2017 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 2017 Big 12 standings.

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

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

I use a game and a half as a line of demarcation to determine if teams drastically over or under perform their APR. By that standard no team drastically over or under-performed relative to their APR. Since we don't have anything interesting to talk about here, let's talk about one of the most interesting teams in the Big 12: Kansas.

For anyone who has followed Kansas football the last few seasons, let me start by offering my heartfelt apologies. Since 2010, Kansas football has been a dumpster fire. While the basketball team just won their fourteenth consecutive Big 12 title, the football team has managed a grand total of four conference wins in that span! Some might argue Kansas has been atrocious since 2009, and while its true the Jayhawks won just a single conference game in 2009, that team was at least competitive. The 2009 Kansas team actually scored more points (353) than they allowed (341) and were unlucky to finish with just one conference win, losing three games by a touchdown or less. The Jayhawks ended the year on a seven-game losing streak. This made it much easier to fire their successful, player-abusing coach. Since Mark Mangino’s departure, the program has cratered. Kansas has now won three or fewer games for eight consecutive seasons. This got me to thinking, how does Kansas stack up with other woeful power conference teams? Are the Jayhawks currently in the midst of one of the worst runs in recent college football history or do they have company in the gutter? To answer that question, first I needed to identify a reasonable time period to examine. College football has been played for a long time, but the game looked pretty different in the early 1900s, so comparing Kansas to the 1901 Bowdoin Polar Bears doesn’t provide much value. However, in 1984 a pretty significant event occurred that revolutionized college football. The SCOTUS ruled that individual conferences and schools could negotiate their own television deals. Using this watershed moment as a clear delineation, we’ll define post-1984 as the ‘modern era’ of college football. So, with three and a half decades of history, I looked at power conference teams (this includes the current Power 5 and former BCS conferences as well as those teams in the old Southwest Conference prior to the formation of the Big 12) that won three or fewer games in at least six consecutive seasons with a negative SRS score. SRS measures how many points a team is above or below average and ensures that our query captures teams that were truly bad, and not those that were simply unlucky.

In addition to Kansas, five other teams met these criteria. They are listed below.

The good news for Kansas is that most of these teams experienced at least a modicum of success shortly after their sojourn through the wilderness. Baylor almost qualified for a bowl game in 2005, hired Art Briles a few years later, and reached unfathomable heights (with no off field troubles whatsoever). Iowa State saw outstanding individual achievement even in the core of their struggles. It took Dan McCarney a few years to find traction, but the Cyclones played in five bowls in six seasons between 2000 and 2005. During their miserable run in the 80’s Kansas State hired the best coach in college football history and nearly played for the national title in 1998. After a brief retirement, The Wizard is still in Manhattan working miracles. Northwestern played in the Rose Bowl in 1995 and have been annual bowl contenders since. It took Temple longer than the other four teams to reach respectability, but even after they were booted from the Big East, the Owls managed to play in a bowl game within a decade and even won their conference in 2016. Yes Kansas fans, things may look bleak now, but climbing out of the muck can happen quicker than you might expect. Of course, the Jayhawks have produced their worst SRS scores in their current run of inefficacy under head coach David Beatty, so he may not be the man to coach the next bowl bound Jayhawk team.

One thing that surprised me when gathering this data was the teams that did not appear on this list. I figured ACC punching bags Wake Forest and Duke as well as SEC bottom dweller Vanderbilt would meet the criteria for inclusion. While all have fielded bad teams since the mid-80’s, they have always managed to intersperse those years of futility with moments of competency.