With the high level of uncertainty surrounding the team this year and personally having almost no read on the team, I thought I’d take a look at the idea that how badly we beat our opening foe NAU this year correlates to how good of a season we’ll have. So I went to look at our FCS opponents historically and found we really haven’t played that many. Only 13 since we’ve joined the PAC and all but one of those in just the last 15 years. So I expanded it to FCS teams and mid-majors. To include mid-majors, and save myself ~70 years of data, I limited the data to the years since ASU has joined the PAC.
That leaves us with 70 games over the last 38 years; 13 FCS foes and 57 mid-major foes. For the sake of this, I’m not including bowl games played against mid-majors or bowl wins in the season win total. So we went 7-5 in 2012 in this set of data, for example.
The first thing that stands out is how exceedingly average we’ve been as a program, averaging 6.65 wins over the last 38 years and with 6 or 7 wins almost 50% of the time. For the sake of this analysis, let’s consider 6 or 7 regular seasons an ‘average’ season, anything less than that will be a ‘bad’ season, and anything more a ‘good’ season. We could add a ‘great’ season category, but we’ve only had 3 seasons of 10 or more wins in the PAC era of ASU football.
Here is each of the FCS games ASU has played with the margin of victory and the number of regular season wins. The small sample size is pretty evident. The trend shows that the more you win by the better, but this is hardly predictive. The average margin of victory is 41 points for a “good” season, 29 points for average, and 28 points for bad. So not a lot this can tell us, other than hopefully we absolutely crush them.
Adding in mid majors, the number of data points jumps to 70 and gives us a better picture, but not a lot more predictability. The numbers are all over the place. The average margin of victory is 30 points for a “good” season, 20 points for average, and 22 points for bad. It looks as though average teams have the most trouble with cupcakes.
28+ wins by 15 to 27 wins by <= 14
good 17 52% 3 20% 6 27%
average 10 30% 7 47% 12 55%
bad 6 18% 5 33% 4 18%
Looking at it from this angle provides a little more insight, but not a whole lot than we’ve already gleaned. The more ASU wins by the better. Anything less than a blowout, is not a great sign, but hardly an indication the team is going to tank. Bear in mind, these numbers don’t account for the quality of the opponents, but that’s something we won’t know about NAU after Saturday either.
That leaves us with 70 games over the last 38 years; 13 FCS foes and 57 mid-major foes. For the sake of this, I’m not including bowl games played against mid-majors or bowl wins in the season win total. So we went 7-5 in 2012 in this set of data, for example.
The first thing that stands out is how exceedingly average we’ve been as a program, averaging 6.65 wins over the last 38 years and with 6 or 7 wins almost 50% of the time. For the sake of this analysis, let’s consider 6 or 7 regular seasons an ‘average’ season, anything less than that will be a ‘bad’ season, and anything more a ‘good’ season. We could add a ‘great’ season category, but we’ve only had 3 seasons of 10 or more wins in the PAC era of ASU football.
Here is each of the FCS games ASU has played with the margin of victory and the number of regular season wins. The small sample size is pretty evident. The trend shows that the more you win by the better, but this is hardly predictive. The average margin of victory is 41 points for a “good” season, 29 points for average, and 28 points for bad. So not a lot this can tell us, other than hopefully we absolutely crush them.
Adding in mid majors, the number of data points jumps to 70 and gives us a better picture, but not a lot more predictability. The numbers are all over the place. The average margin of victory is 30 points for a “good” season, 20 points for average, and 22 points for bad. It looks as though average teams have the most trouble with cupcakes.
28+ wins by 15 to 27 wins by <= 14
good 17 52% 3 20% 6 27%
average 10 30% 7 47% 12 55%
bad 6 18% 5 33% 4 18%
Looking at it from this angle provides a little more insight, but not a whole lot than we’ve already gleaned. The more ASU wins by the better. Anything less than a blowout, is not a great sign, but hardly an indication the team is going to tank. Bear in mind, these numbers don’t account for the quality of the opponents, but that’s something we won’t know about NAU after Saturday either.
