2019 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: MAC

Last week we looked at how MAC 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 2019 MAC standings.

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

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

Conference champion Miami significantly exceeded their expected record while their division rival, and arguably the best team in the conference, Buffalo, under-performed relative to their APR. The reason both teams significantly over or under-performed is simple: record in close games. Buffalo finished 0-2 in close conference games, losing by a single point to Ohio and three points to Kent State. Their five conference wins all came by at least nineteen points. Meanwhile, Miami was 4-0 in one-score conference games, including three wins by exactly three points.

Worst Conference Champions
Miami has won the MAC ten times in their history and a few of those title winning teams have been really good. However, their last two championship teams have been among the worst, at least in terms of their Adjusted Pythagorean Record within the MAC. The 2019 team finished 6-2 in conference play, but scored exactly as many touchdowns as they allowed against MAC competition. Almost a decade prior, in 2010, the Redhawks finished 7-1 in the MAC, but scored just two more touchdowns than they allowed. As I have APR data for each FBS conference going back to 2005, I decided to compile a list of the 'worst' conference champions by APR. I decided to look at outright conference champions only, so the 2010 Connecticut Huskies are off the hook as they finished in a three-way tie atop the Big East in 2010, but held the tiebreaker over Pitt and West Virginia thanks to head to head wins. We'll start with mid-major conferences. Here are the four worst outright mid-major champs by APR since 2005.

Three MAC teams appear on this list with Akron joining the two Miami teams. East Carolina checks in as the only mid-major team that was actually underwater in conference play. Now here are the four worst outright major conference champions.

The ACC eclipsed the MAC by sporting the four worst major conference champs since 2005. Virginia Tech in 2008 (the year almost every ACC team finished within a game of 4-4) is the lone major conference champ to finish underwater in league play.

As you may have guessed, these eight teams all entered their respective conference title games as moderate to significant underdogs (with the exception of Virginia Tech in the hyper parity of the 2008 ACC). They each managed to pull off upsets to join this esteemed list.

Thanks for reading. We'll be on our seventh conference next week when we recap the Mountain West.