A couple months ago while we were talking about whether or not this year's Badgers have five great players, it got me thinking: there's got to be a better way to define greatness — aside from the obvious wins and losses and championships and such. Surely there are common statistical threads among great teams.
So, being the nerd my brother tells me I am, I decided to dig into this further. Using the stats provided by the UW media guide online, I put each Badger team's stats going back to 1946 into an Excel spreadsheet and started figuring.
I then calculated per-game averages for each season. After all, there is a great disparity in the number of games played by modern teams and teams even 20 years ago.
Then I narrowed down date range. After all, the 1951 team was great, but how often did teams pass 50 years ago? Figuring out what statistical categories were key for that team carries little weight with what might make the 2008 team great.
As such, I picked 1993 as the starting point season. That was the year that the Wisconsin football renaissance began in earnest, and even though there have been plenty of tweaks along the way, the program's blueprint for success has remained the same.
Lastly, I chose three great teams: 1993, 1998, and 1999. No surprise there. I weighed adding two other 10-win teams, 2005 and 2006, but the former lost three games in Big Ten play and the latter didn't really beat anyone until Arkansas in the Capital One Bowl.
So here's what we're going to do: over the next few days we'll show what the team's average has been in key statistical categories over the past 15 seasons, see how the three great teams performed there, and then monitor those areas over the course of the season to see how the 2008 edition shapes up.
Excited yet?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Are you ready for statistics?
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6 comments:
Uh,... can't wait!
Nerd.
If you really have that much free time I am sure I can find something for you to do. lmk.
I'd have to say Scott, that if not beating anyone means not beating Ohio State or Michigan, the 2006 team ranks along with the 1998 team. And really, any other year the last 10 years that 2006 team would have been playing in a BCS bowl.
True enough, Edward. The 2006 team was such an unexpected success — I thought that would be a nine-win team at best — that 12 wins was an enormous accomplishment. But what was the best win? At Iowa? And while they did deserve a BCS bid, they were clearly the third-best team in the conference that year.
I suppose the '98 team just had the good fortunate of playing in a year in which one of the Big Two was down.
You're not a nerd - you're a coach in training ~
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