Stats 2000-2013

[smurzer]

So both are winless against FBS teams on opening day.

In the last 12 years of Bennett and June, SMU is 0-11 against FBS opponents on opening day. 9 of which were Big 12 opponents (the other two were Navy in 2002 and Rice in 2008). Average margin of defeat in those games is 26.5 points.

[PonyTime]

Just curious as to what is June's opening day record compared to Bennett's? Anyone have the actual stats?

June went 1-5 on opening day with double digit losses in 4 out of the 6 games. The 1 win coming against SFA in 2009.

Bennett went 0-6 with double digit losses in 5 of the 6.

Forgot about that Baylor game - but can you blame me. We would all like to forget about that one.

BTW - Caven was 1-4 in openers.

Tom Rossley won as many openers as the three following coaches have won in the last 17 years.

[PonyTime]

Just curious as to what is June's opening day record compared to Bennett's? Anyone have the actual stats?

June went 1-5 on opening day with double digit losses in 4 out of the 6 games. The 1 win coming against SFA in 2009.

Bennett went 0-6 with double digit losses in 5 of the 6.

Forgot about that Baylor game - but can you blame me. We would all like to forget about that one.

BTW - Caven was 1-4 in openers.

Tom Rossley won as many openers as the three following coaches have won in the last 17 years.

Forrest Gregg pasted an SEC team by 30+ points in one of our openers. Of course it was Vanderbilt though, so not sure it counts...

[smurzer]

Moral of the story.... Don't bet on SMU to cover on opening day. Regardless of the coach.

[Rebel10]

So both are winless against FBS teams on opening day.

In the last 12 years of Bennett and June, SMU is 0-11 against FBS opponents on opening day. 9 of which were Big 12 opponents (the other two were Navy in 2002 and Rice in 2008). Average margin of defeat in those games is 26.5 points.

Thanks for the info.

[ponyboy]

I excluded the bowl games under June for a fair comparison.

This analysis is interesting. But if the point is to determine how each coach has done against good teams, you'd never fairly exclude bowl games, would you?

[couch 'em]

I think typically you would include them, but of our 3 bowl game victories there were two that had very unusual circumstances. Nevada lost their best players and were clearly crippled on offense. It would be like us losing Padron and Line for that game. It wasn't the same team, really.

Pitt was even worse off - they didn't even have a coaching staff. It was very very interim. The Fresno win was a great one but seems like not including them is better than cherry picking. For the record, the Fresno rating that year was 72.41, so it wouldn't change anything too much anyway

[smurzer]

I excluded the bowl games under June for a fair comparison.

This analysis is interesting. But if the point is to determine how each coach has done against good teams, you'd never fairly exclude bowl games, would you?

I would agree with that point within a "singular view of wins" against good teams. But (right or wrong) I personally don't put the bowl wins on the same level as regular season wins. I have just never put that much stock into bowl season as it doesn't fall into the context of a competitive run for a conference championship.

When looking at the success of any team/coach, I just think the focus should be the regular season, which exists to try and win your conference. Shouldn't the goal of every football season be to compete for (and win) your conference championship? Since bowl wins factor nothing into the efforts of winning a conference championship, I don't put them on the same level of importance. I may be wrong on that take, but I would take a conf championship (and a bowl loss) 100 times out of 100 over no conf. championship and a 3rd tier bowl win.

Just my $.02

[ponyboy]

But Couch and Smurzer you can play that game with data on both sides, can't you?

An example. I'd love to prove that JJ's been the greatest coach in the history of modern sport and so when I put the comparison with Briles together, well it turned out that Briles had clearly outperformed JJ. My temptation was to exclude JJ's first rebuilding year (2008) and then this season (2013) as outliers that didn't reflect reality, the truth as I saw it. To do so would have improved our average Sagarin in the JJ years by 20 whole points. But that wasn't fair and what you're doing isn't fair, IMO. Avoid confirmation bias and include all data.

[Rebel10]

Being 6-31 against winning teams includes bowl games right?

[ponyboy]

Not sure of the answer. But, even if so, I believe two of the three bowl wins are discounted in that stat because in beating them we made them no longer a winning team (i.e. over .500 on the season).

This is why this whole thing is a game. Just look to final Sagarin. (Even though it does have the disadvantage of making cartoons less cute).

[Rebel10]

Well if they came into the game at 6-6 that means that they are not a winning team anyway when we played them. No game there. Isn't he also winless against the academies?

[ponyboy]

If they had beaten us and ended up 7-6 on the year, you'd count it as us losing to a winning team, wouldn't you?

[Rebel10]

If they had beaten us and ended up 7-6 on the year, you'd count it as us losing to a winning team, wouldn't you?

If if's and buts were candy and nuts.

[ponyboy]

C'mon. Just try to use your brain for a second.