Just so you know, it bothers me to no end that the conference demands all publication of its name be in numerals.  I always want to write Big Twelve---it's a visual thing.  Not my call, however.

Anyway.

Part three of seven, below: 

Baylor

(+3,-5,-9,-3,-17,-5,-15,+5) Grand total: -46

Did you know Baylor's only 10-win season was under Grant Teaff in 1980? Dave Roberts owns that +3 mark for his final season in Waco, a 2-9 effort.  Kevin Steele coached the next four seasons never gaining more than three wins, and the ever-patient Guy Morriss has been in charge the last three.  Morris has been all over the map with the turnovers in his three years, but they did manage +5 last year, good enough to give Baylor a 5-6 record.  It is the program's best win total since the Chuck Reedy era of 1993-1996 that netted the program 5,7,7 and 4 wins.

Check out these Points For/Points Allowed totals during the Morriss regime, looks like a guy acclimating to the job:

2003: 191/455
2004: 224/406
2005: 236/291

PF going up, PA going down, love it.

Colorado

(+6,+5,+5,-2,+7,-6,+1,+2) Grand total: +18

The first total is credited to Rick Neuheisel's final year in Boulder before Gary Barnett moved in and held the head coach position the next seven years.  It's a quality eight-year run in the turnover margin department.  Nothing fancy, but any team that can half its seasons in the +7,+6,+5,+5 range is doing pretty well.  Amazingly, the -2 season was Barnett's best, as Colorado went 10-3.  Not surprisingly, the -6 return was paired with Barnett's only losing season, a 5-7 effort.

Iowa State

(-9,-10,+5,+13,-1,-6,+10,+14) Grand total: +16

Dan McCarney's been the head coach at Iowa State since the 1995 season, so blame him for any and all of the good and bad in this eight-year period.  Prior to this eight-year run, McCarney inherited a team that went 0-10-1.  He had a rough start, winning 3,2 and 1 games his first three years, and then netted just 3 and 4 wins the next two seasons before he truly turned things around in 2000 with a 9-3 effort.  Not surprisingly, the Cyclones had a +13 turnover margin that year.  Two more negative turnover seasons saw the record plumment to 7-5 and 7-7 before he fixed the turnover numbers with two more double-digit positive outputs at +10 and +14.  Those corresponded with a pair of 7-5 records.

McCarney's last six years have been a drastic improvement from the effort earlier in his career and much of that credit is due to dramatically improving the turnover numbers.

Kansas

(-2,+1,-6,-8,-9,-7,+4,-8) Grand total: -35

Terry Allen owns the first four totals, Mark Mangino the last four.  Disaster abounds.  It's hard to find any correlations here, as Kansas won 4,5,4 and 3 games in Allen's final four seasons.  Mangino battled his way to 6 wins with a -7 turnover margin, then boosted the margin to +4 the next season and yet the record fell to 4-7.  Then, Kansas produces a sloppy -8 last year but finish 7-5, the program's best record since the 10-2 record in 1995 under Glen Mason.  Next...

Kansas State

(+13,+18,+7,-1,+9,-1,-6,-6) Grand total: +33

This is all Bill Snyder, who stepped down at the end of last season.  Kansas State has built a reputation as a ball-hawking school but the wheels came off Snyder's final three seasons.  However, you'll be hard pressed to find a better five-year turnover run as the one from 1998 to 2002.  In that time period, Kansas State had four 11-win seasons, interrupted only by a 6-6 record in 2001 (-1 turnover margin).  Bill Snyder clearly understood turnovers, and when he could no longer control them stepped down.

Missouri

(+8,-9,-5,-1,+12,+11,+5,-1) Grand total: +20

Larry Smith owns the first three totals, Gary Pinkel the last five.  Not surprisingly, Smith's 8-4 record matches the +8 effort in 1998.  He then went 3-8 and 4-7, mirrored by -9 and -5 turnover efforts.  Gary Pinkel's greatly improved Mizzou's turnover fate, notching two double-digit positive seasons, and finishing no worse than -1 twice.  However, Missouri's record has been uninspiring.  Pinkel's best season was 2003 at 8-5 and +11.

Nebraska

(+8,+6,+1,-1,-3,+23,-13,-2) Grand total: +19

Frank Solich owns the first six marks, Bill Callahan the last two.  Nothing fancy here, just a bunch of 10-win seasons mostly with an option offense and talented defense.  The +23 total is amazing, and was matched with a 10-3 record, Solich's final in Lincoln.  It's hard to judge Callahan's turnover skills right now but it'd be in his interest to notch a positive return somewhere.

Oklahoma

(-6,-6,+7,+9,+19,+17,+4,-1) Grand total: +43

This is one of the easiest to interpret.  The disastrous John Blake owns the first mark, then Oklahoma hired defensive guru Bob Stoops, who held the line for a season and remade the program in his image and improved the record to 7-5.  Then, Oklahoma went on to dominate much of the early 2000's, winning a national championship in 2000 at +7.  That was followed up by +9,+19 and +17 seasons with 11,12 and 12 wins.  Things began to decline in 2005.  Oklahoma made the Orange Bowl but was routed and had just a +4 return that season.  Last year Oklahoma had to replace Jason White and much of its defense and struggled to a -1 mark in the most disappointing season in Norman since Stoops was hired.  Stoops understands turnovers so I have faith that Oklahoma will return to previous levels soon.

Oklahoma State

(+4,-5,-4,-8,-2,-4,+16,-15) Grand total: -18

Eight years, three coaches.  Oy.  Bob Simmons owns the first three totals (5-6,5-6 and 3-8 records), Les Miles owns the next four and Mike Gundy owns the last one.  Miles had one bad season (4-7 record/-8 turnover margin) and three good ones (8-5/-2, 9-4/-4, 7-5/+16).  Gundy's first effort was disastrous and the Cowboys were the embarrassment of the Big 12.  We'll see where he goes from here.

Texas

(-1,+13,+5,+10,+17,+2,+5,+7) Grand total: +58

Eight years, all with Mack Brown.  Easy enough.  He inherited the program from John Mackovic and started off with three straight 9-win seasons.  Brown then made a leap and started winning 10 and 11 games from that point onward, peaking with last season's 13-0 national championship.  Brown clearly understands the importance of turnovers and how to control them, but has let the numbers dip just a hair the last few seasons.

Texas A&M

(+15,0,+5,+8,+2,-11,+9,+5) Grand total: +33

Defensive-minded R.C. Slocum owns the first five marks, Dennis Franchione the final three.  Slocum's 11-win 1998 season mirrored his team's +15 turnover total.  Franchione won just 4 games his first year (-11), then notched 7 wins (+9) and then 5 wins (-5).  Pretty self-explanatory.

Texas Tech

(-6,-2,+6,+6,-10,-8,-5,+9) Grand total: -10

Spike Dykes owns the first two marks, Mike Leach the final six.  Here are Texas Tech's win totals in that eight year time frame: 7,6,7,7,9,8,8,9.  Hard to tell what's going on.  Leach is considered an offensive coach and may not worry intensely about the possession game when he's directing a high-octane offense that scores upwards of 70 touchdowns a season.

***
Previous:

• Turnover Analysis: SEC
• Turnover Analysis: ACC
• Turnover Data
  

This is part of a series looking into turnover margin data during an eight-year period in the various BCS conferences.

Alabama

(0,+5,-8,+3,+15,+1,+6,+8) Grand total: +30

Nice effort overall, with just one season of negative turnover numbers and an eight-year sum total of +30.  Coach Mike Shula has posted improving turnover margin numbers in his three seasons at one of the game's top programs.  His predecessor Dennis Franchione worked wonders his first year at +15 and helped improve the Tide's record from 3-8 to 7-5 despite all kinds of sanctions and other program issues.

Arkansas

(+12,+5,-8,+4,+17,+11,-3,-1) Grand total: +37

This data is unique because it mirrors coach Houston Nutt's eight-year tenure at Arkansas.  His results are pretty good, including three seasons of double-digit positive turnover margins and just three years with negative results.  Of little surprise, those disappointing turnover numbers the last two years also coincide with Nutt's two worst records while at Arkansas (5-6 and 4-7).  Of note: all three double-digit turnover years saw Nutt post nine wins.  It looks like things may be getting away from the coach, however unless he can squeeze out more positive numbers from his team.

Auburn

(-2,+6,-1,-1,+9,+1,+4,-3) Grand total: +13

Tommy Tuberville has coached the Tigers in seven of these eight seasons.  He has yet to post a double-digit positive turnover margin in any single season, but hasn't had any terrible negative efforts either.  It's pretty clear he's not a turnover wonk, but has gotten good results by more or less holding the line.  His two best seasons, however, did coincide with two of his three best turnover numbers (2002's 9-4 effort and +9 margin and 2004's 13-0 effort and +4 margin).

Florida

(-5,-5,+18,-6,-9,+7,+4,+18) Grand total: +22

Those +18's are pretty sweet.  But they're surrounded by ugly -5,-6 and -9's.  The first four are the ownership of Steve Spurrier, who may or may not have cared about turnover margin as he dusted the SEC regardless (10-2,9-4,10-3,10-2).  Ron Zook tried the same lazy turnover thing his first two years with less stellar results (a pair of 8-5's).  The much-balloyhooed Urban Meyer went out and fixed things to the tune of +18 and a 9-3 record.  That +18 it should be noted, was a more impressive debut than Turnover Margin God^TM Pete Carroll's +16 in 2001.

Georgia

(+1,+9,+1,-3,+8,+11,-2,+11) Grand total: +36

Jim Donnan is responsible for the first three seasons and their quality but boring (9-3,8-4,8-4) marks.  Mark Richt assumed the reins in 2000 and posted his worst turnover margin (-3) and also worst record 8-4).  Since then it's been all gravy, with seasons of 10,10,11 and 13 wins.  I think he gets it, as he's posted two double-digit positive turnover margin seasons and nearly a third at +8.  I hear his career record's pretty impressive.

Kentucky

(-13,+3,-12,-8,+7,-1,-2,-9) Grand total: -35

Blame Hal Mumme for those first three numbers.  Guy Morriss slowed the bleeding for two years before Rich Brooks assumed control for the last three years.  Morriss went from 2-9 to 7-5 by making his turnover margin go from -8 to +7.  Take note, young coaches.  It will help you get a job at Baylor if that's your thing.

LSU

(+1,-7,+4,+4,-1,+5,-2,-9) Grand total:-5

Gerry DiNardo is responsible for the first two totals.  Nick Saban owns the next five marks and Les Miles the last one.  Minus-nine is not a great way to start your LSU career, but somehow Miles managed 11 wins so what do I know?  Nothing too impressive here.  Saban won a lot and did it mostly with defense but surprisingly pedestrian turnover margins.  Odd.

Mississippi

(-4,+3,+5,-1,+5,+6,-3,-5) Grand total: +6

David Cutcliffe owns the first seven of those totals, Ed Orgeron the final one.  Nothing too notable here, as Cutcliffe kept things mostly positive but in the low single digits.  Hist best turnover season (+6) was also the year of his best overall record at Ole Miss at 10-3.

Mississippi State

(+3,+4,+10,-4,-15,-21,-1,+2) Grand total: -22

The first six totals all belong to longtime coach Jackie Sherrill and tell a pretty common story---that of a coach who might've stayed just a bit too long and let the wheels fall off.  Those first three years Mississippi State went 8-5, 10-2 and 8-4, very respectable numbers for that program.  Those Bulldogs played tough defense and easily made a handful of bowl appearances.  After that however, things fell apart as Sherrill notched 3,3, an 2 wins his final three seasons in Starkville.  Sylvester Croom was hired in  2004 and has done little to improve the record.  However, he's managed to stop the bleeding via turnover and that offers a bit of hope for his viability as the Bulldogs' coach.

South Carolina

(-13,-4,+5,+8,-5,+7,+1,+2) Grand total: +1

Brad Scott's final season the Gamecocks went 1-10 and sported a nifty -13 turnover margin.  Lou Holtz would coach the next six seasons and of little surprise, his two best records (8-4, 9-3) were during two of his three best turnover margin seasons (+5, +8).  Turnover ignorant Steve Spurrier is now the coach and he managed a stable +2 to help the Gamecocks to a 7-5 record and a one win improvement over Holtz's final year.

Tennessee

(+16,+3,+3,+5,+2,+3,+6,-7) Grand total: +31

This is a fun one.  Phil Fullmer is a longtime coach at Tennessee and is responsible for all eight returns documented on here.  Last year was the first time in eight year where he failed to post a positive turnover margin and not surprisingly, Tennessee had a disastrous (by their standards) season finishing just 5-6.  It's brutally obvious that Fulmer is very aware of the power of turnover margin and does the near impossible in having positive annual returns a vast majority of the time.  Only once in the eight-year period did he post double-digit returns, but it was also the season Tennessee went 13-0 and won the national championship!  Coach Fulmer is superb at finding ways to control his team's turnover margins, and it's a big part of his success as a head coach.

Vanderbilt

(-11,-8,-3,-2,-14,-10,+4,-2) Grand total: -46

Interesting numbers.  Woody Widenhofer is responsible for the first four seasons, Bobby Johnson the last four.  Neither coach has had much success, topping out at five wins and bottoming out at two wins.  It appears that both have recognized the importance of turnover margin and found ways to steadily reduce their totals during their stay.

***

Previous:

• Turnover Analysis: ACC
• Turnover Data
  

Catchup for the non-regular CFR readers:

I created an excel document recording turnover margin over the last eight seasons for each and every team in a BCS conference as well as the "Independents".  It's available for download and modification as you wish.  Merry Christmas.

I thought I'd also review parts of the data that stood out to CFR and write about them, see if there's anything we can learn from it.

• Boston College

Coach Tom O'Brien has been the pilot of this ship for each of the years the data recorded (1998-2005).  He's a somewhat rare CFB coach with a lengthy tenure to track long term trends with, such as turnover margin.

Here's what BC has done in that time period: (-2, -1, +14, +6, +8, +3, 0, -4)

Interesting.  It's not like BC is going violently up and down each year, but it also looks like coach O'Brien can only sustain turnover success for short bursts (that +14, +6, +8 time period) before regressing.  Surprisingly, the Eagles went from 8-3 during their 2001 season at -1 turnovers to 6-5 during the impressive +14 effort in 2000.

• Clemson

Nothing too fancy here.  Just one season at double-digit margin, a -11 effort in 1998 that saw them go 3-8.  Tommy Bowden was hired the next year and since then the Tigers have bounced around in a unique pattern: positive, positive, negative.  from 1999 to 2001 they went +4,+6,-5 and from 2002 to 2004 they went +2,+4,-8.  Last year they had a +9 turnover margin, so if the pattern holds, expect another season of positive turnover margins.  Phil Steele eat your heart out!

• Duke

Could be worse, as coach Ted Roof has stopped the hemorrhaging.  The Blue Devils had seasons of -10,-6,-13,-14 and + 2 before he was hired.  Since then he's coaxed this feebly talented team to +4,+2 and -8 efforts.  At least the double-digit negative margins have disappeared.

• Florida State

A rare team that "gets it" and "gets it done".  Until last year, of course, and much of that may have had to do with the unexpected rise of a freshman quarterback in Drew Weatherford who was probably anticipating another season on the bench until Wyatt Sexton caught lyme disease, jumped on cars and proclaimed himself God.  Anyway.  Look at these fun numbers: +12,+10,+11,+4,+11,+8,+7,-4.  The Chris Rix turnover machine (42 career interceptions) probably had a hand in those double-digit positives turning into single-digit positives in three of his four seasons.

• Georgia Tech

Um... The Yellow Jackets went 10-2 in 1998 with a +5 turnover margin.  Since that season, they've won either 7,8, or 9 games uninterrupted.  However, their turnover numbers have been all over the map: -12,+13,+1,-8,+2,-13,+9.  The associative properties of turnover margin and record swings apparently doesn't apply in Atlanta.

• Maryland

The Terps had 3-8, 5-6 and 5-6 records prior to the hiring of Ralph Friedgen.  Since then they've gone 10-2, 11-3, 10-3, 5-6 and 5-6.  In that time their turnover numbers have looked like this: -2,+9,+3,+18,+1,+1,-9,-5.  The associative properties of turnovers and record swing do apply in College Park, however.

• Miami (Florida)

In Butch Davis' final three seasons, the Hurricanes were +6,+5 and +13.  Larry Coker inherited a super-talented team with a veteran quarterback who didn't turn the ball over and was on the cusp of a title.  He managed to keep the ship afloat and the 'Canes rallied behind him to a stunning +27 effort and a national championship.  Since then, however, they've had two very uncharacteristic years at -1 and -4, a more "Miami" effort at +14 and then last year's good/not great +5.  The turnover numbers are evidence that Coker hasn't been able to bottle up that Miami magic and consistently coach an aggressive, ballhawking team on the field.

• North Carolina

John Bunting may or may not be a fine coach, but his run at UNC has been an unmitigated disaster in the turnover margin department.  Either he doesn't know how to or doesn't care to have a respectable effort in the turnover margin battle.

Bunting's five-year turnover margin: -10,-15,-15,-4,-1

Perhaps he's learned to slow the bleeding, but that's hard to do.  Even lowly Duke didn't have those kinds of problems.

• North Carolina State

Head Coach Chuck Amato has six seasons under his belt, and they've been fairly nondescript as far as turnovers, 2004's -17 disaster aside.  He keeps the Wolfpack in the positive, but hasn't found a way to reach a double-digit positive turnover margin yet: +4,+8,+7,+2,-17,+0.  This looks like a Philip Rivers trend if I've ever seen one (-17,0 without him).  Not surprisingly, coach Amato has been under pressure the last two years.  Lesson: competent quarterbacks are verrrrrrry important to a team's success.

• Virginia

They might be the only BCS team to have neutral or positive turnover margins in all eight years presented in my data.  The statesmanlike George Welsh rode his final years out at +11, +4 and 0 before handing the keys to Al Groh.  Groh has done an equally good job controlling turnovers, going +4,+15,+5,+6 and +3.  His teams have been a bit disappointing of late, but it's not because they don't know how to win the turnover battle.

• Virginia Tech

Special teams and turnovers are this team's calling card under coach Frank Beamer.  Only one season in the last eight has seen the Hokies have a negative turnover margin.  They've gone +11,+1,+5,+10,+8,-1,+13 and +9 in that time period.  Great stuff.

• Wake Forest

Jim Grobe has spent five years at Wake, producing turnover margin totals of -3,+18,+7,+7 and -2.  Not bad, as he keeps the negatives low and the positives fairly high on a team without much talent.

Turnovers are a critical factor in the seasonal success of football programs.  For the most part, excellent teams have excellent single-season turnover margins (USC +21, Texas +7, West Virginia +14) and poor teams have poor single-season turnover margins (Temple -8, Oregon State -14, Illinois -11, Oklahoma State -15).  But what do multiple season turnover trends tell us?  What are those trends and what can we ascribe to the coaches and teams that created these outputs?

To dig a little deeper into this information, I made an Excel chart of BCS conference teams and Independents, recording their turnover margins dating from the present back to 1998.  That's eight seasons worth of data.  The information was collected from my two most recent Phil Steele College Football Previews and also this year's official NCAA statistics database.

The data is available for download from CFR's "Files" section (under "Hard Data" and titled "TurnoversBCS".  I will also offer modest analysis of the data in the coming days on here.  I will mostly focus on coaching regimes and their turnover output.  Please keep in mind that the story of turnovers is a complex one, but the data presented is fairly simple: team name, and turnover margin in any given year.  However, I think there are trends and patterns that emerge from the data that are worth exploring.

To whet your appetite, take a gander at the following:

• Nebraska and California had perhaps the wildest turnover swings in recent memory, going from +23 to -13 in the 2003 and 2004 seasons and from -18 to +18 in the 2001 and 2002 seasons.
  
• No coach has come close to the turnover success of USC's Pete Carroll, who has boasted turnover margins of +16, +18, +20, +19 and +21 in his five seasons at Troy.
• Say what you want about the man, but Tennessee's Phil Fulmer has a grasp on how to control turnovers.  Until last year's -7 effort, he had at least seven consecutive seasons of positive turnover margins (+16,+3,+3,+5,+2,+3 and +6).  Call him Carroll-lite.
• Virginia is the only program to have recorded neutral or positive turnover margins all eight seasons!  Credit goes to coaches Al Groh (2001+) and George Welsh.

Analysis by conference, coming soon!

I am proud to announce that CFR will now be hosting some of Tex Noel's data.

If you are not familiar with Tex, he's a college football statistic historian who runs the 1st-N-Goal stat research service.  You can find a lot of Tex's work at the great College Football Data Warehouse or at this website: 1st-n-goal.net.  He's also authored a book, "Stars of An Earlier Autumn" with data from 1869-1936.

You can find the Tex Noel section at CFR on the menu at left under the heading "Tex Noel's Stats".  I haven't created any HTML pages for his data yet, but the downloads section is open where you can swiftly download and examine excel pages of his first two entries.

Enjoy!

Back to college football for a moment.

Superpredictor the Harmon Forecast has its week one predictions up.

Guess what?

They have Boise State beating UGA 30-24.

Guess I'm not so crazy.

Out of fear that the NCAA season statistics website will remove the current data in favor of the upcoming season's, I've saved (more or less) everything they have up there right now on Microsoft Excel files.

In addition, I've loaded most of that data onto CFR, where you can find it located on the menu at left under "2004 NCAA Team Stats".  Basically, you can download last season's stats from us, if you wish.  Excel is a good format anyway, because you can tinker with the data and manipulate it as you wish.

As an example, here is our 2004 Offensive Data page.  We've also added a Defensive Data and Miscellaneous Data page, and may include some player data down the road.

As the name says, CollegeFootballResource.com.

Just doing our job.

As we noted below, we have uploaded a document/essay explaining some of our thoughts on the scheduling practices within college football.

After sending the document to an associate for review, he said it was too long.  That may very well be the case, and in order to make things a little less burdensome for those who may not enjoy taking on 3,000 words focused so narrowly on scheduling, we offer the following as a condensed version of some of the arguments.  Take this as a teaser, if you will, as we hope you will find the time to download, read, analyze and consider the arguments posed within the essay.

• Scheduling is a two-part system: conference games and out-of-conference (OOC) games.  The conference slate is usually rigid and decided well in advance.  It is beneficial and necessary.  The OOC slate is more arbitrary, and more likely to be exploited.
  
• It is to the game's benefit, especially in regards to understanding the relative strengths of teams within a given season, to foster an environment of equitable scheduling.  There are several impediments to that vision.
• First, not all conferences are the same size.  The 10-team conferences are easier to judge and analyze, while the larger 12-team conferences are split into divisions and have various means to gerrymander their schedules in ways favorable to the more elite teams.
• Also, OOC scheduling is unregulated.  For every USC taking on Virginia Tech on the road, Notre Dame annually and elite teams within small conferences, there are several Auburns and Kansas States, taking on 1-AA opponents at home, and avoiding if at all possible BCS conference teams, let alone elite smaller division schools.  We support the open scheduling rules, but are intolerant of the various elusive and exploitative ways many established programs go about making their OOC slate.  It hurts the game, artificially boosting their records and rankings at the expense of good teams who were willing to test themselves against more legitemate opponents.
• We set aside some guidelines, perhaps rules, to schedule opponents.  Nobody from outside D-I should be tolerated.  Contending teams on BCS conference teams that take on weak teams from the smaller, non-BCS conferences should be frowned upon and their credibility (when it comes to rankings) held up to very strict scrutiny.
• One last point we more or less forgot to mention in the essay-loading up a schedule with home games is unacceptable.  No elite BCS conference team that regularly contends (Ohio State, USC, Georgia, etc.) should have an 8-game home schedule, or in an 11-game slate, have 7 home games and just 4 road games.  Home field advantage is very pronounced in college football, and such maneuvering usually goes unnoticed and uncriticized.  The buck stops here.  There is nothing wrong with 6 home games and 5 road games, or 6 home and 6 road, but there is simply no justification for 7/4 or 8/4, 8/5 imbalances.

There is a lot more to the scheduling process that we haven't yet discussed, and will when those aspects come to our attention.  Hopefully this primer has opened your eyes if you had not noticed these things before, or seen them in this kind of light.  There are various valid counter-arguments most programs can offer to our challenges, but nevertheless a lot of exploitation goes on (even unabashed exploitation, by Kansas State, for example), at the fans' and media's expense in determining who is best, and also at the expense of good teams that follow the rules and are better than teams that don't yet get ranked far lower.  That has to come to an end, it's simply unfair, and not a built in unfairness, but one created through dishonesty and manipulation.

As promised, I have uploaded a document explaining some of our thoughts about the shady scheduling practices inside of college football.  It is a very controversial, but instructive and informative read about some less-discussed aspects of the game.

Please be sure and download it and read it for yourself soon.

You can find it by going to Files at left, and clicking on Intelligence, it is called "scheduling".  It is in microsoft word format.

We'll post a more brief explanation of the essay's main points soon on the blog.

We here at CollegeFootballResource.com have a mission to be an educational resource about the game, not just a link resource and central hub for your college football needs.  Please take advantage of what we have to offer, because we're doing something different here.

As promised, we have completed our first file, and loaded it into the site.  It is called "political football".  The word document is basically a fun look at the various states each 2004 Presidential candidate carried, and the schools and winning records within those states.

Be sure and stop by our "files" area in the navigation at left to download the file.

Some of the findings-

• College football is very red, with 75 schools in states carried by President George W. Bush, and only 32 carried in states by John Kerry.
• Schools in states won by President Bush had a cumulative record of 443-396, for a .528 win percentage.
• Schools in states carried by Kerry had a cumulative record of 188-192 for a .495 winning percentage.
• The conferences generally swung nearly completely for one candidate or the other.  Only the Mid-America Conference had any semblance of a mix, with 9 of 14 institutions in states carried by President Bush.
• The President also netted 8 of the top 10 teams and 17 of the top 25 (Associated Press), but he could not claim the national champion USC Trojans, who were in Kerry's California and beat a Bush-backed Oklahoma team.

Please keep in mind this is all for fun and a light way of showing some of the things we like to analyze and document here at collegefootballresource.