September 5, 2005

Interview with David Malinsky

Last week I had the opportunity to talk with Dave Malinsky, a senior analyst for Covers.com to talk college football. He had a lot of great insights -- some of them might even surprise you.

I will note that this interview was not recorded and this is not a transcript -- additionally it has been edited for length.

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Fanblogs: There’s been a lot of talk about USC in the off-season. Lot’s of people think they can pull another national title. What do you think, can they do it again?

Malinksy: The door is definitely open they have, potentially, one of the best offenses in the history of college football. They have a lot of future NFL players. I don’t think they’re going to miss Norm Chow – they’re going to stay inside of his playbook. One thing Chow was really good at, and we saw this in the Oklahoma game, was game planning for one team. For most of the schedule, USC is good enough to win on talent alone. They might have some difficulty on the road at ASU and Cal, but by the end of the season the coaches and players will be on the same page. There’s a good opportunity for USC this year.

F: You mentioned kids who will probably be playing on Sundays soon – USC has a lot of Heisman hopefuls, who do you like in the Heisman race this year?

M: I don’t think you’re going to see the same numbers out of Leinart this year – last year was a special situation. You probably won’t see him getting 412 attempts. USC was in some close games last year, and USC was trying to get him the heisman. This year USC has a lighter schedule and Pete Carroll is going to be looking to the future and hoping to get some other players some game experience. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a loss of 50 passing attempts, or more, this year.

The player I think is in the best position for the Heisman this year is Chris Leak. We know that Leak is a brilliant fit for Urban Meyer’s system and he also has some other advantages. If you look at it regionally, Leak really has no competition in the SEC. All of the other major conferences have several people vying for the title and will share votes. But we know that Leak will get the numbers – Florida will have a number of close games and there’s no major running back to shoulder the burden.

F: Changing gears for a moment, I know that you all cover a lot of different sports, where does college football rank in terms of difficulty of prediction?

M: College football has always been a favorite of ours. One good measure, as far as we’re concerned, is return on investment and if you compare them, college football will come in #1 year in and year out.

F: Why do you think that is?

M: There’s a real diversity of styles of play in college football. If you look at professional sports, like the NBA for example, there’s no real diversity – to an extent the rules keep teams from being too diverse. If you look at the NFL, nobody is ever going to run the wishbone. College football has a huge variation in offenses and defenses and on top of that, there are 120 teams to look at so there’s a lot of diversity there.

F: That diversity causes some problems for the pollsters too, though… are there any polls, computer or human, that you think do a good job? That you all look at fairly consistently?

M: The polls have, from the very beginning, been one of our good friends because they’re not really very good. The Coaches’ Poll for example… the coaches are the people who should least be able to put together a good ranking. Say you’re Oklahoma’s coach and you’re playing Texas in Dallas and then your ballot is due the next day. You don’t have time to even really see the teams. A lot of coaches will only see the other team’s if they’re playing them. Sportswriters have the same problem – most of them are covering some particular team so they’re very isolated. So these polls really work for us because they determine so much of the perception of the game but they’re not really very accurate.

If you look at the computer polls, you have a problem with the number of data points. Jeff Sagarin’s ratings are very good for Basketball, but college football just doesn’t have enough data points to smooth out the glitches.

F: Those polls have a huge weighting in the BCS… do you think the BCS suffers those same failings, then? Would a playoff be a better solution?

M: The problem with a playoff is that most systems that are proposed use the same polls the BCS does. If you look back over the past five years you see that in some of the situations you’ve got two teams with a legitimate claim to be the #1 team in the country, but if you were to go to a playoff you would have a lot more teams who thought they were the #8 team. It would be hard to determine who the last team in would be.

One possible solution would be to extend the season one game after all of the bowls are complete and allow the top two teams to play for the national title. I think you’d find if you went back that it would be a rare occasion for more than two teams to have a valid claim to the top spot, so that would solve most of the controversies we’ve had.

F: So far this off season it seems as though the Michigan fans have been even more, shall we say, boisterous than usual… do they have a claim there, or are they just blowing smoke?

M: I think what you’re seeing is a bit of excitement because of what the fans saw last year… young playmakers. Lloyd Carr has had some outstanding defenses, but the reason why Michigan is usually good is not because of their outstanding offense, but their ability to manage the game. This year Hart and Henne look very good and that’s something a Carr team hasn’t really seen. Also, their schedule lays out well. They do have a danger spot on the road at Iowa, but really Michigan has a schedule that should take them undefeated into their game with Ohio State.

F: Now there are a lot of new coaches running around or, rather, teams with new coaches… who do you think is going to make the best first impression this season?

M: We talked briefly about this before, but I think Urban Meyer is going to have a great year. One of the reasons is that usually when you get a new coach it’s because the team was in trouble. Florida was not in trouble last year. You could’ve watched every Florida game last year and walked away thinking that they were the best team on the field. They just underperformed. Also, I think we’re going to see that Alex Smith was really a very ordinary talent and Meyer now has a player in Leak with true talent.

A lot of times when new coaches come in they’re having to put new systems in so they’ll have to take a step back before they can move forward. If you look at New Mexico State, they may even have to take two steps back. They’re working with a line that was recruited for drive blocking for the option, now they’re going to have to turn them into nimble pass blockers, so it might take a little longer.

Les Miles at LSU is a decent choice, but he simply can’t help but have a good season. You have to believe that if LSU loses a game or two this year it’s going to be a bit of a let down with all of the talent they still have, so he’ll have a difficult time impressing given the expectations.

F: Lou Holtz came into South Carolina a few years back and made them decent almost immediately, but that sort of fell off. Is Spurrier going to be able to turn South Carolina into a powerhouse over the next four or five years?

M: Spurrier has a better shot than Holtz because of playmakers. Holtz’s style didn’t play well in the SEC because you have to be able to win with speed and playmakers. Holtz had success in the past by winning the line of scrimmage but was susceptible on the perimeter. Spurrier’s question is how he is going to win the recruiting game. When he was having his run at Florida he pretty much controlled the state. Now there are three or four new D-I schools that are going after the same recruits. So it’s going to be interesting to see if high schools in Florida are going to want to send their kids to Meyer in Gainesville or whether Spurrier can get them in South Carolina. To be successful, though, Spurrier has to recruit out of Florida.

F: It’s going to be a tough conference to make headway in. In the off-season it seems that a favorite pass-time of fans is debating who has the better conference. Top to bottom, who do you think is the best conference this year?

M: Going in, the SEC ha a little wider gap than they normally do. There’s a lot of strength in the conference – Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee, LSU, and so on. There are probably six teams in the SEC who would do no worse than second in any other conference in the nation. On the bottom the only team that doesn’t look to be trending upward is Kentucky, so the bottom is really no worse than normal.

F: Back to the topic of coaches for a moment, it seems like every year we hear that this will be Paterno’s last year. Just how long can this guy last, anyway?

M: As bad as Penn State’s record was last year, there were some good things on the field. In 2002 Penn State was just a few bounces from playing for the National Championship. Last year, Penn State might have had the best defense in the nation when you factor in the lack of offensive support. It’s possible that Penn State could have a good season next year and if Paterno has one last great season, he’ll hang it up. He’s too competitive to walk out a loser.

F: Do you think it’s accurate to say that as much as Paterno has done for the university that they probably aren’t going to boot him any time soon? That if he leaves it’ll be of his own accord?

M: That’s probably true. Short of him having a 1-10 season or some sort of serious disruption I see him leaving on his own, possibly after next season.

F: What teams do you think are going to surprise us this year… both in terms of out-playing their expectations and under-performing?

M: Usually when you lose a lot of key players, conventional wisdom tends to downgrade a team, but Cal – almost man-for-man – their replacements are better than the ones they lost, but they ended up dropping anyway. In addition, they’re going to have a lot of time to develop as a team before they meet USC. There’s just something about that game, too – if you look at the last three years, USC was not the better team. Last year, for example, Cal out played USC with 424 yards of total offense compared to USC’s 205. I think you’ll see that, a lot like Alex Smith, Aaron Rodgers was an ordinary talent – Lynch is a much better player. Cal could be something real special this year.

F: And how about the under-performers?

M: That one is more tricky, a lot of factors play in, so we’ll just have to see. One to watch for, though, would be Ohio State. They don’t seem to be maintaining talent levels. One test of a good coach is one who improves the talent level from year to year, but since OSU’s championship season we’ve seen a steady decline, and Tressel didn’t even win that championship with his own recruits. The only one who Tressel could really claim was Maurice Clarett and that might not have even been him. We might see their record falling for the third straight year.

F: One last question before I let you go, for those folks who aren’t out there betting on college football but want to, what sorts of beginner mistakes are commonly made? What should they avoid?

M: The biggest thing is the perception of the teams themselves, going back to the polls that’s a very misleading measure and it makes the betting lines confusing. You might see a ranked team only picked by a few points over an unranked team and think that’s a great bet, but in reality it might not be. Another might be betting with the heart instead of the head. That might add a certain amount of enjoyment to the game itself, but it’s not a very good way to make money.

F: Great advice. Well Dave, I just want to thank you for taking the time to chat with us today.

M: It was a pleasure.

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Fanblogs also wants to thank Covers.com for arranging the interview. Covers.com is the world's leading online media organization for sports statistics, odds and news from a gaming perspective. Founded in 1995, Covers.com is operated by Comprehensive Sports Information Limited (CSI), located in Halifax, Canada. Covers.com provides timely information on the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and College Football and Basketball. For more information, please visit www.covers.com.

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