State of the Nation: FCS, Turnover Luck, and Probable Cause Edition

As part of a new series at Mid-Major Madness, we will be looking at the best stories around SBNation during the past week and what they mean to us here at MMM.

This isn't your normal link fest. This could include links to football! *gasp* Yes, that sport with the oblong ball is starting this week, meaning everyone will be distracted while we continue to look at everything from players to conference to teams over the next month.

In most cases, this will be basketball related, or at least relative to basketball in some way. Without further ado, here are your best shots for some good reading:

1. Maize n Brew: FCS vs. FBS - Few things are more annoying that watching a number of FBS teams beat up on teams from the FCS (and those names might even be changing) during the first couple of weeks of the college football season. There are some "rivalries" there but for the most part, these games are just a way to get a "live" practice, with fans in the stands, and make some money. Sometimes things don't go as planned, and Maize n Brew looks back at the history of FCS upsets, along with the best bets for some to occur this coming season.

This is basically the equivalent of Chaminade taking down Ralph Sampson and Virginia, or maybe something more recent: Elon beating Clemson.

The Phoenix pulled off the biggest upset in the history of the college basketball ranking system I run back in 2005. To be clear, in the five years I had been running the rankings, nothing had come close to the level of this defeat. Since then, only a handful of games have been at this level, but none as shocking as the win by Elon.

There is a reason I call a team collapsing "Pulling a Clemson".

2. Banners on the Parkway: Without Probable Cause - The sad story of Dez Wells and his expulsion from Xavierhas been played out in the media over the last week. It appears there was some level of sexual misconduct by Wells, but he won't be charged with anything.

Brad D at Banners on the Parkway leads us on a journey that looks at the failures of the system and how Wells' story unfolded in the past few days. It is a long read but well worth it.

Think of it as a rubber-neck look at the Five Stages of Grief for Musketeers fans.

3. And the Valley Shook: Turnover Lucky - Finally we leave you with an article that should have basketball fans thinking. LSU's football team finished with a +20 turnover ratio, a stat that betting guru Phil Steele considers "turnover lucky". Basically the teams that have such an extreme turnover margin are destined for some regression next season (the same thing works for teams that are turnover unlucky).

So if LSU overachieved in taking the ball away, and weren't really as good as they seemed last season (and with the abrupt departure of the Honey Badger, we might be in a chicken and egg situation as the article points out), what are they destined for this year?

We would like to think there is a stat out there in college basketball that should be the equivalent of turnover lucky/unlucky. So what is it? In what singular category can a team overachieve to the point where they skew way above or below their actual level of talent/skill and end up with a record far different from what you would expect?

The Nation rests.