Shameless self-promotion

[Huckleberry]

Long post on stats and their correlation to winning (excerpt below)

Also, I have published an adjusted stats database.

Originally Posted by the blog post

Will Muschamp famously declared that stats are for losers. Greg Davis? It turns out that he wants to know which stats are for winners. It has come to Barking Carnival’s attention that the Texas staff, and Davis in particular, ran some numbers to determine which stats correlate best to wins. My excitement that the Texas staff was willing to use statistical research in their efforts to continously improve was quickly tempered by the study’s content.

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Based on the information HenryJames mailed to me on what appears to be a Rainbow Cattle Company cocktail napkin, the study was performed by taking the season-ending Top 10 in various statistical categories and summing up that groups wins and losses for the year. That gave each statistic a Top 10 Winning Percentage. The study was performed for both the 2008 season only as well as the nine-year period beginning in 2000 and ending last year.

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Some issues with the study:

1. I haven’t checked, but I doubt that they pulled out games between teams that were both in the Top 10 of each stat. Such games would artificially lower the winning percentage by bringing it toward .500 because of the 1-1 mark in the game.
2. Using per game totals for the yardage stats. The biggest effect of this can be seen by the relative placement of rush defense and pass defense in each list. Teams that are trying to come from behind are more likely to throw the ball. Using total yardage numbers here instead of efficiency numbers probably skews the study heavily.
3. Using raw stats instead of adjusted stats. Can’t complain too much here simply because adjusted stats weren’t available to the Texas staff. They simply used what the NCAA publishes, which leads to all kinds of problems. The NCAA year-end stats include games against FCS competition and they clearly don’t account for the schedule each team faced.

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blah, blah, blah it goes on to post results of some studies