’t Nielsen rated.

Some (like this one) use just the average of Nielsen-rated games. Which is terrible because then you end up with a school like…[Read more]

Capitalism is still the worst economic system that happens to be better than all of the others. I think Churchill said that.

Not a knock on capitalism, but the quote you’re thinking of that’s attributed to Churchill was about democracy being the worst form of government that’s better than all the rest. Not about capitalism

Yup, from a betting perspective, it turns out that Vegas has a pretty good idea what they’re doing. There’s really not any value on the over. The under has a bit more value, just given the possibility of major injury/upheaval, but it’s really not a great bet either.

Vegas did a solid job setting the O/U, it’s almost like they’re professionals at this

Yeah, there were a bunch of really strong safeties so I tried to list them elsewhere if possible. In particular, cornerback wasn’t stellar which is why Blackmon was a clear choice for that CB/S /nickel role on the first team.

Pulling Blackmon away from there would mean putting another CB on there. I already cheated a bit by putting Vaki in…[Read more]

Most teams use at least two RB in rotation, which is why. Honestly, if we were just listing 1 RB it would also hurt since we’d then be leaving off Tavion, Joe Williams, Ty Jordan and JaQuinden.

You’ve made good points and I’ve made some updates. Dimick should be there – he was overlooked since he didn’t go to the NFL, but that’s irrelevant here.…[Read more]

Fair – I agree with you. That was sentimentality getting the better of me

Lowell Lotulelei was a miss, absolutely. I’ve added him in.

Blechen I didn’t realize went through 2014, thought he was further back and not eligible. Still though, I have 3 safeties there so I want more coverage if possible.

Norris I came very close on. I reordered him onto the 2nd team about 5 times and wouldn’t argue at all with him on there.…[Read more]

The description of “prone to multi-loss seasons” is a bit hilarious.

Unless you’re Alabama, Georgia, Ohio St or Clemson during their run, you generally have multiple-loss seasons.

Since 2000, LSU has had 4 seasons with 1 or fewer loss. And 3 of them were national title seasons.

In 9 years at Michigan, Harbaugh has 7 multi-loss seasons. And 1 of…[Read more]

Looking at this the things that stand out to me are

• Need more OL in general
• WR isn’t bad….but lose a ton next year and don’t really have the folks ready to take over
• Same story at LB. Great top 3, but they all likely leave after this season and we’ve currently got nothing behind them
• QB is ok…unless bad things happen. Not a must-have to…

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