The outcome of the Notre Dame game will tell us very little if the last 30 years are any guide
Michigan fans - myself included - often view the Notre Dame game as a bellwether for the rest of the season. I decided to take a look at whether we should do so, because in the offseason my options are little projects like this or simply wandering the halls of my castle while moaning and pining for my long-lost love, Ms. Constance.
The last thirty years of history say we should not see the ND game as a harbinger of things to come, though of course not all ND teams are created equally...and I am too lazy to make what's below any more complicated than it is. That caveat made, here is what I found:
Michigan's winning percentage since (and including) 1984 when beating ND was 73.8 (note that the ND game itself was excluded from this calculation).
Michigan's winning percentage in the same time period when losing to ND was 70.1 (again, the ND game was excluded).
Michigan's winning percentage in the same period when tying ND was 90.9 (ND game excluded; the teams have only tied once in the past 30 years).
Michigan's winning percentage in the same period when not playing ND was 65.6.
The takeaways from this:
1. As noted, the outcome of the ND game has told us very little about how Michigan would do during the rest of the season - with one exception (see No. 3). So let's not get too carried away by what happens.
2. Michigan should probably play ND every year. Whether those scaredy cats (this is a medical term) will agree to this again remains to be seen.
3. Michigan should at all times try to tie ND. I don't care if you say that's impossible or point to sample size. This is science, damn you.
/s
Otherwise, presuming you might have meant 1985, good stuff.
I wanted to push the period covered out to thirty years, which seems like a perfectly reasonable arbitrary number.
Michigan won 4 national championship during the first hiatus (1910-1941), 2 during the second (1944-1977) and 1 off of a 2 year hiatus (1995-1996).
The game was played mostly by dinosaurs and cave bears until 1975, so I'm not sure how much we can take from that.
1975 is a pretty ridiculous year to consider the start of the "modern era".
I'm tired, and the thought of football played by large lizards and giant bears entertained me for a moment.
I want to see them play Kuwait.
mastadons to the right!
stand up, sit down,
fight, fight, fight!
It never ceases to shock me just how prominent the color brown was in the 70's...
But I guess they already play the power house that is Purdue.
I definitely agree with the OP - the outcome of one game in isolation really says nothing meaningful about the season, and truth be told, I am never sure why anyone has believed this to be the case. Hopefully, we don't see too much of this sort of "analysis" this year, eh?
As we have noted at some length on the blog, there are several other things which correspond much better to overall success in games as well as in the season, such as third down differentials and yards per play differentials and even average points per red zone trip.
Within the context of one season, you would be right. When we talk about some of the work that has been done on this blog and others and taking that data back 5-10 years, the correlations between the stats I mentioned and overall success are pretty well-documented. I guess I never understood how a game which typically occurs only a few games into the season could reliably be used as some sort of harbinger of success by itself. Maybe that's just me.
Fuck Notre Dame.
I concur
The Irish are wearing those damn lucky green jerseys on September 6 and that their kicker does something unbelievable.
I always anticipate the name of the Notre Dame kicker every year.
Because if some young man is going to kick me in the nuts every fall, I'd like to at least know his name. If you're old and crusty like me, you develop quite a roster of soul-devouring, nightmarish names:
Chuck Male, 1979
Harry Oliver, 1980
Reggie Ho, 1988
Nick Setta, 2002
Kyle Brindza, 2012
You sir, need a kick in the nuts for writing that junk. Nothing personal!
If you started with $10,000 in 1985 and bet on the underdog every year, how much would you have now?
there have been 17 U-M/ND games. The underdog won outright in 11 of them.
The 6 times the favorite won, they were favored by an average of 8.5 points. The 11 times the underdog won, they were the dog by an average of 5.55 points.
A 8.5 point favorite pays (about) -360 on the moneyline. Conversely, a 5.5 point underdog pays (about) +200.
Making things simpler and assuming a +200 payoff on the underdog for each game, if one started with $10,000 and bet half of the pot on the underdog on the moneyline starting in 1993 (the dogs covered in 1993, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011) --- you would now have $13,515.24.
You would have had $54,060.97 prior to the 2012 game, but of course the favorite has won outright 2 years running now.
I think the majority of us who have followed the modern history of this rivalry are well aware that the outcome of this game has had little to do with the success (or lack of success) on the rest of the season. But we still obviously want to win it because...you know, FUCK Notre Dame.
As for your other points, I don't doubt that this rivalry has put together so many fantastic finishes the last 35 years. And yes, we probably SHOULD play every year. But that doen't mean I want us to anymore.
This goes beyond our painful memories with them like the ref in South Bend using an index card to see if Michigan got a first down or Carlyle Holiday leaving the ball behind on the 2 yard line and getting rewarded a touchdown.
It's the endless undeserved hype. The underserved NBC TV contract that continues to get renewed despite the fact that they are 24th in winning percentage since they got it. And then my personal breaking point came when after decades and decades of dodging conference invites, they figured out that they MUST be in one in this day and age but still make their own terms by saying they want to be a part time member. And then the ACC sacrifices their balls and agrees to it. That's not how it should be. You're either a full fledged conference member or you're not. I had always been annoyed at the special treatment ND got but once this "membership" happened with the ACC, I was done. When we stop playing them after this season, I will have a much easier time trying to stop getting mad over all the shit they get away with.
One problem with us not playing them though is that we pretty much put them in their place over the last 20 years. Like the spoiled little rich kid who's mommy and daddy think is so precious and can conquer the world, then gets his ass kicked by the regular kid down the street as soon as he leaves the house.
We frequently put an emphatic end to the Notre Dame hype, and early in the season. Now who will do it?
We'll have to be FSU or Clemson or VT fans for a day when they play ND.
Actually talking about the "success" of the season is a different idea, and would be interesting to look at. One important factor is that the game is always played early in the season, and thus has comparitively less impact on where the teams are ranked at the end of the season.
We could look at something independent, such as final Big Ten standing in a given year, as a measure of success to see what the ND game tells us. It's a different question, but "success" in a given year for elite CFB programs is rarely defined by winning percentage (IMO).
Notre Dame has not really excited me for a long time, despite the history. They just have not been elite (either have we) for most of the past 15 years. Seeing #17 play #24 early in the year when both those rankings are based on reputation and brand most years has become meh. When Holtz was there and they had Rocket and that sort of thing I was more into it. They are a brand, just as we are but the on field performance for both programs has not been that good for a long time so I am for mixing it up. That said I would like to play them every so often.
I was at one of the 38-0 games and it was fun but in retrospect this type of program should not get beat by that much (not to mention twice in a decade). Sort of how OSU fans were feeling sorry for us during RR when Earl Bruce said essentially this is not a Michigan quality team.
In some perfect parallel universe I would like to play two home and homes with ND every decade and use the other 6 years with home/homes with a major Big 12 team (everyone wants Texas but Oklahoma would do), a SEC upper third team (say Auburn or Georgia), and then either a Pac 12 or ACC (say Stanford currently but UCLA of 15 years ago OR Clemson-ish type). Those would be fun games and bring new teams to AA and have us visit some fun venues. And f*** games at neutral sites - its so damn sterile.
But to OP point yeah we've seen teams of late (not to mention past 30 years) look good versus a fraudulent ND team and then get smacked in a very average Big 10 the past half decade or so. So it has meant little. For some weird reason ND has MSU's number and we have ND's.
You show a winning percentage difference of nearly 4%, over a large number of seasons. That may well be significant. Anyway, it is probably a more significant result than the percentage when the game is tied, considering that your sample size there becomes very small.
In general, sample size is probably too small to say anything (although I'm not sure about this, besides for the ties), but this is suggestive that the result of the ND game does in fact tell you something about how good that year's team is. Then again, that's pretty obvious.
As for your second point, Notre Dame is typically the most difficult non-conference game on the schedule, and you excluded that game from your calculations. For years in which we didn't play ND, I'd guess the game was replaced with something else more difficult than normal -- that is I expect that the average non-conference opponent in a year w/o ND is stronger than the average non-conference, non-ND opponent in a year we played ND. Such an effect would give you a lower winning percenage in those years, as you've calculated it.
Anyway, I know you aren't taking this too seriously, but I can't resist.
I'd also be curious to see how the results of the ND game correlates to results vs MSU and OSU. But that was maybe already done before?
Yes!!! Notre Dame is a number two!!
The outcome of this game seems to affect ND more than it does us. If Michigan loses, they still have the conference title to play for. If the Irish lose, they are behind the eight ball early in the year since their goal is to win the MNC.
I'd be curious to see how this analysis shakes out on the Irish side of the equation....and oh yeah, fuck Notre Dame.
The number of times MIchigan beat ND and went on to a National Title: 2
Number of times Michigan lost to ND and went on to a National Title: 0