Parrish Raus

So in an interesting turn of events at the end of last week, Frank Wren gave Larry Parrish his walking papers.  Wren did so a matter of hours after Fredi Gonzalez had stated that every member of the coaching staff would be back in 2012.  Politically speaking, this is a significant development because Wren is having to step in to make a change that Gonzalez should have made, but didn’t.  Already low after he presided over an epic September collapse, Gonzalez’s reputation went down further with Braves fans when he acted as if no changes needed to be made to the coaching mix.  Wren clearly agreed, stepping in personally to get rid of Parrish.  Not only will Wren be thinking “why did Gonzalez not figure this out on his own?,” but the fact that he made the change himself shows that Gonzalez’s position isn’t exactly set in stone for the long-term.

Why did Parrish need to go?  Can I interest you in some fancy numbers to illustrate that the Braves offense underachieved this year?  Baseball Prospectus relies on True Average as one of their go-to stats.  True Average accounts for both propensity to get on-base and the propensity to get extra-base hits.  The best way to think of it is BP’s way to come up with one number that represents offensive production as opposed to looking at a slash line.  Before the season, BP’s projection system generates an expected True Average number for every major leaguer, which is based on the player’s history of performance, his physical characteristics, his age, and just about anything else that might be relevant.  Those projections give us a baseline against which to evaluate the Braves’ performances at the plate in 2011. 

Here are the projected and actual True Averages for the seven regulars who started and ended the season in Atlanta:     

Player	Projected TAv	Actual TAv	Difference
Freddie Freeman	.263	.280	+.017
Alex Gonzalez	.241	.226	-.015
Jason Heyward	.292	.253	-.039
Chipper Jones	.299	.287	-.012
Brian McCann	.296	.284	-.012
Martin Prado	.275	.245	-.030
Dan Uggla	.291	.270	-.021

Notice a trend there on the right-side of the table?  Every Braves regular with the exception of Freddie Freeman performed below expectations.  In other words, a collection of players with the combined characteristics of the Braves’ regulars should have produced at a given level, but in reality, they collectively performed well below that level.  If that’s not a coaching failure, then what else can it be?  (Random statistical noise, perhaps?) 

Despite the depressing ending to the 2011 season, I’m feeling fairly optimistic about the Braves’ chances in 2012.  One major reason for this optimism is that the Braves were in playoff position for almost the entire season despite a millstone around their necks offensively.  Whether Parrish was that millstone is the big question.

Your Schwartz Is As Big As Mine: SEC Scoring Versus the National Average

As I was embarking on my remarkable timesuck this weekend of putting 31 years worth of SEC standings into an Excel spreadsheet so I could calculate scoring averages, it occurred to me that I cannot discuss the question of SEC offensive performance over the years without comparing the conference against the national average.  I may have dropped Stats 402 at Michigan within a week because my small section was badly overcrowded, the TA barely spoke English, and “holy s***, this is math!,” but I have enough sense to know that any statistical study requires a baseline.  If we are looking at the changes wrought by Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer, then we need to know whether the SEC was simply moving along with the rest of college football or if one or both coaches had a significant when they joined the league.

So, thanks to some rudimentary skills with Excel (although not enough skill to convert this to a colorful graph) and a great nap from my two-year old that gave me the time to do this flight of fancy, here is SEC scoring versus the national average from 1980 to the present:  

Year	SEC PPG	National PPG	Margin
2010	30.88	27.78	3.1
2009	28.2	26.87	1.33
2008	25.22	26.92	-1.7
2007	30.06	28.23	1.83
2006	25.2	24.18	1.02
2005	23.83	26.54	-2.71
2004	24.69	26.4	-1.71
2003	27.15	26.66	.49
2002	25.43	27.13	-1.7
2001	27.56	26.78	.78
2000	26.35	25.99	.36
1999	24.68	25.69	-1.01
1998	25.51	25.69	-.18
1997	25.58	25.58	0
1996	24.38	25.52	-1.14
1995	26.67	25.3	1.37
1994	26.17	24.52	1.65
1993	24.33	24.51	-.18
1992	21.63	23	-1.37
1991	24.26	23.02	1.24
1990	23.15	24.72	-1.57
1989	23.07	24.21	-1.14
1988	22.06	23.98	-1.92
1987	24.74	23.24	1.5
1986	23.18	22.86	.32
1985	22.72	22.4	.32
1984	23.98	22.17	1.81
1983	21.91	22.25	-.34
1982	23.43	21.77	2.66
1981	19.63	20.52	-.89
1980	21.94	20.66	1.28

Some thoughts on the numbers:

• There is no doubt that Urban Meyer and the Spread has had a major impact.  After his first year, SEC scoring has exceeded the national average in four of five years, each time by at least a point.  2010 was the most offensive year in the 31-year sample by some margin.  Ironically enough, Meyer’s offense was dreck last year, but the slack was picked up by Malzahn’s Auburn, Petrino’s Arkansas, Spurrier’s South Carolina, Mullen’s Mississippi State, and Saban’s Alabama.  If one viewed 2006-10 in isolation, then one could reach the conclusion that offenses in the SEC took a quantum leap and therefore the conference got better, but…

 

• The link between offensive success and conference success is broken when one looks at the 80s.  In four of ten seasons, scoring in the SEC was below the national average.  In those years, the SEC was the best conference nationally (as measured by SRS) twice and finished second in the other two years.  Look at 1983.  According to SRS, this was the best year for the conference in the entire sample.  Auburn finished 11-1 and should have won the national title.  Georgia’s only loss was to Auburn and the Dawgs then beat unbeaten, #2 Texas in the Cotton Bowl.  (“What’s the time in Texas?  Ten to nine.”)  Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama were all excellent.  There wasn’t a single SEC team that finished with an SRS number below zero.  The SEC was wildly successful in 1983 despite the fact that its teams scored below the national average.

 

• A related note: Pat Dye won four SEC titles at Auburn.  In three of those four years, the league finished below the national average in scoring.  There’s no question as to what environment was favorable for Dye’s Tigers.

 

• In terms of Spurrier’s impact, the effect took a little while.  Scoring generally went up, with a major blip in 1992.  A major part of that blip was Alabama’s epic ‘92 defense, not to mention the fact that Georgia had by far its best defense of the decade, allowing only 12.9 points per game.  Spurrier’s team had its worst offensive performance of the 90s in 1992, scoring only 24.2 point per game.  Scoring then picked up thereafter, reaching an apex in 1994 and 1995, the height of the Spurrier offensive boom.  By 1996-99, the effect was over.  Also, it’s worth noting that the SEC’s second-best performance in terms of collective SRS rating took place in 1997, when the conference matched the national scoring average exactly.  Again, offensive prowess is not necessary for the league to succeed.

 

• What the hell happened in 2006?  Generally speaking, the national scoring average has shown a stead, gradual ascent, adding a touchdown over the course of 31 years.  2006 looks like a massive, isolated recession.  Scoring dipped by over two points from the prior season and then shot up by over four points in 2007.  2007 was a wacky year in sorts of ways, one of which is that it featured the highest scoring average in modern college football history. 

 

• 2008 stands out as a transition year for the SEC.  It was the last year in which the Meyer offense was truly great, as Dan Mullen took his talents to Starkville after the season.  On the other hand, it was the offensive nadir for Tommy Tuberville, it featured an Alabama team that had not yet figured out how to move the ball effectively, it was the training wheels year for Petrino at Arkansas, and it was the end of the line for Phil Fulmer at Tennessee, and Sylvester Croom at Mississippi State.  Think of 2008 as the SEC’s awkward teenage year. 

 

• If I put words in HP’s mouth that the offensive dark ages for the SEC was the first half of the Aughts, then the numbers belie his conclusion.  SEC scoring out-paced the national average in 2000, 2001, and 2003 before collapsing in 2004 and 2005. 

 

• If I had to sum up my views on the changes wrought by Spurrier and Meyer, I would say that both pulled the SEC in the direction that college football was headed generally.  As college football moved from I-formation running to passing out of multiple receiver sets in the 90s, the SEC followed suit with Spurrier at the vanguard.  As college football has progressed to be dominated by the Spread in the second half of the Aughts, the SEC has again tracked the trend with Meyer’s offense as the shining example.  Stepping into the realm of speculation, the SEC is especially well-suited to take advantage of the Spread because of the number of athletes in the South who can both run and throw, thus filling the critical role in the Spread?  (Where did Oregon find Darron Thomas?  Where did Michigan find Denard Robinson?)  Did I just give myself another research project?

 

• Man, I am getting desperate to have some actual games to discuss.

Spurrier Versus Urban: Who Had the Bigger Impact?

My pissing matches with Heisman Pundit are usually just for fun.  My tiny niche on the Internet is the Statler & Waldorf role, usually by criticizing other writers and media types.  I like arguing, so this is an easy role to fill.  It also generates chances for cheap, lazy posts, so it is consistent with my half-assed approach to this endeavor.  However, my latest exchange with the college football blogosphere’s favorite PR guy actually led me to an interesting question: did Steve Spurrier have a bigger offensive impact on the SEC than Urban Meyer? This point seemed self-evident to me:

The funny thing is that HP could actually tell the story he’s trying to spin if he set 1990 as his starting point instead of 2005.  When Steve Spurrier came to the conference, it was in the throes of basic I-formation football.  The 80s were dominated by Vince Dooley early and Pat Dye late, with Johnny Majors having some success sprinkled in the middle.  Running and defense was the dominant style.  Spurrier’s passing attack took the conference completely by storm and his teams proceeded to finish first in the conference for six of the next seven years.  Spurrier’s success led the rest of the league to innovate, with such examples as the Hal Mumme/Mike Leach Air Raid offense at Kentucky, Auburn going spread-ish with Dameyune Craig, and Tennessee modernizing its offense with David Cutcliffe.  Spurrier had a massive impact on the SEC and opponents either imitated or died.  Thus, the conference that Urban Meyer joined 15 years after Spurrier’s arrival was anything but the backwater that HP imagines.

HP rebutted in the comments section:

1. If Spurrier started an offensive revolution in the SEC, it sure didn't show up much in the offensive data for other teams…

7. Your claim that Spurrier changed offenses more than Meyer did in the league is absurd. The proof is in the offensive numbers, the titles and the Heisman winners. For instance, the Heisman is only won with superb offensive numbers. That's a truism. So, it's no shock that the only SEC Heisman winner between 1986 and 2007 came from Florida, the only SEC school that had outstanding offensive production. Of course, since 2007, there have been three SEC Heismans, which coincides with the league's offensive explosion (as I demonstrated by the numbers in my post). Do you think it's all just a cosmic coincidence?

8. I grant you that Spurrier did introduce the forward pass to the SEC. But those offenses that started passing were nowhere near as innovative as Spurrier's and they did not keep up with some of the other leagues and that is reflected in the national offensive numbers during that time (as I pointed out, only 1 SEC team averaged over 35 ppg from 1998 to 2005, and 10 have since...another coincidence?)

The crazy thing about sports arguments is that there are usually numbers to help resolve arguments.  With the help of the ESPN SEC Football Encyclopedia* and the invaluable college football section at Sports-Reference.com, as well as heavy usage of Microsoft Excel, I created a chart to measure a number of factors over the past 31 years of SEC football:

• Points per game scored by SEC teams collectively;
• SEC teams finishing in the top ten nationally in scoring offense and total offense;
• Consensus offensive All-Americans from the SEC;
• SEC offensive players who finished in the top ten of the Heisman voting; and
• The SEC’s SRS Rating and conference rank based on SRS.

I included the last two categories because I wanted to compare the overall strength of the conference with its offensive numbers.  Normally, I wouldn’t care about individual awards in assessing overall conference strength, but HP suggested them as a yardstick and they do have some value in assessing the subjective opinions of the media regarding SEC’ offenses.  I would have liked to have included yardage figures on the chart, but I couldn’t find those figures for the 80s and since the point of this exercise is to test whether the 80s were more of an offensive dark age than the first half of the Aughts, I couldn’t use yardage as a measuring stick.  If someone knows where I could find those figures, I’d be all ears.  

* – I bought the Encyclopedia on my last trip to Borders because “everything must go!”  Yup, my last purchase at one of my favorite stores was shaped by one of my online Newmans.

To steal a line from Brian Cook, chart?  Chart.     

Year	PPG	Top 10 Total Offense	Top 10 Scoring Offense	Offensive All-Americans	Offensive Heisman Top Ten	SRS	SRS Rank
2010	30.88	2	1	2	2	8.20	2
2009	28.2	1	2	3	2	10.35	1
2008	25.22	0	1	3	1	6.83	2
2007	30.06	0	1	3	2	9.78	1
2006	25.2	0	1	1	1	9.02	1
2005	23.83	0	0	2	0	4.61	5
2004	24.69	0	0	2	1	4.85	5
2003	27.15	0	0	1	1	7.10	1
2002	25.43	0	0	1	0	6.32	2
2001	27.56	1	1	5	1	8.57	1
2000	26.35	0	1	0	1	5.32	4
1999	24.68	0	0	3	1	7.71	2
1998	25.51	1	1	3	2	5.52	4
1997	25.58	2	1	3	2	10.68	1
1996	24.38	1	1	3	2	6.04	2
1995	26.67	2	4	0	2	5.86	3
1994	26.17	2	1	1	2	6.98	2
1993	24.33	2	2	1	3	6.13	4
1992	21.63	1	1	2	1	4.96	3
1991	24.26	2	0	0	1	5.74	2
1990	23.15	1	1	2	0	1.89	6
1989	23.07	0	0	2	1	7.17	1
1988	22.06	0	0	1	0	4.52	2
1987	24.74	1	1	2	2	8.47	1
1986	23.18	1	1	2	1	6.26	2
1985	22.72	0	0	3	1	9.24	1
1984	23.98	0	0	2	0	8.91	1
1983	21.91	1	1	1	1	11.22	1
1982	23.43	0	1	1	1	9.09	2
1981	19.63	1	1	1	1	7.49	2
1980	21.94	0	0	1	1	9.80	1

There are two major points to be made here.  First, look at the difference between the SEC before and after Spurrier as compared to the SEC before and after Meyer:

Before and After Spurrier

Year	PPG	Top 10 Total Offense	Top 10 Scoring Offense	Offensive All-Americans	Offensive Heisman Top Ten	SRS	SRS Rank
1980-89	22.66	4	5	16	9	8.21	1.4
1990-2001	25.02	15	14	23	18	6.28	2.83

Even accounting for the fact that we are comparing a ten-year period against a 12-year period, there can be no argument that Spurrier wrought a massive change to the SEC.  Look at 1995.  That year, there were four SEC teams in the top ten nationally in scoring offense, or one fewer than the SEC produced in the entirety of the 80s.  So much for the claim that only Florida was moving the ball in the 90s.  Tennessee, Georgia, Auburn, South Carolina, and Kentucky all appeared in the top ten in scoring or total offense during the decade, with Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia all appearing multiple times.  Also in 1995, SEC teams averaged a touchdown more than they did in 1991 and a half a touchdown more than they did in the last season before Spurrier.  That is some fast, significant change.

If you want the kicker, look at the SRS numbers.  Despite the fact that the SEC was a defense-heavy conference in the 80s, the league was better in that decade relative to the rest of college football.  According to SRS, the SEC was the best conference in the country six times in those ten years and second in the other four years.  During Spurrier’s 12 years, the league finished outside of the top two six times.  The conclusion here is simple: offensive success does not correlate to overall strength.

There is also a conclusion to be drawn that success in the form of national titles isn’t necessarily evidence of a strong conference (although I certainly take that position a lot when the topic of the Big Ten comes up).  The SEC was extremely strong in the 80s, but the decade did not produce a national champion for the conference after Georgia’s title in 1980.  There were certainly close calls, specifically for Georgia in 1982, Auburn in 1983,* and possibly Tennessee in 1985, but no SEC team even played in a bowl game billed as a national title game after 1982.  Maybe the conclusion to be drawn is that a defense-heavy super-conference is less likely to produce a national champion than a more balanced one.     

* – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the fact that Miami was a unanimous national title in 1983 is indefensible.  Auburn finished with the same record and played the toughest schedule in the nation.  According to SRS, the Tigers played five of the top ten teams in the country.  Miami didn't play a single team in that category until they had the good fortune to play Nebraska on their home field in the Orange Bowl.  In short, the voters overrated Nebraska in 1983 (dominated a schedule that turned out to be fairly soft) and then overreacted to Miami upsetting Nebraska.  And to think that we might have been spared the entire era of Da U if voters were more rational.   

Take Auburn as an example.  In 1988, the Tigers had an epic defense and missed out on a shot to play Notre Dame for the national title in the Sugar Bowl because of the Earthquake Game, which Auburn lost 7-6.  Fast forward to 2010 and Auburn went unbeaten and won the national title despite playing in more close games than the ‘88 team.  The team with a great defense and average offense lost a game did not play for the title; the team with the great offense and the average defense did.  Is this a lesson that a defense-oriented conference is less likely to produce national champions?

Before and After Meyer  

Year	PPG	Top 10 Total Offense	Top 10 Scoring Offense	Offensive All-Americans	Offensive Heisman Top Ten	SRS	SRS Rank
1999-2004	25.98	2	2	12	5	6.65	2.5
2005-10	27.23	3	6	14	8	8.13	2.0

Yes, there is a difference, but it is not as pronounced as the difference pre- and post-Spurrier.  Scoring has gone up, but not as much as the Spurrier era versus the 80s.  SEC offensive players have been more likely to receive individual accolades, but how much of that is because the offenses are better and how much is because the teams are outstanding?  (Counterpoint: SEC teams were excellent in the 80s, but they didn’t have a raft of award-winners, so simply winning isn’t enough.) 

That said, the last four years have seen an offensive explosion.  In two of the past four years, the SEC’s scoring average exceeded 30 points per game.  There is a strong parallel to be made to the Spurrier era.  Offensive change does not occur overnight.  It takes time for other programs around the conference to look at what the Gators are doing and ramp up what they are doing offensively.  In the Spurrier era, it took five years.  By 1994-95, SEC teams were scoring 3-4 points more per game than they had in the 80s.  In the Meyer era, it took only three years for the conference’s offenses to see similar progress, followed by a major regression in 2008 (apparently, Meyer’s influence isn’t complete) and then a progression back to 30 ppg in 2010. 

Coming later this week, an answer to a follow-up question: did the changes in scoring in the SEC after Spurrier and Meyer track offensive changes in college football overall?  In other words, did scoring go up simply because of a rising tide of points in college football generally?

Ode to an Oft-Whiffing Shortstop

The Braves passed the halfway pole of the season yesterday by scoring five runs against Felix Hernandez (I know, I’m as surprised as you are) to complete a sweep of the Mariners in Seattle and move 12 games over .500.  Despite an offense that has been painful to watch, the Braves have a three-game lead over the field for the wild card spot.  As we learned repeatedly through the 90s and 00s, all that matters in baseball is getting your playoff lottery ticket.  When it comes to winning the World Series, William Munny was right: deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it. 

So why are the Braves having a good season?  The pitching is an obvious answer.  As Joe Lemire points out, the Phillies and Braves are both in striking distance of becoming the first teams in 22 years to have a team ERA below 3.00.  This morning, I want to give credit to a less obvious candidate: Alex Gonzalez.  I was not happy when the Braves swapped Yunel Escobar for Gonzalez, reasoning that we were buying high on a player who was hitting at an unsustainable level.  A year later, my fears about Gonzalez regressing to the mean offensively have been realized.  Gonzalez has a miniscule .274 on-base percentage and an OPS+ of 76, which means he is well below the norm in terms of his production at the plate.  After his 23 homers last year, he has all of seven this year.

Despite being close to Uggladom with the lumber, Gonzalez is second among the Braves’ position players in WARP (Wins Over Replacement Player).  How is that possible?  Well, according to the Baseball Prospectus, Gonzalez has been the most valuable fielder in all of the majors in 2011.  His glove work has generated ten runs of value for the Braves above and beyond what a replacement-level player would have done in the same spots; no other player in baseball is above nine runs of value.  This is one of those instances where an advanced fielding metric matches up with what our eyes tell us.  I am certainly not alone among Braves fans in having marveled at Gonzalez’s work in the field this summer.  It’s been a pleasure to follow my Twitter feed during games to see fans repeatedly compliment the guy for being an ace with the leather.  Jair Jurrjens, Derek Lowe, and Tim Hudson – a trio of low strikeout, low walk, groundball machines – ought to be particularly grateful to be playing with Gonzalez.  If there is any justice in the world, then Gonzalez will win a Gold Glove.  It’s just too bad that he’s not in the AL so he could lose to Derek Jeter.

It’s good that Gonzalez is having such a good year, because otherwise, it’s a grim season for Braves position players.  Because of an average year at the plate and a bad season in the field, Chipper has been a tick below replacement level.  Freddie Freeman has been at replacement level, which is good by the standards of Braves first basemen since Andres Gallarraga and is forgivable for a young player in his first year as a regular in the majors, but still isn’t going to get a team to the playoffs.  Whether because of a sophomore slump or bad instruction (I refuse to consider that he isn’t going to be a great player), Jason Heyward has been one of the lowest-performing right fielders in the NL.  Martin Prado has recovered from a bad start to be solidly average, but that’s a major step down from his 2010.  Nate McLouth is only passable in comparison to his lost 2010.  And the less said about Dan Uggla, the better.  The Braves have experienced a team-wide offensive collapse.  Other than Brian McCann, every player on the team is at or below expectations offensively.  That’s a sign of a coaching failure, which means that the Braves need to be thinking about making a change with the hitting coach.  It would be a shame to waste an MVP-type season from McCann, a Gold Glove-type season from Gonzalez, and a terrific season from the pitching staff collectively because Larry Parrish has apparently told the Braves to go up there and swing at everything that moves.

The team’s weak performances with the bats make me a little leery of the idea that trading for a big bat in the outfield will be a panacea.  Normally, I would look at this team and say to myself “man, we are one bat away from being right there with the Phillies.  It makes financial sense for the Braves to push themselves over the top.  Let’s not let the desire to save money in left field be the difference between making the playoffs and staying home in October.”  That said, if Parrish can turn Dan Uggla into the second-worst second baseman in the National League, then what is he going to do with Carlos Beltran? 

I can also see an argument on the part of Liberty Media that the team’s attendance does not justify an increase in the payroll.  The Braves are 15th in the majors in attendance, despite the facts that they are coming off of a season in which they made the playoffs and they have been over .500 for the vast majority of the year.  At times, it has seemed as if the Braves have more fans on the road than they do at home, a popular team that doesn’t draw at home as well as they should.  Liberty Media is not in the business of losing money, so the argument for taking on a big, expensive bat in the outfield is less persuasive than it would be if the team were drawing 35,000 per game.

How did I start this post singing the praises of Alex Gonzalez and then end on such a grim note?

Oh, Orson

This is the sort of thing that only I care about:

IT'S A SPRAIN OH GIMME DA SPRAY. That three overpaid medics did not come out immediately and revive Aaron Murray's sprained ankle with magic spray is proof that Georgia is not a professional European football team. Anyone who watches their fair share knows that the magic spray is all you need to recover from a major soccer injury, often reviving an apparently dead man in a matter of seconds. When Italians have heart attacks, it's often applied directly to the chest and works in half the time. This is really all a roundabout way of saying that Aaron Murray's ankle is fine, and that if your national soccer team is not named Spain and has a coastline bordering the Mediterranean, you play an abominable, despicable form of the game and should be ejected from international competition forever based on style alone.*

*You too, Portugal.

Ahem...

What do we Know about the Falcons?

As the local professional football collective comes down the stretch, they are 12-2, which gives them a two-game lead over the Saints and Eagles for the best record in the NFC. Unless something goes terribly wrong, the Dirty Birds are going to be at home for the NFC playoffs. At first glance, the Falcons’ record is deceiving because the team has won seven straight games decided by one score after losing the opener in Pittsburgh in overtime. They look like a team whose record flatters. However, the Falcons are also second in the NFC in point differential, so maybe they aren’t a lucky team after all. The best team in the NFC in terms of point differential is Green Bay, a team that last year and this year seems like less than the sum of its parts. Great offense, good defense, and yet still loses more games than they should. Do we point a finger at Mike McCarthy? They’re the anti-Falcons: good statistical profile, but mediocre record because they lose close games.

When I say that the Falcons don’t have a good statistical profile, this is what I mean:

	Yards per play gained	Yards per play allowed	Margin
Eagles	6.3	5.3	+1.0
Giants	5.8	4.9	+.9
Saints	5.7	5.2	+.5
Packers	5.6	5.1	+.5
Bears	5.0	5.0	0
Falcons	5.0	5.6	-.6

Eeek. We can explain away that low yards per play gained number by pointing out that the Falcons have a low variance offense that consistently churns out first downs by getting medium-sized gains without giving up sacks or penalties. The opening two drives on Sunday against Seattle were the Platonic ideal for this team’s offense: 15 plays and 51 yards for a touchdown, followed by 14 plays and 51 yards for a field goal. At the end of two drives, the Falcons had ten points while gaining a mere 3.5 yards per play. (Put in context, the hapless Panthers have the worst offense in the league and they gain 4.3 yards per play.) Yards per play doesn’t quite do this offense justice. The Falcons don’t hit big plays, so their number isn’t very high, but they score points just fine because they are rarely in third and long and they convert makeable third downs on a consistent basis. The Falcons are first in the NFL in total plays and second in first downs. The offense may look like a tortoise, but we ought to remember who wins the race in Aesop’s fable.

The defense, on the other hand, is harder to justify. They are significantly worse on a per play basis than any of the other contenders in the NFC. They are decent at denying opponents first downs (11th in the NFL), but that’s probably a function of the fact that the offense keeps the ball all day. The saving graces for the defense is that they are good against the run (seventh in yards per rush allowed) and they force turnovers (fifth in the NFL). (The Falcons are not unlike the Patriots, who also allow 5.6 yards per play and get by by forcing turnovers. The Pats, however, are better on offense.) That said, the NFL is a passing league and the Falcons give up a lot of passing yards. Should we feel confident that we can win consecutive playoffs games against Aaron Rodgers and then Mike Vick or Drew Brees? Yes, the Falcons beat Green Bay and New Orleans this season, but both games were very tight and the Falcons needed a little bit of good fortune both times.

So how much does yards per play matter? Can the Falcons win a Super Bowl when their opponents are outgaining them by a healthy margin? Let’s look at the last decade’s worth of conference champions:

	Yards per play gained	Yards per play allowed	Margin
‘09 Saints	6.3	5.5	+.9
‘09 Colts	5.9	5.0	+.8
‘08 Steelers	4.9	3.9	+1.0
‘08 Cards	5.9	5.3	+.6
‘07 Giants	5.1	5.0	+.1
‘07 Pats	6.2	4.9	+1.3
‘06 Colts	6.0	5.5	+.5
‘06 Bears	5.0	4.6	+.4
‘05 Steelers	5.4	4.6	+.8
‘05 Seahawks	5.8	4.9	+.9
‘04 Pats	5.5	5.0	+.5
‘04 Eagles	5.9	4.9	+1.0
‘03 Pats	4.8	4.4	+.4
‘03 Panthers	5.1	4.7	+.4
‘02 Bucs	4.9	4.2	+.7
‘02 Raiders	5.8	5.0	+.8
‘01 Pats	4.9	5.3	-.4
‘01 Rams	6.6	4.7	+1.9
‘00 Ravens	4.7	4.3	+.4
‘00 Giants	5.1	4.6	+.5

Eeek squared. 19 of the last 20 conference champions have had a positive yards per play margin. In fact, only two of 20 conference champions have been lower that +.4: the ‘01 Patriots and the ‘07 Giants. Both of those teams won the Super Bowl, but they needed to pull two of the biggest upsets in NFL history to do so. Is that what we’re counting on to make the Super Bowl? You wouldn’t know it from reading the paper or listening to the radio, but this Falcons team doesn’t fit the statistical profile of the vast majority of conference champions.

Again, we need to point our fingers at the defense. There are six teams that have made the Super Bowl averaging five yards per play or less and five of them came home with the Lombardi Trophy. (An interesting side note: there are four teams on the chart that allowed less than 4.5 yards per play and every one of them won the Super Bowl. If you drop last year’s Super Bowl in which both teams had top offenses, there have been seven teams to make the Super Bowl with an offense gaining 5.8 yards per play or more and six of those teams lost. Let’s file that away in the memory bank if the Eagles or Patriots make the Super Bowl.) There isn’t a single team on the list that allowed 5.6 yards per play, although there are two teams that allowed 5.5 yards per play and both of them won the big game.

So we have one team as our beacon of hope: the 2001 New England Patriots. A young team with a burgeoning star at quarterback that got hot, won a ton of close games, and then pulled a massive upset in the Superdome. There’s actually a larger point to be made here: it might not be hyperbole to say that the Falcons are built on the Patriots model. Look at the three New England teams that won the Super Bowl. One had a negative yards per play margin and the other two were a nothing special +.4 and +.5. Those New England teams won with superior turnover margins: +8 in 2001, +17 in 2003, and +9 in 2004. If there is a secret to having a positive turnover margin, then Thomas Dimitroff has brought it from Massachusetts. Maybe we aren’t doomed after all. If the Tuck Rule comes into play in the Falcons’ first playoff game, then I’m headed for the nearest casino to bet on the Dirty Birds in Dallas.

The Auburn Defense is Neither Auburn, nor a Defense. Discuss.

It’s been a fun few weeks reading stories about Alabama’s underground economy,* but Camkampf has obscured a more pressing issue for those of us who love SEC football: is the Auburn defense good enough to win a national title?  We know that the offense is outstanding.  We know that Nick Fairley is both inappropriately named and also an immovable object in the center of the defensive line.  We know that the Auburn secondary is suspect and facing a senior quarterback, Julio Jones, and a road game against the defending national champions.  So where does this defense stack up?  As ESPN’s Eliminator points out, the defense makes Auburn dissimilar from recent national champions. ($)  But I don’t like their numbers, so I thought that I would use a few of my own.

* – The story of the various scandals involving Auburn’s and Alabama’s NCAA violations would make for a great fourth section in Eric Schlosser’s Reefer Madness.  An economist would look at college football in Alabama and would not be surprised in the slightest that the state’s two major programs have both been hit by major sanctions on numerous occasions.  You have a state where there are no pro sports teams, so all of the sports interest is funneled into college football.  Evolution has given the state a bipolar set-up in which there are two major programs: a historically successful alpha program and a not-quite-as-good, but striving oh so hard second program.  The state is relatively poor and looked down upon by the rest of the country, so its college football teams become a matter of great importance and pride.  Put on top of that cauldron the ineffective lid of the NCAA’s weak, subpoena-free enforcement apparatus that isn’t a major deterrent to paying players and you have a situation in which it would be surprising if Auburn and Alabama were not forking out $200,000 for quarterbacks.  As my copy of Fab Five looks down from my bookshelf and snickers, I’m not saying that Auburn and Alabama are the only schools that flout NCAA rules.  I’m just saying that the state’s set-up makes that phenomenon likelier than in other places.

Last summer, I took a look at the yards per play numbers for national champions over the course of the decade.  Here’s what that list looked like in terms of yards per play allowed (with 2009 Alabama added in):

2009 Alabama – 4.05
2008 Florida - 4.46
2007 LSU - 4.42
2006 Florida - 4.32
2005 Texas - 4.39
2004 USC - 4.27
2003 USC - 4.41
2003 LSU - 4.02
2002 Ohio State - 4.66
2001 Miami - 3.93
2000 Oklahoma - 4.14

And here is yards gained per play:

2009 Alabama – 5.96
2008 Florida - 7.13
2007 LSU - 5.84
2006 Florida - 6.34
2005 Texas - 7.07
2004 USC - 6.33
2003 USC - 6.49
2003 LSU - 5.89
2002 Ohio State - 5.61
2001 Miami - 6.57
2000 Oklahoma - 5.99

And here’s what those ten national champions looked like in terms of yards per play margin:

2009 Alabama – 1.91
2008 Florida - 2.67
2007 LSU - 1.42
2006 Florida - 2.02
2005 Texas - 2.68
2004 USC - 2.06
2003 USC - 2.08
2003 LSU - 1.87
2002 Ohio State - 0.95
2001 Miami - 2.64
2000 Oklahoma - 1.85

Auburn is currently gaining 7.6 yards per play and allowing 5.18,  giving the Tigers a yards per play margin of 2.42.  So there are two conclusions to be made here.  First, Auburn’s defense is weaker than any of the ten teams to win national titles in the aughts.  The Tigers allow a half a yard per play more than any of those ten teams.  On the other hand, Auburn’s offense is better than any of those ten teams.  Only 2005 Texas and 2008 Florida gained over seven yards per play; Auburn is almost a full half-yard per play better than either of them.  (Note for Gary Danielson: what do 2005 Texas and 2008 Florida have in common?  You know, in terms of the offenses that they ran?  Take a wild guess.)  So while Auburn’s defense doesn’t look like a national championship defense, the team as a whole would fit in with 2008 Florida, 2005 Texas, and 2001 Miami in the cluster of the best national champions of the decade.  (Caveat: Auburn hasn’t yet played the toughest game on its schedule.  After the Iron Bowl, the SEC Championship Game, and a bowl game, one would expect the Tigers’ number to be lower.)  Despite playing several close games against inferior opponents, 2010 Auburn does not have the statistical profile of the insanely fortunate 2002 Ohio State team.

So here’s the takeaway (and one that I was not thinking when fingers hit keyboard this morning): the focus on Auburn’s defense is a little myopic.  A defense doesn’t exist in isolation; it’s part of a team.  If the team is producing great numbers overall, then do the individual components really matter that much?  This is the problem with ESPN’s Eliminator analysis.  It penalizes Auburn for not meeting certain defensive benchmarks, but it doesn’t reward the Tigers for blowing past the offensive benchmarks like Usain Bolt at middle school field day.  It’s possible that a team could be so extreme in terms of offensive strength and defensive weakness that it could have a good yardage margin, but would still be unlikely to win a national title.  A team that gained 13 yards per play and allowed ten would be better in yardage margin than any of the last ten national champions, but we would expect a team like that to lose a game or two 63-59.  It doesn’t seem to me that Auburn is quite that extreme.

By the way, this post has done nothing to push me off the position that Gus Malzahn is more valuable than Gene Chizik.  If Auburn were faced with a choice between the two, it should keep the former.  It would be insane for the Tigers to fire a coach who just won the SEC, but there is a precedent for that from their friends in Tuscaloosa. 

I Can’t Help it if I’m (un)Lucky, Michigan Edition

Following on my post arguing that Georgia is better than their record, I thought that I would do the same analysis for Michigan. This has been a strange year for Michigan fans to grasp. The offense and defense are both record-setting ($) in their own special ways. The team is hard to evaluate, especially in the context of deciding whether the future under Rich Rodriguez is promising enough to retain him as opposed to placing a call to Palo Alto. It’s strengths are so pronounced, as are its weaknesses. But is 6-3 a fair reflection of Michigan’s merit. On the one hand, Michigan is 4-0 in games decided by one score, so the record flatters them. On the other hand, Michigan yardage numbers are good, so maybe this team has been undone by sometimes fluky factors like turnovers, red zone performance, and special teams. To the chart we go!

	YPP Off.	YPP Def.	YPP Mar.	Sagarin	SRS
Ohio State	6.1	4.2	+1.9	88.22	15.36
Iowa	6.2	4.9	+1.3	86.17	15.29
Mich. State	6.0	5.2	+.8	79.56	12.16
Wisconsin	5.9	5.4	+.5	79.37	11.59
Illinois	5.1	5.2	-.1	79.29	9.06
Michigan	6.9	6.3	+.6	74.48	5.21
Penn State	5.5	5.9	-.4	73.84	5.02
NW	5.4	5.8	-.4	66.94	-0.63
Indiana	4.7	7.3	-2.6	63.63	-0.08
Purdue	4.2	5.3	-1.1	59.62	-6.07
Minn.	5.0	6.4	-1.4	58.57	-9.43

(Note: the yardage numbers come only from games against BCS conference opponents. This includes games against Notre Dame.)

The “Michigan has been unlucky” case is more of a mixed bag than the same case for Georgia. If you rely on yards per play margin, then Michigan is better than their record. By that measure, the Wolverines are in the conference’s second tier with Michigan State and Wisconsin, behind Ohio State and Iowa. Additionally, Michigan has only played one team in the bottom tier of the league (Indiana), so they should be even better in yards per play normalized for schedule. (Naturally, Michigan doesn’t play Northwestern and Minnesota, so the Big Ten’s schedule rotation has the Wolverines avoiding half of the bottom tier. If you want to know whether a Big Ten team is going to have a bad year, check to see if they are playing Michigan.) On the other hand, if you look at the computer ratings, which focus on points and strength of schedule, then Michigan and Penn State represent the proletariat of the conference, beneath Ohio State, Iowa, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Coming back to the one team from the Big Ten’s lower class that does appear on Michigan’s schedule, the Wolverines beat Indiana on a touchdown in the final minute despite outgaining the Hoosiers by a significant margin on a per-play basis. Yardage dominance did not translate into dominance on the scoreboard.

This gets back to an issue that vexed me on the morning after the “it’s not you, it’s me” loss to Penn State: Michigan’s poor special teams (namely their kickoff returns, kickoff coverage, and field goal kicking) and turnovers (namely the bad defense’s inability to force a turnover) meant that Michigan was not converting yardage into points:

Michigan lost by ten last night, despite virtual parity in total yards and an advantage in yards per play. Likewise, Michigan outgained Iowa by 139 yards and lost by ten in its previous game. Michigan lost the Iowa game by turning the ball over four times, but the Wolverines didn’t have a single turnover last night. How does a team outgain its opponent on a per play basis, not the ball over, and still lose by double-digits? A massive disparity in field position is a good place to start. Penn State started three drives in Michigan territory; Michigan didn’t start a single drive in Penn State territory. The same was true in the Iowa game. How’s this for your stat of the day: in four Big Ten games, Michigan has started a drive in its opponent’s territory once. Part of this is because the defense doesn’t force turnovers, but it’s also because Michigan is terrible on special teams. Is it possible that Rich Rodriguez sealed his fate by his decision not to bring back Bryan Wright, a disappointing scholarship kicker who could do one thing well: kick the ball high and deep on kickoffs. If so, that would be a fitting coda on Rodriguez’s tenure: a short-sighted decision that didn’t put proper value on a small, but important part of the game. It’s not enough that Michigan fans are tortured by Jim Tressel’s record against the Wolverines; we now have to watch our head coach’s tenure wither on the vine because Michigan gives away a truckload of hidden yards as a result of insufficient attention to special teams.

As you can gather from this paragraph, Rich Rodriguez can’t say that it’s purely a matter of luck that Michigan loses to teams that it outgains. The special teams problems should be fixable going forward. It’s not surprising that a team that has to start a bevy of underclassmen on defense would struggle on special teams, since those underclassmen would normally be focusing on special teams tasks. Likewise, a better coaching staff on defense, combined with natural maturation of young defenders, should improve the turnover numbers. For the purposes of this season, there are non-luck explanations for why Michigan’s points and record slot the team a tier below where their yardage says they belong.

The Wisconsin game becomes very important for Michigan. Assuming that Michigan doesn’t spit the bit this weekend in West Lafayette, Rich Rodriguez will have reached the seven wins that most people think will get him a fourth year in Ann Arbor. If Michigan can beat one-loss, top ten Wisconsin in the home finale, then the season will move from inconclusive to a success. (I know it’s dumb to put so much on any one game; I’m talking about the way that Michigan fans will feel emotionally about the season.) If you look at the team’s yardage margins, then Michigan is slightly better than Wisconsin and with homefield advantage, should be a slight favorite in the game. If you look at the computer ratings, then Michigan should be a 2-3 point underdog, which still gives the Wolverines a good chance in the game. Michigan-Wisconsin is not unlike Georgia-LSU; one team has had a much better season, but the yardage numbers reflect that they are quite close in terms of total merit. The problem is that Michigan has already played two teams like Wisconsin this year – Michigan State and Iowa – and lost by a combined total of 27 points. We’ve been here before.

Other thoughts from the numbers:

• Ohio State and Iowa are the class of the conference. The game between those two teams should decide the conference title. Ohio State is a little better by every measure (although the yards per play number flatters them because they have played the three worst teams in the conference), but Iowa is at home. That should be a fun game. Also, it’s interesting that Iowa’s offense was their albatross last year, but it’s second in the Big Ten in yards per play this year.
• The SEC is a little better than the Big Ten this year, but not by that much. The differences are that the SEC has three elite teams – Alabama, Auburn, and Arkansas – while the Big Ten has two, and the Big Ten has three terrible teams – Indiana, Purdue, and Minnesota – while the SEC has only one that truly meets that definition. That said, the middle classes of the two conferences look fairly similar.
• I’ll say the same thing about Michigan that I said about Florida and LSU: they’re a coordinator from being elite. If Michigan had the defenses of either Illinois or Michigan State, then their yards per play margin would put them up with Iowa and Ohio State at the top of the conference. Michigan’s defense probably has as much talent as those of the Illini and Spartans, although UM is definitely younger. I’m going to shill for Rodriguez yet again, but if he could just find a defensive staff to make the defense average, then his teams would contend for the Big Ten title.
• The yards-per-play numbers don’t correlate with the computer rankings as tightly in the Big Ten as they did in the SEC.
• If Michigan State and Wisconsin win out, they will be the worst 11-1 teams since … 2006 Wisconsin?

I Can’t Help it if I’m (un)Lucky, Georgia Edition

There are a number of ways in which a team can be “lucky” in football. It can have a good record despite being outgained on the season. It can have a positive turnover margin that is heavily influenced by recovering lots of fumbles, both its own fumbles and those of its opponents. It can score a lot of points relative to its yards. I have a sense that Georgia is much better than its record this year, but I’d like to prove it. Let’s go to the numbers!

	YPP Off.	YPP Def.	YPP Mar.	Sagarin	SRS
Alabama	6.6	5.0	+1.6	92.03	17.66
Auburn	7.0	5.5	+1.5	85.66	18.38
Arkansas	7.0	5.6	+1.4	85.42	13.92
LSU	5.2	4.7	+.5	84.75	16.28
Florida	5.3	4.8	+.5	83.29	13.27
USC	6.1	5.7	+.4	82.04	11.08
Georgia	6.3	5.6	+.7	81.03	7.89
MSU	4.6	4.9	-.3	78.02	10.61
Kentucky	5.5	6.2	-.7	71.84	3.75
Tennessee	5.1	6.2	-1.1	70.12	-0.60
Ole Miss	5.2	6.4	-1.2	68.38	-0.38
Vandy	4.0	5.8	-1.8	60.62	-6.35

(Note: the yards per play numbers are from games against BCS conferences only. Also, I am using the Sagarin Predictor, which takes scoring margin into account. Think about this chart as a way to look at three factors: yardage, scoring, and strength of schedule.)

There’s a pretty compelling case to be made that Georgia’s 5-5 record doesn’t reflect the team’s underlying quality. The Dawgs are in a cluster with LSU, Florida, and South Carolina, both in terms are yards per play margin and also Sagarin ranking. LSU and South Carolina have had good seasons (by their standards), but statistically speaking, they aren’t that different from Georgia and Florida, both of which have had very disappointing seasons.

Think of it this way: LSU is 8-1 and ranked #5 in the country. Georgia is 5-5 and unranked. Going into the season, both Les Miles and Mark Richt were on warm seats. Not “win this year or else” seats, but rather “win this year or else 2011 will be uncomfortable” seats. Miles has firmly pulled himself off of the warm seat, pending the final several games of the year. Richt has not. But if you look at the numbers, there isn’t much to separate the teams. LSU would be a 3.5 or four point favorite on a neutral field. (In Athens, the game would be a pick ‘em.) Georgia has been the superior team on a per-play basis. So what’s the line between national title contender and disappointment? LSU is 5-1 in games decided by one score; Georgia is 0-3 (and that doesn’t include the South Carolina and Mississippi State games, both of which were one-score games in the fourth quarter). Is that disparity because of Les Miles being a genius at the end of games and Mark Richt being a dolt in those situations? Hardly. Does anyone think that Richt has forgotten how to win a close game after he won those games repeatedly earlier in his career? Does anyone think that Georgia’s record in close games wouldn’t be better if: (1) opponents dropped winning touchdown passes on multiple occasions (LSU vs. UNC); (2) opponents committed too many men on the field penalties to bail the Dawgs out of final play debacles (LSU vs. Tennessee); or (3) Georgia got magical bounces to convert fake field goals that their opponents knew were coming (LSU vs. Florida)? In short, Georgia is a 7-3 team that has a 5-5 record; LSU is a 6-3 team that has an 8-1 record.

Other thoughts from the numbers:

• The Sagarin rankings match pretty closely to the yards per play margins. Alabama is a little better on a points and schedule basis than they are on yardage, while Georgia is a little worse. However, no team jumps out as one that has drastically over- or under-performed its underlying yardage. If you just looked at record, then there would be wide disparities, but that’s why it’s better to look at big sample sizes (yards and points) as opposed to smaller ones (games won and lost).
• Alabama is going to be favored in the Iron Bowl, mainstream media people are going to say “huh?,” and then Alabama is going to win.
• Look at LSU’s and Florida’s meager yards per play numbers. Both teams are a better offensive coordinator away from national title contention. If either team had Georgia’s offense, they would be Auburn.
• This Mississippi State team reminds me of the 2007 team that went 8-5, but was not nearly as good as its record suggested. That might cool the talk of Dan Mullen being a rising superstar coach, although in his defense, he’s only in year two. We are far from Mullen having a finished product. I’ll be interested to see how Mississippi State does in recruiting this year and next. Will they be able to leverage a good season into better talent?
• Arkansas looks very good by this measure. They are in a cluster with Alabama and Auburn atop the conference. Sure enough, they lost a tight game at home against Alabama and a tight game on the Plains. Yes, they lost by 22 at Auburn, but they led by six in the fourth quarter despite playing most of the game without Ryan Mallett. If Arkansas wins out, then they deserve consideration for a BCS bowl, depending on what happens to Alabama and Auburn. If Alabama loses one of its last two or say Auburn loses one of its last two and then loses the SEC Championship Game, then Arkansas ought to get a spot. You know those fans will travel.
• Florida and South Carolina look evenly matched this weekend. With Florida playing at home and South Carolina playing in November, one would have to give the edge to the Gators. That said, the game should be very close. All of the games in the LSU-Florida-South Carolina-Georgia cluster have been very close.

[Update: I added a column for SRS rankings to have a second computer ranking that accounts for scoring margin.  SRS comes out with some more conventional results.  Georgia doesn’t do as well in SRS, whereas LSU and Mississippi State do better.]

By the Numbers, Michigan State and Virginia Tech Suck

Thanks to the Comcastic wonder of having hundreds of cable channels, I had the pleasure of watching the January 1, 1986 Cotton Bowl the other night. It was a trip down memory lane for me, as it pitted the Bo Jackoson-led Auburn team for which I rooted passionately (it's a long story) against Texas A&M. While watching Auburn's feeble passing game hand the game to the Aggies, I remembered devouring Allen Barra's Football by the Numbers the following summer. Barra argued in the book that Jackson was by far the best player in college football in 1985 and he was penalized by some Heisman voters for playing on a team that couldn't throw the ball.

Football by the Numbers had a real effect on me. For instance, Barra described in the book his NEWS Rating, which was a deceptively simple way to measure quarterbacks. Take a quarterback's passing yards, add ten yards for each touchdown, subtract 45 yards for each interception, and then divide by attempts. Voila, a nice way to evaluate quarterbacks. I liked Barra's focus on yards per play as a measure. As an 11-year old, Barra's approach made more sense to me than the usual drivel that football analysts threw out to rank quarterbacks.

In honor of Barra, I decided to take a similar approach to ranking college football teams before the season. What if we just ranked teams by looking at their per-play yardage margin (yards gained per play on offense minus yards per play allowed on defense) and returning starters? I wish that I would have thought about this earlier in the summer so I could go back to previous years to see if this method would produce better results than the more subjective preseason rankings. I also wish that I had a name for these rankings. Anyway, looking at yards per play on offense, yards per play on defense, and returning starters, removing the decimal from the per-play margin, and then creating a crude sum of apples and oranges, here is the list of BCS Conference teams that had non-negative per play margins in 2008:

1. Florida - 2.6 yards per play margin / 18 returning starters / 44
2. USC - 3.0 / 12 / 42
3. Georgia - 1.7 / 15 / 32
4. Oklahoma - 1.7 / 14 / 31
5. Ole Miss - 1.5 / 16 / 31
6. Penn State - 2.1 / 9 / 30
7. Cal - 1.5 / 1.5 / 30
8. Georgia Tech - 1.2 / 18 / 30
9. Iowa - 1.4 / 1.4 / 28
10. Oklahoma State - 1.4 / 13 / 27
11. Texas - 1.2 / 15 / 27
12. Oregon - 1.7 / 9 / 26
13. Texas Tech - 1.5 / 11 / 26
14. Missouri - 1.6 / 9 / 25
15. Alabama - 1.2 / 12 / 24
16. Ohio State - 1.0 / 12 / 22
17. West Virginia - 1.0 / 12 / 22
18. Clemson - .7 / 15 / 22
19. Baylor - .6 / 16 / 22
20. Rutgers - .8 / 13 / 21
21. Florida State - .7 / 13 / 20
22. Nebraska - .7 / 13 / 20
23. Wisconsin - .8 / 11 / 19
24. Cincinnati - .9 / 9 / 18
25. UConn - .6 / 12 / 18
26. North Carolina - .4 / 14 / 18
27. Oregon State - .7 / 10 / 17
28. Boston College - .4 / 13 / 17
29. Miami - .2 / 15 / 17
30. Notre Dame - .2 / 15 / 17
31. Pitt - .2 / 15 / 17
32. Tennessee - .4 / 12 / 16
33. Arizona State - .1 / 13 / 14
34. Northwestern - .1 / 13 / 14
35. LSU - 0 / 14 / 14
36. Maryland - .3 / 9 / 12
37. South Carolina - 0 / 11 / 11

Some thoughts:

• I'll acknowledge that I wouldn't necessarily use these rankings without some subjective component. For instance, I'd obviously have LSU higher than 35th because the raw numbers do not take into account either the Gotterdamerung of a quarterback situation that they sorted out towards the end of the season or the major upgrade that they have at defensive coordinator. That said, if I would have gone through this exercise before doing my rankings, I would not have had LSU in the top ten.

• I'll also acknowledge that there should be some modification for strength of schedule. I'm mulling over a good way to integrate that factor into the rankings. I wish there were some way to take into account the quality of the players replacing departed

• Some notable teams that do not appear in these rankings because they had a negative per-play margin in 2008: Arkansas, Michigan State, Minnesota, N.C. State, Wake Forest, and Orange Bowl Champions Virginia Tech. Interestingly enough, Virginia Tech and Auburn have the exact same characteristics: they were outgained by .4 yards per play in 2008 and they return 15 starters. One team fired its coach and is unranked; the other is a preseason top ten team. Oh, and Alabama beat Auburn 36-0.

• I was surprised that Texas was only fifth in the Big XII in yards per play margin last year. They strike me as being overvalued going into 2009.

• The numbers love Ole Miss.

• If these rankings turn out to have merit, this will be a terrific season in the State of Georgia. I'll freely concede that Georgia Tech is a much better prospect by the numbers than I gave them credit for being when I did my rankings. We'll see if my subjective Spidey sense about them has any value.

Introducing Negative Grohmentum

So I was reading Phil Steele the other night and ruminating on the demise of my beloved Charles Rogers Theorem when something dawned on me. I was looking at the conference stat pages and was reminded of the fact that, at this time last year, Sylvester Croom was the reigning SEC Coach of the Year. A lot of good that did him. And then I remembered that Al Groh has won the ACC Coach of the Year not once, not twice, but thrice. 20 minutes later, I was ploughing through my Phil Steele archive, which dates back to 2001.

An observation started to form: winning the coach of the year award is a curse because the winning coach's team almost inevitably regresses the following year. Negative Grohmentum was born. So how tight is the correlation between a head honcho winning coach of the year in a BCS conference and then watching his team get worse.


SEC

2008 - Nick Saban / Bobby Johnson / Houston Nutt

2007 - Sylvester Croom - 3.5 games worse

2006 - Houston Nutt - 1.5 games worse

2005 - Mark Richt - 1 game worse

2004 - Tommy Tuberville - 3.5 games worse

2003 - Nick Saban - 3 games worse

2002 - Mark Richt - 2 games worse

2001 - Houston Nutt - 1.5 games better

2000 - Lou Holtz - 1 game better

Total - six of eight teams regressed; mean of 1.5 game regression; median of 1.75 game regression.

Big Ten

2008 - Joe Paterno

2007 - Ron Zook - 3.5 games worse

2006 - Bret Bielema - 3 games worse

2005 - Joe Paterno - 2.5 games worse

2004 - Kirk Ferentz - 3 games worse

2003 - John L. Smith - 2.5 games worse

2002 - Kirk Ferentz - 1 game worse

2001 - Ron Turner - 5 games worse

2000 - Randy Walker - 3.5 games worse

Total - all eight teams regressed; mean of 3 game regression; median of 3 game regression.


Big XII

2008 - Bob Stoops / Mike Leach

2007 - Mark Mangino - 4 games worse

2006 - Bob Stoops - no change

2005 - Mack Brown - 3 games worse

2004 - Gary Barnett - 1 game worse

2003 - Bill Snyder - 5 games worse

2002 - Les Miles - 1 game better

2001 - Gary Barnett - 1.5 games worse

2000 - Bob Stoops - 2 games worse

Total - six of eight teams regressed; mean of 1.94 game regression; median of 1.75 game regression.


ACC

2008 - Paul Johnson

2007 - Al Groh - 3.5 games worse

2006 - Jim Grobe - 1.5 games worse

2005 - Frank Beamer - 1 game worse

2004 - Al Groh - 1 game worse

2003 - Tommy Bowden - 2 games worse

2002 - Al Groh - .5 games worse

2001 - Ralph Friedgen - unchanged

2000 - George O'Leary - 1.5 games worse

Total - seven of eight teams regressed; mean of 1.37 game regression; median of 1.25 game regression.


Pac Ten

2008 - Mike Riley

2007 - Dennis Erickson - 4.5 games worse

2006 - Pete Carroll - unchanged

2005 - Pete Carroll - 1 game worse / Karl Dorrell - 3.5 games worse

2004 - Jeff Tedford - 2 games worse

2003 - Pete Carroll - 1 game better / Bill Doba - 4 games worse

2002 - Jeff Tedford - unchanged

2001 - Mike Price - .5 games worse

2000 - Dennis Erickson - 5.5 games worse

Total - seven of ten teams regressed; mean of 2 game regression; median of 1.5 game regression.


Big East

2008 - Brian Kelly

2007 - Brian Kelly - .5 games better

2006 - Greg Schiano - 3 games worse

2005 - Rich Rodriguez - .5 games worse

2004 - Walt Harris - 2.5 games worse

2003 - Rich Rodriguez - .5 games better

2002 - Larry Coker - 1 game worse

2001 - Larry Coker - .5 games worse

2000 - Butch Davis - 1 game better

Total - five of eight teams regressed; mean of .69 game regression; median of .5 game regression.


Grand Total - 39 of 50 teams regressed; mean of 1.76 game regression; median of 1.5 game regression.


So what's going on here?

To a certain extent, this is good ol' regression to the mean. A coach wins coach of the year in a very good season and then his team will typically take a step back the following year. There isn't much room for improvement after a very successful season. A coach will usually win coach of the year when the voters determine that a program is at its absolute apex: an unbeaten season for Texas, eight wins for Virginia, etc. A team might do well with an experienced roster and then fall back to earth the following year with younger replacements. Schedule can also play into the equation. A team might have an excellent record because of a favorable schedule and then regress when they rotate to tougher opponents or more critical road games in the following season.

That said, these numbers demonstrate a misunderstanding that a lot of people have about what truly matters in college football: talent. I'm going to step out of the objective world for a second and speculate that the sort of coach that wins coach of the year is often one whose team was lucky. Not to keep picking on Croom or Groh, but they won coach of the year after their teams won a bunch of close games. The media looked at their teams and concluded "that team had no business winning eight games, so the coach must have done a great job." What the media should be saying is "that team had no business winning eight games, so they were lucky as hell and are going to take a step back." In other words, the coach of the year award is a pronouncement that a team really wasn't as talented as its record. It's an unintentional veiled insult that mistakes good fortune with good coaching.

There's no doubt that we have a strong correlation between a coach winning coach of the year and then his team getting worse. 78% of the teams in this situation this decade have seen their record regress the following year. 34% of the teams in the sample saw their record get worse by at least three games. By way of comparison, Phil Steele likes to look at net close wins and yards per point in finding teams that were especially lucky or unlucky in the previous season and are therefore due for a correction. (Page 299 if you're following along at home.) Teams with three net close wins have been weaker or the same the next year 76.7% of the time. Teams with 11.56 offensive yards per point or less have been weaker or the same 72.3% of the time. Teams with 19.85 defensive yards per point or more have been weaker or the same 77.6% of the time. Again, 78% of the teams whose coach won coach of the year have been weaker (not just weaker or the same, but weaker full-stop) the next year.

Random Thoughts on the Data

So which teams are the lucky ones who have a four-in-five chance of seeing their records get worse this year? Alabama, Ole Miss, Vandy, Penn State, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Georgia Tech, Oregon State, and Cincinnati.

Negative Grohmentum has been especially pronounced in recent years. In the the last four seasons, the only team with a reigning conference coach of the year that has improved was last year's Cincinnati team, which went from 10-3 to 11-3.

Negative Grohmentum is also especially pronounced in the Big Ten, mainly because the voters have not given the award to Michigan or Ohio State coaches this decade, most likely because of an assumption that those programs have natural advantages, but those natural advantages make those two programs the consistent winners in the conference. (Insert "3-9!" joke here.) Michigan and Ohio State have also been consistent winners this decade and Big Ten voters appear to be attracted by major changes in a won-loss record. How else does one explain the fact that Jim Tressel's teams have won or shared four Big Ten titles, but he has never won the conference coach of the year. Meanwhile, Joe Paterno has won the conference coach of the year twice because his teams have followed the decent-decent-very good-decent-decent-very good pattern, whereas Tressel's teams have been consistently very good. (Insert "SEC Speed Killz!" joke here.) Tressel is penalized because he almost never has to come back from a mediocre season. Illinois has finished over .500 exactly twice this decade and its coaches have won coach of the year both times. "Hey, you've taken a program that is routinely referred to as a sleeping giant and won enough games to make a bowl in which you'll be slaughtered. Here's a trophy for your trouble!" In case you're interested, the last Big Ten team with a reigning coach of the year that did not regress: the 1992 Michigan Wolverines. 1992 is also the last season in which a Michigan or Ohio State coach won the Big Ten coach of the year, despite the fact that those programs have won or shared the conference title in 12 of the 16 seasons since.

Urban Meyer: two national titles in four years, no SEC coach of the year awards. Hell, does anyone want to take bets on whether Florida mimics the '95 Huskers this fall and Meyer is beaten out for coach of the year by Bobby Petrino because Arkansas goes 8-4?

Coaches who have won three coach of the year titles this decade: Pete Carroll, Bob Stoops, Houston Nutt, and Al Groh. The former two are on just about every list of the best coaches in America; the third has been essentially fired; and the fourth is on the hot seat.

By my unofficial count, 12 of the coaches on this list have been fired or forced out of the jobs they held where they won coach of the year: Nutt, Tuberville, Croom, Smith, Turner, Barnett, Bowden, Dorrell, Doba, Erickson, Harris, and Coker.