Point Differential Rankings

[SWC75]

As the third part of a trilogy on SU football history, (with "Talent Level" and "Strength of Schedule"), I've decided to re-post something I did last year, analyzing the relative strength of SU teams by a system I call "Point Differential Rankings"





Some years ago I came up with a system for evaluating teams not only within particular years but also from different eras. It’s simple, (you can understand what the resulting number means without too much trouble), and it measures some very significant things: power and consistency. It also compares a team not just to it’s opponents but to it’s opponent’s opponents, giving the comparison a much stronger base.

Backstory

It dates from the 1991 SU-Florida State game, when an undefeated SU team took on the #1 ranked Seminoles with high hopes of an upset, having recently beaten Florida in the Dome. We jumped out to a 14-7 lead that could have been 21-7 except for a dropped pass in the end zone. We did it by getting quick developing plays off quickly and going right at the Noles who had greater team speed. Then, for some unfathomable reason, we dropped that strategy in favor of running the near-side option over and over again against a team that had more than enough team speed to stuff it, which they did every time. We went 3 and out the rest of the game while the Noles scored 39 unanswered points.

I was stunned that we’d abandoned a game plan that was working beautifully for one that had no chance of working, turning a possible upset that could have gotten us a #1 ranking for the first time in over three decades into a blow-out loss. People chalked up the defeat to the greatness of the team we were playing and the heat: what can you expect? The Florida State quarterback came over to Marvin Graves and told him “I don’t know how anybody gains any yards against our defense“.

But I wasn’t satisfied. I knew we weren’t 32 points worse than Florida State. I thought we could have beaten them if we’d stuck to the game plan. At the end of the season, I found that Florida State had played 13 games and of their 13 opponents, they beat only Western Michigan, (58-0) worse than they beat Syracuse. 11 of their 13 opponents did better against them than we did. That sounded like it was about more than how good they were and how hot it was.

I went through all Syracuse’s opponents that year the same way:
- We beat Vanderbilt 37-10. Of the 11 teams they played, only Alabama (48-17) and Tennessee (45-0) did better. So we were the 3rd best team they faced by point differential.
- We beat Maryland 31-17. West Virginia (37-7), North Carolina (24-0), Penn State (47-7) and Clemson (40-7) did better so we were the 5th best team they played.
- We beat Florida 38-21. That was the #1 performance against them all season.
- We beat Tulane 24-0. Florida State (38-11), Mississippi State (48-0), Alabama (62-3) and Southern Mississippi (47-14) did better so we were their 5th best opponent.
- We lost to Florida State 14-46. BYU (28-44), Tulane 11-38), Michigan (31-51), Virginia Tech (20-33), Middle Tennessee State (10-24), Louisville (15-40), South Carolina (10-38), Miami (17-16), Florida (14-9) and Texas A&M (2-10) all did better so we were the 12th best team vs. FSU.
- We lost to East Carolina 20-23. Illinois, (38-31) and Pittsburgh (23-24) did better so we were #3.
- We beat Pittsburgh 31-27. Notre Dame (42-7), Boston College (38-12) and Penn State (32-20) did better so we were the #4 team vs. Pitt.
- We beat Rutgers 21-7. Duke (42-22), Penn State 37-17), West Virginia (28-3) did better so we were the #4 team vs. Rutgers.
- We beat Temple 27-6. Alabama (41-3), Clemson (37-7) and Rutgers (41-0) did better so we were the #4 team vs. Temple.
- We beat Boston College 38-16. No one did better so we were #1, (actually tied with Michigan 35-13) vs. BC.
- We beat West Virginia 16-10. Pittsburgh (34-3), Penn State (51-6) and Miami (27-3) did better so we were #4 vs. West Virginia.
- We beat Ohio State 24-17. Michigan beat them 31-3 so we were the #2 team vs. the Buckeyes.

In shorthand, we were 3-5-1-5-12-3-4-4-4-1-4-2, a total of 48 “points” in 12 games, an average of 4.00, meaning that we were , on average the 4th best team our opponents played that year. It’s obvious that the Florida State game was a particularly poor performance by the 1991 SU team. We were between the 1st or 5th best opponent our other 11 opponents played. If you drop out the FSU game, our average is 3.27.

The natural thing was to compare this to SU’s two greatest teams, the 1959 national champions and the 11-0-1 team of 1987. The 1959 team played eleven opponents. They beat 9 of them worse than anybody else did. They beat Holy Cross 42-6 while Penn State beat the Crusaders 46-0. We beat Penn State 20-18. Pittsburgh beat them 22-7. Nobody else did any better than we did all year against any of our opponents. We were 1-1-1-2-1-1-2-1-1-1-1. That gave us 13 “points” in 11 games, or a rating of 1.18. You might think that is a typical rating for a national champion but, after spending a long time playing around with this formula, I found that the average post-war national champion is 2.30. In fact only one team in the post-war era did better than 1.18. The 1973 Alabama team beat 10 of 12 opponents by more than anyone else did. They beat Miami 43-13. Notre Dame beat them 44-0. Notre Dame then beat Alabama for the national championship, 24-23. But that was the closest anyone had come to beating Notre Dame all year so that got a #1 for the Tide, as well. That gave Alabama 13 “points” in 12 games or 1.08. But Bama got beat and didn’t win the national championship. The 1959 Syracuse team was and did. The may have been the outstanding college football team of the post-war era, (I never got around to checking the pre-war era).

The 1987 Syracuse team was 4-2-3-3-3-1-1-1-3-1-6-2 for 30 “points” in 12 games or 2.50. The #1 performances were vs. Penn State, Colgate, Pittsburgh and Boston College. Ironically the worst performance is the famous West Virginia game, a one point win. (The ’Neers also lost games by 2,3,4 and 5 points and by three TDs at Ohio State.) Colgate was not a “major college” (Division 1A) team. If you exclude them, SU had 29 “points” in 11 games or 2.64. The 1959 team didn’t play any teams that weren’t considered major college teams in 1959.

I realized I could use this procedure to evaluate teams across the years. It wouldn’t matter if it was a one platoon team or two platoons, if the era was high scoring or low scoring, if they ran more or passed more. The system measures two things: how well did you play and how consistently did you play well. The 1987 team was better than the 1991 team but much of the difference was that one bad game. We always hear that comparative scores are misleading but that’s less true if you look at all the scores. The system would appear to encourage running up scores but you can only do that on the bad teams and they will have other scores run up on them as well. Besides you can’t get better than a #1 rating. The real key is to avoid the bad game that pulls your average down, (like that Florida State game).

The 1959 Syracuse team played 11 opponents but those 11 teams played 65 different teams from every major conference in the country. This system thus compares Syracuse to those 65 teams by comparing how they did vs. Syracuse’s opponents. Thus it’s a very well “grounded” system. As I’ve used it over the years, the results have passed the “look” test. The right teams are at the top. If there is an anomaly, it likely means that a team is better or not as good as you might have thought. It’s not an iron-clad system for ranking teams: nothing is. But it’s something that should be looked at before you decide who is better than whom. If you disagree with the results, you will need to construct an argument around them. That’s the purpose of statistics: to provide an objective foundation for a discussion or debate. In college football it’s not enough to be good: you’ve got to be consistently good. That’s what this system measures.


There’s two websites that contain all the scores for all the major college football teams in history:
http://www.jhowell.net/cf/scores/byName.htm

http://www.phys.utk.edu/sorensen/cfr/cfr/Output/CF_History.html

They can be used to make these comparisons easily. One limitation is that they don’t list schools that were not considered major college or not in a particular year. You thus can’t use these sites to rank the performance against such teams. I have other sources for this information but I decided instead to ignore games vs. non-major college teams, since we were likely the best team they played to begin with. Thus the 1987 team is a 2.64 team, not a 2.50 team because I‘m not counting the Colgate game. I do use all games of each opponent to rank SU’s performance vs. that opponent. If a small college team did better than we did against an opponent, that should count.

I do not count service teams, either as an opponent to be checked out or as an opponent’s opponent who might have beaten a team worse than we did. Service teams are not four year colleges. They don’t obtain players in the same way and are often all-star type teams. However I do include service academiesas they are four year schools.

 

[SWC75]

In the beginning...

SU History

Here then, is the rating of all the Syracuse teams since 1899, when Howell and Sorenson first consider SU to be a major college team, with the exception of 1903-04 when he drops us from that status temporarily. One weakness of the system is in years when less games are played by our opponents, a bad performance will tend to be rated higher than when more games are played. So a team like the 2007 Syracuse team will look worse than the 1936 team or the 1948 team when in fact they may not have been. The system is thus a bit better at rating good teams than bad teams.

1899 8-6-7-3 = 6.00 (I don’t know exactly what Sorenson’s and Howell’s criteria for a major college team is but this is the first year they have SU on their listings and they don’t have us in 1903 or 1904, either- there was no SU team in 1943. The number of games played in these early years was actually comparable to modern teams. Williams and Dickinson, both majors at the time, played 13 games while Cornell and Army played 10 and 9, respectively.)

1900’s

1900 3-11-6-3-4 = 5.40 (We were 7-2-1 overall and 2-2-1 vs. majors but we made the rankings for the first time- see my prior post “SU in the rankings”- They were ranked #11 by Howell, #13 by Albrecht, #16 by Sorenson and #20 by Doktor. There were 42 teams considered major college at this time. The #11 was a 0-43 squashing by the Princeton Tigers, huge power at that time.)
1901 6-4-3-3-2 = 3.60 ( We were 7-2 overall, 4-1 vs. major college teams and ranked as high as #8 by Sorenson.)
1902 2-7-5-7-5 = 4.80 (We started out with 4 small college teams and then played five major college teams. We only went 2-2-1, losing 0-24 to Yale in our first confrontation with that early-day super power. But it was enough to be ranked as high as #12 by Dokter.)
1903- 1904 We didn’t qualify as a major college. (Tell it Manhattan, whom we beat 144-0 on 11/5/04, a game suspended after 32 minutes. Manhattan failed to gain a single yard while SU scored 25 touchdowns.)
1905 4-2-6-7-2-7 = 4.66 (We were 8-3 overall, 3-3 vs. majors but unranked.)
1906 10-5-5-1-4 = 5.00 (We were 6-3 overall but only 2-3 vs. majors and lost 0-51 to national champion Yale. Still we were ranked as high as #12 by Sorenson.)
1907 3-3-3-6-3-6 = 4.00 (We were 6-2-1 overall, 2-2-1 vs. majors but had a scoreless tie with mighty Yale. But only Sorenson rated us- we were #19.)
1908 3-9-3-4-2 = 4.20 (We were 6-3-1 overall but only 1-3-1 vs. majors. However we played quite a major slate- Yale, Carlisle, Princeton, Colgate and the new midwestern power, Michigan. We crushed the Wolverines, 28-4 and played the Tigers to a 0-0 tie. We outscored these teams, 28-27 overall. We were ranked as high as #22 by Dokter but I think this team was probably the best we’d ever had to this point.)
1909 4-5-7-4-4-2 = 4.33 (We were 4-5-1 overall, 1-5-1 vs. majors. Michigan rolled us 0-44 in Ann Arbor.)
Summary:
1900 5.40; 1901 3.60; 1902 4.80; 1905 4.66; 1906 5.00; 1907 4.00; 1908 4.20; 1909 4.33 Average for the decade: 4.50.

1910’s

1910 6-1-6-5-1 = 3.80 (We were 5-4-1 overall but only 1-4 vs. the majors. The one win was 14-0 over Carlisle but this was not a year when Jim Thorpe was playing for them -he did from 1907-08 and 1911-12. The other #1 was a 0-3 loss to Illinois who went 7-0 and beat no less than three teams by that score.)
1911 4-7-2-1 = 3.50 (This time Big Jim was playing for Carlisle who beat 11 other opponents by a combined 287-37 but couldn’t beat Bill Orange: SU 12 Carlisle 11. But it was our only win over major team that year. We were 1-2-1 and 5-3-2 overall. Sorenson had us rated #24.)
1912 9-8-8-1-1-3-6 = 5.14 (We really went big-time this year, playing 7 of 9 games vs. big-time opposition. But we only won two of those games as Thorpe and Carlisle got a 0-33 revenge and Princeton destroyed us 0-62. But we beat Michigan and Lafayette worse than anyone else did. We were 4-5 overall.)
1913 5-6-6-4 = 5.25 (We dialed it back, playing only four big timers in 10 games. But we went 0-4, losing to powers Princeton, Michigan, Colgate and Carlisle by a combined 79 points. But we won the rest of them and were 6-4 overall.)
1914 5-2-3-4-3-5-3 = 3.57 (We were 5-3-2 overall and 2-3-2 vs. the bigs. It was the first of 22 straight winning seasons in all games for SU. The season ended on a sour note with a 0-40 beating by Dartmouth and a 0-20 loss in our first confrontation with Notre Dame. Nonetheless, Sorenson has us as #23. By this time there were 82 major college teams. The teams we faced played an average of 10 games.)
1915 3-3-4-3-1-2 = 2.67 (Our first great team. We were 9-1-2 overall, 4-1-1 vs. big-time teams. We lost only to Princeton, 0-3 and tied Dartmouth and then Montana on a three game western swing in a game that was literally played when they got off the train- and in a blizzard. One of the “small-time” teams they played was Oregon State. This team was invited to the first modern Rose Bowl to play Washington but the school decided they’d already spent the money for one western trip and didn’t want to pay for another. Their highest ranking was #15 by Howell. They probably should have been higher than that. They obliterated an undefeated Colgate team that had outscored five teams 223-0 by the score of SU 38 Colgate 0, a game that was talked about for decades afterwards as one of SU‘s very greatest performances)
1916 4-3-5-4 = 4.00 (A rebuilding year. We played four big time teams and got beat by all of them, including 0-30 to Pittsburgh’s first national championship team. The over-all record was 5-4.)
1917 1-7-1-1-1-2 = 2.16 (This team was even better than the 1915 team. They were ranked as high as #5 by Sorenson and were the best college team four of their six big-time opponents played. They got squashed again by Pitt, in the middle of a 33 game winning streak against collegiate teams, 0-28. They also won the first of a series of games against Midwestern power Nebraska, 10-9. We were 8-1-1 over all, 5-1 vs. big-time teams. One of the “small time“ teams was Michigan State. The #1‘s were Rutgers- who won all their other games with All-American Paul Robeson, Brown, Bucknell and Colgate)
1918 1-1-3-2= 1.75 (An abbreviated schedule- our big time opponents only played an average of 6 games- but another strong team, which lost only to undefeated Michigan. They didn’t have to play Pittsburgh who again won the national championship. We were 5-1 but 3-1 vs. big-time college teams.)
1919 2-1-3-3-3-3-1-5-6 = 3.00 (Another strong team that won one of the greatest victories in SU history, a 24-3 win over Pitt in Archbold that finally ended their 33 game winning streak. A Midwestern swing to end the season brought the Orange down a notch or two with losses to Indiana and Nebraska. We were 8-3 and 6-3 vs. a record 9 big-time teams)
Summary:
1910 3.80; 1911 3.50; 1912 5.14; 1913 5.25; 1914 3.57; 1915 2.67; 1916 4.00; 1917 2.16; 1918 1.75; 1919 3.00 Average for the decade: 3.48

 

[SWC75]

between the wars...

1920’s

1920 1-1-1-3-3 = 1.80 (Chick Meehan got his coaching career off to a great start with this group who went 6-2-1- overall and 3-1-1 vs. the bigs. The first three games were all #1 performances, including a tie with unbeaten Pitt. They were ranked as high as #12 by Sorenson.)
1921- 1-2-9-2-3-2 = 3.16 (The low point was a 0-35 woodshed beating at Pitt. The highpoint was a 7-14 loss in Archbold to a 10-0 Washington and Jefferson team who beat everybody else worse and then went out to tie mighty California and it’s All-American, Brick Muller, in the Rose Bowl. Cal had a 49 game unbeaten string from 1920-25 and only they did better against W&J that year than the Orange did. We were 7-2 overall and 4-2 vs. the bigs and #15 in Howell‘s rankings.)
1922- 3-4-5-1-3 = 3.20 (The only team to beat the For Horseman of Notre Dame in the three years they were together as a unit was Nebraska and they did it twice. Nebraska lost three times in those years- once to Red Grange and Illinois and twice to Syracuse. This year’s Big Red were 7-0 and outscored their opponents 270-19 in their other games but we beat them 9-6 in Archbold. Roy Simmons said the team was told that Nebraska was sightseeing- they would be going to Niagara Falls over the game. That riled up the Orange. We were 6-1-2 overall and 2-1-2 vs. the bigs. Sorenson rated us #6, probably on the strength of the Nebraska game. Yes, there was more than one “Nebraska game”.)
1923- 1-1-4-2-2-4-2 = 2.29 (How would you like to beat Alabama and Nebraska in the same year? The Tide was just about to emerge as a national power when they came to Archbold and got beat 23-0, an afternoon in which Coach Wallace Wade said he learned more football than in all the rest of his career combined. At the end of the season SU traveled to Lincoln and repeated their win of the previous year, 7-0. Overall, we were 8-1 and 6-1 vs. the bigs. The one was an agonizing upset, 7-16, vs. arch-rival Colgate, a harbinger of things to come. Despite that, Howell rated SU his #1 team for 1923, our “other” national champion. Six of the seven big time teams we played had winning records. This team was also invited to the Rose Bowl but the administration again turned the offer down, to much controversy.)
1924 1-1-2-4-4-2-8 = 3.14 (Chick’s last SU team went 8-2-1 overall and 5-1-1 vs. the bigs. They somehow lost 0-3 to West Virginia Weslayan but were 8-1-1 when they got a trip to the west coast to play Southern California, perhaps to make up for the declined Rose Bowl invitation. They had a great time of it. “The Syracuse Football Story” by Ken Rapport shows the team posing on a movie set with the director and star, (unidentified). They did not have as good a time losing to the Trojans 0-16. Still they were ranked as high as #18 by Howell. One of the “small-time“ teams we played was Boston College.)
1925 1-2-4-5-1 = 2.40 (Colgate was unbeaten, including a 6-19 triumph over the Orange that began the “Hoodoo”. We were also unbeaten going into that game. We wound up 8-1-1 overall and 4-1 vs. the big-time schools. Somehow we were tied 3-3 by Ohio Weslayan- we should avoid the Weslayans. Howell and Sorenson had us at #17.)
1926 3-3-3-2= 2.75 (Against a watered-down schedule with only four big-time teams we went 7-2-1 but only 1-2-1 vs. the bigs. Sorenson did rate us #23.)
1927 1-4-4-3-5 = 3.40 (There was some slippage in the program as indicated by an overall record of 5-3-2, with another tie with Ohio Weslayan and a record vs. the bigs of 1-3-1. The highlight was a 19-6 win over Georgetown, then a major college team who beat their eight other opponents by a combined 377-2! But nobody ranked us for the first time in a decade.)
1928 3-6-4-8-3 = 4.80 (The slippage continued punctuated by a 6-30 loss to Colgate, which was becoming a power under Andy Kerr. We actually lost to Ohio Weslayan, 0-6. We were 4-4-1 overall but only 1-3-1 vs. big time teams.)
1929 7-5-4-3-5 = 4.80 (We were 6-3 overall but only 2-3 vs. the top level teams and unranked. Colgate rolled 0-21.)

Summary:
1920 1.80; 1921 3.16; 1922 3.20; 1923 2.29; 1924 3.14; 1925 2.40; 1926 2.75; 1927 3.40; 1928 4.80; 1929 4.80 Average for the decade: 3.17

1930’s
1930 6-4-5-3-3 = 4.20 (We were 5-2-2 overall but only 1-2-2 vs. big time teams, including another whipping at the hands of the Red Raiders, 7-36. )
1931 4-6-3-3-2 = 3.60 (We stormed into the Colgate game at 7-0 and limped back out, having lost 7-21 and then got held to a 0-0 tie with Columbia to end the season. Nonetheless we were back in the rankings, at least according to Albrecht who ranked us #17.)
1932 11-3-4-2-2 = 4.40 (We were starting to play more intersectional opponents- Florida the previous year and SMU this year. The Mustangs would be real good in a couple of years but they were only a 3-7-2 this year. We still managed to lost to them, 6-16 and only one team did worse, our first “double figure” game since the 1906 Yale debacle. We were also one of the nine teams who failed to score, 0-16, vs. Colgate in their “undefeated, untied, unscored upon and uninvited” year- people thought they should be in the Rose Bowl. We also managed to lose to Ohio Weslayan again, 12-19. We wound up 4-4-1 but only 1-3-1 vs. big time schools)
1933 2-8-2-6-4-6 = 4.67 (We were 4-4 overall but only 2-4 vs. the “bigs”. The fact that we played only two small-time teams is a change. Colgate got us again, 3-13.)
1934 3-3-1-1-3-3 = 2.33 (Our best team of the 1930’s. We won out first 6, including 10-0 over a Michigan State team that was 8-0 vs. everyone else. But then we came a cropper vs. Colgate, 2-13 and Columbia 0-12, both of whom finished 7-1. Albrecht had the highest ranking at #20 but this team was clearly better than the 1931 team, at least by this measure. We were 6-2 and 4-2 vs. the bigs.)
1935 4-6-3-4-4-3 = 4.00 (For the second year in a row we were 6-0 going into the Colgate game. For the 11th year in a row we couldn’t come up with a win, this time getting blown out 0-27. And all these games were played in Archbold Stadium because it was so much bigger than Colgate‘s field. We wound up 6-1-1 and 4-1-1 vs. the bigs. But nobody ranked us and the point differential rankings suggest why: this team wasn’t as strong as the 1935 team, despite the similar record.)
1936 6-8-7-4-7-6 = 6.33 (This year all the air came out of the balloon and we had our worst season since going 0-8-1 in 1892. The record was 0-6 vs. big time teams and 1-1 vs. the smalls, including Baldwin-Wallace who beat us 0-19- yes it was that bad. One thing I will say for this team was that they weren’t the worst team any of their opponents played- 6th of 8 vs. Cornell, 8th of 11 vs. Maryland, 7th of 8 vs. Penn State, 4th of 8 vs. Indiana, 7th of 8 vs. Columbia and 6th of 9 vs. Colgate. We were also 3 of 8 vs. Baldwin-Wallace and beat Clarkson 31-0. But we stunk, no doubt about it, and it cost Vic Hanson his job. )
1937 2-9-3-6-6 = 5.20 (Ossie Solem produced an improvement to 5-2-1 and 2-2-1 vs. big-time teams. But this was the season of the Wilmuth Sidat-Singh incident at Maryland where he was left in the locker room in deference to the authorities. That’s the “9“ but the point differential ranking indicates that this was just not a very good team. Colgate again beat us 0-7, the least year of the “Hoodoo”, during which we were 0-11-2 and got outscored 50-239 by our arch-rival in our own stadium.)
1938 1-1-5-6-3-9-5 = 4.29 (Not a great team but a memorable season for a number of reasons. The first #1 is a 53-0 win over Maryland in Archbold where Sidat-Singh and his teammates got a devastating revenge against the Terrapins for the situation they’d been put in the year before. Then came what Grantland Rice said was the greatest game he’d ever seen: the 19-17 win over a great Cornell team that wouldn’t lose against or two years in the famous “fifth down” game vs. Dartmouth. Later we finally ended the Hoodoo by beating Colgate 7-0. We also faced another undefeated, untied and unscored upon team, Duke - who did get invited to the Rose Bowl and lost in the final seconds to USC. But that team handled us 0-21 and Penn State beat us 6-33. Overall we were 5-3 an 4-3 vs. Big-time teams. It was a year of ups and downs but the ups sure were great.)
1939 4-1-7-2-7-3-7 = 4.43 (Not as memorable a season but the team wasn’t that much worse. The schedule may have been the toughest we had played to this point. The first four big time opponents, Cornell, Georgetown, Duke and Penn State were a combined 28-2-2. We managed to tie the Hoyas 13-13, who won all their other games.)

Summary:
1930 4.20; 1931 3.60; 1932 4.40; 1933 4.67; 1934 2.33; 1935 4.00; 1936 6.33; 1937 5.20; 1938 4.29; 1939 4.43 Average for the decade: 4.35

 

[SWC75]

The Schwartwalder Era, (with some before and after)

1940’s
1940 8-1-5-2-6-2-4 = 4.00 (The days of half the schedule being small-time teams were about gone: only one this year. We were 2-4-1 vs. the bigs. The highlight was tying a 6-1-1 Penn State team, 13-13.
1941 4-3-4-5-6-3 = 4.17 (The year of the famous reverse center play, which we used to upset Wisconsin 27-20. We had a good 5-2-1 record. Two of the wins were against small time teams, one of whom was Rutgers. Despite the record, it wasn’t that strong a team.)
1942 2-4-4-7 = 4.25 (In the last pre-war year we did have four “small time” opponents but two were Rutgers and Boston University, who wouldn’t stay that way. They also played a service team. We were 6-3 over all and 2-2 against big time college teams.
1943 Football was suspended for the war.
1944 9-8-5-5-8-1 = 6.00 (A disappointing return but at least we had fun beating Colgate 43-13. We were 2-4-1 with one win coming against a small-time team. )
1945 7-2-9-5-8-5-6 = 6.00 (We finally had an all-big time schedule. The problem is we didn’t have a big-time team to play it. In Ossie Solem’s final year we were 1-6. The bottom was a 0-8 loss to a 1-6-1 Dartmouth team.)
1946 8-5-1-8-3-2-6-8 = 5.13 (Solem’s assistant, Biggie Munn took over and produced a 4-5 record. Boston U. was still considered small-time so we were 3-5 vs. big time schools. The season ended with dismal 7-25 and 22-59 losses to Colgate and Columbia and Munn and his entire staff moved on to Michigan State.)
1947 9-3-7-9-6-4-8 = 6.57 (Reeves Baysinger, who had played for SU in the 20’s and been a jack of all trades since then for the University, filled the vacant spot for two difficult seasons. This year we went 3-6 but were only 1-6 vs. big time teams. But we did beat Colgate 7-0! The third game was a 0-40 disaster against the best team Penn State had prior to the Paterno era, a team that ran through the regular season 9-0, outscoring them 319-27. They set an NCAA record that still stands by “allowing” us a total offense of minus 47 yards in that game. They tied Doak Walker’s SMU team, 13-13 in the Cotton Bowl.)
1948 10-6-7-10-4-8-8-6 = 7.38 (The most famously bad SU team prior to the G-Rob era. We beat Niagara 13-9 in the opener and then lost to 8 straight big-time teams by a combined 76-235. Niagara gave up football after this season. The joke was if they couldn’t beat Syracuse they might as well quit the sport. The worst loss was a 0-48 loss to Northwestern’s Rose Bowl team. Unlike in 1936, we were the worst team Holy Cross and Northwestern played. We were 8th of 9 vs. Temple and Colgate, 7th of 9 vs. Cornell, 6th of 9 vs. Penn State and Columbia and 4th of 8 vs. Boston U, which was now considered a major college. Baysinger was let go after the season. The best we could get to replace him was some guy from Muhlenberg.)
1949 3-7-2-5-5-6-2-1 = 3.88 (Ben’s first team improved from 1-9 to 4-5. The 3.50 improvement in point differential ranking is easily the best in the school’s history: the second best was 2.00 when we got Donovan McNabb as our quarterback. Lafayette was considered small time. The #1 performance was vs. Colgate, #7 vs. Temple)

Summary:
1940 4.00; 1941 4.17; 1942 4.25; 1944 6.00; 1945 6.00; 1946 5.13; 1947 6.57; 1948 7.38; 1949 3.88 Average for the decade: 5.26

1950’s
1950 1-6-6-2-1-3-5-5 = 3.63 (The #1s were vs. Rutgers and Holy Cross, the #6‘s Temple and Cornell. We were 1-1 vs. small time teams, Lafayette and John Carroll and 4-4 vs. everyone else.)
1951 4-4-7-8-2-9-4-2 = 5.00 (The #2 was Boston U, the #9 Penn State. Lafayette was still not big-time. We lost 20-41 to undefeated Illinois’ Rose Bowl champions.)
1952 4-3-4-7-2-2-1-1-12 = 4.00 (The #1s were vs. Colgate and Fordham, the #12, of course, Alabama. We played no small-time teams but did lose to a service team, Bolling Field. We also got crushed 7-48 by Michigan State‘s national champions. Still we were ranked as high as #11 by Poling.)
1953 4-2-6-3-1-1-2-7 = 3.25 (The #1s were vs. Holy Cross and Cornell, #7 Villanova. Temple was not considered big-time any more. We were 4-3-1 vs. everyone else but the losses were by 6,7 and 1 point We were 18 points from being 9-0. Poling ranked us #24.)
1954 5-4-5-9-5-5-1-6 = 5.00 (The #1 was vs. Colgate, #9 Illinois- they were 1-8 but beat us 6-34. At least everybody was big-time this year, as would be the case for the next 28 seasons.)
1955 5-4-2-9-1-5-2-2 = 3.75 (The #1 was vs. Holy Cross, #9 Maryland, who went 10-0 until Oklahoma beat them in a bowl game. Every team we played had a winning record except Boston U. We were ranked as high as #14 by Poling.)
1956 3-6-3-3-2-2-2-1-4 = 2.89 (The #1 was vs. Colgate, the 61-7 game where Jim brown scored 43 points. #6 was the lone regular season loss to Pittsburgh. Our highest ranking was #8 by both AP and UPI as well as Riley.)
1957 6-3-1-6-6-5-5-4-5 = 4.55 (The #1 was vs. Cornell. The #6s were Iowa State- our last tie for 14 years, Nebraska- a 26-9 win over a 1-9 team- and Penn State. We were 20 points from being 9-0)
1958 2-4-1-1-2-4-1-2-4-4 = 2.50 (The #1s were Cornell, Nebraska and Boston U. There were no really bad performances. We lost one regular season game by one point- 13-14 to Holy Cross, a good program in those days under Dr. Eddie Anderson. So did Oklahoma, who beat us 6-21 in the Orange Bowl. Our highest ranking was #8 by poling.)
1959 1-1-1-2-1-1-2-1-1-1-1 = 1.18 (The #1s were Kansas, Maryland, Navy, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Colgate, Boston U., UCLA and Texas. If you don‘t know all about this season, you should. We led the country in scoring, yards gained, rushing yards gained, touchdown passes, first downs, fewest yards surrendered and fewest rushing guards given up, the later 19.3 per game, second all time to the 1947 Penn State team. We outgained our opposition by a ratio of 451-96 yards per game, a record that will never be broken. We were #1 in virtually all the polls, including the ones that really counted- AP and UPI.)

Summary:
1950 3.63; 1951 5.00; 1952 4.00; 1953 3.25; 1954 5.00; 1955 3.75; 1956 2.89; 1957 4.55; 1958 2.50; 1959 1.18 Average for the decade: 3.58

1960’s
1960 2-2-2-2-1-9-5-1-4 = 3.11 (The #1’s were West Virginia and Colgate, the #9 Pittsburgh, who ended our 16 game winning streak, 0-10, the team‘s worst performance, by this measure, in 5 years. Still we were ranked as high as #15 by Albrecht.)
1961 2-1-4-1-5-1-2-1-6-4-4 = 2.82 (The #1’s were West Virginia, Nebraska, Holy Cross and Colgate, the last game against them for 21 years. In the Schwartzwalder Era, we played Colgate 13 times, won 12 and laid the worst whipping of the year on them 6 times. The #6 game was Notre Dame. This team was a bit snake-bit, losing by a point to Maryland an on that field goal after time had expired vs. Notre Dame. It could have been a 10-1 team. Poling had us as high as #10.)
1962 4-6-2-3-3-10-2-1-6-5 = 4.20 (The #1 was George Washington The #10 stinker was again vs. Pitt)
1963 2-6-1-3-1-2-5-6-1-4 = 3.10 (The #1’s were Holy Cross, Penn State and Richmond. The #6’s were Kansas and West Virginia. UPI had us at #12.)
1964 7-1-2-1-3-11-2-3-3-5-5 = 3.91 (One of our most inconsistent teams. The #1’s were 38-6 over Gayle Sayers and Kansas thanks to Floyd Little’s 5TDs and 39-0 over an undefeated UCLA team- the first gamer my father ever took me to. The #10 was to Oregon State’s Rose Bowl team, 13-31 on the west coast. That doesn’t sound too bad but the #10 ranking indicates that, like that 1991 FSU game, the fact that an opponent is good doesn’t mean that a decisive loss to them should be excused. We were again #12 in UPI.)
1965 3-9-2-8-2-2-2-6-3-4 = 3.90 (The first time since 1951 that we weren’t the best team somebody played by this measure. The #9 game was 0-24 home loss to a 5-4-1 Miami team. The #8 game was another west coast loss to a Rose Bowl team, UCLA, whom we had handled so well in previous years. Poling had us at #14.)
1966 10-7-3-3-1-1-3-5-1-2-4 = 3.64 (This year’s stinker was an opening national TV 12-35 loss at Baylor, a team that would win up 5-5. Then we got killed by UCLA at home and went on the longest winning streak since the national title year, 8 in a row, with #1’s over Boston College, Holy Cross and Florida State. UPI had us at #16.)
1967 5-1-9-10-5-6-8-1-3-1 = 4.90 (Often thought of as Ben Schwartzwalder’s last really good team, this was actually his worst team in 16 years- by this measure, anyway. It consisted of Larry Csonka and a good defense. Larry got a record 43 carries vs. Maryland for 181 yards. We beat an 0-9 team by 7-3. Everybody else beat them by more. The loss the next week at Navy was also the worst performance against them. And yet we had three #1 performances: West Virginia, Holy Cross and UCLA, the last by 32-14 the week after their famous game with USC and OJ Simpson and our last west coast victory to date. UPI had us at #12.)
1968 6-4-5-5-10-1-2-1-6-7 = 4.70 (We now began our serious slide into mediocrity. We were ranked #10 going out to California but by the end of the season, none of our performances prior to that looked very impressive. We did have a couple #1’s after that trip, vs. Holy Cross and Navy.)
1969 7-10-2-7-1-7-1-7-3-9 = 5.40 (This team was, like the 1967 team, a fine defensive team but it had no Csonka, which was too bad because it lost two games by a point and one by 3 points in a 5-5 season. But it wasn’t really that good a team. The #10 game was a 0-13 loss to Kansas, which like Illinois in 1954, lost all of it’s other games. The #9 game to BC was also the worst performance against them all year. The #1’s were our 14-15 loss to Penn State -see U-Tube- where we fumbled away a 14-0 lead and Arizona.)

Summary:
1960 3.11; 1961 2.82; 1962 4.20; 1963 3.10; 1964 3.91; 1965 3.90; 1966 3.64; 1967 4.90; 1968 4.70; 1969 5.40 Average for decade: 3.97

1970’s
1970 8-9-10-4-2-6-2-8-6-1 = 5.60 (This was the year of the black boycott which produced a horrific start, then a sharp comeback with a 5 game winning streak, including the 24-7 win at Penn State, our last over them for 17 years. The Miami game at the end was almost identical to the 1998 game: we led 42-7 at halftime and won 56-16.)
1971 7-6-6-5-6-1-11-3-10-4-5 = 5.82 (This team started out being ranked #13 in the pre-season AP Poll. It wound up our worse team since 1948. The #1 was Holy Cross. #11 was Pitt and #10 was Navy)
1972 3-9-10-5-9-4-7-10-11-3-10 = 7.36 (The collapse everybody thinks occurred the next year really began this year. The “double figure” games were Wisconsin, Pittsburgh, Boston College and West Virginia. We managed to win several close games over bad teams and finish 5-6 but this was a bad team.)
1973 10-9-10-12-8-10-10-4-4-2-9 = 8.00 (The bottom of the barrel. The Schwartzwalder Era is a bell curve, starting from the terrible 1948 the year before Ben came and ending with this mess. The “double figure” games were Bowling Green, Washington, Maryland, Penn State and Miami.)
1974 4-5-8-7-8-4-7-7-11-9-8= 7.09 (Frank Maloney’s first team had the same record as Ben Schwartzwalder’s last team but was a noticeably better team until they ran of gas at the end of the year. The #11 game was West Virginia.)
1975 5-7-3-8-5-8-4-9-4-3-4 = 5.45 (Frank’s second team was much improved, won it’s first three games and was being considered for a bowl until our loss to Rutgers. The Pitt game, 0-38, complete with a Connecticut-like long bomb for a score at the end, was the #9 game.)
1976 9-11-6-5-8-11-4-2-9-7-9 = 7.36 (Frank’s third team sharply backslid. After the Iowa game- the first #11- Frank said that we were the worst team in the country. The other #11 was Penn State. The #2 was the famous Pittsburgh game, when the refs moved the ball back two plays in a row to deprive us of a key first down vs. the national champs. We played two 11-0 teams that year- Maryland and Pitt. The Terps lost in the Cotton Bowl to Houston. The Panthers beat Georgia in the Sugar for the national title.)
1977- 11-12-3-8-9-4-4-9-4-3-3 = 6.36 (A mild comeback after a horrendous start. We were the worst team- by this measure- both Oregon State and North Carolina State, our first two opponents, played.)
1978- 10-6-6-11-5-7-10-5-3-4-10 = 7.00 (Bill Hurley got racked up by Florida State in the first game and any hope of a good season disappeared with him. Illinois went 1-8-2 that year: we were the “1“.)
1979- 7-5-4-3-6-10-11-4-4-2-9-1 = 6.00 (Frank Maloney’s best team laid two huge eggs in mid-season vs. Temple and Penn State and another in the rain at Schoellkopf Field vs. a bad BC team. McNeese St. was 11-0 and a D1A team- they dropped down to 1AA shortly afterward- when we blitzed them in the bowl game.)

Summary:
1970 5.60; 1971 5.82; 1972 7.36; 1973 8.00; 1974 7.09; 1975 5.45; 1976 7.36; 1977 6.36; 1978 7.00; 1979 6.00 Average per decade: 6.60

 

[SWC75]

The Carrier Dome Era

　
1980’s
1980: 5-2-6-10-3-10-2-11-4-7-3 = 5.73 (This 5-6 team actually performed slightly better than the previous year’s 7-5 team- by this measure- even if Joe Morris missed several games with an injury. The first “10” was Kansas, the first game he missed. The others were Penn State and Pittsburgh, which had one of the best teams I‘ve ever seen that year. Still, every opponent but one did better than to lose to them 6-43.)
1981: 7-7-6-7-7-7-4-1-8-5-3 = 5.64 (Coach Mac’s first year was considered a disappointment. He took over a veteran team with a healthy Joe Morris and went 4-6-1, a worse record than Maloney’s last. But his team actually performed at a slightly higher level- by this measure. It was also an amazingly consistent team, if not a consistently good team, being the 7th best team 5 of our first 6 opponents played- and we were #6 to the other team. The #1 was Colgate.)
1982- 4-8-11-9-10-10-6-6-6-9 = 7.90 (Coach Mac found the cupboard bare in his second year and had to play young players with dire results. The Colgate game is not included as they were not a Division 1A team- they had been when we played them the previous year.)
1983- 10-4-5-7-12-10-10-6-7-1-3 = 6.82 (We were growing up. The 1980 Pitt may have been the best college defensive team I’ve ever seen. This year’s Nebraska team might have been the best offensive team. But our 7-63 margin of defeat was topped by one team: Minnesota, an 84-13 victim. )
1984- 1-9-9-2-7-7-10-2-5-1-4 = 5.18 (A very inconsistent team. The Nebraska game fell short of being a #1 game by the virtue of that unnecessary safety we took at the end of the game: Oklahoma beat the Huskers 17-7. This was our first ranked team in 17 years, #22 by Dokter.)
1985- 11-1-6-1-5-1-3-3-3-4-6-7 = 4.25 (Our best team since 1966. And after the dreadful opener, were 3.64 for the rest of the season. The same as ‘66. Getting to the Cherry Bowl turned our recruiting around and set us up for what happened two years later. But no one ranked us.)
1986- 9-7-10-8-2-12-5-4-7-10-5 = 7.18 (The ball rolled back down the hill- temporarily. The #12 game was Penn State. Our average rating vs. them during their 16 game winning streak over us was 8.63- we were on average, the 8th or 9th best team they played. They were certainly better than us but the other teams they played were a lot better against them than we were.)
1987- 4-2-3-3-3-1-1-3-1-6-2 = 2.64 (Again, Colgate was 1AA so they weren’t included. If they were, they‘d have joined Penn State, Colgate, Pittsburgh and Boston College, giving up four #1 punch-outs in five games. Ranma had us as high as #2. )
1988- 6-10-1-3-1-3-1-2-3-7-2-2 = 3.42 (A strong follow-up to our “dream year” and an indication that we were in for a good, long run. Except for the lousy performance at Ohio State, this team was very similar to the previous year’s team, both incredibly consistent. Of 24 games in 1987-88 we were one of the top three teams each opponent faced- by this measure- 19 times. ESPN ranked us #10.)
1989- 2-4-7-9-11-1-5-4-3-7-1-6 = 5.00 (A step backwards. Florida State and Penn State were certainly very good teams but we weren’t very good against them.)

Summary:
1980 5.73; 1981 5.63; 1982 7.90; 1983 6.82; 1984 5.18; 1985 4.25; 1986 7.18; 1987; 2.64; 1988; 3.42; 1989 5.00 Average for decade: 5.38

1990’s

1990 12-4-4-8-3-6-1-3-2-8-1-5-2 = 4.54 (We opened in the Kick-off classic losing to USC 16-34. Well, it was USC. But it was a lousy performance and we should have beaten that team and added them to our list of famous scalps: Nebraska, Penn State, LSU, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Miami, etc.; we lifted in this era. It was a much worse performance than our 7-33 loss to Miami at the end of the season. UPI had us #21.)
1991 3-5-1-5-12-3-4-4-4-1-4-2 = 4.00 (See above. The “12” is, of course, that baffling Florida State game that started me down this road. We were #7 in Mark.)
1992 3-3-10-4-1-4-5-3-2-2-5-2 = 3.66 (Our most consistently good team since 1987-88, spoiled only by the Ohio State game in the Dome, another game where we kept running the near-side option over and over again even though it wasn’t working. Without that, we were 2.83. UPI had us at #6.)
1993 2-6-6-3-5-8-12-12-4-8-4 = 6.36 (This team had high expectations but totally fell apart in mid-season. The Miami and West Virginia games were consecutive “worst” performances- 12th of 12.)
1994 7-5-5-4-4-2-9-6-12-6-10 = 6.36 (This team didn’t have the horrendous losses of the previous year, although the Mike Mamula game at BC was another 12, but it also didn’t have much in the way of strong performances.)
1995 3-4-5-5-5-2-2-9-2-3-7-1 = 4.00 (This was a very consistent team until the trip to Blacksburg. I remember we gave the ball to Rob Konrad several times and he punched a hole in the Hokie’s 8 man line repeatedly until we scored on the opening drive. A second Csonka had arrived!. He never got the ball the rest of the game. We went into “near-side option” mode and gave up 31 unanswered points. The Gator Bowl blow-out of Clemson was the first #1 performance by the Orange since Rutgers back in 1992.Marsee had us at #13.)
1996 5-8-1-2-3-2-1-1-1-4-5-3 = 3.00 (The best Pasqualoni team and the best Syracuse team in the years since the 1987 “dream” year. After fumbling away the Minnesota game, the went on tremendous tear, going 1.57 over their next seven games. The four #1 performances- VPI, West Virginia, Tulane, Army, who was 9-0 at the time- were the most since the 1959 team. I recall Coach P crediting the success to his being converted by his assistants to the concept of an “attack” defense, rather than “read and cover“, something Scott Shafer is trying to create now. We were #12 in Bassett, Dokter and Dolphin)
1997 1-6-9-9-4-1-2-1-1-5-3-2-4 = 3.69 (Similar to the previous year’s team, after a 1-3 start we strung together 8 wins in a row. This one wasn’t quite as good, although it got four more #1’s - Wisconsin, East Carolina, Temple, West Virginia. Oklahoma was another big-time scalp we should have gotten, either in 1994 or this year. Bassett had us at #17.)
1998 1-2-1-12-1-4-5-5-3-2-1-7 = 3.67 (The last McNabb team got off to a great start, nearly beating this year’s national champion, Tennessee, in the opener and thumping last year’s national champion, Michigan, in the second game. Then we scored 10 touchdowns on Rutgers. There were hopes of national championship and a Heisman Trophy. Both disappeared that awful night in Raleigh. Later came the ritual slaughter of Miami in the Dome, 66-13, and the dismal Orange Bowl performance vs. Florida, 10-31. Bassett ignored the bad stuff and ranked us #6.)
1999 1-2-6-2-4-4-12-5-6-11-8-4 = 5.42 (We got off to a good start but the collapse vs. Va Tech and the loss to Rutgers- like the 1954 Illinois team, the 1969 Kansas team and the 1978 Illinois team, we were the only team they could beat- ruined the season.)

Summary:
1990 4.54; 1991 4.00; 1992 3.66; 1993 6.36; 1994 6.36; 1995 4.00; 1996 3.00; 1997 3.69; 1998 3.67; 1999 5.42 Average for the decade: 4.47

2000 3-6-8-1-3-6-3-5-4-6-5 = 4.55 (Not an outstanding team but at least they were fairly consistent. The season was most memorable for the attempted to gain revenge on Va Tech, which Troy Nunes, in a classic performance, literally threw away. Dwight Freeney also got hurt in that game, the third straight season ended or limited by a significant injury. Anmar had us #18.)
2001 7-11-2-3-1-8-2-1-3-4-11-3-1 = 4.38 (Our last winning season and our last really good team. The team was actually outgained on the year but went 10-3 thanks to a +15 turnover margin that was largely the product of having a healthy Dwight Freeney for the entire season for the first time. Without the two 11’s- both the Tennessee and Miami games were classic examples of playing strong teams in tough places to win and doing it poorly- this was a 3.16 team. Bassett has us at #7.)
2002 11-12-5-12-9-11-3-3-2-8-12 = 8.00 (This was the year things fell apart- the first time. The Rhode Island game was vs. a 1AA opponent and thus is not included. A series of horrible performances was broken up only by a strong first half at Auburn and Troy Nunes’ unexpected resurgence. The ship got righted- sort of- but this year was a harbinger of things to come.)
2003 9-7-3-1-12-1-11-2-6-7-11-4 = 7.00 (A marginally better team with no consistency at all, as shown by the midseason stretch of 1-12-1-11 vs. Toledo, VPI, BC and Pitt. I remember I was visiting my parents down south during the VPI game, which we lost 8-51, a sort of inferior sequel to the ‘99 game. My Mom, who isn’t a football fan, watched the game for a bit while sorting laundry in the next room. As she was passing me with the laundry basket she laughed and said, “They aren’t really very good, are they? No they weren’t, Mom.)
2004 11-7-4-8-5-5-8-3-3-10-1-12= 6.42 (The year of the book-end blow-outs. We opened on national TV with a 0-51 loss to Purdue and closed out the Pasqualoni era with a 14-51 loss to a Georgia Tech team that had been averaging 19 points a game in the Champ Sports Bowl. We also hit double figures vs. Temple, whose only other win was vs. Florida A&M. But the season will be forever remembered for the amazing performance of Diamond Ferri in the 43-17 win at Boston College.)
2005 4-3-6-11-8-10-8-10-10-11-8 = 8.09 (The G-Rob disaster got off to a decent start but then we unraveled badly. Most people, including me, recall that the really disappointing stretch began at Connecticut but by this measure it really began the previous week at Florida State, still another game where a tough opponent and a road game was no excuse for stinking up the joint.
2006 9-8-6-1-5-7-9-5-9-9-7-10 = 7.08 (Three wins in a row over bad teams to get us to 3-2 created some excitement early but 6 losses in the remaining seven games brought us back down to earth with a thud. The #1 game was Miami of Ohio, our only #1 performance of the G-Rob era. We at least managed to avoid any double figure games until the trip to Rutgers. )
2007 13-12-12-6-8-11-10-6-8-11-10-7 = 9.50 (Modern teams play more games so a bad performance gets penalized more in this system than in previous eras. The Washington opener was our first-ever “13” game. But by any measure the 2007 Syracuse is a major contender for the worse team ever to take the field in a Syracuse uniform. They were never better than the 6th best team any opponent played- even in the Louisville upset. It basically sealed G-Rob’s fate although he was allowed to dangle for another year.)
2008 11-10-11-9-8-12-6-8-11-6-11 = 9.36 (To paraphrase Mark Twain, better to not play a game and be thought to stink than to play one and remove all doubt. G-Rob absolutely had to win- and win now- to continue his career here. So he starts out with 11-10-11, the “10” being the Akron game- and they only question was: who would be our new coach? Greg’s two “greatest” wins were at Louisville and at Notre Dame. Both were #6’s. The Northeastern game is excluded because they were 1AA, or FCS if you prefer.)
2009 8-7-4-9-13-7-9-10-9-2-12 = 8.18 (A marginally improved team in HCDM”s first year. This is one year where my system may be slightly deceiving. West Virginia had an odd, but entertaining year in which every other game was either won or lost by 15 points or less so our modest 13-34 loss to them gets a #13. And, of course, we know what happened at UCONN. The Maine game is not included as it was a 1AA game.)

Summary:
2000 4.55; 2001 4.38; 2002 8.00; 2003 7.00; 2004 6.42; 2005 8.09; 2006 7.08; 2007 9.50; 2008 9.36; 2009 8.18 Average for the Decade: 7.26

2010’s
2010 5-13-4-13-3-2-8-6-9-10-6 = 7.18 (We went from 4-8 to 8-5 because we won close games and did it on the road. But we still made the bottom 25 thanks to “worst” performances vs. Washington and Pittsburgh and being shoved around by strong, veteran offensive lines at the end of the season. The Maine and Colgate games are excluded because they were FCS teams.)
2011- 4-8-3-6-11-1-13-9-9-9-10 = 7.55 (Rhode Island is an FCS team so they aren’t included: I’m sure they would have helped, as UMASS, Brown, Old Dominion, James Madison and Towson all beat the Rams by more than we did. I knew the Tulane game was a lousy performance but everyone Louisville played did better against them than we did. Our 20 point loss to South Florida in the Dome was the only win they had in their last games.)

 

[SWC75]

Summary:

Decade Averages:
1900’s 4.50; 1910’s 3.48 ; 1920’s 3.17; 1930’s 4.35 ; 1940’s ; 1950’s 3.58; 1960’s 3.97; 1970’s 6.60; 1980’s 5.38; 1990’s 4.47; 2000’s 7.26

SU’s major college opposition played an average of 10 games during the 1900’s, 9 during the 1910’s and 1920’s, 7 in the 1930’s, back to 9 in the 1940’s, 10 in the 1950’s and 1960’s, 11 in the 1970’s, and 1980’s, 12 in the 1990’s and 2000’s

The Top 25

1.18 - 1959
1.75 - 1918
1.80 - 1920
2.16 - 1917
2.29 - 1923
2.33 - 1934
2.40 - 1925
2.50 - 1958
2.64 - 1987
2.67 - 1915
2.75 - 1926
2.82 - 1961
2.89 - 1956
3.00 - 1919, 1996
3.10 - 1963
3.11 - 1960
3.14 - 1924
3.16 - 1921
3.20 - 1922
3.25 - 1953
3.40 - 1927
3.42 - 1988
3.50 - 1911
3.63 - 1950

The Bottom 25

9.50 - 2007
9.36 - 2008
8.18 - 2009
8.09 - 2005
8.00 - 1973, 2002
7.90 - 1982
7.55- 2011
7.36 - 1972, 1976
7.38 - 1948
7.18 - 1986, 2010
7.09 - 1974
7.00 - 2003
6.82 - 1983
6.57 - 1947
6.42 - 2004
6.36 - 1977, 1993, 1994
6.33 - 1936
6.00 - 1899, 1944, 1945, 1979

The number of games played by opponents heavily influences the bottom 25 by placing a natural limit on how bad a bad performance can be, as measured by my rankings. Thus recent years dominate. The three teams at 6.36 all had winning records. The 6.33 team was 1-7.

With the top 25, it’s the number of big-time opponents played. When you only played 4-5 of them it’s easier to avoid a truly bad game and maintain a high average than it is when you are playing a dozen games vs. big-time teams. That listing thus favors the earlier teams, but not as much as the Bottom 25 “favors” the more recent teams.

I decided to take the formula a little farther to look at the bottom teams. The total point differential “points” accumulated by the 2007 team was 114, (114/12 games = their 9.50 ranking). The 12 teams we played that year, (all “big time”) played a total of 152 opponents. If we’d been the worst team each opponent played, the 2007 team would have 152 “points” and a ranking of 12.67. If you divide 114 by 152, you get .750: the 2007 team was 75% as bad as a team that was the worst team every opponent they had played, (a “perfectly bad” team). I did the same thing for our other famously bad teams: 1936 was .731, 1945 was .712, 1948 was .808 1973 was .721, 1974 was .629, 1982 was .745 and 2005 was .690. So maybe the 1948 team was our worst, not 2007.
I decided to redo the bottom 25 with that sort of comparison: what percentage of a “perfectly bad” team was each SU team? (I didn’t need to compare each team to a “perfectly good team”: a team that was the best team each opponent played to redo the Top 25: since I’d be giving the perfectly good team a “1” for each game, the list would be the same as the original one where I divided by the number of games.)

The New Bottom 25
.808- 1948
.750- 1944, 2007
.731- 1936
.725- 2008
.721- 1973
.719- 1947
.712- 1945
.698- 2002
.690- 2005
.681- 1982
.669- 1972
.648- 1976
.638- 2009
.637- 1986
.629- 1974
.611- 1978
.605- 1937
.600- 1913
.596- 1933
.589- 2011
.586- 1946
.581- 1983
.571- 1979
.563- 1912
That list is probably a little more accurate.