2019 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: SEC

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

Ole Miss and Tennessee were the two teams that saw their actual record differ significantly from their APR. Ole Miss undershot their APR as well their expected record based on YPP and we went over some reasons for that last week. Meanwhile, Tennessee won nearly two more games than we might expect based on their ratio of touchdowns scored and allowed. The Vols were 2-0 in one-score conference games, beating both Kentucky and Missouri by four points, but they weren't exceptionally lucky in close games. The bigger culprit is their performance in their three conference losses. The Vols lost to Alabama, Florida, and Georgia (the three best teams on their schedule) by a combined 82 points. While three of their conference wins did come by double-digits, the combined margin in their five SEC victories was only 56 points.

Whatever Happened to the Conference Championship Game Shockers?
When it comes to conference championship games, the SEC is the OG. When the league expanded to twelve teams in 1992, it also instituted a divisional structure and created a conference title game to match up those two division champs. The Big 12 followed suit a few years later and after the turn of the century, the ACC got in on the fun. Post conference realignment, the Big 10 and Pac-12 also added title games. Thirty years ago, the idea of such an exhibition was a novelty, but now it is an accepted part of college football. Every FBS conference puts on a title game the first weekend in December. With the title game ensconced in the college football zeitgeist, I thought now would be a good time to examine the results of all the title games for the Power Five conferences and see if there was anything to be gleamed from the data. As the SEC has the most robust back catalog of championship games, they are the obvious place to start. The table below lists the following vital statistics about the SEC Championship Game: The straight up record of the favored team, the average spread, the largest spread, the largest upset relative to the spread, and the most recent upset.

Favored teams have done pretty well in the SEC. The favored team has won a little more than 82% of the time. The average spread being nearly ten points surprised me as did the most recent upset (I thought for sure Auburn was favored in both 2013 and 2017, but they were not). While the most recent upset was just six seasons ago, that spread was very tight. Prior to that, the next most recent upset came in 2009 in a matchup of undefeated teams. The largest upsets came two seasons apart, with Freddie Milons out-rushing Shaun Alexander in a beatdown of the Gators in 1999 and LSU ending Tennessee's national title hopes in 2001.

The record of the favorite in the SEC seems pretty good and the average spread seems pretty high, but without something to compare it to, it means nothing. So lets look at the other Power Five conferences starting with the Big 12.

Suddenly the SEC's average spread doesn't look that big. The average Big 12 spread has been nearly twelve points! In addition, while the first Big 12 title game featured the biggest upset, three of the four upsets have come from double-digit underdogs with Kansas State being both a victim (1998) and a suspect (2003). That Kansas State victory also marked the last time an underdog won with the favorite (usually Oklahoma) riding a ten game winning streak.

Now here is the ACC.

Like the Big 12, the ACC favorite has posted a similar overall record and similar spread margin. The average spread has increased significantly over the past four seasons, with Clemson being favored on average by more than twenty points in their past four trips to the title game. The Tigers are also the last team to pull off an outright upset.

Next up, the Big 10.

While the Big 10 favorite has won just over half the time, I think that can be attributed to the narrow margin of the average spread. Prior to the last two games (where Ohio State was a double-digit favorite in both) the average spread was under four and a half points.

Finally, here are the numbers for the Pac-12.

Favored teams have done quite well in the nine Pac-12 title games, with Oregon's victory over Utah representing one of only two times an underdog has won outright (Stanford over Arizona State in 2013 was the other).

So now we can try to answer the question I posed earlier. Where have all the upsets gone? For starters, there haven't been that many to begin with. Overall, favored teams are 61-18 in Power Five conference title games (just north of a 77% winning percentage). Favorites of at least a touchdown are 41-8 (nearly 84%) and double-digit favorites are 26-4 (almost 87%) with the last double-digit underdog to win outright being Florida State in 2005.

Also, consider the four teams to lose as double-digit favorites: Kansas State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Virginia Tech. Nebraska (at least in 1996) and Oklahoma are powerhouses, but Kansas State and Virginia Tech may have arguably possessed less raw talent than the teams they were favored to crush (Texas A&M and Florida State).

I have a limited understanding of statistics, but I think what may be going on here is a Poisson Distribution. It's not deadly and doesn't involve the thousands of women Bret Michaels slept with, but instead refers to the probability of a given number of events occurring. For the reasons outlined above (and a whole lot of randomness), there was a cluster of upsets between 1996 and 2005 (seven favorites of at least a touchdown lost in that span) and we've just been going through a dry spell since. Similarly in college basketball, there were four fifteen seeds that defeated two seeds between 1991 and 2001. Then we went more than a decade without one before having two in 2012 and another in 2013, followed by another in 2016. There have been a few close calls since Clemson pulled the last upset as a touchdown underdog in 2011 (Georgia on two occasions against Alabama, Baylor taking Oklahoma to overtime last season, and Georgia Tech against Florida State to name a few). It will happen. Just give it some time. You probably won't see it coming which will make it even better.