2020 Yards Per Play: MAC

This week, we examine the MAC, a conference that started late but managed to have two teams finished ranked in the AP Poll for the first time since 2003.   

Here are the 2020 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 division, by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.

College football teams play either eight or nine conference games (typically fewer in 2020). 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 2020 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.

Eventual MAC champ Ball State significantly exceeded their expected record as did Akron. For Ball State, it was all about close game performance. The Cardinals finished 4-1 in one-score conference games, winning all their tight games after dropping their opener by a touchdown to Miami. Meanwhile, Akron was not especially lucky, they just happened to be really bad and benefited from beating a team that was statically a little better than they were. That team happened to be Bowling Green. While the Falcons significantly under-achieved relative to their YPP numbers, they were still quite bad; just not catastrophic. In five games, Bowling Green forced just a single turnover, while committing eleven, for a MAC worst turnover margin of -10.  

What's the Deal with the MAC Championship Game?

In the 2020 MAC Championship Game, an undefeated Buffalo team entered as a nearly two touchdown favorite against an upstart outfit from Muncie, Indiana that had not finished with a winning record since 2013. The upstarts traded scores with Buffalo for a quarter and a change before a pair of touchdowns with under two minutes to go in the half (including a scoop and score) gave them some breathing room. In the second half, Buffalo put together some nice drives, but capped those drives with a touchdown just once and Ball State was able to escape Detroit with their first MAC title since 1996. The upset was not out of character for the MAC Championship Game. The last three games have been won outright by underdogs, and underdogs have covered the past five games. Overall, the MAC Championship Game has not gone well for the betting favorite, particularly Against the Spread (ATS).

In nearly a quarter century of action, the betting favorite has won the game outright just around 58% of the time. That isn't great, especially considering some of the larger spreads in the history of the game. However, their performance ATS has been ghastly. They have covered just 26% of the time! To put that number in perspective, if you had blindly placed the same monetary bet on the underdog plus the points in each MAC Championship Game, your rate of return would be over 41%!

It certainly appears the MAC Championship Game is a destination where favorites go to die, or at least kill the profits of their investors. However, before we make any bold proclamations, we need to compare the MAC to other Group of Five (G5) conferences. The MAC was the second non-power conference to hold a championship game (after the WAC in 1996), but does have the longest running championship game among the G5 since the WAC's championship tilt lasted just three seasons. With the Sun Belt adding a title game in 2018, all the current G5 conferences have a championship game. Here is how all those other title games have played out for favoites, both straight up and ATS.

Compared to the MAC, favorites in the other G5 conferences have fared much better in winning the title outright. They have won about 71% of the time (versus about 58% for MAC favorites). However, like MAC favorites, they do have a losing record ATS, although their winning percentage (44%) is much higher than those of MAC favorites (26%). Why is this? Why do MAC favorites struggle in their title games as compared to other G5 favorites? I think the biggest culprit is the venue.

In the early days of the MAC Championship Game, when Marshall was the dominant program, it was played at campus sites. The team with the best conference record got to host the game for the first seven seasons of its existence. However, since 2004, the game has been played on a neutral site in Detroit, Michigan. That makes the MAC an outlier among the G5. Every other conference rewards their best regular season team by allowing them to host the title game (the 2020 Mountain West Championship Game was played in Las Vegas because public health restrictions in California prevented San Jose State from hosting the game). When you compare MAC favorites to other G5 favorites and consider venue, the MAC results don't seem so bizarre.

The MAC doesn't have a very large sample of home favorites, but the fact their home favorites never lost in four tries compares favorably to the 21-6 straight up record of the other G5 home favorites. Their ATS record, while .333 is just one game away from .500 which would equal the ATS record of the other G5 favorites. 

When it comes to road favorites, MAC favorites have actually done better than other G5 favorites in a very limited (and not statistically valid) sample, both straight up and ATS.

The neutral field is where MAC favorites have struggled. MAC favorites have played four times as many games on a neutral field as the other G5 combined. In addition, most of those other G5 neutral site title games came last century. If the MAC rewarded its best teams with homefield advantage, these upsets would slowly go the way of the WAC. 

What's the deal with the MAC?

I for one, knew they would be back. 

2020 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Conference USA

Two weeks ago 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 2020 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. Since teams played a varied number of games (some played as many as seven or as few as three), the rankings are on a per game basis, not raw totals. 

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 as a line of demarcation to determine whether or not a team significantly over or under-performed relative to their APR. Using that standard, Louisiana Tech was the only team that saw their APR differ significantly from their actual record. The Bulldogs also significantly over-achieved relative to their YPP numbers and we went over a few reasons for that two weeks ago, so we'll move on to more important things. 

Is Conference USA the Worst FBS Conference Part II: Conference USA Graduates

Two weeks ago I posited that Conference USA may have surpassed both the MAC and the Sun Belt as the worst conference in FBS. I used AP Poll rankings as a proxy and showed Conference USA has the fewest weeks in the College Football Playoff era with at least one team ranked as well as the fewest numbers of conference members to be ranked. This week, instead of further bashing Conference USA, I want to focus on the members the league lost in the latest round of realignment. 

As I mentioned two weeks ago, 26 schools have called Conference USA home since the league began play in 1996. While some quality programs used Conference USA as a stepping stone in the late 90's and early 00's (Cincinnati, Louisville, and TCU to name a few), I am only going to focus on the teams that left the conference in 2013 and 2014 during the College Football Playoff realignment. Between 2005 and 2012, Conference USA was quite stable. The league was home to twelve teams, playing in two divisions, with a league title game played the first weekend in December. However, four members left Conference USA beginning with the 2013 season (Houston, Memphis, SMU, and UCF). Those four teams moved to the American Athletic Conference. The next season, three more schools joined them (East Carolina, Tulane, and Tulsa). Those seven schools have had varying levels of success since leaving Conference USA, but each has had at least a moment or two in the sun. All seven have played in bowl games since leaving Conference USA and six have spent at least one week in the AP Poll (Tulane is the only team that has not cracked the rankings). 

I'm really burying the lede though. The fact that Tulane has played in a few bowl games since leaving Conference USA won't cause any administrators in the league office to lose much sleep. However, the outsized success that the top three programs (Houston, Memphis, and UCF) have had since leaving probably does. Those three teams have combined for four New Year's Six bowls (out of seven possible bids) and a BCS bowl appearance since leaving Conference USA. Meanwhile, Conference USA has been in the conversation for a New Year's Six invite twice (both times by Marshall), but has not been able to close the deal. If Conference USA had been able to hold those schools perhaps they would have become the preeminent Group of Five conference in the College Football Playoff era.

2021 Bracket Advice: Unbeaten Teams in the NCAA Tournament

As many college basketball fans know, no team has won the NCAA tournament while finishing unbeaten since Indiana in the nation's bicentennial year of 1976. Since the Hoosiers cut down the nets in The Spectrum 45 years ago, five other teams have entered the NCAA tournament without a loss, including Gonzaga this season. How did those other four teams fare and how does Gonzaga compare to them? Glad you asked. We'll start chronologically, beginning with Indiana State.  

The Sycamores entered the 1979 season with moderate expectations. They finished a game behind Creighton in the Missouri Valley Conference in 1978, and lost a tight game to the Blue Jays in the conference tournament final. The Sycamores were relegated to the NIT where they lost in the second round to Rutgers. In the offseason, their head coach, Bob King dealt with some health issues and the head coaching duties were turned over to Bill Hodges. Despite not being ranked in the preseason AP Poll, Hodges adept coaching and some minor contributions from Larry Bird helped the Sycamores win all their regular season games. They were rewarded with a number one seed in the NCAA Tournament and advanced all the way to the championship game where they were dispatched by Magic Johnson and Michigan State. Despite their unbeaten record, Indiana State was probably a little overrated. Their SRS was eleventh in 1979, which while good, is not dominant. After Indiana State, the nation would have to wait twelve years until another team entered the NCAA tournament without a loss. 

While Indiana State did not even make the tournament the year before their unbeaten regular season, UNLV began the 90's with a bang, routing Duke in the NCAA final. With the bulk of their roster returning in 1991, the Rebels were the number one team in the AP Poll in 1991. The Rebels did not play a single game decided by less than ten points until their second round NCAA Tournament game against Georgetown. The Rebels appeared to be well on their way to becoming one of the most dominant champions in NCAA Tournament history, but Duke upset them in the national semifinal 79-77. Despite the loss, UNLV was the most dominant team according to SRS in 1991, finishing nearly four points better than second place Arkansas. After UNLV's run, it would be nearly a quarter century until another team finished the regular season without a loss.

Wichita State, fresh off a Cinderella Final Four run in 2013, opened the 2014 season solidly in the middle of the AP Poll. While they were not nearly as dominant as UNLV in 1991, the selection committed rewarded their regular season brilliance and gave them a number one seed. Unfortunately, waiting in the second round, was a talented, but underachieving Kentucky team. The Wildcats upset the Shockers in the second round and eventually advanced to the national final. Speaking of Kentucky...

Prior to this season, the last team to enter the NCAA Tournament unbeaten was Kentucky in 2015. After advancing to the national final in 2014, the Wildcats were the preseason number one in the AP Poll in 2015. They were a wire-to-wire number one in the poll, and were a heavy favorite once the NCAA Tournament commenced. After cakewalks in their first three NCAA Tournament games, the Wildcats showed some vulnerability in a tight victory against Notre Dame in the regional final. After dispatching the Irish, the Wildcats were upset in the national semifinal by Wisconsin. Like UNLV a quarter century before, the Wildcats still rated as the top team in SRS by about four points. 

So how does Gonzaga stack up against that quartet?

No shade to Gonzaga, but I don't think its a coincidence that four of the last five teams to enter the NCAA Tournament unbeaten have played in mid-major conferences. However, it should be noted that the Missouri Valley in 1979, the Big West in 1991, and the West Coast Conference this season, all sent multiple teams to the tournament. Other West Coast Conference teams don't have the talent of Gonzaga, but at the same time, the West Coast Conference is not the Patriot League or the Southwestern Athletic Conference. By SRS, Gonzaga compares pretty favorably to the dominant teams on this list. They are currently first in this metric, by about a point and a half over Illinois. While this does not guarantee they will be around in the Final Four, it does objectively mean they are very good. They were also the top ranked team in the preseason AP Poll, which is a good proxy for talent. A lot of randomness can happen in the NCAA Tournament, but I wouldn't hesitate to select Gonzaga as my champion when filling out a bracket.

2021 Bracket Advice: What About Mid-Majors with Great Records?

This week, we are taking a break from our weekly football recaps and offering you some advice on how to make selections in your office pool before the NCAA Tournament gets started (hopefully). Last year, I penned a magnum opus for a tournament that did not get played, but all of the things I wrote are still applicable to this field. Long story short, think long and hard before you pick Alabama, Arkansas, or even Michigan to make a run to the Final Four. You can thank me later. This year, instead of looking at teams that might be more likely to flame out early in the tournament, I wanted to help you find some underdogs to play on in the first round. 

The 2020-21 college basketball season has been anything but normal. Non-conference games were more rare, games were postponed or canceled almost daily, and the Ivy League didn't play at all. Thanks to this unique scheduling situation, a pair of mid (or maybe even low) major teams managed to put up sterling won/loss records. Colgate and Winthrop enter the NCAA Tournament with one loss apiece. However, neither are in the final edition of the AP Poll. Does this happen often? To answer that question, I looked at every instance since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 where a team qualified for the field, finished with no more than two regular season losses, and was not ranked in the top-ten of the final AP Poll. Prior to 2021, it had happened eleven times before. Those eleven teams are listed below below along with their record, conference, final poll ranking, eventual NCAA seed, and NCAA tournament result. 

While none of the teams managed to make it into the top-ten despite their great records, they still got respect from the AP writers. Eight teams finished the season ranked and the only teams that entered with a single loss both topped out at number twelve. Also, props to my mother's alma mater, The College of Charleston, that appears on this list twice in a three season span (John Kresse was way underrated by the general college basketball public). But who cares about rankings, you came here for bracket advice. Well, based on tournament results, its probably not a good idea to take either Colgate or Winthrop to get to the second weekend. None of these eleven teams advanced further than the second round. However, we should note that only one team was favored by seed to get past the second round. In 1990, La Salle was awarded a four seed, so theoretically they did not quite live up to expectations when they blew a large halftime lead and lost to fifth seeded Clemson. Teams seeded like Colgate and Winthrop have actually done better than expected. Granted the sample size is quite small, but four other teams were given double-digit seeds (NC A&T, Penn, Charleston, and Stephen F Austin). Three of those four pulled first round upsets, with North Carolina A&T being the lone double-digit seed to be eliminated in the first round. Colgate and Winthrop might not be household names, but if history is any indication, one or both would be a solid first round upset pick. 

Don't worry, we're not done just yet. Check back Wednesday for one additional bracket advice post. We'll examine undefeated teams and see how Gonzaga stacks up compared to previous teams that entered the NCAA Tournament with an unblemished record. 

2020 Yards Per Play: Conference USA

After a six week sojourn through the Power Five, we return to the Group of Five this week and examine Conference USA.   

Here are the 2020 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 division, by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.

College football teams play either eight or nine conference games (typically fewer in 2020). 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 2020 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.

Despite starting their season on time, Conference USA did not come close to playing a full league season in 2020. No team played a full eight game schedule (Old Dominion didn't play at all), and the eventual title game participants played only nine regular season league games between them. With the teams playing an abbreviated schedule, it should not be surprising that a lot of teams significantly over or under-performed. Florida Atlantic and Louisiana Tech significantly exceeded their expected record. The Owls and Bulldogs combined to finish 8-4 in conference play and their records were buoyed by a phenomenal mark in close games. The teams combined to finish 5-1 in one-score conference games, with Florida Atlantic posting a 2-0 mark and Louisiana Tech going 3-1. At the other end of the spectrum, Florida International, Southern Miss, and UTEP significantly under-performed relative to their expected records. Florida International played only three conference games, so the small sample size is mostly to blame. Southern Miss went through a decades worth of coaches in a few months and also finished 0-3 in one-score conference games. Finally, UTEP was 0-2 in one-score conference games and also finished with a -8 turnover margin in league play (tallied in just four conference games). 

Is Conference USA the Worst FBS Conference? Part I: Rankings and Such

In a quarter century of existence as a football league, Conference USA has had a lot of turnover in its ranks. Conference USA began play in 1996 with just six members, and only one of those original six is still in the conference (Southern Miss). The league has played football for 25 seasons and a total of 26 teams have called Conference USA home at one point or another, including two current Power Five teams, the last three Group of Five programs to play in the New Year's Six, and even Army. The turnstile conference sees its members leave for greener pastures and replaces them with mid-major programs from defunct conferences, the FCS, or other FBS leagues. The latest round of realignment occurred at around the same time as the beginning of the College Football Playoff in 2014. In the seven seasons under the new postseason format, you can craft a pretty good argument that Conference USA has overtaken (or undertaken?) the MAC and the Sun Belt as the worst FBS conference. 

In the seven seasons of the College Football Playoff era, each of the Group of Five conferences have seen their teams spend time in the top 25 of the AP Poll. However, Conference USA has the fewest weeks with at least one team ranked.

After Western Kentucky finished the 2015 season ranked 24th in the final AP Poll, Conference USA went four consecutive seasons without a team spending any time in the AP Poll. Marshall changed that with a solid run in 2020 before a three-game skid to close the season that caused them to fall out of the poll and likely cost Doc Holliday his job. In addition to having the fewest weeks of at least one league member in the AP rankings, Conference USA has seen just two programs enter the AP Poll; Marshall and Western Kentucky. Every other FBS conference has seen at least twice as many teams make their way into the rankings. 

The AP Poll is hardly the final word on team or conference strength, especially in 2020 with schedules being so fluid and unique. However, at worst, it is a good way to gauge the national perception of teams. Next week, we'll take a break from football, and I'll provide some bracket wisdom, but in two weeks we'll look at another area where Conference USA has struggled, relative to their Group of Five peers in the College Football Playoff era. 

2020 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 2020 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. Since teams played a varied number of games (everyone played at least eight games and six teams played a full nine game schedule), the rankings are on a per game basis, not raw totals. 

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 line of demarcation to determine whether or not a team significantly over or under-performed relative to their APR. Using that standard, no team saw their actual record differ significantly from their APR.

 

Power Five Teams to Never Make a Conference Title Game

With Iowa State's historic season in 2020 (and Notre Dame's to an extent), the list of Power Five programs to never make a conference title game has shrunk by two. However, instead of celebrating Iowa State's success, lets have some fun at the expense of those teams that have never played in a conference title game. We'll go alphabetically by conference, starting with the ACC.

Of the fourteen teams in this iteration of the ACC, just three have not played in the league's title game. All three teams play in the Atlantic Division, home of current power Clemson and former power Florida State. Meanwhile, the Coastal Division saw all seven teams alternate division titles over seven consecutive seasons beginning with Duke in 2013 and ending with Virginia in 2019. The three teams to not play in the title game have all come fairly close over the years. Louisville, with Heisman winner Lamar Jackson, finished the 2016 season tied with Clemson atop the Atlantic Division, but dropped a classic in Death Valley giving the Tigers the tiebreaker. NC State, with a generational talent of their own at quarterback, just needed to beat Maryland in the final game of the 2010 regular season, but lost to the Terps, giving the division title to Florida State. Finally, Syracuse finished 6-2 in ACC play in 2018, and nearly beat Clemson in Death Valley before Chase Brice and Travis Etienne staged a late rally. Had the Orange won, they would have played their old Big East rival Pitt in the ACC Championship Game.

Up next, the Big 10.

Only half the current Big 10 teams have ever played in the conference title game. Illinois has never really come close, with their best conference finish since the league added a title game being 4-5 in 2019. Indiana almost won their division this past season, but the league changed the rules so Ohio State could qualify despite playing five conference games. Maryland has never come close to playing in the Big 10 Championship Game, but they had a few near misses in the ACC. Most notably in 2006, when they hosted Wake Forest in the regular season finale with the winner taking the Atlantic Division. Michigan has come close to winning first the Legends and later the East side of the Big 10, but fell to eventual winners Michigan State, Nebraska, and Ohio State in different seasons. Minnesota had a chance to win the Big 10 West in 2019, but fell to Wisconsin in the regular season finale giving the Badgers the division title and Paul Bunyan's Axe. Purdue and Rutgers have never really come close to winning their respective divisions since the Big 10 added a conference title game. 

Now, the Big 12. 

Six of the current Big 12 teams have played in the conference title game. Kansas nearly finished unbeaten in 2007, but dropped their regular season finale to arch-rival Missouri in the Border War. They have not finished with a winning conference record since. Oklahoma State had the misfortune of having their best team immediately after the conference discontinued the title game. Had a title game existed in 2011, perhaps the extra quality win could have pushed the Cowboys ahead of Alabama and prevented an all-SEC BCS Championship Game. Texas Tech's best shot at a division title game in Mike Leach's penultimate season when the Red Raiders won their first six conference games before a trip to Norman. The Sooners blew them out and set up a three-way tie in the Big 12 South that was broken by the BCS standings. Dana Holgorsen's final West Virginia team won six of their first seven conference games, but lost their final two games to Oklahoma State and Oklahoma by a combined seven points. A victory in either would have put the Mountaineers in the Big 12 Championship Game. 

And now, the Pac-12. 

Every team in the Pac-12 South has made the conference title games, so this list is entirely populated with teams from the North. Amazingly, Cal has not posted a winning conference record since 2009, so they have never really been in position to contend for the division crown (Pac-12 added divisions in 2011). Oregon State finished 6-3 in 2012, their lone winning conference record since 2009, but that was two games behind Oregon and Stanford. Washington State narrowly missed out on a division title in three consecutive seasons. The Cougars finished either a game behind or tied with the division winner in 2016, 2017, and 2018. The most agonizing finish was probably 2018, when they entered the Apple Cup with a one game lead on the Huskies, but lost at home to give their arch-rivals another division crown. 

And finally, where it all began, the SEC.

The SEC Championship Game has been around the longest, so it makes sense most of their teams have played in it. The closest Kentucky came was 2018 when they finished two games behind Georgia. Had they beaten the Dogs at home (instead of losing by 17), they would have been the East's representative. Ole Miss finished 7-1 in Eli Manning's senior season, but that lone loss came to eventual conference and national champion, LSU. The closest Vanderbilt came was 2012, when they finished with a 5-3 SEC record, but were a distant fourth in the East. Note that while Texas A&M has not appeared in the SEC Championship Game, they did win the Big 12 in a shocking upset over Kansas State in 1998. 

That's the list. Which of these teams do you think is the next to break through and play in their conference title game? Were I drafting a team to make it next, I'd probably take Michigan or Oklahoma State, with Minnesota an intriguing wild card. 

2020 Yards Per Play: Big 12

Three conferences down. Seven to go. This week, we stay in America's heartland and look at the Big 12.   

Here are the 2020 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 (typically fewer in 2020). 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 2020 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.

Texas Tech was the lone Big 12 team to see their actual record differ significantly from their expected record based on YPP. The Red Raiders under-performed, but we can't blame close games. All three of their conference victories came by a touchdown or less and they were a respectable 3-2 in close conference games. Instead, the culprit was turnovers. The Red Raiders forced the fewest turnovers in Big 12 play (9) while committing the most (18), causing them to fall short of their expected record. Which, speaking of...

Matt Wells' Teams Almost Always Under-Perform

At least relative to their YPP numbers. Matt Wells has been a coach at the FBS level for eight seasons; six at Utah State and two at Texas Tech. I happen to have YPP data for all those seasons (and a few more going back to 2005) and in that span, his teams almost always fall short (sometimes a little, other times a lot) of their expected conference record based on YPP. 

During his six seasons at Utah State, the Aggies were undoubtedly a successful team. They played in five bowl games, won a division title, finished in the top 25, and went 30-18 against Mountain West opponents. However, in that six season span, Utah State finished with the largest average negative disparity between their conference record and their expected record based on YPP in the Mountain West.

As you might expect over a sample size of six seasons, most teams finished with a negligible average disparity. Teams over-perform one year and under-perform the next with little rhyme or reason save for the randomness inherent in a college football season. However, two teams really stood out. Air Force and Utah State. Air Force finished with a conference winning percentage that was on average .141 better than their expected winning percentage based on YPP. In an eight game conference season, this means they won about 1.13 more additional games than we might expect based on their YPP numbers. By contrast, Utah State finished with a conference winning percentage that was .109 lower than their expected winning percentage. This equates to 0.87 fewer wins in an eight games conference season. 

After guiding Utah State to eleven wins and a top 25 appearance in 2018, Wells was hired by Texas Tech. In his first two seasons in Lubbock, the Red Raiders have struggled. They are just 8-14 overall and 5-13 in Big 12 play. They lost to Kansas in 2019 and nearly lost to them again in 2020. Despite the poor record, Texas Tech has put up mediocre per play numbers. Last season, they ranked ninth in the Big 12 in Net YPP, and while finishing ahead of Kansas should be the default for any Big 12 team, their record was still slightly worse than one would expect based on their YPP numbers. Then in 2020, the Red Raiders actually posted a positive per play differential, yet lost twice as many conference games as they won. Through two seasons, Texas Tech has under-performed worse than any other Big 12 team.

That -.146 equates to 1.31 fewer wins than expected over a nine-game Big 12 conference season. Two seasons is not nearly a large enough sample to draw any meaningful conclusions, but paired with his six seasons at Utah State, a pattern has started to develop.

In eight seasons, Wells' teams have been in the top half of their conference once when it comes to performance against expected record based on YPP. Meanwhile, they have finished last three times, second to last once, and third to last once. Why have his teams consistently struggled to finish within range of their lofty YPP numbers? Well, we can't blame turnover margin. His teams are collectively +10 in 66 conference games. No, the primary culprit appears to be plain old close game luck. In conference games decided by a touchdown or less, his Utah State teams were 5-9. In conference games decided by more than a touchdown, those Aggies were 25-9. Meanwhile, in two seasons at Texas Tech, his teams are 3-6 in close conference games and 2-7 in all other conference games. Doing the math, overall, his teams are just 8-15 in close conference games (and 27-16 in all other conference games). Is Matt Wells a poor close game coach or is this record a function of small sample size randomness? History is not destiny, but if Matt Wells wants to keep his job, he better start winning more of these close games.

2020 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 2020 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. Since teams played a varied number of games (everyone played at least five and a few played a full nine game schedule), the rankings are on a per game basis, not raw totals. 

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 line of demarcation to determine whether or not a team significantly over or under-performed relative to their APR. Using that standard, Wisconsin was the lone team that saw their record differ significantly from their APR. The Badgers played six conference games and won half of them, but two of their victories (the first two) came by 38 points apiece and gave the impression the Badgers were an elite team. Huge margins of victory, particularly in a smaller than normal conference season, can really skew how a team rates in APR. 

Bert is Back in the Big 10

You may have missed it if you don't follow Illinois football (and why would you?), but the Illini will have a new football coach in 2021. Illinois replaced a one-time Super Bowl losing coach with a two-time Rose Bowl losing coach when they hired Bret Bielema. Bert as he is affectionately known, coached Wisconsin for seven seasons following Barry Alvarez's retirement. His tenure was very successful with three Big 10 titles, five ranked finishes, and an average of nearly ten wins per season. His Big 10 background and success makes him an obvious homerun hire for Illinois right? Well, if you look at the past three Wisconsin coaches, it sure seems like the culture surrounding the program was the primary reason for the success other than any greatness inherent in the head coach. 

We'll circle back to Bielema in a moment, but let's start with his replacement, Gary Andersen. Andersen was the head coach at Wisconsin for just two season, but in that time he led the Badgers to nineteen victories and one division championship. Following his abrupt departure, he headed to Corvallis, Oregon and coached the Oregon State Beavers for two and a half seasons, where his teams won just seven games. He resigned from Oregon State and after a little more than a year, returned to where his FBS head coaching career began, Utah State. Andersen took over a Utah State team that had finished in the top twenty-five the previous season, with a future first round pick at quarterback, and led them to a 7-6 record. In his second season back at Utah State, his team began the year 0-3 with each loss coming by at least three touchdowns and Andersen again resigned. At Wisconsin, his teams went 13-3 in Big 10 play. Since leaving Wisconsin, his teams won nine conference games over parts of five seasons.

This analysis is not completely fair to Andersen as he did lead Utah State to a pair of bowl games in his original tenure. Let's give him credit for those four seasons.

When we include his first run in Logan, his career numbers look a little better, but its important to remember context. When Andersen had his greatest success at Utah State, the WAC was imploding. Boise State left the WAC for the Mountain West after the 2010 season, with Fresno State, Hawaii, and Nevada following after the 2011. In 2012, Utah State was in a conference with two teams that had good seasons (Louisiana Tech and San Jose State), two of the worst teams in FBS (Idaho and New Mexico State), and two FBS newcomers (Texas-San Antonio and Texas State). 

When Andersen left for Corvallis, Wisconsin hired Pittsburgh head coach Paul Chryst. Chryst's teams in the Steel City had been middling, posting a 19-19 overall record as they closed out the Big East and joined the ACC. However, upon arriving in Madison, the Badgers continued to be one of the best teams in the conference outside of Ohio State. In six seasons under Chryst, Wisconsin has won at least ten games four times, played in the Big 10 Championship Game three times, and averaged nearly ten wins per year. In conference play, the Badgers have lost as many games in six seasons under Chryst as the Panthers did in three seasons. 

Now lets return to Bielema. He has not been out of coaching since 2012. After leaving Wisconsin, he became head coach of Arkansas. While his overall record at Arkansas was mediocre (29-34) and while he guided the Hogs to three bowl games in five seasons, he did not do what he was ostensibly paid for; beat fellow SEC opponents. 

Bielema's best squad (at least based on the advanced metrics) was probably his 2014 team which managed a 2-6 conference record. His team did finish with a winning conference record in 2015 (and famously denied Ole Miss their shot at an SEC crown), but that same team also lost to Texas Tech and Toledo in non-conference play. Outside of that 5-3 finish, his teams averaged 1.5 conference wins per season. Bielema's new division, the Big 10 West, is nowhere near as brutal as the SEC West and Bielema won't have to deal with Alabama, Auburn, LSU, and Texas A&M on an annual basis, but Illinois will begin his tenure at the bottom of the division hierarchy. Iowa and Wisconsin are the stalwart front runners, Northwestern is the nerd school that annually overachieves, and Minnesota, Nebraska, and Purdue have all hired young promising coaches in the past few years (though success at their current locations has been mixed). Illinois replaced a failed retread (who took them to a bowl a little more than a year ago I might add) with another failed retread who happened to have Big 10 roots. And his success at his previous Big 10 job (now nearly a decade in the past) appears to have had more to do with the program itself than anything Bielema did. Perhaps Bielema will be a success at Illinois, I've been wrong a time or two before. However, this hire was lazy. Instead of hiring a coach that succeeded at an easy job and failed at a hard one, maybe take a shot on a coach that just led Kent State to back to back winning seasons? Casual college football fans and less plugged in alums may not have known who he was, but he would have been a better choice.    

2020 Yards Per Play: Big 10

This week we move from the coastal elites to the midwest and examine the Big 10.  

Here are the 2020 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 (but the other games from championship weekend are). The teams are sorted by division by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.

College football teams play either eight or nine conference games (typically fewer in 2020). 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 2020 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.

Indiana and Northwestern overperformed relative to their YPP numbers. The Hoosiers and Wildcats nearly met in a Bizarro Big 10 Championship Game until the conference changed the rules at the eleventh hour to allow Ohio State to qualify despite playing just five conference games. The Hoosiers and Wildcats were a combined 5-1 in close conference games, but another major reason for their success relative to their performance was their absurd defensive play once their opponents arrived in the Red Zone. In Big 10 play, Indiana allowed nineteen drives inside their twenty yard line, but opponents converted touchdowns less than half the time (nine) and scored at all just over half the time (eleven). Meanwhile, Northwestern was even better at preventing touchdowns. Opponents scored just seven touchdowns in the twenty-five occasions they got inside the twenty. They did manage ten field goals to account for seventeen total scores, but were only able to punch it in the end zone just over a quarter of the time. The Hoosiers and Wildcats were the epitome of 'bend but don't break'. At the other end of the spectrum, Maryland, Michigan, and Purdue all underachieved relative to their YPP numbers. Maryland played only five games, so the small sample size of their conference schedule led to increased variance. The Terrapins were also -7 in turnover margin in those five games. I couldn't pinpoint a reason for Michigan's underachievement, but the Wolverines also played a small number of conference games (6) and had a negative turnover margin (-3). Purdue finished 2-3 in close conference games, but the real culprit for their underperformance were their own Red Zone struggles. The Boilermakers scored just fifteen touchdowns on twenty-eight possessions inside the twenty. 

Longest Bowl Losing Streaks

In many respects, 2020 was a dream season for Indiana. In an abbreviated campaign, the Hoosiers finished with one regular season loss and found themselves ranked seventh in the AP Poll when bowl season commenced. Alas, the Hoosiers met up with a volatile Ole Miss team in the Outback Bowl and lost 26-20. Despite the loss, the Hoosiers still finished twelfth in the AP Poll, their highest ranking since finishing fourth in 1967. The loss was familiar for Indiana fans in that it was their sixth consecutive bowl loss. The Hoosiers have not won a bowl game since the 1991 Copper Bowl. Six consecutive bowl losses may seem like a lot, but the Hoosiers have a ways to go to match the all-time record among current Power Five teams. And who might they be chasing for this ignominious record? Why, a team they almost faced in the Big 10 Championship Game and a small, private school with little football tradition, also located in Indiana. 

I kid of course about Notre Dame. For a private school, their enrollment is rather large. Honorable mentions for bowl losing streaks go to South Carolina and West Virginia, a pair of schools that followed starkly different timelines in those losing streaks. South Carolina's took more than four decades, while West Virginia squeezed theirs into a twelve year period. 

Take heart Indiana fans. While the bowl losing streak continues, at least you can always relish the journey of the 2020 season.