2023 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Big 12

Before we get started, Happy Leap Day to all who celebrate. Remember, as Leap Day William taught us, nothing that happens on this day counts! Last week we looked at how Big 12 teams fared in terms of yards per play.his 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 2023 Big 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, Big 12 teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

Oklahoma State significantly exceeded their expected APR while TCU and UCF significantly underachieved relative to their APR. Those same three teams also significantly overachieved (Oklahoma State) and underachieved (TCU and UCF) based on their expected record according to YPP and we went over some reasons for that last week. No need to rehash those reasons.  

We Like Lance, A Lot

In 2022, Kansas qualified for a bowl game for the first time since the waning days of the George W. Bush administration (2008). Though they ended the year by losing seven of eight games, including the Liberty Bowl, it was a phenomenal season for a team that won a grand total of eight conference games between 2009 and 2021. Expectations were muted heading into 2023, with the Jayhawks picked to finish ninth in the the new look Big 12 by the preseason periodicals. Technically, the Jayhawks only slightly exceeded those modest forecasts, finishing tied for seventh with a 5-4 league record. However, the Jayhawks finished unbeaten in the non-conference and won their bowl game against UNLV to finish 9-4. That record earned them a final ranking in the lower reaches of the AP Poll (23rd) and in the process meant head coach Lance Leipold has now guided two different schools to ranked finishes in the AP Poll. His final team at Buffalo (2020) also finished ranked. In fairness that team did not play any regular season non-conference games and thus probably deserves an asterisk of some kind, but leading Buffalo to an unbeaten regular season is still impressive in the face of a global pandemic. Is this a unique achievement? I did some research and actually this is more common than you might think. 

Among coaches that were active in 2023, 26 had guided at least two different FBS programs to ranked finishes. Those coaches are listed alphabetically in the table below. 

As usual, Nick Saban is in a class (nearly) by himself, having led three different schools to ranked finishes. That achievement looks a little less impressive when you consider that Butch Jones and Steve Sarkisian have done the same. Brian Kelly has also guided three different schools to ranked finishes and while he is a notch below Saban, he is a notch (or two) above Jones and Sarkisian. 

So roughly 20% of active FBS coaches have led multiple schools to ranked finishes. Not as impressive as I initially thought. However, Leipold has guided two schools that could charitably be described as non-traditional powers to ranked finishes. How can we quantify the difficulty in leading schools like Buffalo and Kansas to ranked finishes versus Alabama and Texas? You could probably do an in-depth historical analysis of each school, but I decided on a much simpler measure. For the 26 coaches that led two different schools to ranked finishes, I looked at their first ranked finish at each school and calculated the amount of time since that school's most recent ranked finish. Using Leipold as an example, prior to 2023, Kansas had last finished ranked in 2007, a span of 16 years. Meanwhile Buffalo had never finished ranked in their history prior to their ranked finish in 2020. Since Buffalo had never finished ranked prior to Leipold's arrival, that speaks to the rarity of his accomplishment, but also presented a problem for attempting to quantify that accomplishment. The Bulls have not been playing at the FBS level for a century like other schools. They rejoined FBS in 1999 after playing at the highest level for about a decade in the 1960s. I decided to arbitrarily calculate the amount of time for schools that had never previously been ranked as 25 years. Even if they had fielded a team for longer than that, the landscape of college football and the game itself has changed significantly in the 21st century. Those 26 coaches are listed once again, but this time they are sorted by the average amount of time between their first ranked finish at each school and the schools' most recent ranked finish prior to their arrival. Higher is better, or at least more impressive. 

Leipold shines when he adjust for each school's history. He finishes tied for second with PJ Fleck behind James Franklin. Vanderbilt went 64 years between ranked finishes prior to Franklin's arrival and he had the Commodores ranked in back to back seasons (2012 and 2013). Obviously, if Vanderbilt had never finished ranked in their history, the 25 year rule would apply and illogically derate his accomplishment. However, again the 25 year rule is far from perfect, but is intended to put all mid-majors and programs that have recently moved to FBS on a more level playing field. At the other end of the spectrum from Leipold is Lincoln Riley who inherited a stacked program from Bob Stoops at Oklahoma and engineered a quick turnaround after a momentary lull under Clay Helton at Southern Cal. 

2023 Yards Per Play: Big 12

Before we get started this week, I wanted to take a moment to mention the passing of legendary college basketball coach Lefty Driesell. For the unfamiliar, Lefty was a favorite coach of mine and the inspiration for both my old AIM screen name and the address of this blog. Obviously, as a naive 23 year old, SEO optimization did not enter my mind. Before he retired, I was able to see Lefty coach in person at the Charlotte Coliseum in December 2001. Hard to believe that was nearly a quarter century ago, but time keeps rolling along. But enough about me, lets get to why you came here in the first place, a look back the Big 12. 

Here are the 2023 Big 12 standings.

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 Big 12 team. This includes conference play only, with the championship game not included. The teams are sorted by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.

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 2023 season, which teams in the Big 12 met this threshold? Here are Big 12 teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Conference championship game participant Oklahoma State (more on them later) significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP while TCU and UCF underachieved relative to their YPP numbers. Oklahoma State was left for dead after a lackluster non-conference performance that included a close win at Arizona State and a blowout home loss to South Alabama. After a close loss to Iowa State to open conference play, it seemed like Mike Gundy might finally be on his way out in Stillwater. But the Cowboys won their next five conference games (with three coming by one-score) before getting waxed by UCF. At 5-2 and holding the tiebreaker over Oklahoma thanks to their head to head win in Bedlam, the Cowboys pulled off consecutive second half comebacks against Houston (trailed by 14 in the second quarter) and BYU (trailed by 18 at the half) to qualify for the Big 12 Championship Game. The Cowboys finished 4-1 in one-score conference games and had a decent turnover margin in Big 12 play (+4). Close games pushed the Cowboys to the pinnacle of the Big 12, but they kept TCU and UCF near the bottom of the league standings. One season after holding a horseshoe and four-leaf clover, TCU's good fortune flipped. The Horned Frogs finished 0-3 in one-score conference games (0-4 overall thanks to their opening loss to Colorado) and had the worst in-conference turnover margin in the Big 12 (-8). This kept them home for the holidays one season after they finished as the national runner up. UCF also fared poorly in one-score conference games, posting a 1-3 mark in such games. Their close game losses were especially tight, with two of the defeats coming by a single point and another coming by two points. 

Underwater in Championship Games

Doing away with divisions is probably a good thing for college football. I say probably because a team's geographic location should not arbitrarily make their path to the conference title game easier or nigh impossible (see the Big 10 for instance). However, doing away with divisions also ensures teams like Purdue, Duke, or Wake Forest will not be making conference title appearances for a very long time. Conferences obviously want their best teams to qualify for the championship game because it usually means a better game, more ticket sales, a higher television rating, and beginning in 2024, an opportunity to secure multiple CFP bids. But I'm an egalitarian (and a Wake Forest fan) so I think it rules when Purdue, Duke, or Wake randomly shows up on Championship Saturday. But I'm not here to argue for or against divisions. No, I'm here to point out a statistical anomaly. 

With unbalanced divisions, its easier for a (statistically) mediocre or bad team to qualify for the conference championship game. With an easy schedule, a few lucky bounces, a tiebreaker, and a small sample size (eight or nine game league schedule) a team that is statistically weak can finish ahead of six or seven other teams in a division. But without divisions, that same team would need to finish ahead of twice as many teams to qualify for the conference championship game. And that is exactly what Oklahoma State did in 2023. The Cowboys finished with a Net YPP of -0.27 and became just the second team to qualify for a conference championship game in a league without divisions with a negative Net YPP. The other team to do so also played in the Big 12. 

Division-less conferences have not been around for very long. By my count there have been 19 such seasons (see below), but the Big 10 and SEC are nixing divisions in 2024, meaning all the power conferences will be free-for-alls. The MAC also announced they will not have divisions in 2024, leaving the Sun Belt as the lone holdout. As leagues expand and divisions go away, I expect we will see fewer and fewer teams get to their respective conference title games with negative Net YPPs. Cherish Oklahoma State's 2023 accomplishment for its rarity!

2023 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Big 10

Last week we looked at how Big 10 teams fared in terms of yards per play.his 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 2023 Big 10 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, Big 10 teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

Using a game and a half as the standard for significant over or underachievement, no Big 10 team saw their actual record differ significantly from their APR. 

Losing Teams in Bowl Games

As the bowl schedule has expanded in recent years, more losing teams are finding their way into postseason games. Some may lament the mediocrity (or worse) of their inclusion and hearken back to the days of exclusivity in bowl games. Personally, I don't mind more college football (we don't have any games for roughly eight months out of the year), but to each his own. I'm not here to try and convince you a five win team playing in Detroit the day after Christmas is good (or bad). On the contrary, I want to see if there is any angle where we can make some extra money to pay off those holiday bills. 

In the BCS/College Football Playoff Era, nineteen teams have participated in a bowl game despite owning a losing record entering the game. Those teams have ranged from champions of brand new conferences (North Texas in 2001), to also-rans from the SEC (Mississippi State in 2016), to a glut of teams willing to play postseason exhibitions in a global pandemic. How have these teams fared both straight up and against the spread? Read on to find out!

Those nineteen teams finished with a 10-9 straight up record. Basically, they have been a coin flip to win outright in their bowl games. However, in those nineteen games, they entered as betting underdogs thirteen times meaning we would not have expected them to finish with a winning record. Nineteen games is a small sample, but these losing teams have overachieved at least relative to the moneyline. In addition, motivation does not appear to be an issue for these losing teams. They have won five of the six games in which they entered as favorites. Alas, there does not appear to be a solid ATS trend to take away from this examination. Their cumulative ATS record has also amounted to a coin flip with the teams combing for a 9-10 mark (3-3 ATS as a favorite and 6-7 ATS as an underdog). 

Unfortunately, there has not been an overarching trend when it comes to betting on or against losing teams in bowl games. My advice is to handicap their games as you would any bowl team. Focus on how they played in the regular season, keep tabs on their opt outs and coaching changes, and don't be afraid to back them on the moneyline if they enter as underdogs. 

2023 Yards Per Play: Big 10

Two conferences down. Eight to go. We head (mid) west this week and examine the Big 10. 

Here are the 2023 Big 10 standings. 

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 Big 10 team. This includes conference play only, with the championship game not included. The teams are sorted by division by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.

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 2023 season, which teams in the Big 10 met this threshold? Here are Big 10 teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Iowa and Michigan significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP while Nebraska and Illinois underachieved. Iowa and Michigan combined to finish 6-1 in one-score conference games and the Wolverines finished with the second best in-conference turnover margin (+15) in the Big 10. Meanwhile, Illinois and Nebraska has the two worst in-conference turnover margins in the Big 10 with the Illini finishing seven turnovers in the hole while Nebraska turned the ball over fifteen more times than their league foes. The Cornhuskers also finished 1-5 in one-score conference games, continuing an incredible trend I shall henceforth refer to as the Curse of Bo Pelini. 

Outliers

Iowa was bad on offense in 2023. That is not a controversial or surprising statement. Their nepo offensive coordinator was under fire before the season began thanks to their lackluster performance throughout his tenure. In order to keep his job, the Iowa offense had to average at least 25 points per game in 2023. That number included any points scored by the defense or special teams which have been fantastic over the past few seasons. The Hawkeyes just missed their goal of 25 points per game by roughly ten points. Per game. Iowa averaged 15.4 points per game in 2023 and ranked second to last in scoring offense (only Kent State averaged less). As you may have noticed from the YPP table, their per play offensive numbers were also quite bad. The Hawkeyes averaged under four yards per play against Big 10 opponents (3.85). I have YPP numbers going back to 2005, and while the Hawkeyes cannot lay claim to having the worst per play conference offense of any BCS/Power Five team in that span (my alma mater actually holds the record with 3.06 in 2014), they are by far the most successful BCS/Power Five team with a dreadful offense. 

Including Iowa last season, 28 BCS/Power Five teams have averaged less than four yards per play in conference action since 2005. 26 of those 28 teams finished with losing conference records. Iowa, of course, won their division with a 7-2 mark last season and Vanderbilt eked out a 4-4 SEC record in 2008 while averaging 3.96 yards per play. Twelve of 28 teams finished winless in conference play, seven finished with one conference win, six won two league games, and UCLA in 2008 was the only team to win three (two of their three league wins came against teams that also averaged under four yards per play). Combined the 27 teams not named Iowa, finished 26-201 in conference play, averaging less than one league win! The Hawkeyes were not a great team in 2023, but they were one of the most unique teams in recent college football history. 

For the curious, all 28 BCS/Power Five teams that averaged under four yards per play are listed below along with their conference record. 

Non-BCS and Group of Five teams that averaged under four yards per play in conference action did not fare any better. In fact, they were a little worse. Since 2005, fourteen mid-major teams have averaged under four yards per play in league games. Those teams combined for a 9-101 conference record and no team won more than three league games. 

2023 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: ACC

Last week we looked at how ACC teams fared in terms of yards per play.his 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 2023 ACC 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, ACC teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

Using the somewhat arbitrary standard of a game a half, no ACC teams significantly over or underachieved relative to their APR in 2023. 

More Than a Feeling

*Editors's Note

I write (or at least draft) these posts several days or weeks in advance, so this was written prior to Jeff Hafley taking the Green Bay defensive coordinator job. That's an interesting choice for the Packers considering the defenses Boston College put on the field. 

Is Boston College a team on the rise or are the Eagles destined to get their head coach fired after 2024? On the one hand, the Eagles rebounded from their first losing season under Jeff Hafley to finish 7-6 in 2023. They are led by a talented and mobile young quarterback in Thomas Castellanos. Castellanos passed for over 2000 yards and rushed for over 1000 yards while accounting for 28 total touchdowns. With another year of experience under his belt, the Eagles should move up a rung or two in the conference pecking order and be one of the better mid-level teams in the ACC. But on the other hand...

While the Eagles finished bowl-eligible in 2023, they won a lot of close games. Five of their six regular season wins came by a touchdown or less. And most of the teams they beat were not very good. They beat Holy Cross (a good FCS team) by three, Army by three, Virginia by three, Connecticut by seven, and Syracuse by seven. They did beat Georgia Tech by fifteen in Atlanta, but that was by far their best regular season performance outside of their near comeback against Florida State. They won a lot of close games against mediocre to bad teams. And while Castellanos played well in spurts, he was also very erratic. He tossed 14 interceptions on the season. Only three FBS quarterbacks threw more. And while Castellanos is young enough to expect improvement, the other side of the ball was in veritable shambles. In ACC action, the Eagles allowed nearly seven yards per play (6.99) and 34 touchdowns, both worst in the conference. But perhaps the biggest indictment toward any pro-Eagles optimism has been their Vegas power rating over the past few seasons. 

Their have been three full college football seasons since the 2020 campaign was impacted by Covid. During those three seasons, Las Vegas bookmakers have made the Eagles betting favorites in ACC play three times. That is easily the lowest total of any ACC team in that span. 

Only Virginia and Syracuse come close to the betting line futility Boston College has endured over the past three seasons (note Virginia has also played one fewer game as their ACC finale against Virginia Tech in 2022 was canceled). While the betting line and the betting market are not perfect indicators of team strength, they serve as a solid proxy for how good teams are. The line and the market are updated after each game so the evaluation of a team can look very different in November than it did in August. Despite being bowl-eligible in two of those three seasons, the market never warmed to the Eagles. Perhaps they will remain undervalued by the betting market in 2024, but I think this serves as a giant red flag and solid indicator to bet against Boston College, both in the preseason over/under win total market and the point spread market early next season.