1. Perspective

Conrad Ukropina just put a feather in the cap of heaven. That was the most beautiful flying object I’ve seen in 25 years, since November 17, 1990. On that day, John Hopkins sent his 5^th field goal of the day through the uprights in a dramatic last-second victory over Cal in what would come to be known as “The Revenge of the Play.”

Since the Harbaugh-led resurgence of Stanford football, we’ve seen some dramatic field goals at the end of games. Some fluttered in the skies and sailed adrift, like Jordan Williamson’s Fiesta Bowl meltdowns. But many led to victories, notably Williamson’s OT FG vs Oregon in 2012 and Nate Whitaker’s game winner at home against USC in 2010.

But this kick was different. It was just a perfect kick. Dead center, high and long. And smothered the playoff hopes of Notre Dame, which makes it extra special.

A hummingbird in a butterfly bush flower is a beautiful thing to watch, but it doesn’t send me into a group hug full of timeless ecstasy. Only Conrad Ukropina can do that.

2. Brief Game Notes

Stanford’s first drive was capped with a completion to Schultz that used McCaffrey as a decoy on play-action. Beautiful call by Shaw. And then Notre Dame ran the kickoff back for a touchdown. We’ve been spoiled by some great special teams coverage over the years. In fact, I can’t remember when the last time we’ve given up a kick return for a touchdown. If you can, let me know. So I guess we were overdue.

On the next drive, Rector and Cajuste made some amazing third down catches, and the offense was moving. On the following possession, Notre Dame had a false start on 4^th and 1 from the 3 and had to settle for a field goal. The breaks were starting to go Stanford’s way. Stanford forced another Notre Dame field goal from inside the ten, and the red zone stops turned out to be the difference in the game. When forced to load the box with run defense and play man-to-man in the red zone, our defense isn’t actually that bad. Statistically, Stanford’s red-zone defense doesn’t rate that high, because teams have made a ton of field goals and Stanford has almost no 4^th down stops or turnovers. However, Stanford, Northern Illinois, and Boston College are the only FBS teams to have allowed more red-zone field goals than touchdowns. Not bad, especially if your goal is to win games in offensive shootouts.

At the end of the half, Stanford forced the only turnover of the game as Kizer fumbled. It was another play that cost Notre Dame just enough points to ensure the Stanford win. And Notre Dame dopped a pass early in the 3^rd quarter that would have led to another touchdown, only to settle for its third field goal of the game. As I watched the tape, I realized just how fortunate Stanford was. It played well and made some big-time plays, but Notre Dame definitely shot itself in the foot a few times. Notre Dame outgained Stanford by 111 yards, and average 8.9 yds/play compared to Stanford’s 6.6 yds/play. Add in the kickoff return for a touchdown, and delete the facemask penalty on Stanford’s game-winning final drive, and you most likely have a Notre Dame victory.

There were a few coaching decision to second-guess, and I’m happy that they belong to Brian Kelly and not David Shaw. First, Brian Kelly’s decision to try a drop back pass on Notre Dame’s 3^rd quarter two-point conversion attempt was a mistake. The way they were running the ball, that call makes no sense. More importantly, after picking up a first down and getting down to the two, Notre Dame used its second timeout with 35 seconds remaining. It should have let a few more seconds run off the clock and just set up for a run play and preserved the timeouts. Then, it would have scored with 10 to 20 seconds left—not 30. But it might not have mattered—Hogan was just too determined to get the win. And the Fox announcing team just got so into Cajuste—Cajuste is loose!—that there was no way to lose. And I think we might be onto something with Cajuste. If you’re in a tight spot sometime in the future, don’t click your heals together, just yell at the top of your lungs, “Cajuste!!!!!!!!” I promise—good things will happen. If you need an extra boost, try this: “Cajuste!!!!! Ukelele!!!!!!” Thank you Gus Johnson. Thank you very much.

Joel Klatt incorrectly repeated how Hogan had just played his best game. Sorry Joel. Top five of his career, sure, but not his best. But he definitely went out on a high note. Thank you Kevin Hogan for four great years.

3. The Playoff Race & Stanford’s Chances

The playoff teams are already set assuming the favorites win. Oklahoma is in as the Big12 champion. Fair enough? Absolutely. They’ve looked good, are strong on both sides of the ball, and are ranked in the top 4 in virtually all rankings and metrics. On the Massey Composite Ranking site, Oklahoma is a top-4 team in 100 of the 110 different ranking systems. That is a really high percentage, as there is a lot of variability in those systems. (For example, one ranking has Stanford as high as #2 while another has Stanford at #19.)

The Big-10 champion is in as well. Make sense? No question about it. Iowa would be undefeated with a huge win over Michigan State, or MSU would own the best set of top-20 wins of anyone in the country: Michigan, Oregon, Ohio State, Iowa. The champion of this conference absolutely has to get in. It owns huge wins over the Pac-12 (MSU over Oregon, and NW over Stanford) and the fact that the conference has the defending national champion means something as well.

Alabama, when it beats Florida, is obviously in. It will have beaten more teams in the top quarter of the FBS than anyone else: Wisconsin, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas A&M, Tennessee, LSU, Mississippi St, and Florida. That is 8 wins against teams that a generally ranked in the top-30. Outstanding. In, and a heavy favorite.

Finally, if Clemson wins, they are in as well. Stanford dulled the shine of Clemson’s win over Notre Dame, but its win over Florida State now looks even better at FSU blew out Florida. Clemson also has had very few lucky or close wins. I would give the top seed to Alabama, but give Clemson the #2 seed. They are a lock.

But what if Alabama or Clemson lose? First of all, Ohio State is not getting in the Playoff. Ohio State owns a 1-1 record against top-40 teams. That isn’t good enough. And with the Big-10 already a lock to get a team in, there is no way the committee will choose two teams from the same conference unless they have to. Is there a scenario that would force their hand? Technically, yes. If Alabama, Clemson, and Stanford lose, then Ohio State is in the Playoff. But it won’t happen.

For that matter, Alabama isn’t going to lose either. If it does, the SEC is out of the Playoff, which is absolutely fine considering it owns no quality wins over top-25 teams other than the freakish week 1 South Carolina win over North Carolina. Florida is not a great team, and the committee knows it. If Alabama can’t beat them, then they have no spot in the playoff. So, if a miracle happens and Alabama loses to Florida, Stanford would be in the playoff with a victory over USC. But again, it ain’t going to happen.

So that leaves the issue of Clemson vs North Carolina. If North Carolina wins, and Stanford wins the Pac12 championship, then we have a very interesting situation. First of all, Clemson is out of the discussion. They don’t have a good enough record and strength of schedule to stay in the top-4 after losing. More importantly, the committee seems committed to selecting conference champions, which is a great thing. A lot of experts and analysts are writing and talking about how Clemson could stay in the mix after a loss. It isn’t going to happen. There would have to be a bad call at the end of the game that led to a UNC win for the committee to overturn things and put Clemson in. The game will be the deciding factor, and the winner will advance. It is as simple as that.

So if UNC and Stanford win: then it is UNC vs Stanford. First, let’s deal with the obvious: Stanford has two losses and UNC has one. We’ll need to account for the big difference in scheduling difficulty.

Let’s assume Stanford and UNC are average top-10 teams. Then we’ll use Sagarin’s rankings and data on how top-10 teams fare against other teams. Ideally, we would have a probability curve that represents the likelihood of victory versus the appropriate rank of the opponent. For example, an average top-10 team might own a 92% win probability against a team ranked 30^th, and a 91.7% win probability against a team ranked 31^st, etc. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to data like that, though it would probably be easy (but time-consuming) to gather. It’s much easier to group teams into intervals, so that we can analyze Stanford’s win likelihood against a team ranked 11-20, for example, or a team ranked 21-30. I’ve used the last five seasons worth of data to provide a clearer picture of the win probability at different intervals. Note that Sagarin’s rankings include FCS teams as well, for a total of 253 teams. Here’s the data:

Top-10 Team vs Opponent Ranked…	2015 Wins	2015 Losses	‘11-‘14 Wins	‘11-‘14 Losses	Total Win Probability
1-10	7	7	46	46	50.0%
11-20	10	4	52	16	75.6%
21-30	11	1	52	8	87.5%
31-40	11	2	48	6	88.1%
41-50	7	0	38	2	95.7%
51-60	9	1	35	3	91.7%
61-70	10	1	19	0	96.7%
71-253	a lot	0	a lot	0	100.0%

First, let’s note why it seems like there are so few upsets. This is because early and mid-season upsets usually mean that the underdog is actually a better team than expected. By the end of the season, with all of the games played, it is extremely rare that a great team lost a game to a team that turned out to be horrible.

The primary issue with the data is the 51-60 interval. Obviously, the probabilities should continue to increase per interval. So I am going to adjust the win probabilities to the following to smooth them out a bit:

Top-10 Team vs Opponent Ranked…	Total Win Probability
1-10	50%
11-20	75%
21-30	87%
31-40	90%
41-50	93%
51-60	95%
61-70	97%
71-253	100%

Now, let’s analyze Stanford and North Carolina’s seasons, including a theoretical Stanford win over USC in the Pac12 championship and a UNC win over Clemson in the ACC championship.

STANFORD vs Opponent Ranked…	# of Games	Win Probability	Expected # of Wins
1-10	1	50%	0.50
11-20	3	75%	2.25
21-30	2	87%	1.74
31-40	2	90%	1.80
41-50	1	93%	0.93
51-60	1	95%	0.95
61-70	0	97%	0
71-253	3	100%	3.00
TOTAL	13		11.17

So, if Stanford is indeed an average top-10 team, it would be expected to win 11.17 games given its schedule. At 11-2, Stanford would have underachieved by 0.17 wins.

UNC vs Opponent Ranked…	# of Games	Win Probability	Expected # of Wins
1-10	1	50%	0.50
11-20	0	75%	0
21-30	0	87%	0
31-40	1	90%	0.90
41-50	3	93%	2.79
51-60	2	95%	1.90
61-70	0	97%	0
71-253	6	100%	6.00
TOTAL	13		12.09

UNC would be expected to win 12.09 games given its schedule. At 12-1, UNC would have underachieved by 0.09 wins.

The difference is nominal, and Stanford’s 2^nd loss is clearly expected based on how much more difficult its schedule is than UNC’s schedule. So, it would have to come down to other metrics. Margin of victory is high for both teams. Both teams are trending in the right direction with week one losses that look to be complete outliers. In my opinion, it would come down to this: who looks and plays better in its championship game. We saw this happen last year. Ohio State’s 59-0 dominance of Wisconsin demanded that it be put in the playoff. So if UNC and Stanford win, whoever gets the open spot will be the team that has a more convincing performance. If Stanford can win by two touchdowns while UNC barely beats Clemson, then Stanford will make the playoff.

If you’re curious about the possibility of Stanford vs Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, read up here.

These projections I think underestimate the importance of being conference champion, but some great stats, probabilities, and Ukropina pic can be found here.

4. Up Next: USC (8-4)

The big question is: can Stanford win convincingly? Can Stanford’s defense get a few turnovers and stops? Is Stanford even better than USC?

Last week, I wrote that Stanford was going to roll Notre Dame. I based that comment on this: I was sure that Hogan was going to have a great final home game, and I blindly hoped that Notre Dame just wasn’t that good on offense. Turns out, Notre Dame is pretty good team, and the Stanford defense struggles to turn in good performances against good offenses. Does the Stanford defense have a chance? Well, Oregon, Cal, Notre Dame, and WSU all have top-25 offenses. USC’s offense is not quite as good—32^nd in total offense. But I’m still worried that USC will be able to run the ball. I hang my hopes on Helton calling too many pass plays and Stanford somehow intercepting a couple of passes. If the defense goes another game without getting any turnovers, the Stanford offense will need to be near perfect.

Should be fun evening at Levi Stadium. There’s good mojo there. Stanford played well against Maryland in the Factory-Farmed Chicken Bowl last year, and the Grateful Dead strung together some beautiful notes over the summer. We’re Truckin, down to Levi’s Stadium, woah oh baby back where I belong, back home, the game ain’t worth a dime, if we don’t lay them Trojans down.