The return of the Maze

Howdy there. Have you missed me? Well I have missed you too. Had to take a break for a while to try and learn some new stuff that I hope to bring to the Maze. I am still learning the new stuff, it might be a while before it is actually brought here because well, you know we want to have a great product for you to feast on. Today we are going to have a little bit of a taste of some of the new stuff that we have been learning. No it is not related to the game, it is just learning new tools to help look at the game, so maybe it is related to the game.

The Maze is in its third season and it has managed to grab some stuff from the game and wanted to compare them to see how things have changed. The first thing is to see if the points per game has changed from season 129 to season 130. The assumption is that if there are more points being scored then then things are on the up and up. Though with a higher points per game average it might mean there are more Sim AI teams in the world, but we know our world is packed and getting more packed. So then does it mean the offenses are just getting more potent or are the defenses are just getting worse? I know there are a lot of offensive minded coaches out there, I am yet to come across a coach who people say is defensive minded. Below is a graphic representation of the points per game for the last 2 seasons.

From the graphs it seems like more teams were scoring more points per game in season 130. So did coaches get better? You tell me. The average points per game seems to be the same for the two seasons, they are represented by the vertical lines in the graphs. From my eye test they seem to not have budged, but you tell me what you think and how you see it. In season 130 there were more teams with their points per game average higher than 60, now that is putting up points right there. But with that said the question is who did those teams play? I think that might be the more pertinent question. The graph above is for all the teams at the D-1A level, so it includes both Sim AI teams and human coached teams. Not sure how things would look if we break it down by Sim AI vs human coach.

So now we have seen this across the whole world, what about if we look at it from conference to conference. Who do you think is the most potent conference? Or maybe which conference has the worst defenses? Does putting up points depend on the offense or the opposing defense? Between the two, who contributes the most to the points being put up. Does putting up points depend on the offense or on the defense? There is the saying defense wins you championships, so points per game depends on the defense you are facing?

From the graphs there it seems like there has been some shake up from season 129 to season 130. You might say oh it is because of the addition of new coaches to conferences or the subtraction of coaches, whatever your reason is for why this might have happened, it happened. The SEC still sits at the top of the pile, and there movement has been behind them. The ACC stepped up their game and moved up two spots, yep two spots. The Big 12 and Big East remained in their order as they dropped down, with the Big 12 still ahead. The Big 10 swapped places with Conference USA, and so did the Sun Belt and MAC. The WAC is still in the basement on the mean points per game. The Big East is going to be interesting this year with human coaches at all the teams, I wonder if they will improve their mean points per game.

Now that was a lot of useless nonsense, so lets bring it to a stop. I know recruiting started today but actually picks up tomorrow when people will jumping at each other. It should be a fun day. Do not forget to schedule teams for your OOC games. You do not want to just play Sim AI because that will hurt your SOS, but I could be wrong.