Does Last Year Matter?

by Peter Bean on Jul 6, 2006 2:18 PM CDT in Texas Longhorns Football

The first look at how national champs fared in their title defense year immediately triggered two more questions I wanted to answer. First, where did the national champion for a given year finish in the previous year?s Final AP Poll? And second, where was a national title team ranked in the title winning year?s Preseason AP Poll?

We?ll tackle the first of those two questions today.

The table below lists the year, the national champion for that year, and the team?s final poll position in the previous year. (NR indicates the team did not finish ranked in the AP Top 20 the previous year.)

National Champions¹

Year	National Champ	Previous Year

1980	Georgia	NR
1981	Clemson	NR
1982	Penn State	3
1983	Miami	NR
1984	BYU	7
1985	Oklahoma	6
1986	Penn State	3
1987	Miami	2
1988	Notre Dame	17
1989	Miami	2
1990	Colorado	4
1991	Miami	3
1992	Alabama	5
1993	Florida St.	2
1994	Nebraska	3
1995	Nebraska	1
1996	Florida	2
1997	Michigan	20
1998	Tennessee	7
1999	Florida St.	3
2000	Oklahoma	NR
2001	Miami	2
2002	Ohio St.	NR
2003	USC	4
2004	USC	1
2005	Texas	5

¹AP Final Poll Only

Also interesting. A few more quick thoughts:

*Between 1986-96, the national champion for the a given year could be found in the top five of the previous year, except for 1988 with Notre Dame (the exception to many rules).

*If we assign a rank of #21 to Georgia 1980, Clemson 1981, and Miami 1983, as well as a #26 to Oklahoma 2000 and Ohio State 2002 (the AP Final Poll increased from the Top 20 to the Top 25 in between the two groups), we can calculate an average ranking of a national champion the year before. Using those numbers, we get a previous year?s ranking of 8.26. I thought this number might be a little bit lower, actually.

*Teams do sometimes come out of nowhere. It?s happened twice in the BCS era, and came close in 2004 as well (Auburn). However, 73% of national champions since 1980 finished the previous year ranked 7th or better.

*It gets very interesting if you drop the NR teams as outliers. Not counting any NR teams, the average finish the year before nearly drops in half, to 4.8. Barring the occasional perfect storm from a team out of nowhere, you can find next year's champion at or near the top of the final AP Poll for a given year.

*This set of data tells us very little, though it?s fun to look at. What I ?am- interested to see, and what we?ll explore next, is how high each team ranked in the AP Preseason Poll. That, I suspect, will be telling.

--PB--

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Comments

Doesn't

this all hinge on finding some meaningful correlation between polls and MNCs or are you trying to prove that there isn't any correlation?

It seems like looking at the previous year's record and the following year's record will have a connection.

That being said, its all very interesting. Especially now, since preseason polls help put teams on track to get in the BCS. I would imagine that in the BCS era there is a very strong relationship between high preseason rankings and MNCs. Even more so than in the pre BCS era.

Walker, Texas Ranger -- C.D. Parker: And how are you doing, little partner? Lucas Simms: Walker told me I have AIDS.

by EYESofBEVO on Jul 6, 2006 3:28 PM CDT reply actions

For now

I'm just putting the data out there with a few notes. I think from this set we learn a couple important things:

First, a not insignificant majority of the time, the national champion finished the previous year ranked very highly - 73% of the time it's been #7 or better. That's intuitive, so no big surprise.

Still, outside of those 73% of champs that came from the Top 7 of the previous year, the remainder won their title after a not at all stellar year before. It's even happened twice in the BCS era. Just interesting to note, as conventional wisdom says that BCS champs have to start the season ranked highly.

I'm most interested in comparing pre-season rankings of national champs. That, I think, will tell us a lot.

by Peter Bean on Jul 6, 2006 3:41 PM CDT reply actions

1990

Georgia Tech won the Coaches' National Championship in 1990. And they didn't need any 5th downs or losses to do so. Not to mention they beat Nebraska by 24, to Colorado's 15. (The only shared opponent of the season.)

by Jeff on Jul 7, 2006 9:48 AM CDT reply actions

What a weird year

1990 was just weird, culminating in a freaking 5th down?? Astounding. One wonders how it all would have gone down in today's more 24/7 media environment.

by Peter Bean on Jul 7, 2006 10:01 AM CDT up reply actions

In any case

I'm not passing any judgments on who was the best team in any given year - no desire to get in to an LSU-USC debate here. I had to pick something, so I went with the AP Poll.

by Peter Bean on Jul 7, 2006 10:02 AM CDT up reply actions

My Bad

I didn't even pay attention that it was a listing of all AP winners. I tend to skim everything when at work. Oops.

by Jeff on Jul 7, 2006 11:00 AM CDT up reply actions

1979 Georgia

In '79, Georgia went 6-5.

Included in that was a record of 5-1 in the SEC. And 1-3 vs. the ACC and lost to South Carolina who was an independent at the time.

The team was one of the most irratic in UGA history. They were young at many positions and basically lacking a great running back.

With a year of experience, a HUGE senior class and a game breaking back, it was an entirely different result in '80.

In other words, I think if you're going to come out of nowhere, it helps to have a MASSIVE senior class of returning starters AND you have to somehow fill or fix the thing that was broken in the past. (Oh...some enormous dose of luck would be nice too)

Ohio State's 2002 title is very similar to UGA's '80. They had a large senior class, and a magical FR back arrived on the scene to change the look of the offense. And they were ridiculously lucky)

In Oklahoma's case, they were learning a new system in Year 1 and that held them back in '99. You could argue their "missing piece" was experience/knowledge of the Stoops system.

Plus, in 2000 OU returned almost everyone while making it through an entire season with virtually no meaningful injuries. An incredibly rare combo.

So...to come out of no where, you need:
Tons of Seniors
+
Filling a Missing Piece
+
Silly Amounts of Luck

pwd

by Paulwesterdawg on Jul 7, 2006 1:19 PM CDT reply actions