2019 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Pac-12

Last week we looked at how Pac-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 2019 Pac-12 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, Pac-12 teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

Both schools from the Evergreen State significantly under-performed relative to their APR. Washington State finished 1-3 in one-score conference games and also finished dead last in in-conference turnover margin (-13). Their brethren from Seattle were even worse in one-score Pac-12 games, finishing 0-4. By contrast, each of Washington's four league wins came by at least twelve points. No team significantly exceeded their APR, but Colorado came close. Perhaps Mel Tucker saw the writing on the wall in regards to how good Colorado actually was and this contributed to him taking the Michigan State job.

When the Meek Inherit the Earth
Last week I used the 247 Talent Composite to try and find value when elite teams were underdogs to non-elites. For the past five years, there has not been any value to be had. This week, I will be doing the same thing, but different. Or maybe doing a different thing the same way. Instead of looking at elite teams as underdogs, I wanted to look at what happens when the dregs of college football are favored. The methodology is explained in the next paragraph, so if you only want the results, skip down.

Using the 247 Talent Composite, I calculated the mean and standard deviation talent ratings for all Power Five teams (and Notre Dame) for the years 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. As I mentioned last week, I ignored the Group of Five teams because with the exception of about five teams per season, Power Five teams all have more 'talent' than Group of Five teams. Using the mean and standard deviation, I determined which Power Five teams were more than one standard deviation below average in terms of raw talent. Whereas about two teams per season were at least two standard deviations above average, no team was more than two standard deviations below average in any season. On average, about eleven teams per season were at least one standard deviation below average. Once I determined the teams, I looked at all instances where these 'dregs' of the Power Five were favored against any other Power Five team that was not a dreg and calculated how they fared against the spread. I also separated out instances where they were extreme favorites (three points on the road, six points at a neutral site, and nine points at home). With that out of the way, here are the results.

Seventeen schools have been one standard deviation below average in raw talent at least once in the past five seasons. Some of them are obvious (Wake Forest) and others are a little shocking (Arizona -- RIP Kevin Sumlin). They are listed in the table below.

Five schools have been one standard deviation below average in all five seasons. Four of those schools have been at least moderately successful in that span (Boston College, Kansas State, Wake Forest, and Washington State) and the other is Kansas.

So how did these dregs of Power Five football (talent-wise) fare against the spread when they were favored against more talented Power Five teams? As you might expect, not that great.

They covered 42.5% of the time as favorites and were marginally better as extreme favorites (44.4%). Here are how the individual teams performed as favorites.

When you break things down by team, the Washington State Cougars stand out. They were favored 23 times in the past five seasons against more talented Power Five teams which is more than double the number of times of the second most favored team (Virginia). They were an extreme favorite 14 times, which is more than three times as often as any other team. They are also one of three teams (Wake Forest and Indiana are the other two) to post a winning ATS record as a favorite. Some statistically inclined folks might call them an outlier. When we remove them from the equation, the record of these Power Five dregs as favorites comes into clearer focus.

Excluding Washington State, these talent-challenged Power Five teams covered less than 37% of the time and just under 32% of the time as extreme favorites. When filling out a parlay card, you may have intuitively believed betting against a team like Purdue as a favorite was a good idea. Data has confirmed your intuitions. When a team with inferior talent is favored against a more talented team, betting against them has proven profitable at the window the past five seasons, especially when you don't bet against Mike Leach.