Thank you, Reno. The correlation between rushing success and winning football games is routinely grossly misinterpreted. This is one of my pet peeves about what passes for “analysis” by ex-jock announcers and their ilk.

They’ve got the causation almost exactly reversed. Teams don’t win because they get a lot of rushing yards; they get a lot of rushing yards because they win. More specifically, teams that are ahead in games tend to run more (to use clock), and teams that are behind tend to pass more (to try to score quickly). Since the teams that are ahead end up winning more often than not, the result is that winning teams do indeed tend to accumulate more rushing yards (and losing teams often end up with a lot of passing yardage).

Correlation is not causation. Yes, winning teams tend to run the ball more. They also tend to play back-up quarterbacks in the fourth quarter more, kneel down in the final two minutes of games more, etc. Accumulating more rushing yardage is no more the key to winning football than is yanking your starters earlier or calling more kneel down plays.

It’s like my noticing a correlation between people having high incomes and spending a lot of money on yachts and sports cars and such, and I conclude that the best way for me to increase my income is to start spending money like a drunken sailor.

You guys might be right about more rushing yards having no impact. I do think some of the most solid plays involve GREAT rushing teams that are playing teams that just can't stop the run. Even more so in colleges. But you just can't go by the rushing stats because they are not always entirely acurate.

well, ex-jocks and their lack of understanding of statistics involved with the game you can see on tv too

it is funny, but almost the same thing as you express there

and reno, did they ever get around to hockey?

rushing and college and the NFL would have to be different, to start with, due to the 'non-closed' nature of college football - it is not a league, as such

and also, rushing stat calculated differently

AussieVamp2, you're right. College football is very different from the NFL. There is general parity in the NFL, so on any given Sunday any team can beat another. In college football that's obviously not the case. Teams like Nebraska, through sheer physical dominance, can absolutely destroy smaller schools, literally running through their defense at will. The bottom line is that strength of the running game and strength of schedule are much more important in college football than in the NFL.

The programmers I was working with are working on hockey. But there is no reason to ask me further questions about these guys because I am no longer associated with them.