What it takes to win a National Championship

[wxman42]

Some of this isn't rocket science but from 1999-2014 here are the average national ranks for "3" main categories for the team that won the National Championship.

Scoring Offense...10th..(Worst Rank 41st)
Scoring Defense...9th..(Worst Rank 53rd)
Turnover Margin...16th..(Worst Rank 39th)

Meanwhile the Average Composite Score is 35 (Lowest was 5th...Highest was 93), Nebraska's Composite Score in 2015 was a whopping 239. Since 2000 the lowest Composite Score for NU was 68 in 2001 (last time they competed for a National Championship) while the highest was 269 in 2007.

In order for NU to become relevant again there will have to be drastic improvements in Turnover Margin and Scoring Defense going forward.

 

[redwine65]

coaching turnovers every 3 to 5 years doesn't help either.
you never get a team that knows the plays like the back of their hand.

 

[RedSea]

Why did you throw turnover margin in, as opposed to many other stats you could have used?

 

[jeans15]

Why did you throw turnover margin in, as opposed to many other stats you could have used?

Turnover margin is pretty crucial.

 

[wxman42]

TO Margin is huge imho. Keep in mind since 1999 no team has won a National Championship with a TO Margin Rank greater than 39. Since 1999 NU's average rank in TO Margin has been 71. The best year for NU was in 2003 when they were ranked #1 in TO Margin, The last four years NU's TO Margin Rank has been 119...75...119 and 108. However even when they were ranked #1 in TO Margin in 2003 and went 10-3 they still got blown out "3" times. Thus TO Margin is just part of the equation.

 

[RedSea]

No doubt turnover margin is important to success. But that fact gets rolled into the scoring offense and scoring defense categories, as would be true of many other stat categories. if you have a good turnover margin, then that tends to make your scoring offense and scoring defense better. So you end up double counting that factor in your composite. you could do the same with something like yards gained and allowed or other categories. You could just take one category, average margin of victory, and compare those teams with NU that way too. Turnover margin would be a contributing factor to that as well.