u/mathmat

There's been a huge shakeup in UCLA leadership, starting about a year before Chesney was hired (when a much more sports-friendly Chancellor took over).

People made hay about the AD being fired at the start of the season, but what people missed is that AD was a figurehead during the hiring search and frankly was a huge portion of the problem.

When fans:

1. know the AD's name, and
2. have a laundry list of complaints about him

you know things have been bad for a long time.

Early indications are very promising, but really the fans need to find a way to fill the stadium. Nevada on Halloween in the rain might not be great, but Illinois and USC need to be packed.

"Memaw always said I was pretty"

I will lay down over his helicopter to stop him from leaving.

We tried to tell them at the time, people don’t listen

The parallels never stop

It’s not our fault people aren’t recognizing Wisconsin’s greatness.

Strength of Record also isn't predictive, really. It seems like it's pretty similar.

Excuse me, was mis-remembering the description. It's comparing to the average of the entirety of FBS. It's the same idea.

<Nebraska> and it isn't close.

Tom Fornelli has a similar metric called Fornelli+ (it’s a silly name but whatever). It tracks how much better you’re doing vs your schedule than an average top-25 team would have done.

He has UCLA second.

For one, UCLA hasn’t played an FCS game. For another, all of their opponents are in the power five or the pac-12.

Anyways, let’s play the game and talk through all unbeaten teams:

I’d say UCLA’s best wins are Oregon and Wisconsin, with Purdue as a solid result. Cal and Maryland and SDSU are all… whatever.

Miami: Wake Forest is a good win, Clemson is a positive. They also have Stanford (SP+ equates them to a decent FCS school), Florida A&M, South Florida, and Florida State. So… fine I guess. Wake is a great win.

BYU: Notre Dame and Arizona are great wins. Utah Tech and Colorado State are whatever and TCU/Iowa State are solid.

Utah: I don't see a good team on here. Arkansas? Iowa State? Kansas? Colorado? Utah State? Idaho?

Texas Tech: Oregon State and Houston are good wins. Arizona State and Colorado are fine. Abilene Christian and Sam Houston no comment.

James Madison: They’re great and I won’t hear otherwise.

Of these schedules I think BYU is a clear number one and I’d take UCLA as having a narrow edge over Miami’s. That’s basically what SOR says too.

This is the right interpretation.

Strength of Record is the specific stat I referenced. ESPN has UCLA 3rd.

I didn’t make a claim about SoS, SoR accounts for UCLA winning every game.

Even looking at SoS, BYU is 37, Miami is 58, Texas Tech is 82, and Utah is 101. So why do people only talk about UCLA benefiting from a “weak” schedule?

If UCLA’s schedule is so easy why does just about every strength of record metric have UCLA top 5?

Damn right

Don’t remember who it was at the time but there’s a lot of real injuries coming out of this game.

lol USC thinks they’re the hardest game on the schedule

That doesn’t just happen on its own. That defense played their asses off.

I mean the strangest part is it was never Campbell over Chesney.

It was "the locked up mystery candidate" (Sitake). Campbell was eventually available as a pretty decent way to salvage the search.

SportsScience in shambles.

2005 would have been the high point if not for one particular game.

Rutgers

My liege, your vaunted victories of yesteryear are indeed proof you have much to educate me on in the world of foot-ball. How foolish I was to believe otherwise.

UCLA’s fine at passing and fine at defense. It’s good to be able to hang your hat on something though.

Also, sorry to say, UCLA is 44 spots better than SMU on efficiency. https://cfbefficiency.com/?year=2026