The Gang of Five watched Toledo lose on Tuesday night to Northern Illinois, magnifying everything which already applied to the American Athletic Conference below:
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Anyone who’s done some serial dating in their life knows how this story ends.
You’re going out with three to four gals at the same time, because that’s what you do when you’re young. You understand that you’re on borrowed time before one of them runs into another when you’re out with one and not the other.
The careful ones have set places you go to each one with, but sometimes, you’re in a Sam Hunt song and “these county lines just keep on closing in.” I’m disgraced at myself for that last line.
In college football, the inverse is sometimes true. We go all seasons without the folks vying for the same thing running into one another, often by design that we call, “lousy out of conference scheduling.”
This year, however, the Gang of Five (G5) teams of national consequence (save for Toledo) have one bar in town, and nothing else to do on a Friday night. (Toledo is playing before Friday a lot of times this month.)
Memphis, if it wins out, has a reasonable claim (if other pieces fall into place) that it deserves a CFB Playoff spot. You don’t paddle a very good Ole Miss team and deserve to have the committee ignore it because of a lack of a brand name.
Their next three weeks become the G5 Tour of Doom, starting with a Navy squad that, while isn’t in the playoff hunt, is certainly a top-25 level group.
Moreover, Navy is fourth in the nation in rushing (as the Midshipmen usually are), and is its usual, physical, “difficult to prepare for because you can’t simulate it in practice” self. You can’t just become a triple option team for a week. For all the guff the Tigers get about their defense not holding up, however, they are 22nd in the country against the run, and that’s not a function of being ahead by so much that teams stop running.
They’ve seen 295 opponent rushes, higher totals than significantly less successful teams such as Vanderbilt and Arkansas.
In fact, the one common thread of all the G5 heavyweights is that they’re all in the top 27 against the run. Toledo entered Tuesday night’s game 27th. Temple and Houston are closer to the top 10. Navy runs the ball in a unique way, and there’s a difference between being good against the run and defending a well-schooled triple-option team. The Tigers cannot afford the slow start they had against Tulane, which is one of those obvious things that doesn’t require elaboration.
From there, it’s the Temple and Houston road show, where against the former they’re sure to be subjected to the “property of transitive opponents” theory with Notre Dame.
Houston might reasonably have the best shot at a playoff spot among the G5 contenders, having three of its final four at home, including Navy, before an AAC title game that might have national intrigue. It’s unclear, though, how much national pull Houston would get if it went unbeaten.
The Cougars have no landmark (or Landshark, I guess) wins to fall back on, and their only dips into the Power 5 pond were with underwhelming Louisville and Vandy.
Houston’s best shot is going unbeaten (hey, another obvious statement!) and then seeing Temple go scorched earth after its first loss until the AAC title game, where the Owls would lose to Houston convincingly. Still, from a perception point of view, that might not be enough.
We’ll find out about all these teams most people don’t know much about, and it’s coming down the pike awfully soon.
It’s Friday night in G5 land, and everyone’s at the bar for the live local act to put on a show. Whether or not they all cannibalize one another’s chances at true love, or at least true like, is a matter we’ll only know right before closing time.
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