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Legal Commentary

: LawPundit

College Football Teams 2008 Statistically Compared using cfbstats.com: Alabama vs. USC

By Andis Kaulins

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The current college football rating system by popular polls should be scrapped. A review of football statistics this season shows this clearly. Too much emphasis is being placed upon a team going undefeated against weak opposition, rather than on hard football facts. Let us compare Alabama and USC. If any team should be in the national championship game this year, it is Southern Cal. Please note that we have no bias in favor of USC, having graduated from Nebraska and Stanford. We also have no bias against Alabama, which has a fine team. We just do not think Alabama should be ranked Number One in 2008 and USC be excluded from the title game, when almost all stats favor USC, except for one freak loss.

College Football Teams 2008 Statistically Compared by LawPundit using statistics from cfbstats.com:

Alabama vs. USC.
In comparing these stats consider that the Massey Ratings rank the Alabama schedule difficulty as the 61st most difficult in the country and the USC schedule difficulty as the 35th most difficult. Sagarin at USATODAY.COM has the respective schedule difficutly as 73rd for Alabama and 33rd for USC. Alabama has had the far easier schedule and thus should have the far better stats, but this is not so, not by a mile.

Parameter	Alabama (12 games)	Opponents	USC (11 games)	Opponents	Advantage to
Scoring/game	32.1	11.5	38.4	7.8	USC
Points scored	385	138	422	86	USC
First Downs	230	156	245	155	USC
Yards per Play Rushing	4.82	2.72	5.39	2.60	USC
Rushing Yards	2418	883	2273	952	Alabama
Passing Rating	127.85	96.76	158.72	81.78	USC
Passing Yards	2032	2099	2686	1364	USC
Yards per play Total Offense	5.7	4.1	6.7	3.4	USC
Total Offense Yards	4450	2982	4959	2316	USC
Punt Returns Yards/Return	13.22	9.35	8.17	11.09	Alabama
Kickoff Returns Yards/Return	19.07	21.54	28.11	20.16	USC
Punting Yards/Punt	40.19	39.62	36.37	41.78	Alabama
Interceptions	15	6	16	11	Alabama
Fumbles (No. - Lost)	18-9	17-9	20-8	15-9	USC
Penalties -Yards	48 - 422	71 - 530	91 - 833	61 - 469	Alabama
3rd Down Conversions	42.41%	25%	44.85%	27.5%	even
Red Zone Success	83.67%	76.47%	81.82%	71.43%	USC
Field Goal Success	68%	53.8%	88.9%	50%	USC
PAT Success	95.5%	100%	98.2%	88.9%	USC
					Advantage
					to USC
Final Totals					13-5-1