Danny Kanell's harebrained ESPN and SEC conspiracy forgot this one important rule

College football fans were treated to a healthy helping of tinfoil-hat-level theories when they got on X yesterday, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood SEC hater, Danny Kanell. Apparently, the former Florida State quarterback was disgruntled over the most recent update to ESPN's FPI ratings, one which saw Clemson and Miami drop quite a few spots.

You can view the video in the post below, but the core of what he's saying is essentially this: since the rating updated without any significant results vis-a-vis roster additions or subtractions, or any sort of game being played, this is most likely the result of ESPN's bias towards the SEC.

Of course, this is not how advanced statistical profiles tend to work. There are updates throughout the offseason, some of which do have to do with roster changes, but others have to do with underlying tweaks to the formula. Bill Connelly's SP+ does the same thing, as does Kelley Ford's KFordRatings.

Danny Kanell's tinfoil hat theories about ESPN, SEC conspiracy forgot an important rule

The FPI update does seem to change more than you'd expect, however— but Kanell jumping to conclusion here is, frankly speaking, pretty unjustified. He forgot the most important rule when understanding situations like this: never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

As CFB Nerds outlined in a response thread, the reason that these ACC teams in particular were moved down like this had more to do with an update in ESPN's data than formula or some kind of conspiracy:

This adequately explains the entire thing— but, as you'd expect, Kanell was quite ready to sound off about a perceived conspiracy to benefit the SEC. When you're raring to go that badly, little things like research and fact-checking don't take priority.

Of course, basic reasoning could have helped here, too. Why didn't any Big 12 teams see this kind of fall? What about the Big 10 teams?

He tries to raise a point about how Bret Bielema's Illinois team is being disrespected for being ranked below South Carolina when they just beat them in a bowl, too. Hey, Danny, did you consider that this is a rating for next year and not this past one? Did you know that teams change year over year?

The point is not that South Carolina is absolutely better than Illinois for the upcoming year— they may well not be. The point is that there's plenty of warrant to rank Carolina higher in the preseason whether or not Luke Altmeyer is coming back to Illinois, and to act as though last year's bowl game is some silver bullet here is to be intentionally obtuse.