Mid-Season Scoring Analysis
18 October 2007
In the absence of rules changes, scoring stats are the most consistent from season to season of all stats in Division 1A football. Here's a survey of various stats half way through the 2007 season.
| MOV | #games | Pct |
| 1-8 | 123 | 0.342 |
| 9-16 | 71 | 0.197 |
| 17-24 | 73 | 0.203 |
| 25-32 | 43 | 0.119 |
| 33-40 | 25 | 0.069 |
| 41-48 | 16 | 0.044 |
| 49+ | 9 | 0.025 |
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There have been 360 games between Football Bowl Subdivision Division 1 opponents. If we count the number of games for one-score, two-score, etc. wins we get the table at the left.
So more than half of all games (53.9%) are decided by two or fewer scores.
This is one reason why we enjoy the game so much. There are the expected (and unexpected!) blowout wins, but if you pick a random game to watch, it's a better than even chance it will be a good game, and sometimes even the blowouts are entertaining.
There's a bit of a dark side, though. When we look more closely at the matchups and scores, we find that the Bowl Subdivision is more like two sub-subdivisions. Fans of the non-Autobid conferences complain, with some justification, that the system is "unfair." But if we want competitive games, in the non-autobid leagues we pretty much have only their conference games to enjoy as "competitive" events. Some averages and breakdowns, with analysis to follow:
| Cat | | #Gms | VW% | HW% | Avg_WS | Low_WS | Avg_LS | Hi_LS | AvgMOV | AvgTOT |
| 1Av1A | | 360 | 0.372 | 0.628 | 36.1 | 9 | 18.9 | 67 | 17.2 | 55.0 |
| nBCS v nBCS | | 103 | 0.408 | 0.592 | 34.9 | 10 | 22.0 | 67 | 12.9 | 56.9 |
| | non-conf | 32 | 0.313 | 0.688 | 33.3 | 10 | 21.3 | 47 | 12.1 | 54.6 |
| | conf | 71 | 0.451 | 0.549 | 35.6 | 14 | 22.3 | 67 | 13.3 | 57.9 |
| BCS v BCS | | 145 | 0.455 | 0.544 | 33.9 | 9 | 17.9 | 48 | 16.0 | 51.8 |
| | non-conf | 40 | 0.475 | 0.525 | 32.7 | 15 | 14.8 | 34 | 17.9 | 47.5 |
| | conf | 105 | 0.448 | 0.552 | 34.4 | 9 | 19.1 | 48 | 15.3 | 53.4 |
| BCS v nBCS | | 112 | 0.232 | 0.768 | 40.0 | 16 | 17.4 | 45 | 22.6 | 57.4 |
| | @ nBCS | 29 | 0.655 | 0.345 | 36.3 | 16 | 19.3 | 43 | 17.0 | 55.7 |
| | @ BCS | 83 | 0.084 | 0.916 | 41.2 | 17 | 16.7 | 45 | 24.5 | 58.0 |
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- Scoring overall is up by about a field-goal compared to 2004 and 2005. (2006 was an anomaly because of the clock changes.)
- Despite protestations by fans regarding the lack of good non-conference games among the autobid conferences, the non-conference BCS vs BCS games have the highest visitor winning percentage of any category.
- The lowest margins of victory are in the non-autobid vs non-autobid categories, as are the highest total point averages (save for the nBCS vs BCS categories.)
The best offenses in the non-autobid conferences apparently come at the expense of defense.
- Likewise, the top teams in autobid conferences tend to win by a slightly higher margin, but do because of lower average losing-team scores.
- Again in 2007, it appears that home field advantage is not as much as some assume. In games involving teams from the same category, we see pretty much the same 45-55 split that characterizes most division 1 team sports.