To that point, now that they’ve pulled away a little bit:
I am curious if a metric exists out there to measure “game dominance.” i.e. how long is a game held competitive for? This could be a complex metric whereby the size of a lead or deficit is factored over how long it occurred. Or it could be discretely and more simply measured as a threshold (what fraction of a game was less than or equal to two scores and what fraction was greater than two scores). Or it could be as a scenario function of time - at what point in 60 minutes does the team secure a statistical victory?
My point with these metrics is teams like Oklahoma should be thoroughly punished for playing more than half of their games closely. They should be punished for not handling Army thoroughly, despite winning. Teams should be rewarded for ending the game in the first half. A score against a good team in garbage time with third strings in should my impact how their final score is viewed. Or, at least we should have a metric to help discern who suffers from that (such as current Alabama, who thoroughly dominates their opponents by halftime, whereas LSU requires 4th quarter play to separate from a C-USA team who hasn’t looked all that impressive).
I say this coming from a perspective of once having debated that my 2013-14 knights were unfairly treated, only to revisit that a little bit and say sure, they were somewhat unfairly treated, but not nearly as much as I thought, as they certainly didn’t always look impressive. Comparatively, the current Knights haven’t played close games past the first half aside from division/conference/bowl games in the last two season. FAU was the closest thing yet.
When you’re comparing all of these currently undefeated teams, that’s the measurable difference against similar opponents. Oklahoma, Auburn, and Stanford have tailed off, and should take a hit. Penn State, Notre Dame, WVU, and UCF have not.
Stop glorifying teams just because of “the system.” Think differently.
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. Wish that'd been the final score.
