Dear Andy: Who is actually the underdog when Notre Dame faces Texas A&M?

We’ve got a full slate of games this weekend (FINALLY), and you, the listeners of Andy Staples On3, have questions. Let’s dive into the latest edition of Dear Andy to answer your college football questions.

From Robert
What dictates whether a game is an upset, rankings or point spread?

This question wasn’t actually asked to me. Robert Behrens, the managing editor of the Texas A&M fan site Good Bull Hunting, posted this as a poll on Wednesday for his followers on X. I’d been pondering this very question all week, so I think it would be fun to explore it here.

What dictates whether a game is an “upset?”

— Robert Behrens (@rcb05) August 28, 2024

In the Associated Press poll, Notre Dame is ranked No. 7 and Texas A&M is ranked No. 20. The coaches poll has each team in the same place. So people who should be good at evaluating football teams (sportswriters) and people who actually have proven themselves capable of evaluating football teams (FBS coaches) each feel that Notre Dame is 13 spots better than Texas A&M.

By this logic, a Texas A&M win would be an upset. Maybe not a major one, because the Aggies are ranked and are at home, but a top-10 team shouldn’t be losing to a team ranked No. 20.

But if Texas A&M beats Notre Dame, the bookmakers in Las Vegas — or I guess they could live pretty much anywhere now — wouldn’t consider it an upset at all. They’ve always favored the Aggies in this game.

The line opened in May at multiple books with Texas A&M favored by 1.5 points. That line then moved further toward the Aggies, pushing the spread to 2.5 earlier this month and three points last week. It has since moved back toward Notre Dame, but Texas A&M was still favored by 1.5 points as of Wednesday afternoon.

In the eyes of gamblers, the real upset would be Notre Dame winning. Just as with the pollsters, it wouldn’t be a huge upset. But it would be the underdog beating the favorite.

So who gets to decide?

I lean toward the linemakers on this one. 

While they face the same challenges as poll voters in determining how new rosters might look on the field, the people who set the line have far more at stake. The idea behind a point spread is to ensure even action on both sides so the sportsbook isn’t exposed in either direction. Adjusting the line based on the action coming in helps protect the books, but a bad initial line can cost real money. 

That’s why I usually fill out my NCAA Tournament bracket based not on seeds but on lines. I remember covering an Arizona-Utah NCAA Tournament game in Miami in 2009 where No. 12 seed Arizona was the betting favorite against No. 5 seed Utah. Arizona had future NBA player (and future Team USA beach volleyball player) Chase Budinger and future No. 8 overall pick Jordan Hill. The Wildcats had an interim coach after Lute Olsen stepped down, but they had more talent and Vegas understood that. The game was never close.

In football, we’ve seen this in the College Football Playoff. Clemson was the No. 1 seed following the 2017 season. Alabama lost the Iron Bowl but snuck in at No. 4. Yet the Crimson Tide opened as a one-point favorite and bettors poured money on the Tide to push the line to three. Alabama won 24-6.

But that line was set after watching the teams play all season. This one is based more on feel because we’ve never seen Nic Scourton chase quarterbacks for Texas A&M and we’ve never seen Riley Leonard throw passes for Notre Dame.

But I’ll ride with the folks in the desert and say it’s an upset if Notre Dame wins and chalk if Texas A&M wins. Of course, given the direction the line has moved in the past week, it may be a pick ’em (or flipped) by kickoff Saturday night.

From Todd
You generated a lot of anger ranking Georgia Tech No. 4 in your Playoff Poll. Why can’t people accept GT’s rightful return as a national power?

From Justin
Dear Andy, if Florida, West Virginia, Clemson, Texas A&M and USC all win this weekend and Iowa wins by 40 points,  which team’s ranking would cause most feedback in your weekly updated Playoff projections?

I’m not sure I accept the idea of Georgia Tech returning as a national power — though I’d love Haynes King to reach Reggie Ball legend status — but I figured I’d honor the first actual result of the season by projecting the Yellow Jackets to win the ACC in this week’s Bracketology column. 

This, naturally, made a lot of people mad. According to the groupthink we all agreed upon while talking to ourselves these past nine months, Georgia Tech wasn’t one of the teams that’s supposed to win the ACC. We agreed those teams would be Clemson, Florida State, Miami, N.C. State and maybe Louisville or Virginia Tech. The Yellow Jackets weren’t in the club.

I had picked Florida State to win the league, but after watching Georgia Tech dominate the Seminoles on both sides of the line of scrimmage in Dublin, I decided to re-evaluate. I need to see Clemson, Miami and N.C. State before I decide whether I trust them. Fortunately, we get to see all of them this week. Clemson-Georgia and Miami-Florida should be particularly instructive, though we may need to wait until N.C. State plays Tennessee in week two to get a better sense of the Wolfpack. 

So I went with Georgia Tech for this week. I surmised that even if they did win the ACC, they wouldn’t beat Georgia. I put them down for a loss to Notre Dame and a loss somewhere in ACC play. That would put them at 10-3, which probably would make them the No. 4 seed unless something crazy happened in the Big 12 or a Group of 5 team with a great signature win (or two) over a power conference team went undefeated.

There was significant pushback on the idea of Georgia Tech at No. 4, but that was mostly from people who still don’t understand how the new CFP seeding rules work. 

I plan to update these projections every week, and I plan to do it largely based on the results on the field rather than our preseason assumptions. That will produce some wild swings from week to week early, and the movement will slow as the data points get more plentiful. 

That brings us to Justin’s question. I think a Florida win against Miami or West Virginia win against Penn State — assuming they inspire me to project those teams into the bracket — would get the most pushback. Florida beating Miami might not tell us anything with all those monsters left on Florida’s schedule, but the Mountaineers beating Penn State probably would suggest West Virginia is capable of competing for the Big 12 title.

If Clemson beats Georgia, the Tigers become an easy choice for presumptive ACC champ. (Sorry, Georgia Tech.) But then the question becomes whether I think the ACC can be a two-bid league. A Texas A&M win isn’t even an upset based on what we just discussed, but I do have Notre Dame in my projected bracket. Slotting in the Aggies into the field in that case would make sense — but it absolutely would get blasted by the readers who understandably need more convincing before they believe in Texas A&M.

USC is an interesting one. I have LSU in my first four out, so a close win might not get the Trojans into the bracket. A decisive one probably would. Lincoln Riley is another lightning rod, so that would generate some debate. But I’m just fascinated by Sunday’s game for many of the same reasons I’m fascinated by Miami-Florida. 

Riley and Brian Kelly left other prestigious programs on the same day in late 2021 to take these jobs. It can be argued they both overachieved in year one. USC took a big step back in year two, and LSU took a slight step back in spite of having the Heisman Trophy winner at QB. Now both are replacing Heisman-winning QBs with their former backups and hoping that a new defensive coaching staff will turn around a unit that was awful in 2023. It’s yet another Spider-Man Meme game.

From Mack
Andy, if Georgia wins big against Clemson, do you think the talk about Dabo will continue to start up again after just week one? (About him not wanting to adjust when it comes to the transfer portal and do things his way.)

This will be the easiest hot take to predict if this is the result when the Bulldogs and Tigers play in Atlanta. And it would make perfect sense.

Clemson is the only non-service academy to not take a transfer this entire offseason. Since Army, Navy and Air Force require a recommendation from a member of the U.S. Congress for admission and Clemson doesn’t, this is quite a distinction.

A few years ago, Clemson and Georgia were on the same level. Prior to the change in the transfer rules, both were among the best at recruiting blue-chip talent and developing that talent when it arrived on campus.

Kirby Smart’s program and Dabo Swinney’s program are still great at those things, but unlike Swinney, Smart has elected to take advantage of the new rules to supplement roster losses.

Georgia had some good tight ends in Oscar Delp and Lawson Luckie, but after losing Brock Bowers, the Bulldogs took transfer Ben Yurosek from Stanford. Dominic Lovett — a transfer himself before last season — and Arian Smith are capable receivers. But after losing Ladd McConkey, Smart decided to take Colbie Young from Miami and London Humphreys from Vanderbilt. These players may not identically replace the NFL talent lost, but they stand a better chance of replacing some or most of that production — and more quickly than a freshman would.

Georgia doesn’t have any transfers starting on its offensive or defensive lines because it doesn’t need them. But you can bet that if Smart thought he could upgrade this offseason, he would have.

In theory, Smart’s willingness to take ready-made contributors should widen the talent gap between Clemson and Georgia. The Tigers didn’t feel that different from eventual national champ Georgia when the teams met in Charlotte to open the 2021 season (a 10-3 Georgia win), and that was a loaded Georgia roster. But Georgia has since signed higher-ranked recruiting classes and used the transfer portal while Clemson has clung to the same philosophy everyone else has abandoned.

If Swinney’s Tigers win on Saturday, it’ll shut us all up for a long time. If Clemson plays Georgia close and loses Saturday, it still might restore some faith in Swinney’s way of doing things.

But if Georgia covers that 13.5-point spread, the chorus is going to be entirely predictable — and the loudest bars will come from within the Clemson fanbase. It will be a definitive declaration that it’s time to evolve.

A Random Ranking

Todd, who asked the Georgia Tech question, wants me to rank Tom Petty songs. I have done that before, so feel free to peruse that list here. But Todd’s suggestion gave me an idea. After Petty passed away, Florida created a new tradition. Fans in The Swamp sing I Won’t Back Down after they sing We Are The Boys of Old Florida between the third and fourth quarters. It’s a beautiful tribute to Gainesville’s favorite native son. Oklahoma plans to start a similar tribute Friday for die-hard Sooner and beloved Oklahoman Toby Keith, who died far too young earlier this year. So let’s rank Toby Keith songs while we guess which song Sooners fans will sing between the third and fourth quarters. My money is on How Do You Like Me Now? even though it references breaking into a stadium and painting a phone number on the 50-yard-line in the first verse.

1. Red Solo Cup
2. Should’ve Been a Cowboy
3. Wish I Didn’t Know Now
4. Beer For My Horses
5. How Do You Like Me Now?
6. Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue
7. I Wanna Talk About Me
8. I Love This Bar
9. Whiskey Girl
10. As Good As I Once Was