Category: Sports

11 Weird Old-Timey Sports Teams

Scoop, November 30, 2025 (11:46 pm)December 1, 2025 (9:14 pm) ... 3 comments.

Most of the list is new to me, but every baseball fan knows about the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. Among teams that played a full season, they were the worst major league team in history, with 20 wins and 134 losses.

Just before the turn of the century, the National League monopoly was plagued by interlocking ownership, with some owners holding stock in several teams, and some owning majority control of two different clubs. By owning two teams, they would take all the best players to the “A” club to create a super team, leaving the “B” club to die a natural death.

Ferdinand Abell and Harry Vonderhorst drained the once-great Baltimore Orioles to stock their Brooklyn Superbas. It was a short-term strategy that created an all-star team of established superstars. It worked for two years. The Superbas, a pathetic 54-91 in 1898, managed to win pennants in 1899 and 1900 by poaching many top-line players from the Orioles, including four players from their starting line-up and the three 20-game winners on their pitching staff.

Barney Dreyfuss drained the Louisville Colonels to stock the Pittsburgh Pirates, allowing the Pirates to pick up the greatest player of the era (Honus Wagner) in the process. That one paid off in spades. As soon as the Superbas squad headed for the old-age home, the Pirates became the best team in the league. They won in 1901, 1902 and 1903, and remained contenders or winners until Wagner turned 40. Wagner led the league in WAR an amazing 12 times, and his 1908 season was considered the all-time best for a position player in the era from 1893 to 1919, meaning from the beginning of the modern pitching distance until the beginning of the “lively ball era.” In 1920, when they started using fresh balls instead of keeping the same one in play for the whole game, some big kid named George Ruth took advantage of the new procedure to eclipse Wagner. (But it’s noteworthy that Wagner’s 1908 season, as measured by WAR, was better than Ty Cobb’s best years!)

Owner Frank Robison drained the Cleveland Spiders to stock the pathetic St. Louis team that he had bought out of bankruptcy. He didn’t have as much talent to work with as Abell and Dreyfuss, so he succeeded only in creating the worst team of all time in Cleveland, while the St Louis team was never much better than mediocre under his ownership. He did manage to improve the St Louis team significantly, but they were atrocious to start. They were 29-102 and 39-111 in the two seasons before Robison poached the best of the Spiders, and they jumped to 84-67 after the merger. Their winning percentage went from .260 to .556 in one year. That was impressive at face value, but the Spiders went down more than the Perfectos went up! In 1900, the Spiders were dismantled, and the Perfectos were renamed the St. Louis Cardinals, a name that has stuck with the franchise to this day. They were never much good under the Robison family, but they eventually became the best team in the league, and their reign endured for two decades, right up to the last pre-integration year (1926 to 1946). The Cardinals remained a strong club after integration began in 1947, but they were slow to integrate, failing to field a black player until 1954, and lacking any top black players until 1958-1959. Branch Rickey, the man whose innovative farm system had made the Cardinals a powerhouse, had moved from the Cardinals to the Dodgers, and he grasped the importance of integration. By the time the Cardinals decided to place a tentative toe into the pool of black talent, the Dodgers had already scooped up Jackie Robinson, Joe Black, Jim Gilliam, Don Newcombe, Sandy Amoros and Roy Campanella. Thus was the torch passed from Rickey’s old team to Rickey’s new team.

College pigskin, Week 13

Scoop, November 23, 2025 (2:27 pm)November 29, 2025 (3:41 pm) ... 1 comment.

It was a week for silly games.

Three of the top-ranked teams were using this week to play rah-rah home games against the weakest teams they could find. It must be a crazy week for bookies because there is no way to know exactly when the good teams will take a foot off the gas. Alabama covered an enormous spread, the other two did not.

#3 Texas A&M took on Samford, a team rated 59 points lower by the computer and 53.5 by the oddsmakers. Samford is an FCS team with a 1-10 record. They may not be the worst D1 team in the country, but they are in the discussion. A&M won 48-0, as Samford was able to gain only 77 yards from scrimmage. A&M did not try to run up the score, choosing instead to give everyone a chance to play. At the end of the game, the Aggies were playing their 4th-string freshman quarterback.

#10 Alabama matched up against Eastern Illinois. Like Samford, Eastern Illinois is not only an FCS team, but a very weak one. The computer had ‘Bama up by 55, and the bookies called it 50.5 points. ‘Bama won 56-0. Alabama emptied the bench, but poor Eastern Illinois just didn’t belong in that game. They managed only two first downs in the entire game, for a total of 34 yards from scrimmage. At least their punters got plenty of practice.

#4 Georgia played Charlotte. Charlotte is an FBS school, but they came into the game 1-9, and their only win was against an FCS opponent. The computers rank them as the second-worst FBS team in the country, with only lowly U Mass beneath them. The betting spread was 42.5, and the computer rated Georgia 51 points better. Georgia basically gave their starters a rest, so it was one of those games where all the parents got to see their kids play. Their quarterbacks completed passes to fourteen different receivers, nine of whom caught exactly one pass. I don’t know what the D1 record is, but fourteen receivers seems like a big number. I like that a lot, since I would have been one of those “Look, mom, I caught one” kids. Georgia won 35-3.

Auburn, South Carolina, LSU and Clemson also scheduled home games against weak opponents this week, but since they have not performed up to expectations this year, it didn’t matter much.

—-

#9 Notre Dame and #1 Ohio State weren’t trying to schedule weak opponents. It just worked out that way. Ohio State had a conference game against Rutgers (score 42-9), while Notre Dame scored 35 in the first quarter against Syracuse, on their way to a 70-7 curb-stomping. The Irish couldn’t let up much because they are locked in a life-and-death struggle with Alabama at the bottom of the top ten. It’s not likely that there will be a difference between finishing 9th and 10th in the rankings, but there could be. If BYU wins the Big 12 and is not in the top ten nationally, they will get the tenth tournament seed automatically, knocking out the team ranked 10th nationally. While that isn’t likely, both Notre Dame and Alabama are acutely aware of the possibility that the #9 team is completely safe, while the #10 team is not.

In games that mattered …

Most of the top ten teams have to keep winning to make the playoff, while the teams just below them not only have to win, but have to hope for one of the top ten to lose.

None of the top fourteen teams lost, but there could be some movement among the bubble boys.

#11 BYU beat Cincinnati, 26-14
#12 Utah won, but allowed 47 points
#13 Miami won easily, 34-17
#14 Vanderbilt crushed Kentucky. 45-17
#15 USC lost to #7 Oregon
#16 Georgia Tech fell behind Pitt 21-0 and never recovered.
#17 Texas won, but allowed 37 points.

Miami is obviously hoping that their win will impress the committee more than Utah’s, thus allowing them to climb a little.

Texas should move up to #15, but they have three losses,so their chance of making the playoff is close to zero, if not absolute zero.

The best hope for the bubble boys: Three of the top ten teams have tough opponents next week. Oklahoma plays LSU next week, Oregon plays Washington, and Alabama plays Auburn. An Oklahoma, Oregon or Alabama loss could knock them out of the top ten. Oregon might survive a loss, but the other two can’t. The rest of the top ten teams either have easy games or are so secure that a loss won’t knock them down below #10.

Some essential conference races are still wide open:

The ACC: The winner of the ACC championship game is likely to be the 11th seed in the playoffs. Despite the loss by Georgia Tech, Miami is still on the outside looking in. Both Virginia and SMU are in if they win, making the Miami-Pitt game meaningless.

If BYU stays at #11, they could still make the playoff by winning the Big 12 championship game, in which case it will get the 10th seed and knock out the team ranked #10.

On the other side of the tracks

The worst FBS squad, poor U Mass, remained winless … but they only lost by 28, so it was a decent week.

You read above that #2 Charlotte made the audacious move of scheduling Georgia. They only lost by 32 because Georgia emptied the bench early.

#4 Middle Tennessee played #3 Sam Houston in a sort of reverse bowl game. Call it the Toilet Bowl. Middle Tennessee won easily, 31-17, so Sam Houston held onto the third spot, and the bottom three remain the same.

Overrated teams o’ the week

The current list. (Based on the new Sagarin computer ratings and this week’s AP poll.)

1. 32 places (!!) – Tulane (54, 22)
2. 22 Places – North Texas (43,21)
3. 19 places – Georgia Tech (42, 23)
4. 17 places – Virginia (34,17)

Houston fell from the list because voters finally acknowledged reality.

What happened to last week’s most overrated teams? (Based on last week’s Sagarin computer ratings and last week’s AP poll.)

1. 38 places (!!) – Tulane (62, 24) beat Temple 37-13.
2. 26 places – Houston (51, 25) lost to unranked TCU, 17-14.
3. 24 places – North Texas (46,22) shellacked Rice
4. 20 places – Georgia Tech (35, 15) lost to Pitt, as I expected.
5. 17 places – Virginia (36,19) did not play.

College Pigskin, Week 11

Scoop, November 12, 2025 (2:29 pm)November 12, 2025 (7:07 pm) ... 9 comments.

Just a minor update. Based on the official committee rankings, South Florida would get the #12 seed instead of James Madison.

BOOO!!

I admit it. I’m openly rooting for James Madison.

You’ve already seen the rest of the post.

——————-

Last week’s #2, undefeated Indiana, had a scare. They were losing with 40 seconds on the clock, but pushed over a last-minute TD to remain undefeated.

Indiana looks pretty safe for an undefeated regular season. Their only remaining games are against Wisconsin and Purdue, two basement dwellers in the Big Ten. They are pretty much a lock for a playoff spot even if they lose the conference championship game.

Last week’s #9 Oregon barely eked out a victory over #20 Iowa.

Last week’s #8 Texas Tech totally dominated #7, formerly undefeated BYU. BYU’s loss means that there are only three remaining undefeated teams in the FBS division, and they are ranked 1-2-3.

Last week’s #14 Virginia and #15 Louisville both lost to unranked teams. Virginia never scored a TD. Louisville took it into overtime before losing to Cal.

Last week’s #23 Washington lost to Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Badgers came into the game as the lowest-scoring team in the Fab Four conferences, at 13 points per game. Their offense was exactly that bad once again, but this time their usual 13 points was enough to defeat Washington.

Oddity of the week: Rutgers ran 69 plays from scrimmage, and 41 of them were rushes by Antwan Raymond. Assuming that football is a show as well as a sport, Antwan is now the hardest working man in show business. (He amassed 240 rushing yards, giving him exactly 1000 for the year.)

There is no especially dominant team in the very balanced ACC this year. It appears that none of their teams will make the top 12 in the rankings, so the ACC champ is likely to get the automatic #11 seed. Right now Georgia Tech, Virginia, Pittsburgh and SMU are tied for the conference lead. Their national ranks are 14, 20, 23 and NR respectively. Miami and Louisville are ranked 16 and 19 nationally, but are not currently among the conference leaders. In order to make the playoff, an ACC team would either have to win the conference championship game or make it into the top 10.

James Madison continued an underdog pursuit of that 12th playoff spot with a win over Marshall. If the regular season were now over, James Madison would be in the playoff, based on being 24th in the new AP poll! As I’ve noted before, there are only four strong conferences, but the top FIVE conference winners get an automatic bid. At the moment, James Madison is the top-rated conference leader outside the Fab Four, and would therefore get the #12 seed in the tournament. South Florida, Tulane and North Texas, co-leaders in the American Conference, are right on their heels, ranked 25, 26 and 28.

Last week’s #11 Texas, #12 Oklahoma and #13 Utah had the week off. Those three spots are crucial because they are the bubble boys. Exactly 12 teams make the playoffs. Because of exemptions for the conference champions from the ACC and one other conference to be determined, a team from the three strongest conferences must finish in the top ten to be sure of a spot. That’s also true of Notre Dame. As of this week’s AP list, Notre Dame and Texas would barely sneak in with the #9 and #10 seeds, while Oklahoma and Utah would just miss.

Overrated teams o’ the week

The current list. (Based on the new Sagarin computer ratings and this week’s AP poll.)

1. Virginia – 24 places (44,20)
2. James Madison – 17 places (41,24)
3. Georgia Tech – 16 places (30,14)
3. Cincinnati – 16 places (38,22)
5. BYU – 14 places – (26,12)

What happened to last week’s most overrated teams? They had a perfect week – no wins at all. (Based on last week’s Sagarin computer ratings and last week’s AP poll.)

1. 24 places – Memphis (46,22) – LOST to Tulane. They gave up 35 points in the first half.
2. 22 places – Virginia (34,12) – LOST; failed to score a TD against unranked Wake Forest.
3. 16 places – Georgia Tech (32,16) – Did not play.
4. 15 places – BYU (23,8) – LOST to Texas Tech; they fell behind 26-0 before scoring a meaningless TD in the fourth quarter.
5. 14 places – Cincinnati (39,25) Did not play.

College Pigskin – the first CFP ranking

Scoop, November 5, 2025 (12:29 am)November 5, 2025 (12:31 am) ... 7 comments.

The committee’s first ranking isn’t very different from the AP’s.

There are only minor changes in the top 25: Memphis and Cincinnati are out; Pitt and Iowa are in. I agree with those changes. Memphis was my most overrated team of the week, and Cincinnati was also on the overrated list.

One difficulty with the list: there are no teams outside of the Fab Four except Notre Dame, which means that there’s no way to determine the fifth-highest-ranking conference champ, a team that gets an automatic spot in the playoff. (It would have been Memphis, based on the AP rankings.) I don’t know how they would resolve that. Not that it matters. Whichever team gets that spot is likely to be a sacrificial lamb at the altar of the 5th seed (currently Georgia), but at least it gives us a fun underdog to pull for.

For now, I’m assuming that Memphis would get that 12th seed. Therefore, if these were the final rankings, both Texas and Oklahoma would be out, replaced by Virginia and Memphis as the 11th and 12 seed.

I believe there will be many changes in the weeks to come. For example, BYU is currently ranked 7th, but their next three games are all tough, and they will be 10-point underdogs this week! (Similarly, Sagarin’s system favors Texas Tech by 9.) The BYU Cougars are at a fork in the road. One path proves they belong; the other banishes them from the titanic twelvesome.

College Pigskin, Week 10

Scoop, November 2, 2025 (2:14 pm)November 3, 2025 (7:06 am) ... 3 comments.

Two undefeated teams, Navy and Georgia Tech, lost.

The Indiana juggernaut continued to trample the opposition with a 55-10 victory. This week’s victim was Maryland. The Hoosiers lost their star receiver to a strained hammy, but never missed a beat. They passed North Texas to become the highest-scoring team in the nation. They are also #3 on defense, giving them an average margin of victory of 35 points. They did just as well when the QB sat down and let his little brother play. (No kidding. The freshman back-up quarterback is the brother of the starting quarterback.)

Time will tell, but at this point the “Top 25” seems like a “Top 2 and some other teams.” While the other teams climb the mountain, the Indiana Hoosiers and THE Ohio State University seem to be hovering above the clouds.

There was bit of a shake-up on the leaderboard as numbers 8, 9 and 10 and an undefeated Navy team all lost, but I can’t say that any of those losses surprised me.

#10 Miami lost in OT to unheralded SMU. From the comments: “SMU last beat a top 10 team in 1983. SMU had not beaten a top 10 team on their home field since 1974.”

#8 formerly undefeated Georgia Tech lost to unranked NC State,

#9 Vanderbilt lost to #20 Texas. I was starting to think the Longhorns had hit their stride when they took a 34-10 lead into the fourth quarter, but they did everything possible to blow the game, and probably would have if Vandy hadn’t simply run out of time. Final: 34-31.

Formerly undefeated Navy lost to North Texas, which came into the game as the highest-scoring team in the nation. Navy held North Texas to 31 points, but lost that game by failing at the one aspect of offense they are supposed to be best at: disciplined ball control. Their QB lost a fumble and threw two interceptions.

It was another woeful week for:

Pre-season #2 Penn State. They are now 0-5 in the Big 10 with Indiana up next.

Pre-season #4 Clemson. They allowed Duke to score 46 in a loss that dropped them to 3-5.

Pre-season #15 Florida, now 3-5.

Oklahoma State. They are now 0-6 in the Big 12. It was just two years ago that they beat Texas A&M in a bowl game. As the song says, then was then and now is now. They have lost 17 in a row against FBS opponents.

On the other hand, Wisconsin had their best conference week of the year – a bye.

Who’s in line for the underdog spot in the post-season tournament?

This changes constantly. If the regular season were now over, Memphis would be in the playoff! As I’ve noted before, there are only four strong conferences, but the top FIVE conference winners get an automatic bid. At the moment, Memphis is the top-rated conference leader outside the Fab Four, and would get the #12 seed in the tournament.

The computer model says James Madison is the best conference leader not in the Fab Four (??!!), by a whisker over South Florida. That sounds weird, and it’s difficult for me to imagine James Madison being competitive in the tournament, but they are also #27 in the AP poll, not far behind Memphis. Memphis has a difficult remaining schedule, but James Madison may well run the table.

Note: There are currently six one-loss teams in the American Conference (considering conference games only), so I considered all six the “conference leader” temporarily, just for the sake of this exercise. South Florida and Memphis are two of them.

Overrated teams o’ the week

Based on the difference between this week’s Sagarin computer ratings (shown first in parens) and the new AP poll, this week’s list is:.

1. 24 places – Memphis (46,22)
2. 22 places – Virginia (34,12)
3. 16 places – Georgia Tech (32,16)
4. 15 places – BYU (23,8)
5. 14 places – Cincinnati (39,25)

What happened to last week’s most overrated teams? (Based on last week’s Sagarin computer ratings and last week’s AP poll.)

1. 56 places – Navy (82,26) LOST to unranked North Texas
2. 24 places – Houston (46,22) LOST at home to 2-6 West Virginia.
3. 22 places – Virginia (37,15) WON 31-21 against Cal.
4. 15 places – Georgia Tech (23,8) LOST; allowed 48 to a team with a 1-3 conference record
5. 14 places – BYU (24,10) did not play.
5. 14 places – Cincinnati (31,17) LOST; got slaughtered by Utah. In fairness, Utah is good. Utah’s only two losses are to teams currently ranked 8th and 9th

Yamamoto wins a third as the Dodgers close it out

Scoop, November 2, 2025 (12:19 pm)November 2, 2025 (4:32 pm) ... 4 comments.

I really thought the Jays could win it with the last two in Toronto, but no dice. The Dodgers won yet another nail-biter.

Closing it out on zero days rest, Yoshinobu Yamamoto went 3-0 with a 1.02 ERA in the Fall Classic. He’s the first pitcher to notch three wins in a single World Series since the Big Unit did it for the Diamondbacks in 2001. Yamamoto and The Unit are the only two pitchers to win games 6 and 7 in the integration area. That guy was clutch, and it was needed, because Blake Snell and Ohtani stunk it up on the mound.

That’s two championships in a row for the Dodgers. I guess we don’t call them Dem Bums any more. Now it’s more like Dem MoFos.

What can ya say? It’s good to have money. Maybe it can’t buy happiness, but it can assemble a helluva ball team.

The craziest World Series game ever

Scoop, October 28, 2025 (4:35 am)October 29, 2025 (3:32 pm) ... 3 comments.

ESPN said it eloquently:

For 6 hours and 39 minutes, Game 3 of the World Series played out like a fantastical dreamscape of baseball, filled with tension and drama and madness, with happenings the game had never seen before and won’t ever see again.

The Dodgers won in 18 innings on Freddie Freeman’s walk-off homer – and that’s the sensible part! Here’s the craziness:

Little-used reliever Will Klein got the win. He pitched four innings of one-hit ball after having pitched only 15 innings all year. He was probably either going to win it or lose it, because the Dodgers were out of pitchers, except for Ohtani and Yamamoto, who had pitched a complete game two days earlier. Talk about an unlikely hero! Klein’s lifetime ERA is 5.16 in the majors, and was 5.33 in the minors and 4.86 in college.

Yamamoto’s earlier complete game didn’t seem that important at the time, but looking back on it, it was good that he gave the bullpen a rest.

Everyone has run out of superlatives to describe Shohei Ohtani. He reached base nine times. In his first four at bats, he had two homers, a ground rule double and a boring old regular double that somehow stayed in the park. The Jays finally got tired of that crap, and just walked him in all of his subsequent five at bats, the first four times intentionally, with the last time not intentional in theory. (Wink, wink! It took only four pitches, all well out of the zone.) Ohtani is just the second player in Major League history with four extra-base hits in a World Series game, and the first since 1906. He is the first player to reach base nine times in a post-season game, breaking the previous record of seven. No man had reached base nine times in any game, regular or post-season, in the integration era. Even Danny “Suits” Sparrow has to be looking down with envy at that game. ¹

I don’t know how many people made it to the end at the watch parties in Toronto, where the game stretched nearly to three in the morning.

By the end of the game, the Jays had replaced four starters for pinch runners, and those pinch runners basically had to stay in to play the equivalent length of a regular game. In essence, the Jays had to play the extra innings without their best hitters not named Vladimir. The four guys who stayed in the game after pinch-running went a combined 1-for-14 (.071), while the four players consigned to the bench had gone 6-for-15 (.400).

Footnote 1: Of course, Danny “Suits” Sparrow never got nine plate appearances in a game because an intentional walk couldn’t keep him from scoring. If you walked him intentionally, he would just steal the next three bases, thus ending the game in his first at bat in extra innings. The only defense against him was to walk the batters in front of him to clog up the bases. And even that didn’t work if there were no outs, because the two guys in front of him would take the rare “intentional caught stealing” so Danny had a clear path.

There’s a cute story behind that strategy. When I was living in Norway, my dad and my youngest son spent one summer with me. They were always looking for fun ways to pass the time when I was at work, so I re-wrote the software for the APBA computer baseball game to add Danny “Suits” Sparrow as a player, basically making him capable of a homer every at bat. When my son and my dad drafted their teams, my son got the first pick, naturally drafting Grandpa Danny. My dad therefore had to figure out how to defend against the one opponent he could not defeat – himself, as pictured in his own stories. Talk about karma! The intentional walk didn’t work since Suits would steal the next three bases, so he had to devise the double intentional walk to clog the basepaths in front of Suits. My son then countered with the intentional caught stealing with one or no outs, forcing my dad to counter with the triple intentional walk when there was already one out. It worked like a chess game, because my dad had to figure out when to start walking batters. As I noted above, there was no defense if there were no outs, because the double intentional caught stealing would leave Suits free to steal all the bases and score.

Mind you, they were playing a game with all-time greats, so the situation with one out would occasionally force my dad to walk three guys so he could take his chances pitching to 1941 Ted Williams with the bases full!

I don’t remember exactly how many of those computer games my dad won that summer, but it wasn’t many. His record was something like 3 wins and 159 losses. Every once in a while somebody like Lefty Grove would give up only the four runs created by Suits, and dad’s team would score enough to win. (And Suits did get caught stealing occasionally in the computer game. Even the highest steal rating in the APBA game didn’t assure 100% success,and I couldn’t figure out how to override that with a hack.)

In the final stats, Suits did not end up with a homer in every official at bat. APBA had a quirky thing built into the software where, in certain base situations, certain pitchers could reduce a homer to a double. By a complete coincidence, the final stats almost perfectly duplicated one of his stories, where he claimed to finish a season with 650 walks, 47 homers and a ground-rule double. (Needless to say, the home fans in Philly booed him and threw things on the field when he hit the double, but he calmed down the crowd by agreeing to take a pay cut.)

College Pigskin, Week 9

Scoop, October 26, 2025 (1:43 pm)November 2, 2025 (10:26 am) ... 6 comments.

Not much to see here. The undefeated teams remained so. There were some losses on the bottom of The top 25 (South Florida, Arizona State, Illinois), but they were not especially surprising. Those three teams probably didn’t belong there in the first place.

Just a few short notes:

Indiana continued to look invincible by posting a 56-6 win over UCLA.
Oklahoma State and Wisconsin continued their tribulations. State was shut out. Wisconsin finally scored a TD in the fourth quarter after 14 consecutive quarters without one.
Kent State won their third game of the year!
The quarterback for North Texas, who is only a freshman, passed for 608 yards. And it wasn’t one of those Drew Brees things where the kid aired it out 80 times. He pulled that off in 49 attempts. That wasn’t a big surprise. The North Texas Mean Green (I’ll bet you didn’t know their team name) came into the game as the highest-scoring team in the FBS, and they held that position. Their next game is an interesting contrast in offensive philosophies, as Mr. 600 Yards takes on Navy, a team that runs the ball about 80% of the time.
Speaking of Navy … If the regular season were now over, Navy would be in the playoff! As I’ve noted before, there are only four strong conferences, but the top FIVE conference winners get an automatic bid. At the moment, Navy is the top-rated conference leader outside the Fab Four, and would get the #12 seed in the tournament.

Overrated teams o’ the week

If you’ve read down to this point, you already know that the most overrated team is Navy. The computers rank them #82, but the coaches’poll ranks them #23, and they would get the 12th seed if the season ended now. The AP places them just outside the Top 25 at #26. No other team is overrated by more than 25 places, but they are more than double that. If they actually got that #12 seed, they would probably be the worst team ever to make the playoff. I hope my middle son isn’t reading this. (He is an active-duty captain in the U.S. Navy.)

It would be a miracle if Navy finishes the season in the top 25, because they have not yet come to the hard part of their schedule. If they get by high-scoring North Texas next week, their next game is against Notre Dame. Following that, it’s South Florida and Memphis, two teams that have been in the top 25 at various times this year. Three of those four match-ups are road games. It’s a long row to hoe.

The full list, based on Sagarin’s computer ratings (listed first in parens) and the AP poll:

1. 56 places – Navy (82,26)
2. 24 places – Houston (46,22)
3. 22 places – Virginia (37,15)
4. 15 places – Georgia Tech (23,8)
5. 14 places – BYU (24,10)
5. 14 places – Cincinnati (31,17)

Virginia is the most overrated team in the top fifteen.
Georgia Tech is the most overrated in the top ten (by a whisker over BYU).