Sunday, July 02, 2006

Consistent Part Deux

About a month ago I blogged about consistency in the Big 12 conference. Now I'm going to examine consistency in the Pac 10 for the same time span (1996-2005). Amazingly in that 10 season span, every team in the Pac 10 has won at least 10 games (or won the conference) and had a losing season. If Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were alive today and football fans, they would surely enjoy Pac 10 football. Here are the 10 teams ranked by standard deviation of seasonal winning percentage from most consistent to least consistent.

Oregon .1528
Stanford .1741
Arizona State .1742
UCLA .1767
Oregon State .2032
Arizona .2109
California .2178
Southern Cal .2203
Washington State .2379
Washington .2479

The Ducks rate as the most consistent team of the past 10 years. However, their standard deviation would only rate as the 7th most consistent if they played in the Big 12. In one of sports nice little coincidences, the Ducks won 6 games in 1996 and increased their win total by exactly one game until 2001 when they peaked with 11 wins. The Huskies of Washington rate as the least consistent having gone from perennial contender in the late 90's to doormat the last two seasons. Southern Cal may be a heavy favorite to win their fifth consecutive conference title, but if the Pac 10 has been anything in the past decade, its anything but predictable.

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