Here are the 2023 Conference USA 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 Conference USA 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 Conference USA met this threshold? Here are Conference USA teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.
New Mexico State and Liberty significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP while Middle Tennessee and UTEP significantly underachieved relative to their YPP numbers. The Aggies and Flames combined for a 15-1 conference record (14-0 against the rest of the league), including a perfect 5-0 mark in one-score conference games. Meanwhile, the Blue Raiders and Miners combined to finish 3-6 in one-score conference games. Both teams also finished with a negative turnover margin in league play, although neither was exceptionally poor in that regard.
A Dearth of Ranked Teams
Thanks to a confluence of factors in the 2023 bowl season (a blowout loss by Liberty, an upset loss by SMU, and coaching upheaval at Tulane and James Madison), only two Group of Five teams finished the season ranked in the AP Poll. And those two teams (SMU and Liberty) were historically low (22nd and 25th respectively). Since college football officially separated power conference teams from non-power conference teams in 1998 (first BCS versus non-BCS and later Power Five versus Group of Five), 2023 represented the second fewest number of ranked non-powers.
2023 was tied with five other seasons behind 2005 for the fewest number of non-power teams represented in the final AP Poll. So 2023 was not a great year for non-power teams, but was it really that bad?
Another way to look at representation in the AP Poll besides the total number of ranked teams is to award what I dub 'Poll Points' for each ranking spot. A team that finishes first earns 25 Poll Points, second 24, third 23, and so on, until the team ranked 25th earns just a solitary Poll Point. Using that methodology, 2023 was by far the worst season for non-powers in the BCS/CFP era.
Ranked non-powers accumulated just five Poll Points in 2023 which demolished the previous low of thirteen set in 2001 when Louisville, Toledo, and BYU finished the year ranked 17th, 23rd, and 25th respectively. And speaking of teams like Louisville and BYU, that segues nicely into the main reason there was a dearth of ranked non-powers in 2023. The best non-powers have ascended into power conferences.
In the 26 seasons between 1998 and 2023, there were 97 instances where teams from a non-power conference found there way into the final AP Poll. That is a little less than four per season. 36 (roughly 37 percent) of those appearances in the final AP Poll are no longer in non-power conferences.
Led by TCU and Utah in the early 2010's, the best of the best from non-power conferences with perhaps one notable exception (Boise State) have migrated to power conferences. If we look at Poll Points, the results are even more significant. Those 97 ranked teams produced 878 total Poll Points. 406 of those points (46 percent) are now in power conferences. The non-power conferences will have a token seat at the table in the new College Football Playoff format, but I expect this trend of few ranked non-powers to continue. The non-powers that have built a brand this century are almost all in power conferences, so the benefit of the doubt will not be given to upstarts. Non-powers will have to post fantastic records to get a sniff of the lower reaches of the AP Poll.
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