McKewon: Who Are Nebraska's Peer?

Mavric

Mavric

Yoda
Staff member
As for the rest of the criteria, I considered the following:


» Only teams that are in Power Five conferences and had full access to the BCS when the BCS was in play. That disqualifies Boise State, BYU, Utah, TCU and a few others. It doesn’t disqualify Notre Dame, but something else does.

» At least a 55 percent winning percentage over the last 10 seasons. That guarantees a team has won at least seven games per season.

» At least seven bowls over the last 10 years. Nebraska has played in nine, skipping only 2007. That rids us of yo-yo teams.

» A five-year average national recruiting rank in the top half of college football, as measured by combining the ratings of the 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 recruiting classes according to 247Sports Composite service. Further, any team with a national average rank 10.0 or better doesn’t qualify until Nebraska itself reaches that recruiting stratosphere. Further, the program must have some recruiting advantages (location, facilities, tradition, league placement, etc.) and at least some recruiting disadvantages.

» I’m not entirely dismissing private schools, but there aren’t any on this list, and the differences between how public and private universities operate are significant enough for me to generally disqualify them. This includes Notre Dame.

» Sheer fan decree. Thus Oklahoma makes the list, as did one Big Ten team. Since Wisconsin got the most votes from fans, I went to the No. 2 vote-getter, which has 15 fewer wins than Nebraska over the last decade and a new head coach, just like the Huskers.
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Here are the 12 peer programs — 10 of my own picks, plus the two fan favorites — from worst 10-year record to best:


Iowa
Arizona State
Michigan
Georgia Tech
Michigan State
Oklahoma State
West Virginia
Clemson
Missouri
Wisconsin
Oklahoma
Oregon
Click to expand...
Link

 
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No peers.

Happens all the time.

Who are the peers to the USA? China? Berkshire Hathaway? Apple? Walmart? Amazon?

 
Eye test, gut test and every meaningful metric I can think of says we are not Oregon's peer over the last 10 years.

The rest of the list looks about right.

Since joining the Big 10 we seem to be peers of Iowa, Minnesota and Northwestern, and that's what I'd like to correct first.

 
Guy Chamberlin said:
Eye test, gut test and every meaningful metric I can think of says we are not Oregon's peer over the last 10 years.

The rest of the list looks about right.

Since joining the Big 10 we seem to be peers of Iowa, Minnesota and Northwestern, and that's what I'd like to correct first.
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I'll give you Minnesota, but we're 3-1 against Iowa and Northwestern. Some of the Iowa games have been close, but also boring as hell, and we've also lucked out against Northwestern, but our only loss was by 3 and we've won everything else. I wouldn't go quite that far, especially after last season.

 
Actually we're 6 - 2 against Iowa and Northwestern since joining the Big 10, but it took two miraculous comebacks -- at home -- to keep us from being 4 - 4. And that leaves a one point win against Northwestern and a meltdown loss on Senior Day at home against Iowa. I guess it's that I don't expect Nebraska to win against the second tier of the conference anymore, and they sure as hell don't fear Nebraska. So it feels very peerish.

I'd say our closest peer in all of college football is Michigan. Similar legacy and similar expectations. Pretty much in the same place these days.

 
Guy Chamberlin said:
Actually we're 6 - 2 against Iowa and Northwestern since joining the Big 10, but it took two miraculous comebacks -- at home -- to keep us from being 4 - 4. And that leaves a one point win against Northwestern and a meltdown loss on Senior Day at home against Iowa. I guess it's that I don't expect Nebraska to win against the second tier of the conference anymore, and they sure as hell don't fear Nebraska. So it feels very peerish.

I'd say our closest peer in all of college football is Michigan. Similar legacy and similar expectations. Pretty much in the same place these days.
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I think he meant - and maybe you caught that - that we were 3-1 against both which would be 6-2 combined.

I agree that we were very close to losing to NW again but I think all of the first three Northwestern games were much more about us playing down to their level than them competing with us. Splitting hairs to some extent but if you look at the stats and how the game went, we dominated those games - even the game we lost - everywhere but the scoreboard. OK, dominated is probably a little strong but those games could easily have been as bad of a beating as we gave them last year if we don't shoot ourselves in the foot repeatedly (which, I know, wasn't an uncommon occurrence).

And I don't know if I'd call Iowa last year a "miraculous" comeback. Again, semantics and all but we were down three scores - after handing them a TD - but it was still the middle of the third quarter. We'd already taken the lead with 12 minutes to play, though we did need the late FG to force OT.

 
Another team I think might be our peer is Penn State. They've had similar results and circumstances these past 15 years. Except for the scandal of course. And the Sandusky scandal isn't what characterizes PSU.

 
NUance said:
Another team I think might be our peer is Penn State. They've had similar results and circumstances these past 15 years. Except for the scandal of course. And the Sandusky scandal isn't what characterizes PSU.
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Penn St. can be our peer as long as they keep their hands to themselves.........

 
Even though FSU has a national title, I think they should be the top team of the peers rather than Oregon...

FSU is 96-38

Considering no one has a better record than Oregon does in the last 5 seasons combined. I feel like it's kind of a slap in the face to them especially when there are other programs that haven't been "as good" consistently.

 
Mavric said:
As for the rest of the criteria, I considered the following:


» Only teams that are in Power Five conferences and had full access to the BCS when the BCS was in play. That disqualifies Boise State, BYU, Utah, TCU and a few others. It doesn’t disqualify Notre Dame, but something else does.

» At least a 55 percent winning percentage over the last 10 seasons. That guarantees a team has won at least seven games per season.

» At least seven bowls over the last 10 years. Nebraska has played in nine, skipping only 2007. That rids us of yo-yo teams.

» A five-year average national recruiting rank in the top half of college football, as measured by combining the ratings of the 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 recruiting classes according to 247Sports Composite service. Further, any team with a national average rank 10.0 or better doesn’t qualify until Nebraska itself reaches that recruiting stratosphere. Further, the program must have some recruiting advantages (location, facilities, tradition, league placement, etc.) and at least some recruiting disadvantages.

» I’m not entirely dismissing private schools, but there aren’t any on this list, and the differences between how public and private universities operate are significant enough for me to generally disqualify them. This includes Notre Dame.

» Sheer fan decree. Thus Oklahoma makes the list, as did one Big Ten team. Since Wisconsin got the most votes from fans, I went to the No. 2 vote-getter, which has 15 fewer wins than Nebraska over the last decade and a new head coach, just like the Huskers.
Click to expand...
Here are the 12 peer programs — 10 of my own picks, plus the two fan favorites — from worst 10-year record to best:


Iowa
Arizona State
Michigan
Georgia Tech
Michigan State
Oklahoma State
West Virginia
Clemson
Missouri
Wisconsin
Oklahoma
Oregon
Click to expand...
Link
Click to expand...
I'm sorry, but Sam is wayyy off here. Georgia Tech, Michigan State, Clemson, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Oregon have all won major BCS/New Years 6/Conference championships within the last few years. Nebraska hasn't been close to accomplishing what Oregon has accomplished. Or What MSU has accomplished the last 2 years...

Winning 55% of your games is nice, but winning the right games is what matters.

 
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