1. Pounding the Rock 

It goes without saying that dominating the line of scrimmage is the key to any Stanford victory. But opening up the passing game can certainly help Stanford stretch a slowly developing game into a sizable lead. Fortunately, Hogan hung strings of pearls over the ASU secondary and was 4 for 5 on passing attempts of 25 or more yards. Hogan completed two to Cajuste (Cajuste is loose!), one to Pratt, one touchdown pass to Montgomery, and had one incompletion to Owusu. In fact, after one of the completions, ESPN put up a graphic that noted that Kevin Hogan is third among AQ-conference quarterbacks in completion percentage on throws of 25 yards or more. And still, last night, as ESPN analysts were breaking down the Rose Bowl matchup, Jesse Palmer and David Pollack were discussing Hogan’s difficulty throwing the ball downfield. Hogan’s arm is not an issue—it is an asset. The variability in our downfield passing game comes primarily from our play calling, not from the play of Kevin Hogan.  In fact, with two years of eligibility remaining, Hogan has a chance to establish a legacy right up there with Plunkett, Elway, and Luck. Sounds crazy, but his cards are still on the table, so we’ll have to wait and see.

I also loved seeing Hogan run the read option and keep the ball on a run on 3^rd and 7. Hogan has continued to be shifty with his legs. But the best set of legs for the 2013 season is obviously those of Tyler Gaffney. Gaffney had another great game, running for 133 yards and 3 touchdowns before being rested in the fourth quarter. He is having one of the best seasons in Stanford football history. And his success creates success in other plays. The sweep handoff to Montgomery has been so successful all year (22 yd TD run in this game) precisely because the defense has to respect the fake handoff to Gaffney.

Finally, I would be remiss to not mention the offensive line. Congrats to the big men for protecting the rock and opening up the pasture for Gaffney and others. They are the essence of Stanford football.

2. Zach Hoffpauir and The Party in the Backfield

After the game, Arizona State coach Todd Graham said, “[Stanford] destroyed the line of scrimmage.” It does not matter what your game plan is if you cannot keep things stable around the line of scrimmage.  Tackling was a bit of an issue early, as D.J. Foster broke through for two big plays. On the screen pass to Foster, Ed Reynolds took a bad line to the ball and cut off Skov’s pursuit. (Ed has lost the right to have this section of the blog named after him but remains a personal favorite.) But eventually the dominant defense took over.

Strangely enough, the blown call on the fumble recovery by Stanford in the third quarter ended Stanford’s streak of 37 consecutive games forcing a turnover. The announcers never really addressed the issue. It certainly looked like Mauro was on top of the football. It ended up not mattering thanks to a gritty goal-line stand by Skov (3rd down tackle) and #10 Zach Hoffpauir (4^th down tackle), who apparently wasn’t supposed to be in on that play. Stanford is about to lose a lot of talent on defense, but it looks like there are guys like Hoffpauir waiting in the wings.

3. Math of David: Numbers and Coaching

Shaw mismanaged the clock at the end of the first half, and all year has made some questionable play-calls. But you can’t deny the fact that Shaw (and the team) has continued to come up big in big games. Shaw took chances downfield, and added some new wrinkles as well. On one play in the wildcat formation, Gaffney was supposed to throw to a wide-open Hewitt, but decided against it (or did not see him). Still, it was a new play that would have worked. The coaches also eventually adjusted to the blitz that ASU starting sending almost every play after it was down 28-7. They worked in some screen passes, including a 34-yard gain to Rector in the 3^rd quarter. They should have gone to the screen faster, but at least they got it worked out eventually.

I’ve been critical of Shaw all year. I’ve been asking for three things:

1. More running plays on third down.
2. More play-action passing downfield.
3. More aggression on fourth down (and less punting and FG attempts).

Shaw came up big in all three phases in this game: we ran the ball on 3^rd and 7, we took 5 shots downfield, and we went for it on 4^th and goal from the 1 yard line in the 2^nd quarter. The fourth down play really made me proud to be a fan. The expected value definitely favors the run, but so does the entire image of our football team. One yard needed? Anytime. Any place.

Shaw has exceeded expectations. He has successfully navigated offensive transitions, from replacing a star quarterback to incorporating a new set of options at receiver. It took a couple of months of games after losing Andrew Luck, but nowadays I don’t find myself feeling too much nostalgia as I watch our offense. In 2012, Stanford completed 93 passes to tight ends and came into the 2013 season having lost its top 5 receivers (in terms of yardage). Shaw and the coaching staff have reworked our offensive play-calling and helped develop a very solid core of receivers, and every one of them is coming back next year.

Shaw deserves a high grade for another successful season. I think its time to finally stop (sarcastically) calling him Walt Harris when I disagree with one of his play-calls.

4. Playing for a National Championship

It is disappointing that Stanford hasn’t gotten a crack at the national title in these past four seasons.  Going into the bowls, Stanford is the only team in the country to win 11 games or more in each of the past four seasons. It is an unbelievable statistic, and cements Stanford’s place among the elite programs. But Stanford never managed to sprinkle enough luck into one perfect season. The BCS system doesn’t have any room for consistent greatness—its doors only open to teams without blemishes, or those that benefit from name and perception.

We needed that USC game, though even if we finished 12-1, I’m not sure that it would have mattered. The SEC bias would have carried Auburn into the title game, despite Auburn’s lucky finishes and Stanford’s dominance of their common opponent (Washington State). So, at least the four-team playoff will increases the chance that a Stanford team gets a chance at the title, assuming the committee factors in the difficulty of the Pac-12’s 9-game conference schedule. We’ll have to wait and hope that this amazing run of Stanford football seasons continues and that—just once—we actually get a chance to win it all.

5. The College Football Playoff

During ESPN’s Bowl Selection Show last night, Reece Davis, Lou Holtz, Jesse Palmer, David Pollack and Mark May all took turns sharing their mock brackets if the four team playoff were to start this year. None of the brackets included Stanford (and only Reece Davis included Stanford on his list of “First 2 Out.”) And there wasn’t really any discussion about whether or not there should be any discussion about Stanford. It bothered me. (At least the folks behind the screen at ESPN are working to establish objective metrics, and Stanford had the best season in the country according to one metric: http://espn.go.com/college-football/statistics/teamratings) A 3^rd grader can watch some football games, look at win-loss records, and tell you which team is better. That is essentially what the analysts did. A college football analyst—and certainly the playoff selection committee—needs to go well beyond win-loss records and “eye tests.”

Below, we will look at the blind resumes of four conference champions for the 2013 season. None of these teams are in the top-3 of the BCS Standings—Alabama, Florida St, and Auburn would probably be “locks” for the playoff.

Team	Record		Number of Wins Against Current BCS top-30	Number of Wins Against Bowl Eligible Teams		Average BCS Rank of Opponent in Losses	Average Margin of Defeat in Losses
A	11-1		1	4		9	3.0
B	12-1		1	5		26	4.0
C	11-1		2	6		13	32.0
D	11-2		6	10		40	4.5

First, let’s note that the best team of these four would be obvious were it not for the second loss for Team D. It is clear that Team D played a much harder schedule: 6 wins against the top-30 teams is an extremely rare achievement. So, we must now judge how that second loss weighs against the strength of its victories and schedule. Before we do this, let’s just take note of the losses. Two facts jump out: Team C was blown out in its loss, and team D lost to mediocre opponents. Team B lost to a mediocre opponent as well, so the only reason Team A is still in this discussion is really because of the quality of its loss. But perhaps the most appalling fact about quality of losses is Team C’s 32-point defeat. In my opinion, that is too lopsided for its resume to hold up against other good teams, and I would eliminate Team C (Baylor). Since it remains to be seen how the committee will regard blowout losses, we’ll leave them in the discussion for now.

Now let’s try to quantify how an extra loss for Team D balances out with the five more top-30 wins that it has over Team A and B. One objective way a committee could do this is to compare the winning percentages of the teams when they do play top-30 opponents. Does having to play five more games against the top-30 justify an extra loss? In other words, if TEAM D went 4-1 (.800 win percentage) in those five more games against top-30 opponents, would that be much better than we might expect from those other teams? As we’ll see below, the clear answer is: yes.

Here are the records against BCS top-30 opponents: Team A (1-1), Team B (1-1), Baylor (3-1). Well, there isn’t much data to go on, but the winning percentages of Teams A and B are .500, compared to Team D’s .800 winning percentage in those games. It is reasonable to assume Team A and Team B would not go 4-1 in five games against the top-30, but we really need more data. If we use Jeff Sagarin’s rankings—this is merely to use more readily available data—to look at records versus the top-30, we see that there are only three FBS teams with a winning percentage above .667 (minimum of two games played): Auburn, Oklahoma, and Team D. That is three teams, out of 120+ FBS teams. It is clear that Team D’s extra loss is probably offset (and maybe considerably offset), by its extra quality wins. Exactly how a committee might quantitatively compare these numbers is beyond the amount of time I’m going to spend thinking about this right now, but it is safe to make one clear assumption: if Team A or B had interchanged five of its sub-30 opponents for five top-30 opponents, there is an extremely small (<10%) chance that either team would still have only one loss.  It seems that in this case, at the very least, Team D (Stanford) is deserving of equal footing in the discussion for the fourth playoff team.

Now that we’ve accounted for the fact that Stanford’s second loss is outweighed by its quality victories, we must consider its two losses to mediocre teams. This is an entirely different discussion, which the committee really needs to be transparent about. The only thing I will say for now is that if there is such a huge difference between losing to top-40 teams versus a top-10 team (and we are therefore going to eliminate Stanford), then we should probably also eliminate Team B (Michigan State), which doesn’t have the same quality loss as Team A.

So, if Stanford doesn’t deserve to be the fourth team in the playoff, then let’s wish Team A (Central Florida) good luck in the semifinal against Florida St. Yep, UCF.

Of course, we ignored the overall strength of schedule, which is why Central Florida really had no shot. I merely wanted to show that there are too many variables in play to ever have a fair system.  And it is confounded by the fact that there are no (and probably will never be) any transparent and quantitative evaluative methods that will be used to note, for example, how one extra loss compares to a more difficult schedule. If the committee tried to do some math, I’d feel much better about the system, but even some light math won’t solve this problem.

5. The 8 Team Playoff

The solution to the impossibility of selecting the four best teams is simple: each (AQ) conference champion should be guaranteed a playoff spot. All it requires is four more football games (total!—not for any one team). The top 5 conferences (Pac-12, SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big 10) send their conference champion to the playoff. The highest ranked non-AQ team gets an automatic bid. A committee gathers to select two at-large teams and seed the bracket.

The four quarterfinal games are still called the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl, and the committee will still try (without completely disrupting the integrity of seeding) to design the matchups in a way that preserves the historical connections the bowls have with conference champions.  (All of the other bowl games remain unchanged.) The national semifinal and the championship game are played at rotating sites.

Here is this year’s 8 Team Playoff Bracket:

*Note: The AAC will not receive automatic bids starting next year, so UCF would take the non-AQ spot.

1^st Team Left Out: Missouri. The committee will overlook losses caused by having to play an extra game in a conference championship game. Unfortunately for Missouri, Ohio State gets the last spot for that very reason.

I wish that money was not part of the equation, but since it is, let’s consider the financial impact on the bowls. It is indisputable that making these bowl games national quarterfinals actually makes them more meaningful and will generate even more money for the bowl games. Each game is a part of something larger than itself, and much more immune to having the random insignificance of Baylor vs UCF. Imagine this: there will never be an insignificant Fiesta Bowl match-up ever again! Everyone wins—the networks, the bowls, the fans, the schools, the NCAA—and everyone has a chance to earn it on the field… (Except the smaller conferences, of course. The committee would have to be reasonably ammenable to selecting undefeated non-AQ teams.)

6. Stanford vs the SEC

Did you hear those beautiful and sweet whispers last week?… Could Stanford face Alabama in the Rose Bowl? If Ohio State dominated Michigan State such that the Spartans dropped out of the top-14 of the BCS Rankings, we would have seen Stanford versus Alabama in the Rose Bowl. I am incapable of seeing this objectively, but I think it is reasonable to say that this game would be one of the most anticipated college football games of my lifetime. The entire country would be tuning in to see the West Coast against the South, the best team from the Pac-12 for the past four years against the best team from the SEC for the past four years. Old-school, pro-style offenses and smash-mouth defenses. A rematch of the 1935 Rose Bowl. After Oregon’s failure to perform against the best of the SEC, this would be the Pac-12 next chance.

Unfortunately, we are left with what might have been. We have no way of knowing if any of the past four years of Stanford football teams could have beaten the best of the SEC. In fact, the disconnect goes back much further than four years. Stanford hasn’t played an SEC team since it beat Georgia, 25-22, in the 1978 Bluebonnet Bowl in the Astrodome. 35 years! But it gets worse… I looked through every Stanford season in its history and noticed something even more stunning (besides the fact that it used to play the Olympic Club)—Stanford has never played a regular season game against the SEC.

As far as I can tell, Stanford is still looking for its third nonconference opponent for 2014. Do you think there is any way that Stanford’s athletic director, Bernard Muir, can call up Ole Miss and talk them into scrapping their 2014 game against Presbyterian and replacing it with Stanford?

Seriously, it won’t happen next year, but please email Bernard Muir and request that he contact every athletic director in the SEC: athleticdirector@stanford.edu .

6. Around the Pac-12

The Pac-12 bowl matchups look pretty good in terms of ensuring a decent bowl record for the conference, but they also look fairly dull and include no games against the SEC. There are zero games in which the Pac-12 gets a chance to pull a big upset. Pac-12 teams are favored in eight of their nine games. I think the hardest games for conference teams to win are going to be the games against the Mountain West. If Pac-12 teams can get by Fresno State and Boise State and avoid suspensions from snowball fights (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/10108429/oregon-ducks-football-players-face-discipline-organizing-participating-snowball-fight), we should come close to 9-0. I’d certainly take the over on 6.5 conference wins.