2023 Yards Per Play: Conference USA

After six weeks of Power Five reviews, we shift back to the Group of Five and examine Conference USA.

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. 

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. 

2023 Yards Per Play: Big 12

Before we get started this week, I wanted to take a moment to mention the passing of legendary college basketball coach Lefty Driesell. For the unfamiliar, Lefty was a favorite coach of mine and the inspiration for both my old AIM screen name and the address of this blog. Obviously, as a naive 23 year old, SEO optimization did not enter my mind. Before he retired, I was able to see Lefty coach in person at the Charlotte Coliseum in December 2001. Hard to believe that was nearly a quarter century ago, but time keeps rolling along. But enough about me, lets get to why you came here in the first place, a look back the Big 12. 

Here are the 2023 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. 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 the Big 12 met this threshold? Here are Big 12 teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Conference championship game participant Oklahoma State (more on them later) significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP while TCU and UCF underachieved relative to their YPP numbers. Oklahoma State was left for dead after a lackluster non-conference performance that included a close win at Arizona State and a blowout home loss to South Alabama. After a close loss to Iowa State to open conference play, it seemed like Mike Gundy might finally be on his way out in Stillwater. But the Cowboys won their next five conference games (with three coming by one-score) before getting waxed by UCF. At 5-2 and holding the tiebreaker over Oklahoma thanks to their head to head win in Bedlam, the Cowboys pulled off consecutive second half comebacks against Houston (trailed by 14 in the second quarter) and BYU (trailed by 18 at the half) to qualify for the Big 12 Championship Game. The Cowboys finished 4-1 in one-score conference games and had a decent turnover margin in Big 12 play (+4). Close games pushed the Cowboys to the pinnacle of the Big 12, but they kept TCU and UCF near the bottom of the league standings. One season after holding a horseshoe and four-leaf clover, TCU's good fortune flipped. The Horned Frogs finished 0-3 in one-score conference games (0-4 overall thanks to their opening loss to Colorado) and had the worst in-conference turnover margin in the Big 12 (-8). This kept them home for the holidays one season after they finished as the national runner up. UCF also fared poorly in one-score conference games, posting a 1-3 mark in such games. Their close game losses were especially tight, with two of the defeats coming by a single point and another coming by two points. 

Underwater in Championship Games

Doing away with divisions is probably a good thing for college football. I say probably because a team's geographic location should not arbitrarily make their path to the conference title game easier or nigh impossible (see the Big 10 for instance). However, doing away with divisions also ensures teams like Purdue, Duke, or Wake Forest will not be making conference title appearances for a very long time. Conferences obviously want their best teams to qualify for the championship game because it usually means a better game, more ticket sales, a higher television rating, and beginning in 2024, an opportunity to secure multiple CFP bids. But I'm an egalitarian (and a Wake Forest fan) so I think it rules when Purdue, Duke, or Wake randomly shows up on Championship Saturday. But I'm not here to argue for or against divisions. No, I'm here to point out a statistical anomaly. 

With unbalanced divisions, its easier for a (statistically) mediocre or bad team to qualify for the conference championship game. With an easy schedule, a few lucky bounces, a tiebreaker, and a small sample size (eight or nine game league schedule) a team that is statistically weak can finish ahead of six or seven other teams in a division. But without divisions, that same team would need to finish ahead of twice as many teams to qualify for the conference championship game. And that is exactly what Oklahoma State did in 2023. The Cowboys finished with a Net YPP of -0.27 and became just the second team to qualify for a conference championship game in a league without divisions with a negative Net YPP. The other team to do so also played in the Big 12. 

Division-less conferences have not been around for very long. By my count there have been 19 such seasons (see below), but the Big 10 and SEC are nixing divisions in 2024, meaning all the power conferences will be free-for-alls. The MAC also announced they will not have divisions in 2024, leaving the Sun Belt as the lone holdout. As leagues expand and divisions go away, I expect we will see fewer and fewer teams get to their respective conference title games with negative Net YPPs. Cherish Oklahoma State's 2023 accomplishment for its rarity!

2023 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: Big 10

Last week we looked at how Big 10 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 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.

Finally, Big 10 teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

Using a game and a half as the standard for significant over or underachievement, no Big 10 team saw their actual record differ significantly from their APR. 

Losing Teams in Bowl Games

As the bowl schedule has expanded in recent years, more losing teams are finding their way into postseason games. Some may lament the mediocrity (or worse) of their inclusion and hearken back to the days of exclusivity in bowl games. Personally, I don't mind more college football (we don't have any games for roughly eight months out of the year), but to each his own. I'm not here to try and convince you a five win team playing in Detroit the day after Christmas is good (or bad). On the contrary, I want to see if there is any angle where we can make some extra money to pay off those holiday bills. 

In the BCS/College Football Playoff Era, nineteen teams have participated in a bowl game despite owning a losing record entering the game. Those teams have ranged from champions of brand new conferences (North Texas in 2001), to also-rans from the SEC (Mississippi State in 2016), to a glut of teams willing to play postseason exhibitions in a global pandemic. How have these teams fared both straight up and against the spread? Read on to find out!

Those nineteen teams finished with a 10-9 straight up record. Basically, they have been a coin flip to win outright in their bowl games. However, in those nineteen games, they entered as betting underdogs thirteen times meaning we would not have expected them to finish with a winning record. Nineteen games is a small sample, but these losing teams have overachieved at least relative to the moneyline. In addition, motivation does not appear to be an issue for these losing teams. They have won five of the six games in which they entered as favorites. Alas, there does not appear to be a solid ATS trend to take away from this examination. Their cumulative ATS record has also amounted to a coin flip with the teams combing for a 9-10 mark (3-3 ATS as a favorite and 6-7 ATS as an underdog). 

Unfortunately, there has not been an overarching trend when it comes to betting on or against losing teams in bowl games. My advice is to handicap their games as you would any bowl team. Focus on how they played in the regular season, keep tabs on their opt outs and coaching changes, and don't be afraid to back them on the moneyline if they enter as underdogs. 

2023 Yards Per Play: Big 10

Two conferences down. Eight to go. We head (mid) west this week and examine the Big 10. 

Here are the 2023 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. The teams are sorted by division 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 the Big 10 met this threshold? Here are Big 10 teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Iowa and Michigan significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP while Nebraska and Illinois underachieved. Iowa and Michigan combined to finish 6-1 in one-score conference games and the Wolverines finished with the second best in-conference turnover margin (+15) in the Big 10. Meanwhile, Illinois and Nebraska has the two worst in-conference turnover margins in the Big 10 with the Illini finishing seven turnovers in the hole while Nebraska turned the ball over fifteen more times than their league foes. The Cornhuskers also finished 1-5 in one-score conference games, continuing an incredible trend I shall henceforth refer to as the Curse of Bo Pelini. 

Outliers

Iowa was bad on offense in 2023. That is not a controversial or surprising statement. Their nepo offensive coordinator was under fire before the season began thanks to their lackluster performance throughout his tenure. In order to keep his job, the Iowa offense had to average at least 25 points per game in 2023. That number included any points scored by the defense or special teams which have been fantastic over the past few seasons. The Hawkeyes just missed their goal of 25 points per game by roughly ten points. Per game. Iowa averaged 15.4 points per game in 2023 and ranked second to last in scoring offense (only Kent State averaged less). As you may have noticed from the YPP table, their per play offensive numbers were also quite bad. The Hawkeyes averaged under four yards per play against Big 10 opponents (3.85). I have YPP numbers going back to 2005, and while the Hawkeyes cannot lay claim to having the worst per play conference offense of any BCS/Power Five team in that span (my alma mater actually holds the record with 3.06 in 2014), they are by far the most successful BCS/Power Five team with a dreadful offense. 

Including Iowa last season, 28 BCS/Power Five teams have averaged less than four yards per play in conference action since 2005. 26 of those 28 teams finished with losing conference records. Iowa, of course, won their division with a 7-2 mark last season and Vanderbilt eked out a 4-4 SEC record in 2008 while averaging 3.96 yards per play. Twelve of 28 teams finished winless in conference play, seven finished with one conference win, six won two league games, and UCLA in 2008 was the only team to win three (two of their three league wins came against teams that also averaged under four yards per play). Combined the 27 teams not named Iowa, finished 26-201 in conference play, averaging less than one league win! The Hawkeyes were not a great team in 2023, but they were one of the most unique teams in recent college football history. 

For the curious, all 28 BCS/Power Five teams that averaged under four yards per play are listed below along with their conference record. 

Non-BCS and Group of Five teams that averaged under four yards per play in conference action did not fare any better. In fact, they were a little worse. Since 2005, fourteen mid-major teams have averaged under four yards per play in league games. Those teams combined for a 9-101 conference record and no team won more than three league games. 

2023 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: ACC

Last week we looked at how ACC 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 ACC 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, ACC teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

Using the somewhat arbitrary standard of a game a half, no ACC teams significantly over or underachieved relative to their APR in 2023. 

More Than a Feeling

*Editors's Note

I write (or at least draft) these posts several days or weeks in advance, so this was written prior to Jeff Hafley taking the Green Bay defensive coordinator job. That's an interesting choice for the Packers considering the defenses Boston College put on the field. 

Is Boston College a team on the rise or are the Eagles destined to get their head coach fired after 2024? On the one hand, the Eagles rebounded from their first losing season under Jeff Hafley to finish 7-6 in 2023. They are led by a talented and mobile young quarterback in Thomas Castellanos. Castellanos passed for over 2000 yards and rushed for over 1000 yards while accounting for 28 total touchdowns. With another year of experience under his belt, the Eagles should move up a rung or two in the conference pecking order and be one of the better mid-level teams in the ACC. But on the other hand...

While the Eagles finished bowl-eligible in 2023, they won a lot of close games. Five of their six regular season wins came by a touchdown or less. And most of the teams they beat were not very good. They beat Holy Cross (a good FCS team) by three, Army by three, Virginia by three, Connecticut by seven, and Syracuse by seven. They did beat Georgia Tech by fifteen in Atlanta, but that was by far their best regular season performance outside of their near comeback against Florida State. They won a lot of close games against mediocre to bad teams. And while Castellanos played well in spurts, he was also very erratic. He tossed 14 interceptions on the season. Only three FBS quarterbacks threw more. And while Castellanos is young enough to expect improvement, the other side of the ball was in veritable shambles. In ACC action, the Eagles allowed nearly seven yards per play (6.99) and 34 touchdowns, both worst in the conference. But perhaps the biggest indictment toward any pro-Eagles optimism has been their Vegas power rating over the past few seasons. 

Their have been three full college football seasons since the 2020 campaign was impacted by Covid. During those three seasons, Las Vegas bookmakers have made the Eagles betting favorites in ACC play three times. That is easily the lowest total of any ACC team in that span. 

Only Virginia and Syracuse come close to the betting line futility Boston College has endured over the past three seasons (note Virginia has also played one fewer game as their ACC finale against Virginia Tech in 2022 was canceled). While the betting line and the betting market are not perfect indicators of team strength, they serve as a solid proxy for how good teams are. The line and the market are updated after each game so the evaluation of a team can look very different in November than it did in August. Despite being bowl-eligible in two of those three seasons, the market never warmed to the Eagles. Perhaps they will remain undervalued by the betting market in 2024, but I think this serves as a giant red flag and solid indicator to bet against Boston College, both in the preseason over/under win total market and the point spread market early next season. 

2023 Yards Per Play: ACC

We are ten percent of the way through out offseason previews. Next conference up is the ACC.

Here are the 2023 ACC 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 ACC 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 the ACC met this threshold? Here are ACC teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

NC State and Florida State exceeded their expected record based on YPP, while Pittsburgh underachieved relative to their YPP numbers. For the Wolfpack and Seminoles, the reasons they exceeded their expected records are obvious. Both schools combined to finish 6-1 in one-score conference games and they were also the top two teams in terms of in-conference turnover margin in the ACC (at +10 and +6 respectively). As for Pittsburgh, I can't find anything in the stats that helps explain why their expected record differs so significantly from their actual record. The Panthers were not unlucky in close games (1-1) and their in-conference turnover margin was mediocre (-1). Their fourth down conversion rate and red zone touchdown rates were close to their opponents. They actually scored more non-offensive touchdowns (3) than they allowed (2) in ACC play. This one will remain a mystery. I suppose we can just lay the blame at the feet of Pat Narduzzi and his antiquated approach to offense. 

Moving On Up 

As you may have read or heard, the ACC has had some membership drama over the past year. I'm not a reporter and I am not in the business of making membership predictions, so I will be just as surprised as you when Clemson jumps to the Big 10 and the ACC replaces them with Memphis. Instead of dealing with hypotheticals, lets examine the universe as it is. 

When the Pac-12 died over the summer, the ACC tossed a life raft to Golden State nerd schools Cal and Stanford. Whether that life raft brought them on to a ship that was also sinking remains to be seen. While Cal and Stanford will be interesting fits in the ACC for however long the conference exists in its current incarnation, I think the more intriguing case is the third team from west of the Mississippi that is joining the league, the SMU Mustangs.

Before the term was coined, SMU was a member of a power conference. The Mustangs joined the Southwest Conference in 1918 and were members of the Texas cabal until the league dissolved after the 1995 season. SMU had a good run in the early 1980's, finishing ranked in each season from 1980 through 1984. That success was later deemed to be ill-gotten (check out the 30 for 30 film Pony Excess for details) and SMU was given the 'Death Penalty' for the reprehensible violation of paying college athletes. The 'Death Penalty' did its job and pretty much killed the SMU program. Thus, they were not a hot commodity when the Southwest Conference died and were forced to downgrade to the WAC (the nation's first Super Conference) in 1996. They have continued to bounce around since, joining Conference USA in 2005 and the AAC in 2013. Now, after nearly 30 years, they are back in a power conference. What then, are reasonable expectations in their first year in the 'big leagues'? To answer that, we look as we often do, to the past for guidance. 

Just a note before we dive into this, when I use the term 'power conference', I am referring to conferences that were part of the old BCS system and are now part of the Power Four (formerly Power Five) in the College Football Playoff era. SMU's move to the ACC marks the fifth time a power conference has drafted teams from non-power conferences to fill out its ranks. The first conference to do this was the Big East in 2004 and 2005. The league lost Miami and Virginia Tech to the ACC prior to the 2004 season and replaced them with a team in just their fifth year as an FBS program, the Connecticut Huskies. The following season, the Big East lost another team, Boston College, to the ACC and replaced the Eagles with three Conference USA teams (Cincinnati, Louisville, and South Florida). While this is technically two replacements, I'm grouping them together since they happened back to back in the same conference. How did those four newcomers perform?

Louisville and South Florida posted winning conference records in their first season in the Big East. And while these teams started out hot, Cincinnati had the most staying power in the league, posting winning conference records in six of their eight years as a member of the Big East. Collectively, these four teams combined to go 14-13 in their first season of Big East play. And while that is a winning record, it should be noted that only half the teams in the eight team league were power conference veterans (Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, and West Virginia). 

The next conference to bring a non-major conference team into their mix was the Pac-10 in 2011. The league added Colorado from the Big 12 and Utah from the Mountain West and rechristened themselves the Pac-12. Utah was a Mountain West power, but it took the Utes awhile to acclimate in their new league. 

The Utes posted losing conference records in each of their first three seasons in the Pac-12 before becoming a veritable power in the late aughts. The Utes played in four consecutive non-Covid Pac-12 Championship Games between 2018 and 2022, with the final two resulting in conference titles. 

The third conference to add a non-major team was the Big 12 which did so the very next season. The Big 12 brought West Virginia over from the Big East, but their non-major draft pick was TCU. The Horned Frogs were another Mountain West power, but they also struggled initially in their new home. 

The Horned Frogs had losing conference records in their first two seasons in the Big 12 and despite breaking through with a shared league title and near College Football Playoff bid in 2014, they have struggled to consistently win in league play, posting just five winning conference records in their twelve years in the league. 

After adding the Horned Frogs, the Big 12's membership was constant for a few years until the SEC surprised everyone and poached Oklahoma and Texas in the summer of 2021. The Sooners and Longhorns would remain in the league for three more seasons, but the Big 12 made plans to replace them by raiding the AAC. They brought over Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF in 2023 and augmented that trio with BYU which had been playing as an independent for more than a decade. However, to say those teams struggled when moving up is putting it lightly. 

The quartet combined for an 8-28 league record in 2023 and were just 4-24 against veteran Big 12 members. 

With that history, I think expectations should be muted for SMU, at least in their first season. The previous ten teams that moved up combined to finish 30-51 in league play in their first seasons in their new locales. Seven of the ten teams finished with losing conference records and the only teams that finished with winning records (Louisville and South Florida) played in a conference that was populated with other teams moving up. SMU finished ranked for the first time since 1984 and won the AAC last season, but they also finished 0-3 against Power Five opponents. All of those games came away from home and one was in a bowl where things can get weird. However, only one of those opponents could be classified as good. Oklahoma was top-fifteen last season, but TCU and Boston College were mid at best. SMU dominated their AAC opponents last season, but they only beat three teams that played in a bowl game (Rice, Memphis, and Tulane) The ACC is not the strongest power conference, but I think the Mustangs will struggle as they adjust to a more difficult schedule. If they win half their league games next season, I would consider that a success. 

2023 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: AAC

Last week we looked at how AAC 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 2023 AAC 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, AAC teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

Tulane won an incredible two and a half more games than we would have expected based on the ratio of their touchdowns scored and allowed in AAC play. The Green Wave also greatly exceeded their expected record based on YPP and we went over some reasons for that last week. Meanwhile Florida Atlantic won almost two fewer games than we would have expected based on their touchdown ratio. The Owls were not terrible in close games (1-2 in one-score league games) and they actually had a positive in-conference turnover margin (+3). So what was the reason for the disconnect between their actual record and their APR? Like UAB last week, I think the culprit is fourth down success. The Owls went for it on fourth down 25 times in AAC play and they converted those opportunities less than half the time (11). The Owls were particularly bad in their four-game losing streak to close the season. In that streak, they made 17 fourth down attempts and converted just six times. That amounts to eleven hidden turnovers over four games, two of which the Owls lost by three points apiece. 

Using the Preseason AP Poll to Make Conference Championship Game Bets

The title is straightforward and a bit of a mouthful, but it also serves as a good way to increase your bankroll when Championship Weekend rolls around. Allow me to explain. 

Three years a go, I wrote about how you can go about spotting a championship game blowout. The basic idea of the post is this: When handicapping college football championship games, one of the easiest (and most profitable) methods is to simply look at the preseason AP Poll. If one of the teams was ranked in the preseason AP Poll (particularly the top ten) and the other was not, betting on the team that was ranked in the preseason can usually lock in a profit for you. The table below lists the results for Power Five title games where one team was ranked in the preseason AP Poll and the other was not.

Those teams ranked in the preseason AP Poll have won more than 90% of championship games against teams that began the year unranked. While their ATS mark is not quite as strong, they have covered nearly twice as often as not. This situation played out twice in 2023. Florida State and Texas began the year ranked eighth and eleventh respectively in the preseason AP Poll and faced teams in their respective conference title games that were unranked in the preseason AP Poll (Louisville and Oklahoma State). The Seminoles (with their third string quarterback) and Longhorns both won and covered. 

If we look solely at teams that began the year in the top ten of the preseason AP Poll, the results are pretty similar. 

Those teams won their conference title game 93% of the time and covered over 64% of the time. 

Those were Power Five numbers. Does this trend hold at the Group of Five level? Glad you asked. As you may have guessed, teams from the Group of Five are much less likely to begin the season ranked in the preseason AP Poll. It's even less likely for said preseason ranked team to play in their conference title game against a team that was not in the preseason AP Poll. In fact, it has only happened seven times. 

Those seven teams won their conference title games over 70% of their time, but their ATS record was less definitive. This situation also played out in 2023 with Tulane facing SMU in the AAC Championship Game. Off a Cotton Bowl victory in 2022, the Green Wave were ranked in the preseason AP Poll, while SMU began the year unranked. Despite that difference, and despite the homefield advantage enjoyed by Tulane, the Mustangs dispatched the Green Wave to win their first conference title since 1984. 

So what should you do when making your championship game bets in December? For Power Five conferences, if you see a matchup between teams that fit these preseason ranked/unranked criteria, strongly consider backing the team ranked in the preseason AP Poll. If you can't pull the trigger, pass on the game, but under no circumstances should you back the team that began the season unranked. For Group of Five games, this law is much less ironclad, but if the Group of Five team was ranked in the preseason top ten of the AP Poll, they may be worth a look. 

2023 Yards Per Play: AAC

The college football season is over and the longest offseason in sports begins. To help you get through, we'll revisit all ten conferences as we have for the past seven years via conference only Yards Per Play numbers and the Adjusted Pythagorean Record to see which teams may have been better or worse than their actual record. We'll begin as we always do with the American Athletic Conference. 

Here are the 2023 AAC 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 AAC 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 the AAC met this threshold? Here are AAC teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Tulane and Memphis exceeded their expected record based on YPP while UAB fell short of theirs. Tulane and Memphis won all (or at least most) of the close ones, finishing a combined 7-1 in one-score conference games. Meanwhile, UAB was not unlucky in one-score league games, finishing 1-1 in such contests. Turnover margin also doesn't do a good job of explaining the dissonance between their expected record based on YPP and their actual record. The Blazers had a mediocre -1 turnover margin in league play. Once you dig deeper though, you find the culprit was fourth down success and red zone scoring. The Blazers went for it 18 times on fourth down in conference play and converted exactly half the time. Their defense faced 24 fourth down attempts and allowed 16 conversions. That is roughly seven hidden turnovers spread out over the course of an eight game conference slate. While the Blazers were about average in terms of fourth down success on offense, they struggled mightily in scoring touchdowns in the red zone. They had 31 red zone drives in league play and scored touchdowns on less than half of them (15). Meanwhile, their defense allowed 41 red zone drives and opponents netted a touchdown nearly 70% of the time (28). The Trent Dilfer hire was widely mocked, but fourth down conversions and red zone success can shift in the blink of an eye. I wouldn't be shocked if UAB returned to the postseason and contended for the AAC crown next season. 

The Worst Unbeatens

Ugliest supermodel, poorest billionaire, flabbiest bodybuilder. These are pejoratives most people would happily embrace. When humans developed numbers to classify and group things, the natural consequence was that someone or something would inevitably be the worst of that group. And in 2023, the Tulane Green Wave became the worst college football team to finish unbeaten in conference play (since 2005 using by my preferred YPP metric among teams that played a full conference schedule). It doesn't sound quite as impressive with all those caveats, but believe me, it is. For your viewing and reminiscing pleasure, the ten worst teams by YPP to finish unbeaten in conference play since 2005. 

No team will probably ever top Southern Cal's shortened 2020 unbeaten run. The Trojans played just five league games as the Pac-12 initially canceled their football season before reversing course and playing an abbreviated schedule beginning in November. 

Nine of these unbeaten teams played in conference title games, and despite their middling YPP numbers, they performed quite admirably, especially when they did not face off against another unbeaten (Tulane and Kent State faced off against unbeaten SMU and Northern Illinois teams respectively). 

Collectively, the nine teams were 5-4 straight up in their respective conference title games and 6-2-1 ATS. When not facing another unbeaten, they were 5-2 straight up and 6-1 ATS. 

Tulane may have failed in their effort to capture a second consecutive league title and they were not as good as their unbeaten record might otherwise indicate. However, winning all your games in league play, no matter the competition, is something to celebrate. 

Strangers in the Field Part VIII: How'd We Do?

Another football season has come and (almost gone). But our bets have all been finalized. Unfortunately, there is nothing to sweat in the NFL in Week 18. Let's take a look back and see how the predictions from our Vegas trip went. 

Games of the Year

The first two games were over before kickoff. We nailed the third and some shenanigans on an extra point costs us the fourth game. 

College Football Win Totals

Not too shabby. Nailed almost 60% of 39 total wagers. 

NFL Win Totals

We swept our NFL plays. The Panthers and Rams were easy winners (somehow the Panthers had a higher preseason win total than the Rams), the Falcons was a toss up that went our way, and the Vikings bet won thanks to all their injuries. However, after all the injuries to the Ravens that went against us in 2021, I will not be apologizing for any injury good fortune the fates happen to throw my way. 

Miscellaneous 

The conference title bets were never close to coming to fruition although Memphis was in contention in the AAC until the penultimate regular season game. Tampa Bay and Texas went into slumps as soon as I made these bets. The Rangers did have a two game lead in the division with four to play, but dropped three of their final four games to give the division to the Astros. Of course, they naturally went 13-4 once the playoffs started and won the World Series. Not that I'm bitter. And we got three of five games right on the parlay, but that gets us nothing. 

Money Wagered: $2345

Money Won: $2494.80

ROI: 6.39%

We had our third consecutive winning season and while the ROI is not nearly as large as last year's (nearly 22%), we'll take it and go back to the lab so we can do it again next year. 

Next Thursday we begin our offseason recaps with the AAC. See you then!