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.