TL;DR: I made a meaningless chart to represent domination and blowouts.
Hi Husker Nation. Thanksgiving is over and ’tis the season for our fanbase to start dishing out hot takes faster than mom can stuff a turkey. You start saying things like “we’ll see,” and “maybe” a lot.
Your dad fetishizes about the “good ol’ days,” and your drunk Uncle starts Facebook postin YouTube ‘skers mashups from the 90s. And you read the comments about “domination” and “blowouts.”
Anywhoo, here’s some data from the last 30 years that shows the median percent difference in scores in Husker wins and in losses. ***In other words, how dominating were teams when they won, and how big of blowout did they suffer when they lost?***
**What this is not:** a representation of how “bad” or “good” teams/coaches were/are or a win/loss comparison.
Why did I do this? Because I’m a degenerate Husker fan with an addiction to meaningless stats. Oh, and I’m using the median because no team is as good as its best win or as a bad as its worst loss. And, I removed ties and changed scores of “0” to “1” for the math to work.
Some quick answers…
**The** ***most*** **dominating era?**
Tom Osborne’s teams (since the 1990) scored 108% higher on average than their opponents when they won, and they usually won.
**A close second.**
Frank Solich’s teams scored 107% higher on average than their opponents when they won.
**Which team dominated the** ***most*** **when they won?**
1998 — Frank Solich’s team scored 138% higher on average than its opponents in wins.
**The** ***biggest*** **blowout era?**
Tom Osborne’s 90s teams rarely lost, but when they did their opponents outscored them by an average of 70%.
**Which team suffered the** ***biggest*** **blowouts?**
2003 — Frank Solich’s team was outscored by an average of 123% in its three losses.
**The** ***least*** **dominating era?**
We’re living in it. Scott Frost’s teams only score 46% higher on average than opponents in wins.
**The** ***least*** **dominating team?**
2020 can’t end soon enough, but this team only outscores opponents by 26% on average. Bo Pelini’s 2013 team may wind up with this award after the season though — it scored just 27% higher on average than opponents.
**Which era had the** ***fewest*** **blowout?**
*Mike Riley has entered the chat.* His teams were outscored by an average of only 25%. And his 2015 team? 9%. I wish I was kidding.
———————————————————–
Here’s where I’ll go through the data and give a short summary. The number on the left is the median percent difference in wins. The number on the right is the median percent difference in losses.
**Tom Osborne (1990-1998) — 108% / 70%**
Did these teams dominate? Yes, and they rarely lost. Once upon a time there were three entire years when the Huskers didn’t lose a game in 1994, 1995 and 1997. Dad remembers. But what he doesn’t remember is that when they lost, they lost *bad*. The 1991 Miami game? 0-22. The 1996 Arizona State game? 0-19.
These teams scored 70% higher on average than their opponents in wins, every year.
**Frank Solich (1998-2003) — 107% / 52%**
The Chosen One inherits some of the most dominating players of all time and then *nearly matches* his predecessor in win domination while also suffering less severe blowouts. Crazy. But, the blowouts do start to creep in, culminating in his 2003 team scoring 123% higher on average than opponents in wins and 123% lower than opponents in losses. The force seeks balance.
**Bill Callahan (2004-2007) — 69% / 49%**
The slip into mediocrity. Actually, these teams were still fairly dominant in wins, and actually had fewer blowouts than you think. That’s all I have to say about that.
**Bo Pelini (2008-2014) — 77% / 39%**
The numbers don’t tell the whole story. Overall, stats looks pretty good, but Bo’s margin of victory in wins fell from a high of 116% in 2009, to a low of just 27% in 2013. However, contrary to what we remember, Bo’s teams didn’t actually get blown out that much, except in 2011, when opponents outscored us by an average of 85% in losses — but, this number fell to a low of 18% in 2014.
**Mike Riley (2015-2017) — 59% / 25%**
Hi kids. Wanna know something funny? Mike Riley’s teams suffered fewer blowouts on average than any other era of Husker football. Don’t go too crazy though, it was only 3 years. But, his 2015 team was only outscored on by an average razor-thin margin of 9% in losses. Nearly every loss of the 2015 season could have gone either way. 2016 was bad though — opponents outscored us by an average of 83% in losses.
**Scott Frost (2018-2020) — 46% / 26%**
The Chosen One II inherits a mediocre-to-bad team and not much has changed since. Frostyboi’s teams don’t win very often, and when they do, they just scrape by. But things aren’t as bad as they look either. On average, Frost is avoiding blowouts, and as in Riley’s case, most losses have been very close. I know this is an asterisk season, but things so far haven’t been trending in the right direction — we’re losing by larger margins than we’re winning, and we need to vastly improve our dominance these next few games in order to bring our averages up.
https://preview.redd.it/qme1gzka7b261.png?width=1312&format=png&auto=webp&s=7971c7b6107001a496ed7ed4c21270c6f1e31497
View Reddit by double0se7en – View Source
You must be logged in to post a comment Login