Let CFP committee finally use advanced stats, plus the $8M transfer offer

Until Saturday Newsletter | This is The Athletic s college football newsletter.

Sign up here to receive Until Saturday directly in your inbox.

Today in college football news, your music rec of the week is Particle House .

Every song by anyone should have synths and saxes.

Remember years ago, when coaches and broadcasters in various sports still thought of advanced stats as deceptive witchcraft? (I say this as if many of them arent still of that mindset.

Bear with me.) The contemporaneous subplot that still feels surreal: Despite having an especially old-school power structure, college football had long entrusted a handful of computer ratings with helping to decide which two teams got to play in its most important game.

That BCS systems computer formula originally based on ratings by Jeff Sagarin, the New York Times and the Seattle Times started in 1998, five years before Moneyball was a book, let alone a movie.

College football! Wildly progressive somehow! And then those two perspectives flipped.

As most sports people slowly realized there is more to life than what can be gleaned by a single pair of human eyeballs, college football fans went the opposite way, growing tired of the BCS computers for reasons that often had little to do with the computers themselves.

In 2011, for instance, the machines tried to steer us clear of the reviled Alabama-LSU championship rematch that killed the BCS, but human polls overruled them.

Now in the College Football Playoff era, were headed back in the other direction.

You often hear (and/or say), The BCS was actually fine, or even, We should bring back the BCS, whenever the CFPs human committee ranks your team one spot too low.

That felt especially valid during the committees only actual disaster, the 2023 robbery of undefeated Florida State, when the computers wouldve had the Noles in the field of four.

Technically, the committee has used lots of stats since its inception in 2014, but not anything advanced.

Eleven years ago, Bill Connelly criticized the committees usage of lackluster math (in a post edited by your boy, of course), and now he appears in a new article by The Athletic s Ralph Russo on the state of the committee , still making a similar argument ...

because nothing has really changed.

In a time when the ground-and-pound SEC is out here promoting itself via fancy numbers , why is the committee still stuck pretending its basic statistical comparisons are all the numbers college football fans can handle? Were way past the BCS backlash by now, man.

These days, everybody knows Vegas spreads are punishingly predictive only because theyre informed by computer ratings.

Its long been time to empower the committee to use and cite Connellys SP+, Brian Fremeaus FEI, ESPNs FPI, the Massey Composite and all the other great tools out there.

(Besides, unlike the BCS mysterious computers , the public can actually learn details about how most of these actually work.) Anyway, thats just one rant spinning off of Ralphs article, which also has a lot of stuff about other potential changes coming the committees way in the 16-or-whatever-team era of the CFP.

(Usual note, because I mentioned FPI, the rating that some people believe is nothing but a devious ESPN propaganda tool: FPI is solid.

Against Vegas, it typically holds up about as well as any other rating.

When evaluating teams, look at a bunch of rankings, which irons out each ratings individual quirks.) His dad said other schools reached out to see if he was interested in transferring, and the biggest offer he heard was for $8 million for two years .

Bruce Feldman on South Carolina redshirt soph QB LaNorris Sellers , one of my favorite players to watch last year.

How to attempt to stop Michigan five-star freshman QB Bryce Underwood, according to his high school opponents : We wanted to ...

force them to throw (laughs).

That sounds crazy.

Florida! USC! Pitt! UCLA! Stanford! Cal! Lots of schools with grumbling fan bases have some significant recruiting hope right now .

Former NFL players who were once bullied by Bill Belichick are now having a good chortle at him being an offseason sideshow.

Texas State is teasing a move to the Pac-12 , potentially joining the impending crowd from the Mountain West.

(Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State, in case youve forgotten.

In addition to Oregon State and Washington State, thats so many states! Plus Gonzaga in non-football.

Gonzaga State!) Texas won its fourth Directors Cup in the last five years, having officially taken over for Stanford as the school that constantly wins the award for the best all-sports athletic department.

Speaking of all sports: Last week, during Until Saturdays slapdash preview of Conference USA and the MAC (part of a chaotic series that debuted with a glance at the FCS, Division II and Division III ), I asked which FBS straggler youd take over, if you had a chance to build one of them for years into a College Football Playoff power.

Advertisement This was of course inspired by the upcoming entry in EA Sports college football series, where for decades now, people have enjoyed overhauling the little guys.

But its a fun thought exercise regardless.

In your survey responses, your most popular pick: UMass.

Some of you chose the woebegone Minutemen because you attend there (hello, Zach) or have family there (hello, Kathys niece), while others simply crave the benevolent masochism that goes along with attempting to make UMass football matter (hello, various freaks).

Otherwise, Tulane was your No.

2 pick (even though theyre way too good to qualify for the question), thanks mostly to their blue uniforms.

Among your other responses, this one from Carter jumped out as a really fun reason to take charge of Hawaii: For more on the massive challenge that is Making Something Of UMass, read this story by Matt Baker on exactly how hard that has been .

OK, thats all for today.

Email me at [email protected] with any thoughts! Last weeks most-clicked: The ranking of college footballs 25 biggest storylines since 2000 .

(Top photo: Kevin C.

Cox/Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article.