Chatelain: Husker culture shift taking hold after jolting year of transition under Mike Riley

[Nebfanatic]

No....the best team wins almost every time.

94% is almost every time.

[Moiraine]

No....the best team wins almost every time.

Nah. The best team wins a large percentage of the time. Way too many times do teams who really shouldn't win a game pull out the best game of their season while a good team is struggling. It happens a lot in college football, which is why it's my favorite sport.

 

The way I see it is to think about what a team's record might be if they played another team 10 times. In 2009 if Nebraska and Iowa State played 10 times, Nebraska likely would have won 9 of them. Because Nebraska was the better team overall. Those are those rare ones. But way more often does it happen when you have two teams where one is slightly better and would win a series 6-4. That doesn't mean the would-be 4-win team is the better team because they won the game. It means they were the best team on that day.

 

Hell, a much better example is all of the sports where they play multiple times in the playoffs. There's a reason most sports have series. Many times series are 4-3. Does that mean the better team won "almost every time"? No. the better team won either 57% of the time or 43% of the time. Though with 7 games the likelihood that the series winner is the best of the two teams goes way up because the sample size is much bigger.

 

In college football the sample size is 1 (or 2 at most).