Interesting Stats

Head over to Matt Melton's blog, Statistically Speaking, and check out his discussion on his SDPI statistic, specifically the SEC Rewind. Matt's found a pretty nice tool in terms of performance evaluation, as well as a tool that you can use in your repertoire for preseason predictive measures.

Matt has also helped me on my project, Adjusted Performance Percentage, or APP, and it's many branches. You'll be able to find things like ROAPP, or Rush Offense Adjusted Performance Percentage. Anyway, I have the SEC done, so expect that pretty soon.

APP, ROAPP, POAPP, etc are easy to calculate. You find the average yards allowed rushing (if you decide you want to know the ROAPP) by the 8 teams YOUR team faced in the SEC (adjust it for conferences who play more or less than 8 games). Then, take your school's rushing offense and divide it by the average allowed by the 8 opponents.

For Tennessee, as an example, their 8 SEC opponents allowed an average of 987 yards rushing in the SEC, while Tennessee rushed for 645 yards. 645/987 = 65.3%, or the worst ROAPP in the SEC.

After finishing the SEC portion of the project, I found that these ratings differ very little than if you just ranked every SEC team by the number of yards gained or allowed. It DOES change, however, and in the end, I will be adding the Total Offense APP (TOAPP) and Total Defense APP (TDAPP) to create Complete APP (CAPP). As a preview, Tennessee rates lower than Alabama in CAPP for 2006.

Until next time, here is Phillip Fulmer's Greatest Locker Room Moments Volume 1:

Narrowing the Field

I was doing some quick research on the National Champions of this decade, and I noticed a little bit of a trend for these teams. Obviously, seven national champions isn't the best of sample sizes, but in the current landscape of college football, it's enough for me to mention.

Here is what I found: 6 of the last 7 BCS Champions returned 6 defensive starters and six offensive starters, with one of the six being the quarterback. Ohio State was the lone outlier.

So, who are the the teams who meet this criteria as of spring practice (If your team is listed, and I tabulated incorrectly, let me know)?

Ole Miss
South Carolina
Kentucky
Vanderbilt
Purdue
Northwestern
Indiana
Texas A&M
Oklahoma State
Colorado
Kansas
Miami
Virginia Tech
North Carolina
Florida State
Boston College
Southern Cal
California
Arizona State
Oregon
UCLA
West Virginia
South Florida
Connecticut
Cincinnati

That's a lot of teams! However, to narrow these teams down to a much more defined list, I found that every single BCS Champion of this decade had 7 or more wins the previous year. From Oklahoma to Florida, they all had at least 7 wins. So, the teams like Indiana and Connecticut will be removed from the list, leaving the pool of teams that will win the National Title as follows:

All logos used from http://www.gnu-bee.com/football/index.shtml; sorry South Florida and Cincinnati - I know you win 7+ games and fit the criteria, but this is much prettier ... and do you REALLY think you have a chance?

To Hold You Over ...

While I continue to work on my next big entry, "The 2007 SEC East is a Five Horse Race," I will leave you with a video of Tennessee's latest verbal commitment, running back Lennon Creer out of Tatum, TX.

He looks like a player, which sounds dumb, but you can just tell ...

This kid could very well be everything you ever want in a back. He's 6'1", and anywhere from 190-202 pounds, depending on whether you trust Scout or Rivals. He is reported on Rivals to run a 4.47 40 yard dash, and a 4.5 on Scout. His running style reminds me of Marshawn Lynch out of Cal. Both run a little too upright, allowing more abuse on every run. Creer breaks tackles, has great vision, especially when he needs to cutback. His speed could be "suspect" but he seems fast enough in his highlights. I think he might push for carries in 2007, and if Montatio Hardesty doesn't mature as we all expect, Creer could be #2. Sadly, the carries for Arian Foster could end up at zero. Creer should be the thunder to LaMarcus Coker's lightning. I haven't been this excited about a stable of UT running backs since Lewis/Henry/Stephens.