March Madness Intermission: Mountain West Deep Dive

The Mountain West has been a controversial conference among some college basketball fans over the past few seasons. Between 2022 ad 2025, the conference received 18 bids to the NCAA Tournament, including an amazing 6 bids in 2024. As a fan of an ACC school (Wake Forest), I tend to traffic in corners of the internet (twitter, message boards, etc.) with other ACC fans and boy were they not happy with this development. The fact that 12 of these 18 teams lost their first game in the tournament (some in the First Four and some in the Round of 64) was proof to ACC fans that these teams did not belong in the tournament in the first place. To hear an ACC fan tell it, the Mountain West is no better than the SWAC and undeserving of so many bids. As we saw yesterday, Mountain West teams that ended up as double-digit seeds struggled in the first round, going 2-13 in such games since 2011. But at the same time, a Mountain West team played in the national title game three short years ago. I like to make arguments with data and facts. I also like to discern some actionable betting strategies. With that in mind, I decided to do a deep dive on the Mountain West's performance in the NCAA Tournament. The conference formed just over a quarter century ago, when the strongest teams from the WAC broke off and formed their own league. So what's the verdict? Are Mountain West teams an auto fade in the NCAA Tournament because they they are basically a collection of SWAC schools on the west coast or is there value to be had in backing them in certain situations? 

The Mountain West's first season of play was the 1999-2000 season. 2026 marks the 26th NCAA Tournament the conference has participated in. In those 26 seasons, they have been the definition of a mid-major conference. They are a notch below the big boys (ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, and formerly Pac-12), but they consistently put multiple teams in the NCAA Tournament. In those 26 tournaments, they have received 70 total bids (2.7 per season) and have received multiple bids in 22 seasons. They were a one bid conference in 2001, 2016, 2017, and 2026. As noted earlier, the most number of bids they received was 6 in 2024. So the conference is pretty good at getting teams into the tournament. How have those teams performed once they got there? 

In the 25 tournaments between 2000 and 2025, the conference received 69 (nice!) bids. Seven of those teams were shipped to Dayton for the First Four to attempt to play their way into the main bracket. Those seven teams did not acquit themselves well in Dayton. 

Colorado State's destruction of Virginia in what was ultimately Tony Bennett's last game as head coach is the Mountain West's only victory in that round. 

Last year, I did a deep dive of Mark Few's NCAA Tournament record as coach of Gonzaga. I put his teams into different tiers based on their NCAA Tournament seed. I am going to do the same thing with the Mountain West. I divided the tiers into how likely a team is to win their first round game. 

With that in mind, let's roll through each tier and see how the Mountain West has performed. We'll start with their performance as heavy first round favorites. 

Only one Mountain West team (San Diego State in 2011) has been a top two seed in the NCAA Tournament. The 2020 team was likely to join them before the tournament was canceled. The 2011 San Diego State team won their first two games before falling to eventual champ Connecticut in the Sweet 16. 

The Mountain West has had a team be a 3 or 4 seed four times in its history. New Mexico lost to Harvard in 2013 as a 3 seed, but the other three teams all won their first round game with two of the three advancing to the Sweet 16. 

Now we're getting somewhere. Ten Mountain West teams have received a 5 or 6 seed. And the results have not been great. More than half of those teams (six) lost in the first round despite having a better seed than their opponent. Three of the four that won in the first round advanced to the Sweet 16 with San Diego State advancing all the way to the title game in 2023. 

This is where the bulk of Mountain West teams have been seeded. 27 of the league's 63 bids into the first round (43%) have been in the 7 to 10 seed range. 7 seeds have done alright, winning four of their six first round games, but 8, 9, and 10 seeds have gone just 7-14 in first round games. The 8, 9, or 10 seeds that won their first round game all lost in the second round. The league has had two seven seeds advance to the Sweet 16 (UNLV in 2007 and Nevada in 2018), but neither made it any further. 

Moderate Mountain West underdogs have not fared well in the first round, with 11 and 12 seeds going a combined 2-15. The victories were more than two decades apart, with Wyoming upsetting Gonzaga as an 11 seed in 2002 and Colorado State beating Memphis as a 12 seed last season. 

Finally, the league has not won a single first round game when given a seed of 13 or 14. The Mountain West has never received a seed lower than 14 in the NCAA Tournament. 

I'm now going to compile all the previous tables into one table summarizing the Mountain West's performance in the NCAA Tournament. 

The results have been less than spectacular. Mountain West teams have lost twice as often as they have won in the round of 64 and only one team (San Diego State in 2023) has won a game in the Sweet 16 or later. On the rare occasions they have been awarded a top 4 seed, the conference has performed up to par. However, when given a moderate seed (5 or 6), they have not been adept at avoiding first round upsets. When given a mediocre seed (7, 8, 9, or 10), they have not performed well in what amounts to toss up first round games. When given a low seed (11, 12, 13, or 14), they have not been able to upend many higher seeds. The Mountain West's reputation as an underachiever in the NCAA Tournament is completely deserved. I would not expect Utah State to advance very far in this year's bracket and would probably be inclined to post significant wagers against them. That being said, I don't think the Mountain West has been undeserving of the bids they have received to the NCAA Tournament. The committee's job is to award the 37 at-large bids to some combination of the best and most deserving teams. Mountain West teams have fit into those criteria. Its not the committee's job to project which teams will do well in the NCAA Tournament and I may have to double-check my math on this, but it seems like at least half the teams that play in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, lose. 

March Madness Intermission: The Lily of the Valley

Yesterday we discussed using tempo to select, or more accurately, determine who not to select, as upset picks in the first round of your NCAA Tournament bracket. Today we're going to go with another method: conference pedigree. 

Does it seem like certain conferences almost always produce a first-round shocker? Or that the trendy underdog from some conferences consistently fails to deliver? To answer that question with more than just “vibes,” I looked at every non–power conference’s performance in the first round of the NCAA Tournament since 2011—the last time the field expanded (unnecessarily, in my humble opinion).

Over those fourteen tournaments—remember, there was no tournament in 2020—there were six power conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC) and 25 non–power conferences. When the Pac-12 resumes play next season it will no longer be considered a power conference, but during this time period it was.

I examined how teams from the other 25 conferences performed in the first round when they were given a double-digit seed. This prevents the West Coast Conference from receiving “upset credit” for years when Gonzaga earned a number 1 seed. I also excluded victories from the First Four, the opening round that began in 2011. Several conferences are sent to Dayton almost every year, and two number 16 seeds fail to advance to the official first round each season.

Because of these factors, the total number of first-round games played by each conference does not add up to fourteen. Now that the background is out of the way, let’s get to the results.

We'll start with conferences that have not won a first round game as a double-digit seed since the tournament expanded. 

I knew the SWAC had not won a tournament game since they pressed Georgia Tech into oblivion in 1993, but I was surprised both the Big Sky and Big South had taken first round abuse for this long. The Big Sky last won a first round game in 2006 and the Big South last won a game in 2007. High Point might be a trendy upset pick from some talking heads, but I would avoid putting the Panthers through to the second round. 

Next up, the conferences that have won exactly one first round game as a double-digit seed since 2011. 

Five of the seven victories were among the biggest in NCAA Tournament history, with the America East (UMBC) and NEC (Fairleigh Dickinson) giving us the only two 16 over 1s and the MAAC (St. Peter's), MEAC (Norfolk State), and Patriot (Lehigh) giving us three of the eleven total instances of a 15 beating a 2. The victories by the Horizon (Oakland over Kentucky) and Southern Conference (Furman over Virginia) were also very shocking. 

Now, the conferences that have won two games as a double-digit seed since 2011. 

For the West Coast Conference, non-Gonzaga teams are 0-5 under these criteria (BYU twice, St. Mary's twice, and San Francisco once). Don't tie up your mortgage payment in Santa Clara. VCU has both of the CAA's wins as a double digit seed and the Rams have not been members of that conference in more than a decade. I have been charmed by the siren call of the Summit League (specifically South Dakota State) on multiple occasions, but this conference typically sees it champ bounced early. The Big West and Ohio Valley have not seen a team win a first round game since before Covid. I will note the WAC's two victories have come over the past four tournaments. However, those two schools (New Mexico State and Grand Canyon) are no longer conference members. And finally, look at those numbers for the Mountain West. Yikes. We'll take a deeper dive into the mid-major league everyone loves to hate tomorrow. 

Now those conferences with a trifecta of wins as a double-digit seed since 2011. 

I must say I was surprised these three conferences had pulled off three first round upsets since 2011. However, some context is necessary. Recent returns have been less kind. The Atlantic Sun is 1-8 in first round games since 2016, the Sun Belt is 1-6 in first round games since 2017, and the MAC is 2-9 in first round games since 2013. I know everyone wants to back Akron or Miami of Ohio, but the MAC's track record plus their pace gives me some pause. In addition, the teams responsible for two of the Atlantic Sun's three victories are no longer in the conference (Liberty and Mercer). 

Only one conference has four first round victories as a double-digit seed, so I grouped the Southland with the conferences that had won five. 

I would not have guessed the Southland had inflicted as much first round carnage on higher seeds. The teams responsible for three of the four wins are McNeese State and Stephen F. Austin, who were the standard bearers in the conference this season. The Ivy League and the Missouri Valley have a well-deserved reputation for first round success, but I feel like Conference USA has flown under the radar. The conference won first round games four years in a row (2015-2018) with three different schools (UAB, Middle Tennessee, and Marshall) and won another in 2021 for good measure (North Texas). 

If you've been keeping track, you know we've covered 24 conferences so far. So, which conference has been the best at winning first-round games as a double-digit seed? It's the Atlantic 10. 

The Atlantic 10 has won eight games as double-digit seed in the first round since 2011. However, a word of caution before you haphazardly advance VCU to the Sweet 16. Since 2018, the conference is just 1-6 in the first round, with Duquesne's victory over BYU in 2024 their victory during that period. Personally, I think you're better off with a little Missouri Valley (Northern Iowa) action to get your first round rocks off. 

March Madness Intermission: Too Fast, Too Furious

We're taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming this week to help you make your March Madness picks. We'll return to our YPP and APR football recaps next week. 

Diehards and casual fans alike use a wide range of tools when deciding which first-round upsets to pick. Team quality, matchups, historical trends, travel distance, team colors, mascots, and countless other variables all get considered. However, one statistic that I believe is often overlooked is tempo.

So what exactly is tempo? Simply put, it’s how fast a team plays. One might assume that underdogs with a slower tempo would be more likely to pull off a first-round upset. A slower pace means fewer possessions, which should lead to greater variance—something that tends to favor the underdog. In contrast, a faster tempo creates more possessions, which should reduce variance and benefit the favorite.

But does this theory actually play out in the real world? To answer that question, I looked at all teams seeded 10-14 from the past ten NCAA tournaments (2015-2025) and recorded their Adjusted Tempo (possessions per 40 minutes adjusted for opponent) from KenPom. I did not include the 15 and 16 seeds because as a rule of thumb, you should not be picking those teams to advance in your bracket. I put those teams into separate buckets based on their Adjusted Tempo and calculated the first round winning percentage for each group. The results are below. 

Our theory appears to hold true in practice. Teams seeded 10-14 that played at an Adjusted Tempo of 63.0 possessions or lower won just under half their first round games. Meanwhile, teams seeded 10-14 that played at an Adjusted Tempo of 70.0 or higher won about 12% of their first round games. In fact, it has happened so infrequently over the past ten tournaments, it won't take too much time to list the four teams that have done it. 

Hawaii (13) over Cal (4) in 2016

Marshall (13) over Wichita State (4) in 2018

Buffalo (13) over Arizona (4) in 2018

New Mexico (10) over Marquette (7) in 2025

Sometimes knowing which upsets to not pick can help you win your NCAA Tournament pool. With that in mind, which teams seeded 10-14 in this year's tournament play at an Adjusted Tempo of 70.0 or higher? 

South Florida and Akron seem to be trendy first round upset picks. You may want to think twice about advancing those teams past their favored opponents. 

2025 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Big 12

Last week we looked at how Big 12 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 2025 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.

I use a game and a half as a somewhat arbitrary standard to determine if teams over or underachieved relative to their APR. By that standard, both Arizona State and BYU overachieved. BYU also overachieved relative to their YPP numbers and we went over some reasons for that last week. For Arizona State, the culprit for their overachievement is simple, they were 5-1 in one-score Big 12 games. Five of their six conference victories came by five points or less, continuing a trend for the Sun Devils since joining the Big 12. In their two seasons in the conference, Arizona State is 9-2 in one-score conference games (4-3 in all other conference games). Does close game regression come for the Sun Devils in 2026?

New Kids on the Block

As you may have read in the papers, the Big 12 has undergone some membership changes over the past few seasons. Their luxury programs (Oklahoma and Texas) sought the riches of the SEC a little more than a decade after Missouri and Texas A&M did the same. To buttress their position in the college football hierarchy, the Big 12 in effect 'called up' four teams from the lower levels (this is not intended to be derogatory) of college football. BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF joined the Big 12 in 2023, the final season the Sooners and Longhorns were members. With the Pac-12 falling apart thanks to a quartet of defections to the Big 10, the Big 12 sent out a lifeline to four of the non-coastal members (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah). Its early, but it never hurts to take stock of how those new members have performed. Which of these eight neophytes has been the best addition so far? Read on to find out. 

We'll begin with the call-ups. These four teams have enjoyed varying levels of success this century with three of the four (Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF) posting at least one unbeaten regular season since 2011. And BYU is famously the only non-power team to win a college football national title in the modern era. How does this quartet shake up?

BYU is the only call-up that has acclimated to Big 12 play thus far. All four teams struggled in their first season in the Big 12 (combined 8-28 conference record in 2023), but BYU has posted back-to-back ranked finishes and even qualified for the Big 12 Championship Game in 2025. Cincinnati and Houston also finally got their collective acts together in 2025, but UCF has floundered since joining the conference. The Knights are tied with Oklahoma State for the worst Big 12 record since 2023 (7-20) and that of course includes Oklahoma State's current eighteen-game conference losing streak. 

We'll now move to the 'Four Corners' schools. Utah had the best recent track record of the four, winning the Pac-12 championship in 2021 and 2022. 

Arizona State is the only former Pac-12 school to post winning conference records in each of their first two seasons in Big 12. Arizona and Utah both struggled in 2024 before bouncing back with strong campaigns in 2025 while Colorado did the opposite, faltering to a 1-8 conference mark after losing Travis Hunter and some other players from their 2024 team. 

2025 Yards Per Play: Big 12

We are one third of the way through our offseason sojourn. This week we stay big and look at the Big 12.

Here are the 2025 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 2025 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.

BYU and UCF were the only two Big 12 teams that saw their final record differ significantly from their expected record based on YPP. The Cougars exceeded their expected record while the Knights underachieved. The Cougars and Knights were basically mirror images of each other. The Cougars won all the high leverage events that buoys a team's record while the Knights faltered in those high leverage situations. BYU was 3-0 in one-score Big 12 games and finished with a solid +7 turnover margin in league play. They also converted fourth downs at a much higher rate than they allowed (converted 67% of their attempts while allowing just 42%) and scored touchdowns once they got in the red zone while holding opponents out of the end zone. BYU scored touchdowns on 23 of their 36 red zone drives in Big 12 play (64%) while their opponents managed just a 46% touchdown rate on such trips (17 out of 37). Meanwhile, UCF was 1-2 in one-score Big 12 games and finished with a turnover margin of -9 in Big 12 play. The Knights struggled to convert fourth downs (12 of 28) while their Big 12 opponents converted more than half the time (10 of 19). The Knights were decent when it came to scoring touchdowns in the red zone (11 of 20), but their Big 12 opponents scored touchdowns more than twice as often as they did not on red zone trips (23 of 34). 

Longest Conference Losing Streaks

On November 25, 2023, Oklahoma State beat BYU 40-34 in overtime to lock up a spot in the Big 12 Championship Game. We didn't know it at the time, but that was the last Big 12 game Mike Gundy would win at his alma mater. The Cowboys were expected to be Big 12 contenders in 2024, with the preseason consensus putting them second in the conference behind Utah. A 3-0 start in non-conference play got them to thirteenth in the AP Poll, but the Cowboys lost all their Big 12 games, culminating with a shellacking at the hands of Colorado. The 52-point loss in Boulder was the largest of Gundy's tenure (to that point). I expected a bounce back from Oklahoma State heading into 2025. The preseason consensus was more lukewarm, pegging the Cowboys fourteenth of sixteen teams in the Big 12. The Cowboys opened with a victory over an FCS team and then traveled to Oregon where they eclipsed their previous record for worst loss under Gundy, losing 69-3 to the Ducks. With a week off to prepare for a non-power in-state opponent, the Cowboys looked utterly hopeless in managing just twelve points in a home loss to Tulsa. The Gundy era ended after the loss to the Golden Hurricane and the Cowboys once again lost all their Big 12 games, this time under interim coach Doug Meacham. For the innumerate, that means Oklahoma State is currently riding an eighteen-game conference losing streak. How does that compare to other recent conference losing streaks? Pretty favorably. 

The Cowboys and Boilermakers both have active eighteen-game conference losing streaks heading into the 2026 season (Connecticut does as well, but they left the American after the 2019 season riding a nineteen-game skid and have been Independent since). Were they both to lose out in conference play, they would surpass Vanderbilt as the streakiest losers of the College Football Playoff era. Oklahoma State got the coach and quarterback combo from North Texas, so I expect them to be improved in 2026. A third consecutive winless campaign in the Big 12 would be shocking. Purdue has a rougher go of it in the rugged Big 10, especially with their in-state rival becoming a football power, but I also expect the Boilermakers to find a league win somewhere in 2026. My best guess as to when both break their respective streaks? Oklahoma State opens Big 12 play with a road trip to West Virginia, but then has a bye before UCF comes to Stillwater. On Saturday October 10, 2026, the Cowboys will end their then nineteen-game conference skid against the Knights. As for the Boilermakers, they also host a winnable conference game on October 10 with the Minnesota Golden Gophers coming to West Lafayette. Purdue will have played road conference games against UCLA and Illinois by that point, so their conference losing streak should be sitting on twenty. Mark your calendars for the second Saturday in October when a couple of losers put an end to their respective streaks. 

2025 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Big 10

Last week we looked at how Big 10 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 2025 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.

I use a game and a half as a somewhat arbitrary standard to determine if a team significantly over or underachieved relative to their APR. Using that standard, Minnesota and Illinois overachieved while Penn State and Washington underachieved. Minnesota also overachieved relative to their YPP numbers and we went over some reasons for that last week. Illinois was 2-0 in one-score Big 10 games, but the culprit for the disconnect between their APR and their actual record was their blowout losses. The Illini lost four Big 10 games and each came by at least 17 points, muting their scoring margin and tamping down their APR. At the other end of the spectrum, its easy to determine the reason for Penn State's underachievement. The Nittany Lions finished 1-5 in one-score Big 10 games, losing twice by a single point, once in overtime, once on a last second touchdown by the eventual national champion, and once by five points on a cross-country road trip. As for Washington, the reasons for their underachievement are more difficult to determine. The Huskies can't blame close game performance as they were 1-1 in one-score Big 10 games. I think the biggest reason is their inconsistency on offense. The Huskies scored 37 total points (four offensive touchdowns) in their four Big 10 losses. Meanwhile, in four of their five Big 10 wins, they scored at least 38 points. 

The Wiscy Ain't Workin' Anymore 

In 2025, Wisconsin finished with a losing record for the second consecutive season. This marked the first time the Badgers have compiled back-to-back losing campaigns since 1991-1992. The primary reason for Wisconsin's losing record in 2025 was their inability to score. I have been tracking APR data since 2005, and in 2025, Wisconsin became just the eleventh power conference team to average one offensive touchdown or less in conference play. Wisconsin, along with the other ten, are listed below in chronological order along with the number of offensive touchdowns they scored and their conference record. 

Wisconsin fans can take solace that they posted by far the best record of any bungling offense. The Badgers won two conference games, doubling the previous record of league wins by these offensively challenged teams. If you're a real sicko, go back and look at the box score of their victory against Washington. The Badgers won despite completing just six of their eighteen pass attempts for a grand total of 48 yards. Single-wing high school offenses look upon those numbers in disgust. So the Badgers are by far the standouts of this less than stellar group. How much offensive and overall improvement can we expect going forward? Here's how the previous ten teams fared the next season. 

The teams universally improved. Nine of the ten improved by at least one win in conference play and their cumulative winning percentage increased from .048 to .289 (roughly two additional league wins). However, every team except Auburn still finished with a losing conference record the next season. Offensively, the teams improved from 71 offensive touchdowns in 83 league games (0.86 per game) to 173 offensive touchdowns in 83 league games (2.08 per game). 

You may have noticed there were asterisks in the previous table. Those indicated a coaching change. Five of the ten teams that were offensively inept changed head coaches. As you may know, Wisconsin retained Luke Fickell. Was there a significant difference in quality between the teams that changed head coaches and those that stayed the course? 

The teams that changed coaches had a much larger in increase in both cumulative winning percentage (almost double that of the teams that did not change coaches) and offensive touchdowns per game. However, that is almost entirely due to Auburn's hiring of Gus Malzahn. Take Malzahn out of the mix and the teams that changed coaches performed slightly better, but not nearly as dramatically. 

Would Wisconsin have been better off firing Luke Fickell? All else being equal (having the money to do so, being able to keep their current good players and attract others via the transfer portal and traditional high school recruiting, etc.), the Badgers probably would have been marginally better off had they fired Fickell. But they didn't. The Badgers schedule is easier in 2026 than the gauntlet they endured in 2025. An easier schedule and destined improvement on offense will probably lead to six wins and bowl eligibility. But is an annual struggle to attain a bowl bid what Wisconsin fans were dreaming of when Fickell was hired to replace Paul Chryst (67-26 record at Wisconsin)? Retaining Fickell may have merely postponed the inevitable by a couple of months. 

2025 Yards Per Play: Big 10

Two conferences down, seven to go. This week we head to the midwest and the bane of Paul Finebaum's existence, the Big 10. 

Here are the 2025 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 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 2025 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.

Minnesota significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP (more on them later) while Michigan State and Maryland significantly underachieved. Minnesota was 3-1 in one-score Big 10 games and finished with a solid turnover margin in Big 10 play (+6), but another reason for the discrepancy between their actual record and expected record based on YPP was their lack of competitiveness against the better teams on their schedule. In three games against Iowa, Ohio State, and Oregon, the Gophers were outgained by over four yards per play! In their other six Big 10 games, they were more respectable (outgained by roughly .45 yards per play). Granted they probably should not have gone 5-1 in those six games, but Minnesota was a slightly below average Big 10 team in 2025 that put up some real stinkers against the toughest competition. For Michigan State and Maryland, the easy explanation is close game performance. The Spartans and Terrapins combined to finish 0-5 in one-score Big 10 games. Michigan State also had issues on special teams. A blocked punt against Nebraska put them in an early hole and a punt return touchdown by Iowa was crucial in a game the Spartans lost by three points. Meanwhile, Maryland struggled in situational football. The Terrapins converted just six of their nineteen fourth down attempts in Big 10 play (32%) while their opponents were eight of fourteen (57%). Maryland also struggled to turn red zone trips into touchdowns, converting for six points on nine of twenty-three trips in Big 10 play (39%) while their opponents got into scoring position a lot more often (41 trips) and converted at a much higher rate (26 touchdowns).  

They Won How Many?

Minnesota finished with a winning record for the sixth time in nine seasons under PJ Fleck. They finished with eight wins, but didn't come close to appearing in the Big 10 Championship Game or the College Football Playoff. But I'm here to tell you it was an historic season nonetheless.

The Golden Gophers finished with a winning Big 10 record (5-4) despite being outgained by more than a yard and a half per play by their conference opponents. Since 2005, they posted the worst Net YPP of any team that finished with a winning conference record. 

Surely this means the rent will come due in 2026. Minnesota is bound to regress and not only finish with a losing Big 10 record, but potentially finish near the bottom of the Big 10 standings. Not so fast. The sample size is small, but the previous five teams on this list did not fall as hard and fast as I anticipated. 

The five teams in question collectively won two additional conference games the next season with three of the teams improving their conference record. What, aside from the small sample size, could possibly explain this? I think the answer is coaching acumen. Four of the five teams on this list were coached by current (Barry Alvarez and Bill Snyder) or future (Chris Klieman and Kyle Whittingham) College Football Hall of Famers. Good coaches tend to overachieve relative to their statistics. PJ Fleck may not end up in the College Football Hall of Fame, but he has been at Minnesota for nine years (66-44 record) and has developed a winning culture in Minneapolis.