The Craig Way Show
Where does Texas stand in ESPN's Final Preseason SP+ rankings?
the AP top 25 preseason college football poll came out yesterday and I'm and I did say we've got a couple of baseball notes and we'll get to them in a minute but I couldn't help but notice that in conjunction with the AP top 25 college football preseason poll ESPN did its preseason SP plus rankings. Now the only reason why I bring this up is because this is different than the AP top 25 or the coaches preseason top 25 because that 450 gets you something in Starbucks maybe a little more these days that's why they just fired their CEO and hired the CEO from Chipotle to be the new CEO of Starbucks try to turn that around get their stock numbers back up but the difference is in this SP plus ranking they don't do a top 25 they rank all 134 teams every single team that plays division one FBS football football bowl subdivision FBS so all 134 are rated and the top part of it mirrors the balloting polls like Georgia's number one Ohio State's number two in Oregon's number three now there's a little bit different by one tenth of a point Alabama not Texas's number four and then Texas is number five in the SP rankings so that that's the offensive SP plus along with the defensive SP plus and the special teams so Georgia's number one with a 34.2 Ohio State number two at a 30.8 and then Oregon State 29 Alabama 27.8 Texas 27.7 so 47 percent of these teams according to ESPN analytics have at least a five percent chance of reaching the college football playoff so these they're based on these factors returning production recent recruiting and recent history so how good have you been recently who do you have coming back how good are the players replacing those who don't have coming back those kinds of things and then they feed it all into a into a computer in the formula and it spits it out so as I mentioned Georgia's number one the rest of the top 10 is Ohio State to Georgia Oregon three Alabama four Texas five and then the rest Penn State Michigan Ole Miss Notre Dame in LSU in the second 10 Oklahoma's 13 Texas A&M is 14 Oklahoma State is 20 K State is 17 by the way and and then if you go on down then this why I said this goes beyond 25 so this is what I was looking at SMU is just out of it at 27 out of the what would be a top 25 new big 12 team Arizona in a 28 Iowa State is 30 Kansas is 32 T.C. was 38 North Carolina is 40 Texas Tech is 41 Arkansas is 44 Baylor is 53 UTSA is 54 these are the SP plus rankings so if you go further on down the list I'm looking for Texas State number 86 according to these SP rankings and going further I guess I meant to look a little further up and find Colorado State who is the season opening opponent for Texas but I'm not seeing them I can't believe they'd be way down the list but I'm looking here this 100 wow they are far down the list they are number 100 is Colorado State my alma mater nor Texas not to sporty 105 on that sort of thing and just to let you know dead last 134 UL Monroe that's right that fourth non-conference opponent for Texas they are division 1 FPS they're not playing an FCS team but it is the number the number 134 out of 134 okay if you have friends or family that have been bugging you about going the Texas football games and are the are in the same camp of so does Archie start this year is Archie gonna play that's the game to tell them to go to because he will probably be playing in the third or four quarter in that one and for context for these rankings I always find it curious to compare them to last year so the last year's final SP plus preseason rankings yeah top four with Georgia Iowa State Michigan Alabama so two other four made the playoff you got Texas at nine and then Washington at 17 also had Clemson at seven who went nine and four so a little bit of context for those just to understand that okay a couple of baseball notes rangers tough loss for them last night against the Boston Red Sox will try again tonight as they continue to fall further off the pace now all the Astros remain red hot I think they won nine consecutive starts by Fromer Valdez or at least six consecutive starts that they won uh and then um Mookie Betts return last night uh his first at bat it looked like he hadn't had an at bat in 60 days if you saw it he swung and missed on strike three and tumbled over and fell down out of the batter's box like oh boy is he rusty yeah came up next inning next at bat two innings later hit a home run and then he drove in another run with an RBI single so he looks to be back uh also Clayton Kershaw pitched well last night yeah definitely his best outing since he'd been back but they but they are losing River Ryan to Tommy John surgery so they've lost him they do expect to get Walker Bueller back this week uh so I have them that I have him as well but uh Astros look really good and uh speaking the Astros you remember when Billy Wagner pitched for the Astros will his son had his major league debut for the Toronto Blue Jays last night and got hits in his first three at bats in the game so a lot of these younger guys they're you know they're showing out making a difference there all right we'll be back to wrap up today's program on sports video I am 13 under the zone in the IR radio amp.