re: Time Of Possession Is The Most Overrated Statistic In Football

What kind of logarithms you want to talk about? You want to talk about base 10 or natural logarithms?

While TOP is certainly a flawed stat it can tell a story regarding how your defense will perform generally. Consider that your TOP was 125 and your total defense was 104. Notable exceptions are Missouri and Ole Miss but they had really good defenses.

Most informed college football fans know time of possession is an almost worthless stat, especially now a days when many teams don't play ball control.

If you wanna predict the winner of the game based on the stats, show me the total yardage of both teams and the turnovers.

It's EXTREMELY rare to have more yards, less turnovers, and still lose. Usually takes bizarre circumstances to lose if you win those stats.

TOP is a psychological mind frick for the team on the opposing sideline if your team is eating up chunks of clock 6, 7 minutes at a time and putting points on the board nearly every drive. Not only does it emasculate the defense, but it puts a ton of pressure on the O to feel like they have to score and have to score NOW because they will have very limited chances going forward.

If you've ever played on a defense and had your arse handed to you like that, it fricks you up BAD. Like, on a metaphysical level. Soul destroying type shite that takes days to recover from.

If you've ever played on an offense that is in a groove like that and running down someone's throat and knowing there is nothing they can do to stop you, it's arguably the best feeling in the world. Tiger blood type shite. Makes you feel like you could sprint to the top of Everest, scream to the world that Edmund Hillary was a pussy, and sprint back down.


TOP doesn't always tell the whole story of a game, because you have to be able to score when you're given the chance, but it can be very, very awesome when your team is clicking like that.

Depends on your team. For TAMU, probably pretty overrated. For Bama or LSU, probably pretty important.

quote:

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FishFearMe

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You reek of fear

What did the A&M offense do against Alabama?

Punt, punt, punt, punt?

Time of possession stats for the final four teams this year:
Ohio State - 35
Oregon - 115
Florida State - 86
Alabama - 33

Time of Possession Stats 2014

Fran preached TOP the entire time he was here. Here was his national rankings for the time that he was here:

2003 - 86
2004 - 110
2005 - 94
2006 - 1
2007 - 6

His most successful season was 2006 and he only won 9 games that year. He put too much value on it. Is it important, sure it is, but is not the be all end all stat that you are looking for if you are a successful coach. You don't hear Saban, Miles, Meyer or any other consistently successful coach talking ad nausea about TOP like Fran did. They are focused on turnover margin, 3rd down efficiency and red zone conversion...you know, then thing that actually wins games.

God I hate Fran.

As someone who has seen some halfway decent UK defenses get absolutely hamstringed by offenses who couldn't stay on the field for more than a few downs if their lives depended on it I'll have to respectfully disagree.