YPP Throwback: The 2007 Western Athletic Conference

Our throwback series continues. This week, we take a look at the 2007 iteration of the Western Athletic Conference.

First, here are the WAC standings from 2007.

If the years sort of run together for you, 2007 was the year a WAC team went undefeated in the regular season and qualified for a BCS bowl game. But it wasn't Boise State. No, that was the previous season. 2007 was the year of the Hawaii Warriors. The most geographically isolated FBS team rode a soft schedule, (but challenging logistically - more on that later) to an undefeated regular season and who's to say what happened in the bowl game? 2007 marked the second of five straight years a team from outside the BCS conferences would qualify for a BCS bowl game.

So we know what each team achieved, but how did they perform? To answer that, here are the Yards Per Play (YPP), Yards Per Play Allowed (YPA) and Net Yards Per Play (Net) numbers for each team. This includes conference play only. The teams are sorted by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.

Hawaii and Boise State finished a combined 15-1 in WAC play and they were also the top two teams in Net YPP. At the other end of the standings, Idaho, New Mexico State, and Utah State all finished at least one yard per play in the red in Net YPP and the three also combined for a 3-21 record in conference play.

College football teams play either eight or nine conference games. Consequently, their record in such a small sample may not be indicative of their quality of play. A few fortuitous bounces here or there can be the difference between another ho-hum campaign or a special season. Randomness and other factors outside of our perception play a role in determining the standings. It would be fantastic if college football teams played 100 or even 1000 games. Then we could have a better idea about which teams were really the best. Alas, players would miss too much class time, their bodies would be battered beyond recognition, and I would never leave the couch. As it is, we have to make do with the handful of games teams do play. In those games, we can learn a lot from a team’s YPP. Since 2005, I have collected YPP data for every conference. I use conference games only because teams play such divergent non-conference schedules and the teams within a conference tend to be of similar quality. By running a regression analysis between a team’s Net YPP (the difference between their Yards Per Play and Yards Per Play Allowed) and their conference winning percentage, we can see if Net YPP is a decent predictor of a team’s record. Spoiler alert. It is. For the statistically inclined, the correlation coefficient between a team’s Net YPP in conference play and their conference record is around .66. Since Net YPP is a solid predictor of a team’s conference record, we can use it to identify which teams had a significant disparity between their conference record as predicted by Net YPP and their actual conference record. I used a difference of .200 between predicted and actual winning percentage as the threshold for ‘significant’. Why .200? It is a little arbitrary, but .200 corresponds to a difference of 1.6 games over an eight game conference schedule and 1.8 games over a nine game one. Over or under-performing by more than a game and a half in a small sample seems significant to me. In the 2007 season, which teams in the WAC met this threshold? Here are WAC teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Fresno State significantly exceeded their expected record. The Bulldogs were only 2-1 in close conference games, but they also scored five non-offensive touchdowns while allowing none in their eight conference games. Non-offensive touchdowns are not predictive, but they can massively alter the win probability of a game. Meanwhile, Nevada and Idaho significantly under-performed relative to their expected record. Nevada, led by a soon to be famous (or infamous true freshman quarterback) finished 2-4 in one-score conference games while Idaho was 0-2 in such contests and had the worst in-conference turnover margin (-9) of any team.

Various and Sundry Musings on Hawaii
Hawaii finished unbeaten in the WAC in 2007 and that unbeaten record paved the way for the Warriors to play in the Sugar Bowl (to date only their second ever postseason trip to the mainland). In league play, the Warriors were dominant at home, winning their quartet of WAC homes games by a combined 71 points with the smallest margin of victory coming by seven points against Fresno State. However, their road trips were another matter. The Warriors beat Louisiana Tech by a single point in overtime (when the Bulldogs failed on a two-point conversion attempt), beat San Jose State by a touchdown in overtime, and beat Nevada by two points. You might expect this out of Hawaii since their travel is unique among FBS teams as they are isolated on some sort of land mass out in the Pacific Ocean. Hawaii was definitely better by Net YPP at home, but their road numbers were quite good.

If you have forgotten how the Net YPP shook out in the WAC and are too lazy to scroll back up, keep in mind their road number (+1.74) would have ranked first in the conference in 2007 even without their dominant home performance. In the interest of full disclosure, that road number is not unduly influenced by their beat down of Idaho. If we look at their other three road conference games (that they won by a combined ten points), their Net YPP numbers are still good.

Despite the fact that Hawaii was solid overall in their road games, they were usually digging themselves out of a big hole.

At home, the Warriors trailed a bad Utah State team in the early going, but had had built up an eighteen-point lead by halftime. They never trailed against either New Mexico State or Fresno State and while they fell behind Boise State 7-0, they had regained the lead by halftime and led the Broncos by double-digits for all of the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, on the road, they fell behind 14-0 to Louisiana Tech and needed a field goal with under two minutes left to force overtime. They blitzed Idaho from the opening kickoff, but were down double-digits to San Jose State in the first half and needed to score fourteen unanswered points in the fourth quarter to force overtime. Finally, while they were never down big to Nevada, they did need a field goal in the last half minute to pull that one out of the fire. Could the travel challenges be the reason Hawaii's output on the scoreboard failed to match their strong per play dominance in their road games? I think so, especially when you consider the San Jose State and Nevada games were short rest road games.

Hawaii played San Jose State and Nevada on Friday instead of Saturday in 2007. In the modern era of college football, this is not uncommon. There are typically a handful of games each Thursday and Friday and once the calendar turns to November, there might be games on Tuesday and Wednesday as well. However, what made those particular Friday night games unique is that Hawaii played both Friday road games six days after playing at home. Stating the obvious, this means Hawaii not only had less time to prepare, but also had the extra challenge of flying several thousand miles to the continental United States. Hawaii has played a short rest road game just nine times since the turn of the century and as you might guess, the results have not been great.

Hawaii is just 3-6 in those games, but the real story is the margin of defeat. Typically in short week road games, the Warriors have been pounded. The Warriors have been outsored on average by about 21 points per game. I'll also point out the Warriors are 3-3 in such games under June Jones and 0-3 when coached by anyone else.

Hawaii faced a very easy schedule (by strength of opponent) in 2007. There were two FCS teams on the slate, a bad UNLV team in the non-conference, a Power Five team that finished 4-9 (Washington), and eight mediocre to bad WAC teams. However, give the Warriors credit for pulling out those two short rest road games in a brutal scheduling spot. After their performance against Georgia (or lack thereof), some were of the opinion the Warriors did not deserve that BCS bid. On the contrary, with the logistical challenges Hawaii faces on the regular, along with the specific tough spots they were put in that season, I think an undefeated Warriors team was worthy of an opportunity to get the brakes beaten off of them by a motivated Georgia team.

In 2007, every conference did not have a championship game, but Hawaii was playing for their BCS berth on Championship Saturday. The Warriors hosted the Washington Huskies and played like shit for the first quarter. The soon to be 4-9 Huskies jumped out to a 21-0 lead and led 28-7 mid-way through the second quarter. However, the Warriors cut the deficit to seven by halftime and shut out the Huskies in the second half to win 35-28. The win marked the seventh home victory by the Warriors under June Jones against a BCS conference opponent. In fact, the Warriors were a respectable 7-7 in home games against BCS conference opponents under Jones (including bowl games).

However, I think we should discard a few of those contests. For example, the Warriors opened the 2005 season against a Southern Cal team ranked first in the country and riding a twenty-two game winning streak. Should they really get a demerit for losing to that stacked team? I don't think so. If we remove the games against ranked teams, the Warriors were 7-3 in home games against BCS conference opponents under Jones. For a team that did not win a game the year before he arrived, that ain't half bad. I know his career fizzled at the end of his SMU tenure and he is probably most remembered by NFL fans for a sideline outburst by his starting quarterback while coaching the Atlanta Falcons, but his nine seasons in charge of the Warriors were a master class in rebuilding and maintaining at a tough place to win.

Next week, we'll examine the Sun Belt circa 2005. If you have any requests for this series, let me know in the comments.