2020 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 2020 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. Since teams played a varied number of games (some played as many as six or as few as three), the rankings are on a per game basis, not raw totals. 

Finally, MAC 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 whether a team significantly over or under-performed relative to their APR. By that standard, Ball State significantly overachieved and Northern Illinois significantly underachieved. Ball State also overachieved relative to their YPP and we went over some reasons for that last week. Northern Illinois underachieved thanks to a poor record in one-score games. While the Huskies finished 0-6 overall, half of their losses came by a touchdown or less. 

Two Winless Teams

The 2020 college football season was unique to say the least. For many teams, the season did not start on time, and every team dealt with testing, postponements, and canceled games. The quirky schedule was bound to produce some odd results, and it did for the MAC. In 2020, a pair of MAC teams finished conference play without a win. Bowling Green and Northern Illinois combined to go 0-11 in MAC play. Northern Illinois lost by an average of about two touchdowns per game while Bowling Green was abysmal, losing by about five touchdowns per game. Dating back to the 2019 season, the Huskies and Falcons have combined to lose fourteen consecutive MAC games. But I'm not here to mock and gawk at all the losing that has befallen them the past two seasons. I know misery loves company, so I wanted to see how often two teams in a given conference finished winless. I decided to limit my analysis to the BCS and CFB Playoff eras (since 1998). In order for a conference to have two teams finish winless (assuming each team plays a full schedule), it needs to have more teams than conference games. And it doesn't hurt to separate those teams into divisions. While college football divisions existed before the BCS, this date serves as a nice arbitrary divide and gives us nearly a quarter century worth of data to examine. Without further adieu, here are the other conferences to produce multiple winless teams since 1998. 

The WAC expanded to sixteen teams in 1996, but the super-conference was not long for the world. 1998 was the last year of the expanded WAC and the conference continued to hemorrhage teams for the next decade or so until it finally dissolved after the 2012 campaign. In 1998, Hawaii and UNLV not only finished 0-8 in WAC play, they both failed to win any non-conference games, combining for an 0-23 overall record. Their struggles did lead to high-profile coaching changes that were at least moderately successful. Hawaii hired June Jones and was bowl eligible in seven of the next nine seasons, culminating with a Sugar Bowl appearance in 2007. UNLV hired legendary Southern Cal coach John Robinson, and while he left Sin City with a losing record, he guided the Rebels to their third ever bowl appearance in 2000. 

In 1999, the MAC pulled off a unique hat trick. Ball State and Buffalo both finished winless in MAC play and overall. In addition, Marshall, behind the pinpoint accuracy of Chad Pennington, finished unbeaten and ranked tenth in the final AP Poll. Ball State was in the midst of a twenty-one game losing streak that they would not break until October of the following season. Meanwhile, Buffalo at least had the excuse of playing their first season at the FBS level since dropping football after the 1970 season. 

Our first power conference appearance on the list. Mississippi State and Vanderbilt combined for an 0-16 SEC record, but did manage to win five non-conference games. However, Connecticut, Furman, Jacksonville State, Memphis, and Troy were not exactly formidable opponents in 2002.

The MAC is back for another appearance in 2004. Western Michigan did manage to win a game outside the league, trouncing Tennessee-Martin (runteldat) in their opener. Before bolting for Conference USA, UCF closed out their brief MAC tenure by losing all eleven of their games under former Notre Dame coach George O'Leary. The Knights would extend the losing streak to thirteen in 2005 before rallying to win eight of their final nine regular season games and play in the inaugural Conference USA Championship Game.  

The SEC returns for their second appearance on this list. The 2012 campaign was the first year of a fourteen team SEC and marked the final season for Gene Chizik at Auburn and Joker Phillips at Kentucky. However, both schools would make solid hires in Gus Malzahn and Mark Stoops respectively. 

We finally have another power conference that is not the SEC! NC State, in their first season under future Tennessee coach Dave Doeren finished winless in league play and would push their ACC losing streak to twelve games before a victory against Syracuse in November of 2014 broke it. Meanwhile, Virginia somehow beat a solid BYU team to open the season before dropping all eight of their conference games (with seven coming by double digits). 

The 2013 Mountain West saw a good head coach finish without a conference win (Troy Calhoun) and a bad head coach do the same (Norm Chow). Air Force rebounded and won ten games the next season, while Hawaii would finish the Norm Chow era with a 4-25 conference record.

2013 also gave us one final appearance of the SEC on this list. Bret Bielema (Arkansas) and Mark Stoops (Kentucky) both finished winless in conference play in their first season in charge. Bielema got his team to a bowl game faster, winning the Texas bowl the next season, but Stoops had more sustainability. He is still coaching the Wildcats while Arkansas has already hired two head coaches since firing Bielema. 

After 2013, big time losing took a break until 2019. Old Dominion and UTEP combined to lose all their conference games in 2019, but they both won tight games against FCS opponents in their openers to avoid the ignominy of losing all their games. 

Look who decided to join the MAC with a reduced schedule winless campaign in 2020. FIU and UTEP combined for an 0-7 conference record against an abbreviated schedule. By the letter, they meet the requirements, but that 0-7 mark is not even a full season's worth of conference games in normal times. Of course, technically, three Conference USA teams finished winless in league play in 2020 as Old Dominion elected to not play a fall schedule.

There you have it. Those are the conferences that produced multiple winless teams since 1998. Excluding the outlier that was 2020, it happened nine times between 1998 and 2019, which makes it more common than I thought.