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IU 35 NW 17

They just stomped Colorado, not that that's saying a whole lot. Big Friday night game. Hope we play our best ball of the season so far.

Very tempted to put some scratch on them making it. Respect the hell out of that program.

Is North Dakota State eligible for the CFP this year?

Sam Leavitt is not a great QB by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't think our odds are necessarily lowered because he didn't commit on the visit. Especially since 2 of the 6 finalists have had their visits cancelled since. It's just prudent business to take your visits. IMO even though he didn't bite, the bonus offer signals we're willing to up the ante. So, he can get all his visits, offers and compare... but if he wants to get Arizona (most likely) in a bidding war, he knows we may play ball. If we add him the 2027 class would be something to get excited about. Branham definitely is a great building block.

How do you figure it "probably" moves us back? Since his IU visit, he cancelled Louisville and UNC visits. Maybe IU set a higher financial floor than they'd offer? Could've dropped them for reasons having nothing to do with IU, but with 2 of 6 finalists out, seems positive with us still standing. Arizona still the favorite by a long shot, probably... would be a great duo with Branham though.

Yeah. FWIW the relative rankings are based on the relative rating (the links I shared above explain better / in more detail than I could) and the margins are very thin when looking at it that way. Indiana's relative rating is 13.4 and and Michigan's is 21.3. So the difference between the #12 Big Ten and #3 Big Ten team is less than 8 points. Relative Rating Interpretation Example: If Kansas has a Relative Ranking of 3rd, this means that they are expected to lose head-to-head to the teams ranked 1st and 2nd, but win head-to-head against the teams ranked 4th, 5th, and so on. Suppose Michigan State is 4th, and Kansas has a Relative Rating of 25.0 and MSU has a Relative Rating of 23.0. This means that Kansas is expected to beat Michigan State by 2 points per 100 possessions. If they played a typical 70 possession game, the game prediction would have Kansas favored by 1.4 points. Kansas’s Relative Rating of 25.0 would roughly translate to them being predicted to beat a D1 average opponent by 25 points per 100 possessions. However, since each team’s Relative Rating is calculated based on how they are predicted to perform against other similarly ranked teams, the rating of 25 can’t be directly interpreted this way. For example, at the end of 2022-23, UConn’s Relative Rating was 26.1 (1st in the country), and Houston’s Relative Rating was 24.7 (3rd in the country). However, since UConn’s Opponent Adjustment coefficient indicates that they excel against good teams (large positive red bar), but struggle against weaker teams, they were only predicted to beat an average D1 opponent by 24.0 points per 100 possessions. By contrast, Houston was great at dismantling weaker opponents (large negative blue bar), but struggled against stronger teams. As a result, they were predicted to beat an average D1 opponent by 28.1 points per 100 possessions, a larger margin of victory than for #1 UConn. Against each other, UConn would be predicted to beat Houston by 3.8 points per 100 possessions.

More on that here: https://blog.evanmiya.com/p/the-key-to-your-bracket-relative and on methodology here: https://blog.evanmiya.com/p/introducing-relative-ratings-and https://evanmiya.com/?how_it_works

I agree, but it's not a subjective ranking. Here is how he defines the ranking on his site: "Each team is ranked based on how it would be expected to perform head-to-head against other similarly ranked teams. Each head-to-head prediction is based on both teams’ efficiency ratings, opponent adjustment, and pace adjustment." You can find the full set here: https://evanmiya.com/?team_ratings This will be a worthwhile page to keep track of during the season. Absolutely. We should get a decent idea of what we're working with pretty early with Syracuse being the 3rd game and playing Arkansas and Kentucky before Thanksgiving. I was surprised how low Miya has us but that is why they play the game after all. Huge year for DDV coming up.

Apparently this is an overly optimistic take based on Evan Miya's team rankings. His relative ranking has IU at #51 nationally. If you exclude players whose eligibility case is still pending and they were considered ineligible, it would move up to #44. That is #12 in the Big Ten in both scenarios. Here is his relative ranking for Big Ten teams: And here it is sorted for excluding pending eligibility cases: Behind Illinois, Michigan State, Michigan, UCLA, Nebraska, Ohio State, Purdue, USC, Wisconsin, Maryland and Iowa. Ahead of Oregon, Minnesota, Washington, Rutgers, Northwestern and Penn State. Funny side note... LSU is ranked #17, but if you exclude potentially ineligible players, they're #150.

Belichick's son officially resigns and UNC ends their investigation into his alleged "conduct issues." Just Say No, kids.

We should be able to seriously contend in the Big Ten this year IMO. Illinois, MSU, us, and probably USC. Arkansas, Kentucky, Iowa and Missouri will be the most telling games before January. I think Minnesota, Iowa and Maryland will be better than expected. Nebraska will probably fall off considerably from last year and Wisconsin looks like they'll take a step back too IMO. Michigan / Purdue / UCLA / Ohio State will be tough opponents but very beatable. Gotta take care of business against Northwestern, Penn State, Ruger this year. Oregon and Washington should be W's too this year. My way too early preseason prediction: 24-8 overall, 14-6 in conference. Just about 24 days until the Butler scrimmage. Really looking forward to it.

Miami is dropping Adidas for Nike.

We have the longest active home winning streak in college football.

Thanks for reminding me. Their loss to Ok State makes it even more hilarious. People were writing entire dissertations about how IU must have hacked the cloud and stolen Oregon's playbook... Meanwhile Cig was just watching tape and found obvious tells like Moore's feet pre-snap.

I don't mean this in a snarky way, but is he likely to actually get minutes here? DDV's first two Euro bigs seemed like strictly practice players. Felix is committing much earlier in the cycle though. Would be nice if he can play. Wonder if any possibility of him joining the team in the event Sam is not eligible. Also, do we think this impacts Wabbington at all?

I agree. When was the last time OSU went 1-3 in a 4 game span? Hard for me to recall. With a lot of season left it's easy to see why they're overreacting IMO... doesn't mean it's reasonable whatsoever though. The OSU fanbase, online anyway, act like caricatures of themselves. They want to believe their standards are better than his results... they are not.

Them 13 us 63

Ryan Day is the Nick Saban of James Franklins, lol For real though, he coaches like such a coward sometimes for having all that talent on his roster. He is 1-3 in his last 4 games. Oklahoma fans must be in shambles today.

Will Texas ask to shorten the 4th quarter? Lol

What an atrocious play call by Texas

Texas about to get pounded. Good thing for us

Don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that interception before.