195: Blowouts and a Hail Mary

After a litigious offseason, college football is back. Over the past 10 days, 98 games have been played featuring at least one FBS team, and 50 of those games put two FBS opponents against each other. Week 1 is the perfect time for overreactions, and there is some cooperation from the numbers. Since 2014, no week of the regular season with at least 10 FBS vs FBS games has produced a higher average margin of victory than this season's Week 1 at 25.4 points. The next closest is Week 2 of 2016, when 46 FBS vs FBS games delivered an average margin of victory of 22.1 points. A quick breakdown of the 42 completed FBS-vs-FBS games this week: 33 games decided by 10 points or more 22 decided by 20 points or more 11 decided by 40 points or more One game remains in Week 1. SMU visits Florida State tonight, and the Mustangs are favored on the road by 3 points. Whatever the result, it won't move the average margin of victory all that much. A game that wasn't a blowout was the story of the week. After one second was put back on the clock, Michigancompleted a Hail Maryto reverse the result and beat Western Michigan 13-12 in Ann Arbor. This game is a good microcosm for college football, or the entire country, today. An unexpected and welcomed result gets wiped from the record so the side with more money and power can prevail. No intelligent analysis of clock syncing in this newsletter. I struggle enough getting my own services to talk to each other, and I would be better off not knowing what 'interoperable' even means. What got overlooked in this game to me was the time of possession. Michigan had the ball for just 7:24 of a possible 30 minutes in the second half. Western Michigan put together a 20-play drive in the second half that went for 71 yards, ended in a field goal, and lasted for 13 minutes and 40 seconds. An extra second was all the Wolverines needed, as you can see in the time of possession chart below: That's it for this week. As a reminder, you can find the margin of victory for every game dating back to 2014 season, and lots of other data, over atcfbtxt.com. Recommended reading for this week is Sam Seljan'sarticle about what we miss in the final score of football games.