2015 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Big 12

Last week, we looked at how Big 12 teams fared in terms of yards per play. This week, we turn our attention to how the season played out in terms of the Adjusted Pythagorean Record, or APR. For an in-depth look at APR, click here. If you didn’t feel like clicking, here is the Reader’s Digest version. APR looks at how well a team scores and prevents touchdowns. Non-offensive touchdowns, field goals, extra points, and safeties are excluded. The ratio of offensive touchdowns to touchdowns allowed is converted into a winning percentage. Pretty simple actually.

Once again, here are the 2015 Big 12 standings.

And here are the APR standings sorted by rank with conference rank in offensive touchdowns, touchdowns allowed, and APR in parentheses. This includes conference games only.

Finally, the Big 12 teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

Oklahoma State was the only team that saw their actual record differ significantly from their APR. The Cowboys also exceeded their expected record based on Net YPP, so we won't bother examining them again. Instead, lets talk about the bonkers season Texas Tech enjoyed.

A few weeks ago, I unveiled a new stat I called the ‘Excitement Index’. Basically it measured how often offensive touchdowns were scored in a team’s games. Boston College rated as the least exciting team since 2005 by this measure. I also indicated a team from 2015 rated pretty highly. That team played its home games in Lubock, Texas. The Texas Tech Red Raiders and their opponents combined to score an amazing 104 touchdowns in nine conference games. Perhaps no game was more indicative of their season than their back-and-forth 55-52 loss to TCU. The top ten teams since 2005 in the ‘Excitement Index’ are listed below.

Let’s take a moment to celebrate the absurdity of Louisiana Tech’s 2012 season. The Bulldogs, as you may remember, played in the sendoff season for the Western Athletic Conference. The league had just seven teams, including two FBS novices (Texas State and Texas-San Antonio), so there were only six conference games. The Bulldogs and their opponents averaged just over eleven and a half offensive touchdowns in those six contests. Louisiana Tech spent parts of that season in the top 25 before finishing 8-4. Their 8-4 record was not good enough for a bowl bid. This is somewhat ironic considering just three years later there were not enough bowl teams and the NCAA had to use a bullcrap metric to place teams in bowl games. But I digress.