Information Overload

I love stats. Well, most of the time I do. Stats can tell you a lot about teams, coaches, programs and players. My love of stats goes back to my roots in baseball, a stat driven sport.

Sometimes they can be over done. Way over done. You can spend too much time focusing on the minutia and forget the big picture. You know, can’t see the forest for the trees syndrome.

I also enjoy reading Phil Steele’s college football preview magazine each year. Steele includes tons of stats, some useful some not. Reading the magazine a little closer this year for the blog I noticed something strange – Steele often contradicts himself in different places in the magazine about how a particular team is going to fare in a particular year. Why? He attempts to provide every possible angle and compartmentalize everything into stats and what they mean.

We’ll use Clemson as our example. Phil thinks Clemson will win the Atlantic division. Heck, 3 of his 8 power ratings say that the Tigers are going to go 12-0. Steele’s Power Poll, which combines all 8 sets of power ratings, has the Tigers at number 7 and his Preseason Top 40 has Clemson at #5 because of their relatively easy schedule. It’s all good. Or is it?

Towards the end of the magazine Steele writes his yearly column on turnovers, the gist of which is that if you benefited from a positive double digit turnover differential last year, you probably won’t this year. As a matter of fact he puts a number on it – teams with a positive double digit TO ratio had weaker or the same records 77.6% of the time since 1996. The Tigers were at +13 in turnovers last year.

We’re not done yet. A few pages later Steele analyzes the difference between team's schedules last year and this year and tells us that Clemson’s schedule is 34 places easier in ’08 and than it was in ’07 and they “should have better success in 2008” because of it.

Let’s review. 3 of 8 of Steele’s Power Ratings say the Tigers are going 12-0. Steele predicts the Tigers will win the Atlantic. Steele has the Tigers as the 7th most powerful team in the nation. Yet, there’s a 77.6% chance the Tigers finish with the same or worse record because they were double digit positive in turnovers last year. And oh yeah, Steele thinks the Tigers will finish 5th in the country due to their easy schedule.

The Tigers finished 9-4 last year, so if my math is correct Steele has predicted the Tigers are the 7th most powerful team in the nation, will finish 9-4 or worse, win the Atlantic Division and finish 5th in the country. As my buddy AJ would say, “What? Huh?”