Daily Blog •February 25, 2013

Let’s face it I am a numbers junkie when it comes to analyzing college football. I am always fascinated by different sets of numbers and it’s why I have nine different sets of power ratings in evaluating teams.

As of right now I am putting together my final computer numbers for the 2012 season and I have to look at each unit on each team. For these particular numbers, yards per game and points per game are heavily equated into the final numbers but for some teams those can be deceiving. For example, if a team averages 250 yards per game on offense vs their 8 conference opponents but averages 450 yards per game on offense vs 4 weak non-conference opponents, their final yards per game average will be greatly affected and they could look much stronger on offense than what they actually are.

On the flip side, a team could have a couple of poor performances vs elite teams really weigh down their final average numbers and their offensive/defensive rankings would be affected.

In today’s blog, I thought I would look at total offense averages and then compare it to the median offensive numbers. For those of you that need a fresh reminder what median is…it is when u take a series of numbers like for instance 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and then take the middle number of the sequence and in this instance it would be 3. When you have an even set of a number sequence you then take the two middle numbers and average those two. For example the median for 1, 2, 3, 4 would be 2.5.

I am using offensive medians because a couple of strong and/or poor performances could greatly affect your average. By using the example from above, the offensive ypg average for the team that avg 250 ypg vs its 8 conf foes and 450 ypg vs its 4 non-conf foes would be 317 ypg. However, if u took the median of the 12 numbers, their median average would be only 250, which in my opinion would be the more accurate number in evaluating their offense.

Here are the results of all 124 teams in taking their offensive ypg average and comparing it to their median offense average.           

Offensive YPG vs Median Offense

Rank
Name YPG Median Diff
1
UNLV 367.9 426 58.1
2
Utah St. 469.1 516 46.9
3
Texas A&M 558.5 605 46.5
4
Arizona St 464.5 510 45.5
5
Arkansas St 466.7 512 45.3
6
Louisville 418.8 460 41.2
7
Memphis 318.3 346 27.7
8
Mississippi 423.8 451 27.2
9
Cincinnati 440.2 467 26.8
10
Louisiana Tech 577.9 604 26.1
11
Syracuse 476.0 502 26.0
12
Marshall 534.3 559 24.8
13
Georgia 467.6 491 23.4
14
Hawaii 297.4 320 22.6
15
LSU 374.2 396 21.8
16
Indiana 442.0 462 20.0
17
Texas St 379.8 399 19.3
18
Ohio 444.8 464 19.2
18
Virginia Tech 376.8 396 19.2
20
Arizona 526.2 545 18.9
21
North Texas 392.2 411 18.8
22
Connecticut 318.3 336 17.7
23
Washington St 359.5 377 17.5
24
TCU 388.6 405 16.4
25
Boise St 391.3 407 15.7
26
South Carolina 376.5 392 15.5
27
Northern Illinois 469.6 485 15.4
28
Houston 479.6 495 15.4
28
Wyoming 390.6 406 15.4
30
Arkansas 420.2 435 14.8
31
UTSA 390.3 405 14.8
32
USC 432.9 447 14.1
33
South Alabama 333.4 347 13.6
34
Clemson 512.7 526 13.3
35
California 391.3 403 11.8
36
BYU 400.4 411 10.6
37
Baylor 572.2 580 7.8
38
Illinois 296.7 304 7.3
39
New Mexico St 335.3 342 6.7
40
Mississippi St 381.9 388 6.1
41
Michigan 383.1 389 5.9
42
Minnesota 321.4 327 5.6
43
SMU 367.3 372 4.7
44
North Carolina 485.6 490 4.4
45
New Mexico 370.2 374 3.9
46
Alabama 445.5 449 3.5
47
Missouri 356.4 359 2.6
48
Stanford 374.4 377 2.6
49
Fresno St 477.5 480 2.5
50
San Diego St 396.6 399 2.4
51
Temple 322.0 324 2.0
52
Army 436.3 438 1.8
53
Michigan St 359.3 361 1.7
54
Kansas 360.3 361 0.7
55
Central Michigan 394.8 394 -0.8
56
Tennessee 475.9 475 -0.9
57
Middle Tennessee 392.8 391 -1.8
58
Washington 355.2 353 -2.2
59
Utah 324.4 322 -2.4
60
Iowa 310.4 307 -3.4
61
Rice 427.4 423 -4.4
62
Tulsa 457.1 452 -5.1
63
Western Michigan 439.3 434 -5.3
64
Louisiana 455.3 450 -5.3
65
Oregon 537.4 532 -5.4
66
Colorado St 339.0 333 -6.0
67
Colorado 302.8 296 -6.8
68
Kent St 388.3 381 -7.3
69
Oregon St 431.5 424 -7.5
70
Texas 434.6 427 -7.6
71
Akron 427.2 419 -8.2
72
UCF 407.4 399 -8.4
73
Vanderbilt 379.7 371 -8.7
74
Rutgers 329.9 321 -8.9
75
Wake Forest 301.3 292 -9.3
76
FAU 350.7 341 -9.7
77
Toledo 445.2 433 -12.2
77
Navy 383.2 371 -12.2
79
ULM 432.8 420 -12.8
80
Southern Miss 322.8 310 -12.8
81
UCLA 466.5 453 -13.5
82
UAB 419.1 405 -14.1
83
NC State 421.2 407 -14.2
84
Massachusetts 278.3 264 -14.3
85
Bowling Green 365.5 351 -14.5
86
Troy 498.8 484 -14.8
87
Georgia Tech 441.1 426 -15.1
88
Duke 409.2 394 -15.2
89
Nebraska 460.8 444 -16.8
90
Ball St 457.2 440 -17.2
91
East Carolina 408.5 390 -18.5
92
Buffalo 375.8 357 -18.8
93
Nevada 514.9 496 -18.9
94
Idaho 315.1 296 -19.1
95
Notre Dame 412.2 393 -19.2
96
Wisconsin 393.3 374 -19.3
97
UTEP 372.5 353 -19.5
97
USF 367.5 348 -19.5
99
Ohio St 423.8 404 -19.8
100
WKU 386.9 367 -19.9
101
Kentucky 315.0 295 -20.0
102
Purdue 402.7 381 -21.7
103
Iowa St 364.2 342 -22.2
104
Miami, Fl 440.2 418 -22.2
105
Tulane 319.5 297 -22.5
106
Oklahoma St 547.0 524 -23.0
107
Florida 334.4 311 -23.4
108
Eastern Michigan 335.8 312 -23.8
109
Auburn 305.0 280 -25.0
110
Pittsburgh 390.1 365 -25.1
111
Miami, Oh 385.3 360 -25.3
112
Air Force 418.9 393 -25.9
113
Virginia 396.5 370 -26.5
114
West Virginia 502.0 475 -27.0
115
Kansas St 401.4 373 -28.4
116
Penn St 417.5 388 -29.5
117
Boston College 349.8 319 -30.8
118
FIU 383.8 352 -31.8
119
Maryland 284.8 252 -32.8
120
San Jose St 446.2 413 -33.2
121
Florida St 471.5 436 -35.5
122
Northwestern 394.6 357 -37.6
123
Texas Tech 495.9 442 -53.9
124
Oklahoma 497.9 427 -70.9

As you can see from above UNLV’s offense was underrated in the regard that their median offense was far better than their yards per game average. A quick look at their total offensive yards in their 12 games will show 4 games where their offense was held to 275 yards or fewer. However, in 7 games their offense topped 425 yards therefore giving them a positive difference between avg/median. Texas A&M also performed high in this category as their offense was held to only 334 yards vs Florida in the opener which hurt their overall average but they did top 600 yards seven times giving them a 605 median!

At the bottom of the comparison is Oklahoma, which averaged 498 ypg this past year. However, that total was greatly influenced by their 4 games where they topped the 600-yard mark this season. In 7 of their other games they actually were held to 430 yards or less giving them a median average of just 427.

If you find anything else fascinating from these numbers let us know by emailing brandon@philsteele.com I was looking at doing a couple of similar blogs in the future and already have found that Arkansas and Auburn’s ppg were greatly helped by wins over much weaker foes in non-conference play this past season compared to what they averaged in SEC play.