2008, By The Numbers, Part 5

You know, sometimes it's fun to just play with the numbers from last year and try to make comparisons, whether it be between teams or between conferences. You can learn a lot that way... or you can confuse the hell out of yourself and your readers. There's always a risk to everything, isn't there?

Today, let's talk a little more on scoring, but let's look at it from a conference standpoint. All of us watch games for different reasons. I'm talking about those non-personal games, like for instance, Oklahoma State and Missouri. Now, neither one of those teams mean anything to me, but I'm an offense guy. I like seeing how each side fares against the defense. Inevitably, the enjoyable offensive game for me is a high scoring game on both sides.

That's not to say those 3-0 games aren't enjoyable, but like I said, I'm an offense guy. I like to see some points in the air and on the ground (and inevitably some defensive scoring). Those who like the defensive side of the game watch for other reasons. And then there's those that just take a game where they can get it. Perfectly fine with us.

Now, I'll try to put aside the opinion aspect of this and get to the facts. What I did was look at each conference's total points scored and points allowed in conference games only. From there, it was pretty simple to see what conference games net the most points per game. As it has been recently, there's very few surprises here. Let's look at the top three scoring conferences:

1) Big 12: Average of 67.59 points in a conference game
2) Conference USA: Average of 60.35 points in a conference game
3) Sun Belt: Average of 58.32 points in a conference game

This isn't too surprising, and it doesn't really tell us much. Was it good offense, or was it just shitty defense that allowed this to happen? My impression is it's a lot of both. I can say that Oklahoma seemed to bolster that Big 12 number.

So, who was at the other end? Well, I have to actually throw out the independents here. They only played a total of four "conference games", and their average was 41 points. So, discarding them, here's the three lowest:

1) ACC: Average of 42.92 points in a conference game
2) SEC: Average of 45.53 points in a conference game
3) Big East: Average of 46.54 points in a conference game

Again, not too surprising or revealing. Unless you look at geography. What's the deal with that? If you're east of the Mississippi, your conference game doesn't net a lot of points? Maybe there's something to this. We will have to investigate further, once we secure more research funding (yes, you may contribute; we accept donations).

But you know what's cool? If you're sitting at the bar and someone starts talking about college football, you can drop this bit of knowledge on them, right? Then, the discussion can go in all directions, could become heated, possibly getting you into a fist fight... you know what... best to keep this info to yourself.