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Betting Stuff: Using Pythagorean Expectation to find breakthrough teams in 2024
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Gus Malzahn is going to sleep hard during these next few months ahead of fall camp. From December through May, it could be argued that only a handful of coaches worked more tirelessly on the recruiting trail than the fourth-year UCF coach. The 25 transfer players UCF has added since the end of the 2023 season are tied for the seventh-most of any FBS team. (Each of the six schools with more either have a first-year head coach or a coach entering Year 2.)
“Roster management is so important,” Malzahn said recently during an interview on 365 Sports. “(You have to be) a little bit of a GM. The role of a head coach has really changed. What I love to do is coaching players on the field. Once your spring practice, fall camp starts, that’s the funnest part for me. The reality is putting together a competitive roster each year and keeping the integrity of your program with your core beliefs. That’s the challenge for all coaches in this day and time.”
UCF needed to add depth to its roster one year after making the jump from the American Athletic Conference to the Big 12. Malzahn and Co. tried to keep the core of the team together while fortifying the two-deep — not an easy thing to do in this age of college football. The Knights added some splash pieces on offense, notably former Toledo running back Peny Boone. And they had to replace John Rhys Plumlee at quarterback after 2 years and 23 starts with the program.
“We’re really trying to build quality depth, but obviously there’s nothing like going through it and seeing what reality is,” Malzahn said of Year 1 in the Big 12. “It was good for us to get that foundation of that first year and seeing what we need to do as a program to be able to compete for a championship in that league. It’s a good conference. Every week you’re playing a good team. There’s no off week. That was our mindset after the season as far as addressing our needs.”
Malzahn’s portal haul didn’t steal headlines for its quality. The group ranked 22nd among transfer classes by 247Sports. But it’s not a group that should be overlooked.
The same can be said of the Knights in general entering the 2024 season.
UCF won 6 games last season. It lost 5 straight to begin Big 12 play before winning 3 of its final 4 — including a 45-3 beatdown of then-No. 15 Oklahoma State.
Three of the Knights’ six regular-season losses came by less than 3 points. They lost to Baylor 36-35 on Sept. 30 after being outscored 26-0 in the fourth quarter. They lost at Oklahoma 31-29 after taking a 23-17 lead into the fourth. And they lost to Texas Tech 24-23 on Nov. 18. Kansas was the only team all year to beat UCF by more than 13 points.
“This place is a goldmine. It really is,” Malzahn said on 365 Sports. “Our best days are ahead of us. I don’t think it’s going to be very long at all.”
Maybe even next season.
UCF’s Pythagorean wins expectation last season was 8. The Knights won just 6. Based on that alone, they’re a prime candidate to enjoy a bit more success next fall.
Originally designed by Bill James as a way to calculate a baseball team’s projected winning percentage based on runs scored and runs allowed, Pythagorean Expectation uses a team’s point differential to determine relative strength.
The underlying assertion is that plain win-loss records can be deceiving. It’s why we don’t put Liberty into the Playoff for winning 13 games. A 30-point win is treated the same as a 1-point win and a victory over FCS Southwest is treated the same as a victory over Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Pythagorean Expectation is just another tool, and it has been shown to have predictive utility in college football.
There are outliers, as with anything. But in general, teams that outperform their Pythagorean Expectation one year tend to regress during the following season, while teams that underperform tend to improve.
In 2022, TCU had the second-largest difference between its Pythagorean wins and its actual wins (3.o) of any FBS school. And what happened in 2023? The Horned Frogs crashed back to earth. South Florida had the second-worst difference between its Pythagorean wins and its actual wins (-2.4) in 2022 and the Bulls had a 6-game improvement in 2023.
Last year, UCF’s 2-game difference between expected and actual wins was the fourth-worst at the FBS level. At most books, UCF’s total in 2024 is set at 7.5. FanDuel currently has the best value on the over (-105).
Here are the 10 teams that most underperformed expectations:
- South Alabama — Pythagorean Expectation: 9.7 | Actual wins: 7
- Texas A&M — Pythagorean Expectation: 9.4 | Actual wins: 7
- East Carolina — Pythagorean Expectation: 4.2 | Actual wins: 2
- UCF — Pythagorean Expectation: 8.0 | Actual wins: 6
- Miami (FL) — Pythagorean Expectation: 8.9 | Actual wins: 7
- Penn State — Pythagorean Expectation: 11.9 | Actual wins: 10
- Washington State — Pythagorean Expectation: 6.8 | Actual wins: 5
- TCU — Pythagorean Expectation: 6.8 | Actual wins: 5
- Arkansas — Pythagorean Expectation: 4.7 | Actual wins: 4
- Notre Dame — Pythagorean Expectation: 11.6 | Actual wins: 10
And below are the 10 teams that most outperformed expectations:
- Washington — Pythagorean Expectation: 10.6 | Actual wins: 14
- Oklahoma State — Pythagorean Expectation: 7.3 | Actual wins: 10
- Iowa — Pythagorean Expectation: 7.4 | Actual wins: 10
- Liberty — Pythagorean Expectation: 10.4 | Actual wins: 13
- Tulane — Pythagorean Expectation: 9.0 | Actual wins: 11
- Florida State — Pythagorean Expectation: 11.2 | Actual wins: 13
- Eastern Michigan — Pythagorean Expectation: 4.2 | Actual wins: 6
- Northwestern — Pythagorean Expectation: 6.3 | Actual wins: 7
- Michigan State — Pythagorean Expectation: 2.4 | Actual wins: 4
- Wyoming — Pythagorean Expectation: 7.5 | Actual wins: 9
Miami is a school that instantly jumps out. And I’ve written about the Hurricanes quite a bit this offseason — both as a team that made excellent moves in the transfer portal and as a team to back in the ACC for 2024. In April, I pegged the offense as one that could help shape the Playoff picture.
Miami finished 2022 ranked No. 74 in Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings. The Hurricanes finished the 2023 season ranked No. 28.
They went just 2-4 in games decided by 8 points or less, which could be a turn-off for anyone familiar with Mario Cristobal’s track record. Game management isn’t his strongest quality. But this offense — which has gotten better as the offseason has gone on — could be one that renders late-game vulnerabilities less of an issue.
The spring window brought Oregon State running back Damien Martinez and Houston receiver Samuel Brown into the fold. With Ward at quarterback and quite a bit of continuity on the offensive line, Miami looks promising on paper.
You’ve got to really like the ‘Canes, whose win total for the regular season has been set at 9.5 at most sportsbooks. FanDuel has +128 odds on the over. But the more I see of Miami this offseason, the more optimistic I am.
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Notre Dame is another intriguing team. The defense has been great under Al Golden and returns one of the best playmakers in the country in Xavier Watts. Getting Mike Denbrock from LSU was a shrewd move. But it’s hard to know just what we’ll get from Riley Leonard and with a total already at 10.5 (over is +135 on ESPN BET), there might not be much juice here.
Going the other way, Northwestern isn’t much of a surprise. By most indications, the Wildcats punched above their weight in 2023. They emerged from a tumultuous offseason embroiled in scandal and won 8 games with an interim-turned-permanent head coach. They had 3 wins by 3 points or less and played in a total of 8 games decided by 8 points or less (6-2).
On the season, they were actually outscored by 6 total points. Over the last 3 years, only Purdue (2022) and Coastal Carolina (2022) have won at least 8 games while posting a negative point differential over the course of an entire season. Both took steps back in 2023, albeit Purdue’s was much larger.
In 2024, Northwestern’s Big Ten schedule features Washington (away), Wisconsin, Iowa (away), Ohio State, and Michigan (away). With the quarterback situation being what it is, expectations should be lowered in Year 2 under David Braun.
BetMGM has the Wildcats’ win total at 5.5, with +125 odds on the under.
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Below, you can find the entire FBS from the 2023 season. We have a few months before fall camp starts up around the country, which means rosters can still change on the margins. But with the transfer portal closed and no one new entering the market, we can finally start to nail down some firm expectations for what teams should be in the new season.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
