PMP25: Ceilings And Floors

The total for the fundraiser at the moment: $1,968. I leave the donation page up for the month of May every year, but NOBODY DONATE ANY MORE. 1968 was the year my dad graduated from college. So that's the perfect number for this year. The goal was $1,500, and we're past that already, so... let's leave it at that for this year.

This Pick My Post article request was simply "dealer's choice." It came from my friend Ben. I've been on golf trips with Ben, I've been to drum corps shows with Ben, so I know Ben. Whenever someone I know gives me a "dealer's choice" request, I try to write something they might enjoy. Ben might enjoy... this.

You might have seen this tweet floating around the last few days. This guy took a bunch of the preseason polls and made one "composite" preseason poll for college football next fall:

The question I'm going to answer for Ben: what are we supposed to do with THAT? When the consensus (of ESPN, CBS, etc.) says that we should be 11th preseason, what do we do with that? We've never had that. What are we supposed to do with it?

I'll just start with this: it's probably not going to happen.

(Breathe.)

For the majority of teams in that top-25, it's not going to happen. Preseason polls like this are, essentially, ceiling polls. Which teams have the highest ceilings? Of the playoff teams, Penn State has the most back (from a team that made it to the semifinals), so they're seen as having the highest ceiling. But you know, and I know, that the chances of Penn State actually winning it all are slim. They finally have the ceiling to get there, but will they actually get there? Probably not.

Why not? Because college football. Pointy ball, flat field. It bounces funny. It deflects in weird directions. It's hard to catch and hard to hang on to after you catch it.

Since I'm starting with the ceiling here, let's just start at the top with Nick Saban and Alabama. It's the highest ceiling we've seen in college football over the last few decades. Basically every season from 2008 to 2023, their ceiling was a national title. Here are the results:

Six titles in sixteen years is incredible. With NIL and the portal, I'm not sure we'll see a run like that ever again (just like college basketball changed and what UCLA pulled off under John Wooden is now impossible). Basically, sixteen consecutive years where Alabama's ceiling was "national title."

Actually winning six is also incredible. And the reason it's incredible (and the reason I'm not attempting some kind of lame "if you're the favorites sixteen years in a row, you should maybe win more than six, right?" stupidity here) is because so much can go wrong in your race to be the first one to the top of the mountain. They had the best chance to win the race to the top and they only got there six times. The tiniest thing goes wrong – pointy ball, flat field – and you're going to come up short.

This holds true across all sports. It's why Jordan's six titles with the Bulls, or Tom Brady's seven rings (six with the Patriots, one with the Bucs) are the pinnacle. Once the talent levels normalized across all professional leagues (you can't really compare Bill Russell's 11 titles in 13 years in the 1950's and 60's here because the NBA wasn't "there" yet), six or seven titles became the nearly-impossible. For college football, Saban and Alabama is the best example of "as good as it can be." And that includes failing to reach your ceiling 10 out of 16 years.

So that's what I mean by "it's probably not going to happen." I would guess that a team that is consensus #11 before the season reaches the 12-team playoff maybe... 40% of the time? 35%? A lot has to go right. And a lot could go wrong.

It's why I take such offense to the "Illinois was a .500 team that got lucky" last season. It's why I cling to the 2nd Order Wins NERDstat. We were, very specifically, an 8 or 9-win team that won 10 games last year per 2ndOW. Let's call it an 8-win team that saw Greg Schiano call timeout and that saw Luke Altmyer pin the fumble against his leg until his knee was down. That's the pointy ball/flat field difference between 8 wins and 10 wins.

And that's how competitive football works. Illini fans don't know this fact because we don't know what competitive football looks like. Even I feel silly for all of my Pat Fitzgerald hate (when they would win 4 of their 5 close games) because my jealousy was really centered on the fact that they were in every game. We're in nearly every game now, and this is just what it looks like. For Illinois, when there are five close games, we need the Pat Bryant touchdown at Rutgers and the David Olano field goal against Purdue to pull it out. For Alabama... well, let's talk about that.

It happens to Alabama, too. If you want to keep the Kalen DeBoer Alabama teams out of this discussion, we can just say that it happened to Nick Saban teams at Alabama. When the ball bounced correctly, Alabama won the title. When it didn't – when the field goal attempt was caught by Chris Davis at the back of the endzone and he returned it 109 yards – they finished with one or two losses.

When those things happen at Alabama, it's the difference between 14-0 and national champions and 12-2 and #5 in the final poll. When those things happened at Illinois in 2024, they were the difference between 10 wins and the 8.2 expected wins per 2ndOW. Which means that in 2025, we could very easily have a better team, finish with 9.1 2nd Order Wins (your win expectation based on the stats in each game), and go 7-5.

Yes, better coaching is part of this. Yes, a QB who keeps his composure late is a huge part of this. You can "skill" your way to a few more wins, especially with a solid QB. I used this example many times last season (even going into detail on late game drives), but Illinois and USC were perfect examples of "having a QB who can finish vs. having a QB who folds" last season. Illinois was at 8.2 in the 2nd Order Wins column. USC was 8.1, so they were essentially the same team. Final records? Illinois 10-3, USC 7-6. The main reason? Miller Moss failed so many times on late drives when games were close. It's why USC will have a different quarterback in 2025 (Miller Moss was told he wouldn't be the starter there and is now at Louisville).

But there will still be blocked field goals and tipped passes at the goal line. A QB with moxie can't solve everything. In 2025, it's possible that the deflected pass on 3rd down which deflected right to Zakhari Franklin in the 4th quarter of the Citrus Bowl (which allowed Josh McCray scoring the go-ahead touchdown a few plays later) will harmlessly deflect to the turf. Which would mean we'd kick the tying field goal instead of scoring the go-ahead touchdown. And then South Carolina would kick the go-ahead field goal on their final drive instead of needing four and going for it on 4th down (and failing with an incomplete pass in the endzone). Change the direction of one deflection in that game by 10 degrees and South Carolina is kicking a chip-shot game winner.

Those little tiny things, for now and forevermore, will determine the winners of competitive college football games. Which means some times you have the 10-win season and sometimes you have the 7-win season. For Alabama, yes, it meant that sometimes you won it all and sometimes you didn't. For Iowa, it's always been the "6, 7, or 8 wins when it goes poorly, 9, 10 or 11 wins when it goes your way" range.

And that's the fun part of the stair-climb we've been on. It's why I'm already warning people against this fall's "see, I knew we'd choke when we had a chance for something really special" social media onslaught. Yes, there's choking in college football, and I'll call it out when true choking happens (cough2009cough), but there's also... college football happening. The simple little things that swing LSU between an 11-1 season and a "devastating" 8-4 season.

If you play competitive football, a few plays in a few games will determine what kind of season you have. Last season, every play went our way except for the blindside sack of Altmyer in the Minnesota game (when we were inside their 20 and driving to force overtime). Did that mean that the season was some kind of fluke? No, it meant we played a bunch of close games and this was one of those seasons where the ball bounced our direction.

Next season, given the way pointy balls work, it's likely that things won't bounce our way. The best way to avoid that becoming an issue is to have a 24-point lead at the time (that's how Alabama mostly avoided it for 15 years). But everyone will play close games and those close games will come down to one or two plays (a deflected pass here, a bouncing ball there). We'll see how much the pointy ball likes us when those moments arise in 2025.

But here's my point when they do arise: enjoy it. The nerves are the good part. Competitive football is what we've always wanted in Champaign. I've wanted to know that my team can stand toe-to-toe, not win "bro my team is better than your team, bro" battles on Twitter. We can't let Illini football discourse be reduced to chat threads when playing Madden. And that's where it will head at the first sign of trouble after a #11 preseason ranking.

The point of any rebuild is to get us to the point where we are in the game (E. A. Sports.). We're no longer irrelevant; we're part of the conversation. Those preseason polls unequivocally state that we are in the game now. And I'm ready to embrace it.

What happens to relevant teams? Well, sometimes things go right and you win your bowl game over an SEC team everyone said should have been in the playoff. Sometimes they go wrong (like the 7.8-win Auburn team that finished with only five wins last season). No, not every team has a 2.8-win swing on their 2nd Order Wins, but every team experiences some level of "man, if we could have just won our close games" -OR- "man, we barely squeaked out those close games." Every single Alabama title – all six – have an "if that one thing didn't happen, we lose that game and the national title." Often several.

In the past, in Champaign, those breaks resulted in either 5 wins or 2 wins and nobody cared. Now that our Vegas over/under is set at 7.5 instead of 3.5, it means we're expected to either win 9 games or 6 games. And that's just so glorious.

Our ceiling is a playoff berth (!!). Our floor is six wins. Our FLOOR. If everything goes wrong and we only land on the floor, you will still see celebration in this space. Go back and read everything I said during the 2023 season. The true next step for this program, in my estimation, is back-to-back bowl seasons. And not back-to-back bowl seasons where we only win 2 Big Ten games (over Indiana and Northwestern) like 2011. 3+ Big Ten wins and a winning season. Which we haven't done back-to-back since 1989 and 1990.

Yes, really. We've had back-to-back Solid Seasons™️ one time since 1990. And that one time was the back-to-back 7-6 seasons in 2010 and 2011. 2010 was solid (four Big Ten wins) but in 2011 there were only two Big Ten wins (both to teams with losing records including 1-11 Indiana) as part of that 6-6 before we beat 6-7 UCLA in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl (making them the first 6-8 football team in college football history). So I set this goal back then of attaining back-to-back legitimate Solid Seasons, not a fake winning season (like the one that got our coach fired in 2011).

When I tweeted immediately after the Northwestern loss in November of 2023 that it was the most painful loss I've experienced, that's exactly what I meant. To fall one two-point conversion short of finally getting the "back to back Solid Seasons" monkey off our back, I was on my knees (I literally fell to my knees). The celebration of that 80-yard Casey Washington touchdown followed by the failed 2-point conversion was as "the two ends of the fan spectrum" as I can experience. And for that to be the sixth consecutive game that season that had come down to the final two minutes, well, I was spent. SPENT.

Lady Luck repaid us in 2024 with things going our way. We had a much better team, and when you combine that with the Kansas muffed punt and the Nebraska missed field goal and the Purdue failed 2-point conversion and the Rutgers timeout, we had the season of our dreams. Our "Wisconsin scored with 30 seconds left on a play where they cheated and then Iowa broke their one long run of the season and then Northwestern stopped the 2-point conversion" season was immediately redeemed with last year's list.

The difference now (and, hopefully, forever more): the thing is rebuilt. We have a winning team returning almost all of its talent for maybe the first time in my lifetime (even 1990 had a ton to replace on both sides of the ball including the #1-overall-pick QB). We're not Indiana fans wondering if Curt Cignetti can assemble a second team just like the first team; we have essentially the same team that is now one year older. The polls might reflect our highest preseason ranking of my lifetime. The roster is there. I'm nervous in May for the first time in three decades.

And the nerves are the good part. The results? They'll just... be the results. Yes, I'm excited for our ceiling (an actual, honest-to-God playoff ceiling) but I'm probably most excited about our floor. That floor is all I've ever really wanted. For 30+ years we've walked into the house, stepped on a bad floorboard, and fallen through to the basement. Over and over and over. Lou Tepper, Ron Turner, Ron Zook, Tim Beckman, Bill Cubit, and Lovie Smith all eventually ended up falling through the floorboards.

And now, not only are we safely on the first floor, we might be able to climb the stairs to the second floor. Yes, there are tricky boards there as well and we might stumble. Alabama spent all of their time under Saban on the stairs between the second floor and the attic and even they fell back to the second floor 10 out of 16 tries. Only one team reaches the attic each season.

But look out the window. We're not the basement anymore. We're on the first floor. There's light streaming in. The floor boards feel really firm underneath our feet. Go ahead and stroll over to the staircase and attempt that second floor climb for the first time in literal decades.

It might take a few attempts, but... I'm excited to see what's up there.