2024 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Sun Belt

Last week we looked at how Sun Belt 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 2024 Sun Belt 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, Sun Belt teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

Arkansas State and Marshall were the only Sun Belt teams that saw their actual record differ significantly (difference of a game and a half or more) from their APR. The Red Wolves and Thundering Herd significantly exceeded their APR and they also exceeded their expected record based on Yards Per Play. We went over some reasons for that last week, so no need to rehash it here. 

Conference Championship Game, No Bowl

Marshall pulled off a rare feat in 2024. The Thundering Herd won the Sun Belt, but did not play in a bowl game. There were of course, some extenuating circumstances that precipitated their absence from bowl season. Their head coach took another job in what seemed like mere seconds after the Sun Belt Championship Game. His departure led to a staggering number of players entering the transfer portal. And their bowl opponent happened to be a very good triple option team. Marshall opted out of the Independence Bowl and became just the twelfth team team to participate in their conference title game and not participate in bowl season. The Herd and the other eleven are listed below. 

Marshall is even more rarified air as they join UAB in the pandemic impacted 2020 season as the only other conference championship game victor to sit out bowl season. The Blazers had been set to play South Carolina in the Gasparilla Bowl, but the Gamecocks withdrew due to an uptick in Covid-19 cases within the program and the game was canceled. 

You may notice that five teams in the preceding table have asterisks by their name. The reason? Those teams all faced Marshall in their respective conference title games. The Thundering Herd kept four consecutive MAC teams from appearing in a bowl by beating them in the conference title game. This was in an era when mid-major conferences only had one or two bowl tie-ins. They were also defeated by the aforementioned UAB Blazers in the 2020 Conference USA Championship Game. 

That will close out our 2024 YPP and APR recaps. Thanks for reading. I hope you learned a little something and were at least marginally entertained in the past four and a half months. If you are curious, the rest of our summer schedule is as follows. I'll be taking the month of June off, but will return the first Thursday in July with a breakdown of First Half Point Differential in the Group of Five. Two weeks later, we'll look at the same stat in the Power Four. Two or three weeks after that, I'll recap my annual Vegas trip, and then we should be within shouting distance of the regular season. During the season, every Thursday, I'll post my seven favorite picks against the spread. And before you know it, another year will have come and gone. Thanks as always for reading. I appreciate the handful of folks who keep returning year after year. See you in July!