I will get back on the UFR horse soon, promise, but every January/February I like to grab all of the year's play-by-play data, painstakingly repair the damaged bits, and recreate the information that (other) internet nerds used to. This all goes into those stat boxes I make for HTTV, which I've started working on in earnest the last few weeks.
While I'm at it I thought it might be useful to put together a companion piece to discuss the statistical profile of Michigan and other teams of interest. I also figured I could make it a reference point for those boxes in the future, and also explain some of my decisions.
Feedback is most welcome; I took Stats 404 in college and have been trying to figure out the rest as I go.
Resources:
- College Football Data (CFBD). A good starting point. Free. You can download tons of raw stuff from them, including play-by-play and drive data. A lot of it's in admittedly rough shape, but they've done the hard part of scouring NCAA box scores.
- Football Outsiders. Most stuff free. Home of FEI and its NFL equivalent, DVOA. Fremeau's Efficiency Index is based on drive efficiency.
- 247 Database. Compare against rosters to see who's coming and going.
- Pro Football Focus. Their grading is suspect but they have all kinds of useful snap data.
- Bill Connelly. SP+ rankings remain the most predictive of all fancystats.
Also I did a data dump on Tempo.
[Hit THE JUMP for the deep nerding.]
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