Dumb Luck???
The internets seem quite concerned with the “likelihood” that a team that went 3-9 in 2007 (specifically, Notre Dame) would “rebound” to a “respectable record” in 2008 (say, 8-4). One such discussion is happening here. And in that discussion, a question came up that I actually find more interesting: Sure, it’s rare to “rebound” from such a record, but how common is it to “collapse” from being a 10+ win team to a 3-9 team? Answer: Exceedingly rare.
I figured that had to be the case, but you know me and my unnatural affection for spreadsheets (Yeah, ND Business School!):
As you can see, between the 2004 and 2007 seasons, 34 different teams experienced at least 1 season with a record including 10 or more wins. But only 1 team in that time, Notre Dame, managed to follow such a season with a collapse the next year into “Epic Fail” territory of 3 or fewer wins. The only other comparable collapse would be Tennessee’s own “Epic Fail” of 2005 where they went 5 and 6 after a 10-3 record in 2004.
In fact, the collapse of ND in 2007 was so bad that it was more than 4 games worse than the average “letdown” for a team that just experienced a 10+ win season. On average, any team that had a 10+ win season in our sample experienced an increase of about 1.7 more losses in the following season. ND experienced a 6 game letdown.
I wont get into causation. That’s been hammered on around these parts and everywhere else a football fan can access the internet for long enough, and lord knows we’ll probably do it again ourselves in another post before the 2008 season gets kicked off. But know this: Anytime someone tries to tell you it’s statistically unlikely that ND will have a “good year” this year, you can point out that our disaster of a 2007 season was even more unlikely. Maybe it’s all just dumb luck.
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7 Comments
Usually people refer to luck as the reason their team won, not the reason their team lost. It has to be something else.
With a coach that supposedly is a great offensive mind, you would think that, oh I don’t know, could score.
We will find out this season if last year was due to every opposing team’s defense having good luck, or if coach Billicheck was the true genius and Weis being the OC for all those championships was “luck.”
“they could score.” Screw you proofreading!
I liked the post here and Bless the dance team, not to create an argument on anothers Blog or turf, Charlie took the heat for everything, which was by a bunch of coaches and players below him. Peace.
Bless the Dance Team,
I don’t really think it was luck. It was really odd. Weis said all the time in ‘05/’06 that without Quinn, ND was a “.500 team.” I think ‘07 was proof of that. ND was a 6-6 capable team that played really poorly. A lot of that has to do with mistakes by Weis - mistakes I think he made because he can’t stand losing 6 games. Losing 9 probably doesn’t look much worse to him. Now, do I like that sort of Risk/Reward behavior from Weis? Eh. I’m probably a little more conservative, but I see what he might have been thinking. Like you said, we’ll see a lot this season.
The closest team I can think of that had a similar collapse was Penn State. In 2002 they went from 9-4 to a record of 3-9 in 2003.
Thanks so much for ripping open the wounds from last season that had just started to heal - using real data, no less. Have you no compassion?
ND1990,
Thanks for reminding me of that PSU team. It’s sort of an interesting case study except we don’t have a coach who is 25 years past his prime.
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