How did your team do over the last 10 years compared to the previous 30? A complete chart and a few observations
I produced this chart of the change in win percentage between two time periods: the "10" columns are the 2005-2014 seasons, and the "40" columns are 1975-2004. The All FBS tab has every team for which we have 40 years of complete data (so vacated wins are counted, but, for example, SMU was left out). The P5 (66) tab is the current P5 teams, plus Notre Dame and BYU, and then sliced into the top, middle, and bottom thirds for each time period. I tried to tell a bit of a story by noting which teams climbed from one third to another, which fell, and which stayed the same. I also tried to see if there were any discernable patterns about climbing and falling between the P5 conferences, which is the purpose of the rightmost columns.
I was surprised at how few surprises there were. I highlighted a few numbers that caught my eye in green, yellow, and red. Here are my observations, I trust y'all will tell me about all the stuff I've missed.
First we've got three Climber categories with 15 teams:
Two rags-to-riches stories, TCU and Mizzou, with truly impressive gains over the past 40 years.
Plus six nouveau riche teams - Oregon, Wisconsin, LSU, OK State, Utah, and WVU - all with double digit growth.
And seven blue collar teams, Oregon St, Northwestern, Rutgers, South Carolina, Stanford, K-State, and Baylor. All were under 50% historically, but have battled up to the middle tier in the past 10 years. Special distinction to OSU and NU, who each were below a 30% win rate in the past and improved by over 25 points.
The distribution of the 15 Climber teams was pretty even across four of the P5, with only the ACC having none. However, two ACC teams just barely missed the cut, so I don't think that means a whole lot.
In the middle of the bell curve are the three Holder categories, with 36 teams:
14 bluebloods, led by Ohio State and Virginia Tech, both of whom managed double-digit growth despite starting in the top third historically. Most concerning is Nebraska, which stayed in the top third but did fall by over 14 points (although when you have an incredible 81% win rate historically, a fall is almost inevitable).
Nine thoroughly average teams, although Louisville, Michigan St, and Georgia Tech each posted double digit growth and are poised to break into the top third.
And the unlucky 13 who stayed on the bottom. Vandy is working the hardest to climb out of the cellar with 15 points of growth, but Wazzu is digging even deeper by dropping by 18 more points.
The distribution of the 36 Holders was almost perfectly even among the P5.
Last and perhaps least are the 15 Fallers:
Seven wrong-way teams - Ole Miss, UNC, NC State, Maryland, Virginia, Syracuse, and Colorado - which started mediocre but have gotten worse. The last two were especially dramatic, 20+ point falls from a 58% win rate historically.
Six teams whose glory is fading - Notre Dame, Arkansas, UCLA, Texas A&M, Michigan, and Miami. Notre Dame was a pretty small slip and still has a 63% win rate over the last 10 years, but the 17 point falloff at both Michigan and Miami is remarkable.
Finally, two teams near and dear to my heart that have fallen precipitously, Tennessee and Washington.
At last we see some conference discrepancy among the 15 Fallers - the Big-XII had none, but the ACC had five (six if you count Notre Dame). The other three conferences had even distribution.
A special couple of observations about the Pac-12:
The climb looks like it's coming at the cost of three teams with some of the most precipitous falls - the most double-digit drops of any conference.
The power shift across the Columbia river is astonishing: Oregon and Oregon St are two of the biggest climbers, and Washington and Wazzu are two of the biggest fallers. There's nothing else remotely like that geographically that I see.
I was expecting to see the biggest dropoff in Colorado, and that was true, but I was surprised that it was from only 58% win rate historically. It turns out they didn't get hot until the mid-80s.
Trivia note for the 2016 Pac-12 vs SEC powerhouse matchup: USC's improvement is 9.03%, Alabama's is 9.02%.
All the data for this project comes from cfbtrivia.com, and I would like to take a moment to rave about it and congratulate its creator, /u/ktffan, on such an astonishing accomplishment. The query tool gives an almost endless set of parameters to instantly examine historical records, and slice and dice them to your heart's content. It's the tvtropes.com of college football - I've lost entire days of productivity in the past few weeks exploring it. I challenge everyone to take some time this offseason to produce your own analysis of whatever interests you with this incredible resource.