2025 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Mountain West

Last week we looked at how Mountain West 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 Mountain West 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, Mountain West 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, New Mexico was the only Mountain West team that saw their actual record differ significantly from their APR. Under first-year head coach Jason Eck, the Lobos finished in a four-way tie atop the conference and nearly qualified for their first conference title game since 1997. The Lobos finished 4-1 in one-score conference games to buoy their record. 

Mush, Mush

The Mountain West is undergoing some membership changes before the 2026 season commences. Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, and Utah State are off to reconstitute the Pac-12. A trio of teams, North Dakota State, Northern Illinois, and UTEP, will replace them giving the league ten football playing members at the moment. The oddest addition is Northern Illinois. The Huskies have been MAC members for nearly thirty years, but if we zoom out, they have a bit of a nomadic history. The Huskies were an Independent in the late 60's and early 70's before joining the MAC for an eleven-year run in 1975. They returned to the Independent circuit in 1986 and joined the Big West for a brief three-year span in 1993. The Big West in the early to mid-90s was an interesting amalgamation of teams that now occupy Conference USA, the Mountain West, the Pac-12, the Sun Belt, and defunctland. The Huskies, along with a host of other schools, left the Big West after the 1995 season. The Huskies once again returned to the Independent life before gaining some stability and joining the MAC in 1997. 

The vibes in DeKalb are not great at the moment. Their head coach, who also happened to be an alum and former player, resigned in mid-February to take an assistant coaching position in the NFL. There were some good times under Hammock (a MAC title in 2021 and the victory against Notre Dame in 2024 to name two), but the program dipped under his guidance. Still, losing your head coach in February is not ideal. The Huskies are probably in rebuilding mode and may be one of the worst teams in the Mountain West in 2026. But that is the football season that is to come. Instead of doom and gloom, lets look back at better days for Northern Illinois. 

As I previously mentioned, Northern Illinois joined the MAC (for a second time) in 1997. In their nearly three decades as a member, they were arguably the flagship program for the conference. And here is the data to prove it. The table below lists the conference winning percentage for each team MAC team since 1997. 

Many people probably forget Marshall was a MAC member when they joined FBS in 1997. The Herd had an absurd run under Bob Pruett, winning five conference titles in their first six seasons in the league (after winning the I-AA title in 1996). For the long-tenured MAC schools, Northern Illinois ranks second behind Toledo in conference winning percentage. While the Huskies trail the Rockets (rather significantly) in conference winning percentage, they do have the most MAC Championship Game appearances since the event began in 1997. 

Not only do the Huskies have the most MAC Championship Game appearances, they are also tied with Marshall for the most victories in the history of the event. 

Hard times are likely on the horizon for Northern Illinois as they adjust to a stronger conference. However, when viewed holistically, the Huskies are arguably the best and most accomplished MAC program in the past three decades. 

2025 Yards Per Play: Mountain West

This week we head west and examine a conference that will be undergoing some massive membership changes in 2026, the Mountain West. 

Here are the 2025 Mountain West 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 Mountain West 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 Mountain West met this threshold? Here are Mountain West teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Air Force significantly exceeded their expected record based on Yards Per Play while San Jose State underachieved relative to their down to down performance. Air Force fielded one of the worst in-conference per-play defenses I’ve tracked. There was some improvement in the second half of league play—coinciding with all of their wins—but the overall results remained underwhelming. Through their first four conference games, the Falcons allowed an alarming 8.72 yards per play. While that number dropped to 6.41 over the back half of the schedule, it still would have ranked just tenth across the full season. That putrid defensive performance through the first half of the conference season is the main reason why the Yards Per Play numbers are so skeptical of Air Force's record. The team finished 1-1 in one-score conference games and had a slightly negative turnover margin in conference play (-2). Meanwhile San Jose State's underachievement is simple to diagnose. The Spartans had the worst in-conference turnover margin (-8) in the Mountain West and that was especially pronounced over their four-game losing streak to close the season. In their first four conference games, the Spartans were a solid +4 in turnover margin. However, over their final four conference games, the Spartans were a turnover factory, posting a -12 margin in those four contests. In an unsurprising development, they lost all four of those games by double digits despite a respectable per play differential (-.33). 

Welcome to the Big Show

In our MAC posts the past two weeks, we discussed Sacramento State's expedited rise to FBS, but the bigger and more intriguing call up is happening in Fargo. The North Dakota State Bison, the best FCS team in the last decade and a half, is making the move to FBS. How quickly can the Bison acclimate to life in the FBS? One way to answer that query is to see how they have performed against FBS teams. Even casual college football fans know the Bison have beaten and scared numerous FBS teams during their run as an FCS power. The Bison transitioned from Division II and became an FCS team in 2004. They faced their first FBS opponent (Ball State) in 2006 and their first power conference opponent (Minnesota) also in 2006. The table below lists all fourteen of their games against FBS opponents, the result, their opponent's final record, and in some instances, an interesting fact about their opponent. The table is also color coded by their head coach. In their two plus decades as an FCS team, the Bison had four head coaches, three of which parlayed their success in Fargo to FBS head coaching positions (sometimes circuitously). 

To give additional context, here is their cumulative record versus different types of FBS opponents by head coach. 

You'll notice something happened to North Dakota State around the time of the first College Football Playoff. FBS teams stopped scheduling them. In the past eleven seasons (excluding 2020), the Bison have only faced four FBS opponents. Non-power FBS teams were running scared well before this time. Since 2009, the Bison have faced just one non-power FBS opponent (Colorado State). Unfortunately for their opponents, their are eleven FBS teams (all of the non-power variety) on the schedule in 2026, including the aforementioned Sacramento State Hornets. In addition, while the Bison have not beaten an FBS opponent in ten years, nearly all of their losses have been close (four of five have come by five points or fewer) and all have come on the road. The Bison will host five FBS opponents in 2026, as well as Fordham of the FCS. Their first game hosting an FBS opponent will come in Week Zero when Jacksonville State visits the Fargodome. Their was nothing left for the Bison to accomplish at the FCS level. I'm glad they finally decided to make the move and were able to settle in to a geographically sensible conference. I expect the Bison to be one of the better teams in the Mountain West and would not be shocked to see them in the College Football Playoff in the next few years. 

2025 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: MAC

 Last week we looked at how MAC 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 MAC 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, MAC 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 to determine if a team significantly over or underperformed relative to their APR. By that standard, Ball State significantly exceeded their APR while Toledo underperformed. Toledo also underachieved relative to their expected record based on YPP and we went over some reasons for that last week. Meanwhile, Ball State somehow won three conference games in Mike Uremovich's first season in charge despite playing atrocious football for the majority of the season. The Cardinals played at an average to good level in three of their eight MAC games, but managed to come out on top in all three. Two of the victories were by less than a touchdown. Meanwhile, all five of their conference losses came by double digits, with the Cardinals being outscored by 121 points in those five games. 

Go West, Young Man

Last week, we conducted a deep dive on new MAC member Sacramento State's (limited) history traveling east and their performance against FBS teams. This week, I want to look at how the rest of the conference has fared when traveling west. 

Not counting Sacramento State, there are twelve MAC teams nestled mostly in the midwest, with two located a little further east. Perhaps not surprisingly, those other MAC schools have not made a lot of trips to California. That will change with the Hornets entry into the conference. Sacramento State will host four MAC schools in 2026 (Kent State, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Toledo) and assuming they stick around for a few years, will probably eventually host the other eight. How have the current crop of MAC schools fared when making the trek to the Golden State? To answer that question, I looked at all instances of current MAC schools playing road games in the state of California in the BCS/CFP era (since 1998). Five of the current MAC schools (Akron, Ball State, Buffalo, Massachusetts, and Miami) have not played a road game in California in that span. The performance of the other (magnificent) seven is summarized in the table below. I included the point spread in the game to provide some context regarding who the betting markets expected to win. 

Those trips out west have resulted in more metaphorical deaths due to dysentery or typhoid than they have striking it rich in the gold mines. MAC schools are 1-9 straight up and just slightly better 3-7 ATS in California. Note the lone win occurred this past season when Central Michigan upset San Jose State as a prohibitive underdog. Also note that eight of those ten games have come against teams in their own theoretical weight class rather than against power conference opponents. With four cracks at it in 2026, including one by the best team on paper in the conference, I expect the MAC schools to win a road game in California for the second consecutive season. 

2025 Yards Per Play: MAC

We are now on the back half of our conference reviews. This week we head to the midwest and examine the Big 10's little brother. 

Here are the 2025 MAC 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 MAC 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 MAC met this threshold? Here are MAC teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Western Michigan and Toledo were the two MAC teams that saw their actual record differ significantly from their expected record based on YPP. The Broncos overachieved while the Rockets underachieved and the culprit was close game performance. Western Michigan finished 3-0 in one-score conference games while Toledo was 0-2 in such contests. For Toledo, their close game performance overshadowed an otherwise dominant season. The Rockets lost by one point to Western Michigan and five points to Bowling Green. In their other six conference games, they were 6-0 with an average margin of victory of more than thirty points per game. The loss to Western Michigan essentially flipped the conference title as a win by Toledo would have put the Rockets in the conference title game and moved the Broncos into a three-way tie for second place with Miami and Ohio.  

The Kings of Sacramento

North Dakota State stole most of their thunder, but in February, Sacramento State also announced they were also fast tracking their move to FBS, starting with the 2026 season. However, while North Dakota State will be joining a conference with other schools in their geographic footprint (Mountain West), Sacramento State is joining a bunch of midwestern schools (and a few east coasters) in the MAC. While the move is a bit odd and reeks of a little desperation, it will present some interesting schedule quirks. Sacramento State will head east four times this season, with trips to Eastern and Central Michigan, Bowling Green, and Ball State on the schedule. With that in mind, I decided to look at Sacramento State's FCS history and see how they have performed when heading east and when facing FBS opponents. I don't know that either of those things will give us a great deal of insight on what to expect from them in 2026, but its an interesting research project nonetheless. 

Sacramento State joined the FCS in 1993. In the three plus decades they spent at that level, they made exactly one trip to the east coast. They faced Hofstra in 1996 and lost by 30 points. They also rarely ventured east of the Mountain Time Zone, playing just two games in the Central Time Zone. They fared better in those games. I didn't expect a west coast FCS school to make many trips east of the Mississippi, but the Hornets will make more trips east in 2026 than they did in their entire history as an FCS program! The table below summarizes their previous trips east. 

The Hornets will not only be making more trips east in 2026, they will also be facing more FBS opponents (duh). Their schedule features eleven games against FBS teams - eight against MAC foes and non-conference games against Fresno State, Hawaii, and the other FBS newbie, North Dakota State. How have the Hornets fared when they stepped up in class? The short answer, is 'not very well', but the longer answer, with additional context, is 'better lately'.

The Hornets did not face an FBS team until nearly a decade into their run as an FCS program when they traveled to El Paso to face the UTEP Miners in 2002. They lost by 30. And that was mostly how things went for the Hornets. They did pull off two shockers, beating Pac-12 teams Oregon State in 2011 and Colorado in 2012, but through 2019, twelve of their twenty losses against FBS opponents were by at least thirty points. Things have been a little different in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The Hornets have been much more competitive since 2021, winning a third of their games against FBS opponents while never losing any game by more than 18 points. The sample size is small, but the Hornets are a fourth quarter comeback by Nevada away from posting a .500 record against FBS opponents in the past six years. 

Sacramento State is on their fourth football coach in the past five seasons, so staff continuity is not a strength. At the same time, they have posted five winning seasons in the past six years despite turnover at the head coaching position. Conservatively, the Hornets are in the top third of FCS programs over the past half decade. With that baseline, you would expect them to be competitive against the bottom quartile of FBS, which is the status most teams in the MAC presently occupy. That may be underselling how bad the MAC can be, as they have put some pretty bad teams on the field the past few seasons (hello Kent State and Massachusetts). Despite moving up in class and being a geographic oddity, I expect the Hornets to finish in the top half of the conference in 2026. 

This relationship is probably not built to last. The Hornets are paying an $18 million entry fee to the MAC (as well as $5 million to the NCAA), will not be part of the conference's revenue sharing agreement for five years, and will be covering travel costs for visiting MAC teams. Will the Hornets be members of the MAC in 2036? Probably not. But who knows what FBS even looks like a decade from now. The sport has undergone massive changes in the past fifteen years and those seem to only be accelerating. Just sit back and enjoy the absurdity of Toledo visiting Sacramento on the first Wednesday in November in a conference game. 

2025 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Conference USA

Last week we looked at how Conference USA 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 Conference USA 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, Conference USA 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 to determine if a team significantly over or underachieved relative to their APR. By that somewhat arbitrary standard, Jacksonville State significantly overachieved, while UTEP significantly underachieved. Both teams also over and underachieved relative to their YPP numbers and we went over some reasons for that last week. However, I do have more to say about both the Gamecocks and Miners.

Biggest APR Over and Underachievers

Astute readers probably perused the previous table and thought: 

Wow. Jacksonville State and UTEP seemed to significantly over and underachieve relative to their respective APRs. I wonder where their numbers rank in an historical context. 

First, thanks for your curiosity. Second, I have the answer for you. Among non-power conference teams since 2005, Jacksonville State was the biggest overachiever in regards to their actual conference record and their APR. Meanwhile, for non-power conference teams since 2005, UTEP was the third biggest underachiever in regards to their actual conference record and their APR. 

If you are regular reader of this blog (thanks dad), I like to use history as a guide to set reasonable expectations for how major over or underachievers will perform in the coming season. With that in mind, let's compare Jacksonville State and UTEP with the other major over and underachievers to set a baseline standard for their conference record in 2026. We'll start with the overachiever, Jacksonville State. 

In the APR posts, I calculate the difference between actual conference record APR in terms of wins. However, since each non-power conference from the past twenty one seasons did not all play the same number of games, we are going to use winning percentage. The table below lists all non-power conference teams since 2005 that saw their actual conference winning percentage exceed their APR by at least .300. The teams are sorted by the difference between their actual conference winning percentage and their APR. Their actual winning percentage, expected winning percentage, and difference between the two are listed in the table as well as their offensive touchdowns and touchdowns allowed.

Ten other teams saw their actual conference record eclipse their APR by at least .300. The big question we want to answer is what happened to those previous ten teams the next season? My guess is they would tend to decline in the aggregate. Did that happen?

Unequivocally, the answer is yes. Seven of the ten teams saw their conference record decline the following season, while three teams held steady, and none improved. Their aggregate conference winning percentage declined by .301. In an eight game conference season, this equates to roughly 2.4 fewer wins. I'd say reasonable expectations for Jacksonville State would be between four and five conference wins in 2026. 

What about our big underachiever, UTEP? The table below lists all non-power conference teams since 2005 that saw their actual conference winning percentage fall at least .300 below their APR. Once again, teams are sorted by the difference between their actual conference winning percentage and their APR. Their actual winning percentage, expected winning percentage, and difference between the two are listed in the table as well as their offensive touchdowns and touchdowns allowed.

An unlucky thirteen teams joined UTEP in underachieving by at least .300. Did the previous thirteen teams tend to improve the following season?

In general, the teams that significantly underachieved relative to their APR improved. Nine of the previous thirteen saw their conference record improve, while two produced the same conference record, and two somehow declined. In the aggregate, the teams improved their winning percentage by .225. In an eight game conference schedule, this equates to roughly 1.8 additional wins. I will draw your attention to the cumulative winning percentage. While the thirteen teams did improve, their overall winning percentage was still south of .500. UTEP is moving from one of the weaker FBS conferences (CUSA) to a much stronger non-power conference (Mountain West). I expect improvement in 2026, but three or four wins in conference play is probably the ceiling on this mine shaft.