Brandon Vogel The Bizarre Correlation Between Nebraska's Turnovers and Winning Percentage, 2007-2013

[knapplc]

Brandon Vogel, if you don't already know, writes up some pretty good stats-based articles for Hail Varsity. Today's offering takes a look at the bizarre relationship between Nebraska's turnovers - which are astronomical - and our winning percentage. Over the past six+ years, we have an anomalous relationship between turnovers and winning. We're often winning despite ourselves, or in spite of ourselves, and we are definitely an outlier in college football over that span.

 

 

Over the Huskers’ last 90 games, every game since the start of the 2007 season to now, they are -45 in total turnover margin (-0.5 TO Marg./G). Either way, total or per game average, that ranks 117th out of the 120 teams that have played FBS football for that entire span. Washington State (-0.639 TO Marg./G) is the only BCS conference school below Nebraska.

 

 

The strange thing is that, over that same span, Nebraska’s winning percentage is .667, which ranks 25th nationally. To give you an idea of how rare that is, here are two scatter plots showing all 120 teams’ turnover margin per game as well as their winning percentage between 2007 and now. (Hover over the dots to reveal the team name, national rank, turnover margin per game and winning percentage.)

LINK

 

Go read the whole article. He does some really clever work with charts and graphs, all of which show that we win more than we should - way more than we should - for as much as we turn the ball over.

 

 

 

Wrapping that into the conversation of "Keep Bo vs. Fire Bo," it's hard to reach a conclusion. Yes, the turnovers are a huge problem, and that's a coaching issue, and that does not bode well for Bo. But we're winning, and winning a lot, especially when you compare our turnover margin to similarly-situated teams.

[BIGREDFAN_in_OMAHA]

One key reason why the team isn't playing at an elite level. You can mock the football gods for only so long before it catches up with you!

[Abdullah the Butcher]

[BigRedBuster]

What this tells me is that we are a good team. We have the talent and schemes to win games. For some reason we just can not get over the turnover issues. The MSU game is a perfect example of this.

[It'sNotAFakeID]

Fascinating stuff from Brandon. I like the work he does. From all the teams, there is a pretty clear positive correlation between TO margin and winning percentage. Teams who turn the ball over and don't force turnovers lose more games. Teams who force more turnovers than they lose win more games.

 

But that's not the case for Nebraska. And while we can conclude that it's impressive and terrifying at the same time, the research shouldn't stop there. How has Nebraska won in spite of itself should be highly considered.

[NUpolo8]

The "how" part is because they fight like Hell. Bo has fixed the heart question that was obvious in 07.

[Landlord]

Fascinating stuff from Brandon. I like the work he does. From all the teams, there is a pretty clear positive correlation between TO margin and winning percentage. Teams who turn the ball over and don't force turnovers lose more games. Teams who force more turnovers than they lose win more games.

 

But that's not the case for Nebraska. And while we can conclude that it's impressive and terrifying at the same time, the research shouldn't stop there. How has Nebraska won in spite of itself should be highly considered.

 

 

Are you hinting at an upcoming nerdgasm math thread

[KJ.]

Fascinating stuff from Brandon. I like the work he does. From all the teams, there is a pretty clear positive correlation between TO margin and winning percentage. Teams who turn the ball over and don't force turnovers lose more games. Teams who force more turnovers than they lose win more games.

 

But that's not the case for Nebraska. And while we can conclude that it's impressive and terrifying at the same time, the research shouldn't stop there. How has Nebraska won in spite of itself should be highly considered.

 

 

Are you hinting at an upcoming nerdgasm math thread

I see some ANOVAs and sum of non-squared errors in HuskerBoard's future.

[The Dude]

It's the main reason we continue to underachieve, it would seem.

[BigRedBuster]

Am I the only one who actually finds hope in this? Yes, the turnovers are extremely frustrating especially in big games. However, think about what we could have if we could actually fix this problem. We have the talent to compete at a very high level.

[tschu]

I'd be curious to get a breakdown of our turnover margin based on the strength of our opponent

 

As in,

What is our turnover margin per game against teams finishing top-20 in the year's final sagarin predictor rankings?

Against teams finishing 20 thru 40?

40 thru 60?

60 thru 80?

and 80 or below?

 

It would be interesting to see if we have a reasonable or probably positive turnover margin against the weaker teams, which we can just overcome with our superior talent - whereas we have a massively negative turnover margin against tougher opponents. (Which of course would be more indicting of a coaching issue: ultimately the coaches have to prepare the team for the pressure of bigger games, teach the fundamentals of ball control obviously, and put the kids in situations where it's more difficult to make a big error.)

 

Maybe if I can climb my sick ass out of bed and look into this at some point, I will.

[NUance]

Am I the only one who actually finds hope in this? Yes, the turnovers are extremely frustrating especially in big games. However, think about what we could have if we could actually fix this problem. We have the talent to compete at a very high level.

Yeah. Given that we're in the top 25 in winning while being in the bottom 3 in turnovers, just imagine what we would do if we could fix the turnover problem? Imagine what our winning percentage would be if we were at #25 in turnovers instead of #117?

[Hunter94]

Am I the only one who actually finds hope in this? Yes, the turnovers are extremely frustrating especially in big games. However, think about what we could have if we could actually fix this problem. We have the talent to compete at a very high level.

 

I wouldn't go that far...we aren't playing in the SEC or Big 12 now.....strength of schedule sucks, it's another reason why we win despite TO's.

[BigRedBuster]

Our strength of schedule sucked this year. That hasn't been the case over the previous years in this study.

[Hunter94]

I'd be curious to get a breakdown of our turnover margin based on the strength of our opponent

 

As in,

What is our turnover margin per game against teams finishing top-20 in the year's final sagarin predictor rankings?

Against teams finishing 20 thru 40?

40 thru 60?

60 thru 80?

and 80 or below?

 

It would be interesting to see if we have a reasonable or probably positive turnover margin against the weaker teams, which we can just overcome with our superior talent - whereas we have a massively negative turnover margin against tougher opponents. (Which of course would be more indicting of a coaching issue: ultimately the coaches have to prepare the team for the pressure of bigger games, teach the fundamentals of ball control obviously, and put the kids in situations where it's more difficult to make a big error.)

 

Maybe if I can climb my sick ass out of bed and look into this at some point, I will.

good point, good question.