Michigan Scorigami
Really interesting post by the Hoover Street Rag about Saturday's (and other) Michigan score line.
The most remarkable fact to me:
Michigan has pitched 347 shutouts over 1,335 games. That means historically, 26% of all Michigan games have ended in the Michigan defense shutting out the opponent.
http://hooverstreetrag.blogspot.com/2019/10/michigan-scorigami.html
October 9th, 2019 at 3:47 PM ^
How many were prior to the Model-T?
October 9th, 2019 at 3:51 PM ^
and the Wing T
October 9th, 2019 at 3:52 PM ^
Inevitably (for any school), most. But a nod to the 2015 squad, which helped maintain the average.
October 9th, 2019 at 4:08 PM ^
Did Ford build 'trucks' back then? (Just sayin')
October 9th, 2019 at 4:21 PM ^
Huh??
October 9th, 2019 at 4:30 PM ^
You must be thinking of the Model A Pickup:
October 9th, 2019 at 4:10 PM ^
So do our wins during the time your fine institution was engaged in competition with MSU for being the #1 agriculture school in the America count or dont count? I can never remember
October 9th, 2019 at 4:23 PM ^
Your team looks like it might be on a multi year playoff run and you're here giving us shit. We're flattered.
October 9th, 2019 at 5:54 PM ^
The question was era-based: for ANY program that has 26% of its games result in a shutout, how many of those shutouts occurred 100+ years ago? Or even 75+ years ago for that matter. Shutouts were a more common occurrence back then. Yeesh.
October 9th, 2019 at 9:11 PM ^
Why cant you wife beaters just stay on your own forum?
October 9th, 2019 at 10:03 PM ^
check chuck's posting history. he's pretty cool. i think folks might have overreacted to his shot about the model T's.
October 10th, 2019 at 2:15 AM ^
I care nothing about Ohio Charles.
October 9th, 2019 at 4:58 PM ^
- 97 shutouts occurred prior to the Model-T (1908)
- Best season in that era was 1901
- 11-0 record, all shutouts, points for 550 - points against 0
- Beat Buffalo that year by score of 128 - 0
- Breakdown of shutouts by decade:
- 12 / 2000s
- 5 / 1990s
- 12 / 1980s
- 33 / 1970s
- 9 / 1960s
- 9 / 1950s
- 30 / 1940s
- 30 / 1930s
- 44 / 1920s
- 32 / 1910s
- 67 / 1900s
Prior to the early 1970s, schools could offer 150 football scholarships. The traditional powers like Michigan stock-piled the best players back then and dominated. Title IX forced a limit to 105 in the 1970s and then the current 85 in the 1990s. The impact of these scholarship reductions was to spread out the players more evenly and at the same time make room for the cost of the required Title IX women's sports boom.
October 9th, 2019 at 6:37 PM ^
Thank you, Mongo, for your reasonable response.
October 9th, 2019 at 6:41 PM ^
Now that is how you respond to a question! With the proper data, formatting, and everything!
October 9th, 2019 at 7:17 PM ^
I mean, 62 shutouts in the last 50 years is still pretty good (admittedly propped up by the 70's).
October 9th, 2019 at 6:17 PM ^
First comment. Congrats, you have nothing better to do.
October 9th, 2019 at 10:48 PM ^
I laughed.
October 10th, 2019 at 9:22 AM ^
Interesting enough (if I am remembering correctly) Michigan won its first football game ever 1-0 over Racine or something like that. Racine was the Alabama of the late 1800s so it was a big win.
October 9th, 2019 at 3:55 PM ^
I would like to see the scorigami of Brian's predictions
October 10th, 2019 at 2:11 PM ^
So would I.
"Not it!"
October 9th, 2019 at 3:59 PM ^
This also is pretty astonishing:
Four of Michigan's five results have been Michigan Scorigamis this year, with the 24-21 result over Army being the only non-unique result
This, for a football program that has competed since 1879 and played 1,335 games.
October 9th, 2019 at 4:05 PM ^
Cool but this doesn't seem to be true. Michigan beat Duke 52-0 in 1978, and Navy 52-0 in 1974.
October 9th, 2019 at 4:33 PM ^
Also 10-3 never happened? How is that possible.
October 9th, 2019 at 4:41 PM ^
We've lost by a 10-3 scoreline before (in the 1970 Rose Bowl) but apparently had never won by that score before.
But yeah, it seems like he's wrong about the Rutgers win being a Scorigami.
October 9th, 2019 at 6:06 PM ^
Especially odd since "10-3" has been the result in 6 of the past 21 seasons -- by far the most common one in that period.
October 9th, 2019 at 6:27 PM ^
10-3 is the most Michigan/Iowa score ever. I was stunned that it had never happened before.
October 9th, 2019 at 7:47 PM ^
I hope you knew that off the top of your head
October 9th, 2019 at 8:51 PM ^
So yeah, that's my bad. My original version of the CountIf was hacked together and not great. My updated one that I got from an Excel wizard friend corrected some of my early errors and I now see those two games are there. The post has been updated and I thank you for bringing it to my attention.
October 9th, 2019 at 4:04 PM ^
Everything about this is amazing. And absolutely, quintessentially Michigan. Bravo, gentlemen.
October 9th, 2019 at 4:09 PM ^
VERY COOL!
Nice work guys, love it!
October 9th, 2019 at 4:10 PM ^
Look at scores from the '30s. It was actually quite rare for both teams to score in double digits in the same game.
https://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~dwilson/rsfc/history/howell/cf1933gms.txt
That's 1933. There wasn't a single game that entire season where the losing team scored more than 17 points. There was a 20-20 tie, but it really does seem like almost a majority of games were shutouts.
October 9th, 2019 at 4:21 PM ^
When I read the posts here during the day, am taking a break from endless spreadsheets. Didn't quite get that 5 minute Excel break reading this article. Wanted to run my own pivot table comparing average opponent's scores during the Bo era vs. the Richrod years - see what the delta was. But not sure what I was going to do with that info...
Nice article for combo Michigan fan/numbers nerd - like me.
October 9th, 2019 at 4:36 PM ^
Just remember. Excel is our friend. I have about 6 open at the moment.
October 9th, 2019 at 10:49 PM ^
MeanJoe has 7 open.
October 10th, 2019 at 7:50 AM ^
Hence, his name MeanJoe07.
October 10th, 2019 at 9:45 AM ^
Too bad MeanJoe07 has no clue what this does: Σ
October 9th, 2019 at 4:42 PM ^
10-4 has happened twice but never a 10-3 win. That is freakin' amazing.
October 9th, 2019 at 4:45 PM ^
I think Harbaugh and Patterson knew that, and didn't want to run up the score to something mundane like 24-3.
October 9th, 2019 at 5:12 PM ^
Also surprised to see a 21-3 victory has never happened before...assuming I'm reading the chart correctly.
October 9th, 2019 at 5:58 PM ^
Yes, that does seem odd. Though maybe that score is rarer than it seems. OSU (over Purdue in 1989) and MSU (over ND in 1952) have only one each in their respective histories.
October 9th, 2019 at 6:06 PM ^
I wonder if it has more to do with the 21 than it does the 3. I.e. if a team is capable of scoring 3 touchdowns, the odds they're not able to get at least one field goal at any other point is rare.
I'd be curious to see of the common scores (3, 7, 10, 13, 14, 17, 20, 21, 24, 27, 28, 30, 35) whether 21 is somehow disproportionally lower. And whether that implies some sort of "good/bad" threshold is at 21 if the distribution of winners scores are bimodal.
But, I don't want to do the work.
October 9th, 2019 at 6:10 PM ^
I was looking at this and noticed that 21-7, 21-6 and 21-0 are much more common historically. Michigan has three 21-7 victories over MSU (including last year) since the '70s alone. And 21-0 was very common in the first half of the 20th century.
But 21-3? Strangely quiet.
October 9th, 2019 at 11:19 PM ^
The "3" is the oddball, because placekicking in college football was bad for a long time (at least beyond PAT distance) so the total number of field goals was relatively low. For all the "college kicker" jokes, placekicking has gotten much better in the last few decades.
October 9th, 2019 at 5:59 PM ^
From wikipedia:
In the early days of football, kicking was highly emphasized. In 1883, the scoring system was devised, with field goals counting for five points, and touchdowns and conversions worth four apiece. In 1897, the touchdown was raised to five points while the conversion was lowered to one point. Field goals were devalued to four points in 1904, and then to the modern three points in 1909. The touchdown was changed to six points in 1912 in American football; the Canadian game followed suit in 1956.
October 9th, 2019 at 6:45 PM ^
One thing I'll note, we're still checking the data we got from the Bentley for accuracy, but it's an ongoing updated thing. I'll add the new data at the the same link each time I make a major update.
But I'm glad people are enjoying it.
October 10th, 2019 at 3:36 AM ^
The OT record is incorrect.
Michigan is now 12-3 in OT games (including Army this year).
I believe you are missing OT wins against 2012 Northwestern and 2017 Indiana. The three OT losses were 2009 MSU, 2013 PSU, and 2016 OSU.
I feel like the Bentley database has not been maintained as well since Carr retired. Not sure what happened.
October 10th, 2019 at 6:46 AM ^
I will add those, thank you! I have been emailing the Bentley with corrections as I find them, and to their credit, they have been making the fixes.
October 10th, 2019 at 12:24 AM ^
We have not had many shutouts since the Durken doughnut days!