Football Outsiders takes on CFB luck - Michigan 3rd unluckiest team

Submitted by ish on

Further to the Mathlete's post, here's another way to look at luck this CFB season, per Football Outsiders:

luckiest teams: http://insider.espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8720225/lsu-tige…

unluckiest teams: http://insider.espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8720311/michigan…

both links are $.  so a quick summary - luckiest team was OHIO, followed by LSU and Stanford.  ND came in at 5.  Unluckiest was our beloved spartans, followed by okla st. and michigan.

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Michiganfootball13

December 11th, 2012 at 7:42 PM ^

I disagree, Ohio State going undefeted on a probation season is pretty bad luck to me.  ND is IMO the luckiest team.  ND played MSU early when their O was the worst of the season, Robinson turns the ball over what 6 times, Oklahoma bends over, and they dont have to play USC with their all time leader in tds and yards.

Joined: 04/12/2012

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OmarDontScare

December 11th, 2012 at 6:34 PM ^

Luckiest team was Ohio. Huh...imagine that. In the worst B1G conference in decades and a non conference schedule where the marquee matchup was Cal I find that hard to believe. Cal just fired their coach by the way. God, I'm still pissed at Borges. Aaahhhhhh!!!

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YoOoBoMoLloRoHo

December 11th, 2012 at 8:13 PM ^

1. ND - we out gained them and controlled spans of the game, but 6 €#%{ing turnovers with bizarre play calling. 2. OSU - 2nd half implosion on O ... measuring the luck with this crappy play calling is nonsensical 3. Neb - Bellomy still throwing after a dozen ugly chucks, but night game in Lincoln says loss regardless 4. Bama - Strike up the banjos and cue a picture of Ned Beatty on a canoe outing. I'd say we lacked good luck more than we had bad luck.

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FrankMurphy

December 11th, 2012 at 11:20 PM ^

Eh, whatever. Last year we might have been the luckiest team, so it evens out.

The way I look at it is this: last year, we were probably the worst 10-2 team going into bowl season. This year, we're probably the best 8-4 team going into bowl season.  

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Dallas Walmart…

December 12th, 2012 at 12:31 AM ^

I would have figured Nebraska would have been pretty high on the lucky list.  At least until they played Wisky in the B1G championship game.  Maybe that game was just karma for what had happened all season long for the Huskers.

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LSAClassOf2000

December 12th, 2012 at 6:23 AM ^

It is interesting, first and foremost, that on Mathlete's metric, we end up being slightly lucky with 8 wins compared to an expect 7.6 wins, but it did seem as if, after the Nebraska loss, when our fate was tied to theirs essentially, everything that we needed them to NOT do really they did. In their games with MSU and Penn State, it seemed like we might get bailed out on the conference record potentially (as it was pertinent to the BTCG), and in the second half of each game, both teams seemed to collapse and badly (throw some bad calls in there too). For us, it was two particular weeks of awful luck there. 

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TESOE

December 12th, 2012 at 7:14 AM ^

Luck is confused with coaching in this analysis. Fortunately for Darrell Hazell it goes both ways. Manziel was lucky to have a stellar O line this year. A&M wasn't lucky though...they were just good.

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