So he's back another year, right? We're going to keep TCU all sunnied up for another year?

I don't want to report anything that I have not done the work to like get.

So I don't want to like scoot, go follow Jamie Plunkett and subscribe to Horned Fog, but it's like they're plugged in and Jamie tells me stuff is, you know, some of that.

And then I talk to some people and all that.

So I don't want to like report news or anything.

I can tell you from the outside, like what it looks like that the big question around Sonny Dykes has been not can you take a team to its ceiling, but can you build a team and sustain it? And that question was coming in versus, you know, when he was at SMU and coming into CCU.

And I think we have a resounding no. It's kind of hard.

Did the Big 12 shoot itself in the ass with the BYU and Texas Tech losses this weekend? Or is it because this season is just considered, you know, chaos? Is it okay? Are they going to be okay?

This was a tough one for for the Hawkeyes to take.

Yes, they got flecked.

It's happened before.

It'll happen again.

Fleck will get you.

Ironic that Fleck in Minnesota did get Iowa in a fashion that Iowa has historically prided themselves on getting people earlier this year and all throughout under Forenz.

Shout out to whoever put their baby on the bronze pig.

What are your ratings looking like right now, Parker?

Who do you think right now, after what we've seen through seven weeks, is the best team in college football?

Yeah, that's a great question.

And my kind of top four or five have flipped by about a half point.

I'm much closer at the top than I have been in past years.

I don't think we have that truly elite team.

Notre Dame did come down a little bit.

They are neck and neck with Ohio State as the top team for me.

How did this game grade out for you, Florida beating Texas 27-24?

So if you wouldn't mind, for us dummies, and I just don't want to say everyone's a dummy, I'm a dummy, can you break down the difference between what Bill Conley's SP Plus does, post-game win expectancy, and what your graph shows, which is the net success rate?

Yes, very simply.

My graph is intentionally a lot dumber than that.

Bill's graph, and I have a version that I use for this as well.

Bill's graph says, hey, looking at all the stats and kind of how the game played out, how often would you expect a team to win this game? Right.

And so that's going to do things like what was the one San Diego State last week or, you know, the five like the proverbial five turnover game.

Right.

So is there some solace for Alabama fans coming off of this 20-17 loss to Georgia?

Oof.

Again, go back to that, uh, 100 yards is seven points.

Uh, and you, and you start to do that, and you're looking at, you know, 10 points of value in penalties right there.

Again, that's just a, a silly heuristic, but in a game you lost by eight, you're thinking, "Man, we really dug ourselves a hole just by the penalties there." Um, really s- looked like an early, early start.

Cal with a, a 32 to 28 success rate, um, advantage there, um, but just dug themselves a hole so early, gave up some explosive plays, could not finish, uh, on fourth downs, one for four there.

Um, then only four snaps inside the 20 compared to, uh, 12 for UNLV.

So a weird game.

But maybe based off of the success rate, just a, a little bit misleading of a final score?

Like, how did you get so knowledgeable and passionate about basketball at the same time?

Yeah, I mean, the passion, it just comes from – I was – you know, Memphis, like, they all – the only thing we have is the Grizzlies.

Right.

And for me, I – I mean, my parents, they got season tickets from when I was a kid, and I went to virtually any game I can go to.

Really? Yeah, so from – And they still had the tickets.

So from the time I was seven to when I graduated high school.

And then I would come home every now and then for games.

And then I also read a mailbag that you wrote about, I think someone asked you, are the Grizzlies underrated? What is your outlook on the Grizzlies this year in year one of Cam Boozer and what they're trying to do as a franchise now?

Yeah, the Hardwood Collective.

The Hardwood Collective.

So there, a lot going on in your space.

You're doing great work.

Um, yeah, it is kind of separate question because obviously if you're talking about pres- precedents and touches, it's probably Ty Jerome just because he maximizes his touches at a high level.

I mean, last year he was one of three players, obviously very small sample, to have, like, a per 30-- a per 75 possessions numbers of, like, 30 points and, what, like, eight or nine assists.

So just being able to maximize touches, like, on a per, per minute basis, there's not many more players more efficient than he is.

Um, so when you think about the principles that really define his coaching style, is this roster closer to being a fit with those principles than it has been in recent years? And if not, or if it is, like what steps would you think they'd need to take to get it closer to being, okay, this is the type of roster Tomas is like best maximized by?

They win by 24, but based off of the numbers, this one maybe should have been a little bit closer.

Yes and no. It's really interesting to pair this one.

So, Ole Miss with a positive 6% points of net success rate.

So, again, very small, a little bit outside that standard deviation we talked about last week.

But, you know, a couple things there.

Last week, Ole Miss got the explosives they needed and LSU didn't.

And this week, Ole Miss had the success, but they didn't have the explosive.

So curious how those two games graded out for you.

But the game itself, it did look like just statistically speaking, Troy was probably the better team.

Yes, I could buy into the Missouri didn't prep and take this game as seriously as they maybe should have because they were focusing on SEC play.

And we've seen that like Oklahoma State basically sacrificing the Tulsa game to win at Oregon.

And that might be something that's happening.

But I think the in-game kind of sitting on a lead narrative becomes a little bit flimsy just when you look at how they scored in the first half.

A three-play 18-yard touchdown drive and then a one-play 13-yard touchdown drive was the difference of a 10-10 game with about five minutes left in the half to a 24-10 game.

And then even Troy was able to rally and score at the end of the half and make that a little bit uncomfortable there.

So what does it tell you when a team, let's say from the MAAC, does play right there in lockstep with one of the power conference teams? Do you kind of treat that as the possibility of a one-off or is that something kind of predictive into the future?

What's your love for the game? How long back does it date? How are you now a part of No Ceilings?

Yeah, so I fell in love with the game when I was a kid.

So when the Grizzlies actually played at the Pyramid was when I went to my first games.

I went to the first ever playoff series in franchise history in the Pyramid.

Um, I, I was, I, I had parents that still hold their season tickets.

So now like, you know, I've been covering games, but my wife goes with my mom.

Uh, and then just also growing up with the game, I played year round.

yeah,

What did you like about North Carolina in that game as well?

Yeah, certainly, you know, whoever about about halfway through the third quarter, we got to a point where we said, you know, whoever loses this game is going to have lost a very winnable game.

I think both teams really had their opportunities and TCU even, you know, having on the goal line there and just having, frankly, an outright mental mistake from from Jaden Craig and his first FBS start there, not keeping it, making a bad throw into the end zone instead of converting and ultimately losing the game for TCU.

Really interesting kind of an inversion of last year.

where the Belichick's team had kind of a dynamic first drive and then had no answer, they had answers.

Bobby Petrino said, hey, we're just going to start passing on early downs.

And Billy Edwards was able to step up and commit and connect on some of those and really create some explosive plays that really, you know, that... touchdown drive at the end of the first quarter for UNC was just filthy.

What did you make about Memphis and UNLV?

Yeah

... very close to the season.

That's, that's, that's not great, um, y- there as, as that's resolving.

You know, TCU, I think you bring in Gordon Samis.

Uh, really interesting to look at how much play action that, that he used versus what Hoover used versus what Harvard transfer Jaden Craig used.

Uh, obviously they want an identity where they can run the ball, a little bit more offensive line play.

I think TCU feels better about their offensive line than they have in a couple years this, this season.

Mm-hmm

But do you think there's a reason why it's been relatively quiet surrounding Fort Worth coming off of a 9-1 season where it is postseason top 25?

A very odd 18-8 stretch over the last two years.

I've referred to the last two seasons as kind of backdoor 9-4, if you will, because you go 8-4 and felt underwhelming.

I do wonder if there's not.

So TCU reached a height that nobody else in the Big 12 has reached.

in going to the National Championship game in 2020.

It may never reach again with the expanded playoff, right? And so I think TCU fans kind of went through that cycle.

anybody's last names but i i think he really had a good successful stint for what an offensive coordinator at yukon can be i like his pedigree as an offensive line coach what sort of schematic or what sort of offensive changes are you anticipating for the frogs with that change at oc

Tell our listeners what it is and kind of why you think it can be really useful when projecting football success to understand it.

Yes, one of the most cowardly acts of my entire life was succumbing to peer pressure and coach pressure last year and trying to rebrand Echol as quality possession rate.

And I regret it with every ounce of my soul.

Echol is living on.

That's kind of the way I'm going forward with it.

Echol is a stat that initially was born out of frustration with the way Everyone talks about time of possession and game control in football.

A couple examples stand out to me of games that were the origin story or the confirmation.

Which team or conference, and you can answer this in any way, shape, or form, do you have the most difficult time nailing down a tighter projection where it's not a cop-out, you're literally looking at it, you're consulting all of your numbers, and you're saying to yourself, there's a path for this team to flame out and probably fire their coach or to go 8-4, and I wouldn't be surprised by either outcome?

How do you feel about the two different ways of approaching this? Is there really a right or wrong way? 'Cause Memphis maybe cared too much for Summer League, and I think you could pretty easily argue that Atlanta didn't care enough.

Yeah, um, it's one of those things that's fascinating because I do think...

Yeah, I believe in like, "Hey, you gotta do what's best for the long haul." And I think there's two different ways, obviously, to go about that.

Obviously, there's preservation, shutting people down.

There is one thing where I'm like, there, there are some elements to it where it's like, I saw, like, something where the Miami Heat sent home their second round pick, Ryan Conwell, where I'm like, "What are we doing? We're losing the plot.

We're s- we're shutting down second round picks from Summer League, uh, less than a month into, uh, them getting drafted." I'm like, "All right, that's losing the plot a little bit." Like, I don't, I don't hate what Atlanta's done.

Yeah, selfishly, I wish I would've gotten to watch Kingston Fleming play and Cameron Boozer go against, uh, Zuby Ejiofor.

I thought he did better than, uh, than expected, given all that has transpired for him the last couple weeks.

Schedule just absolutely a gauntlet for Ryan Day this year.

Yeah, so two seasons come to mind.

Last year, 2025, and 2019.

I ended up with Ohio State as the number one power-rated team at the end of the season, and they didn't win in a couple spots.

Very close losses that really had them falling short of winning the championship.

I kind of have 26 circled as another one there.

I've got them at four.

What do you look at here with this Tigers team? Eight and a half is their win total.

How different would it be from a numbers perspective of the national champion and what the numbers may consider to be the best team that year?

Yeah.

So I went and pulled just from, uh, three sources and looked at, you know, what do some of these power ratings say.

So I pulled ESPN's FPI, Bill Connelly's SP+, and my opponent adjusted play rankings.

And all three of those just look at instead of the wins and losses and the final outcome alone, those look at, you know, how did you play, how much... how predictive do we think that is going forward, and what does that look like? So I pulled, um, SP+ and, and FPI from 2015.

I pulled the, my, my numbers from 2019, that's as recent as I have it, and found that, uh, SP+ said o- only about, uh, 55% of the time the, the number one team in the power ratings, uh, won overall.

Um, in FPI, that was 2 of 11 years, so, so 18% where the number one rated team did not win the championship.

So are you okay with that swap of LSU sort of taking the place of where most people would have thought Ole Miss was supposed to come in this year?

How different would it be from a numbers perspective of the national champion and what the numbers may consider to be the best team that year?

Yeah.

So I went and pulled just from, uh, three sources and looked at, you know, what do some of these power ratings say? So I pulled ESPN's FPI, Bill Connelly's SP+, and my opponent-adjusted play rankings.

And all three of those just look at, instead of the wins and losses and the final outcome alone, those look at, you know, how did you play, how much, how predictive do we think that is going forward, and what does that look like? So I pulled, um, SP+ and, and FPI from 2015.

I pulled the, my, my numbers from 2019.

That's as recent as I have it.

And found that, uh, SP+ said on- only about, uh, 55% of the time the, the number one team in the power ratings, uh, won overall.

So are you okay with that swap of LSU sort of taking the place of where most people would have thought Ole Miss was supposed to come in this year?

I wanna know, before we get into the deeper weeds of, like, maybe guys further down in the first round and early second round, what's your opinion of this top four, and how has it, how has it shifted for you, if at all, uh, uh, since the season ended?

Yeah.

Um, for me, I've always kind of held, like, a wide chasm between the top three and then Caleb Wilson.

And, um, you know, d- and I, I think that's just because I know for Peterson and Debonta, they're two guys that kind of fit that go-to, go-to scorer mold.

Like, when you're projecting them out, you're like, okay, I could see them being a 25 to 30 point per game scorer, um, with their three level of scoring.

Um, obviously Peterson had the weird year at Kansas, but, like, I, I look at all the numbers, you know, the stock r- the stock rate, uh, box plus-minus, uh, the combination of three-point efficiency and volume, and the fact that he did all that at, like, 60 to 70%, I'm just like, okay, if he was healthy, this probably is the number one guy.

I, I do have Boozer at number one, just because I feel like a lot of his outcomes do yield, like, some sort of all-star return, impact on winning at a high level kinda, kind of guy.

Mm-hmm.