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Over the summer, I wrote about the idea of a knockout in college football. It's an alternative to margin of victory in that tries to measure how much winning team dominated the losing team. But rather than measure how much one team dominated the other, it measures how long one team dominated the other.
I thought if it was useful and easy enough to track, I would keep up with it throughout the season. Well, week one caught me a little off guard (why didn't anyone tell me how many days?), but here are the knockout times of every FBS vs FBS game in 2015 so far.
| Week | Date | Home | Pts | Away | Pts | KO | ||
| 1 | 09/04/15 | Georgia St. | 20 | Charlotte | 23 | 56:31 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Illinois | 52 | Kent St. | 3 | 56:10 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Georgia | 49 | Louisiana-Monroe | 14 | 55:34 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | West Virginia | 44 | Georgia Southern | 0 | 54:05 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Arkansas | 48 | UTEP | 13 | 52:58 | ||
| 1 | 09/03/15 | Idaho | 28 | Ohio | 45 | 51:16 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Notre Dame | 38 | Texas | 3 | 49:52 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Florida | 61 | New Mexico St. | 13 | 48:40 | ||
| 1 | 09/04/15 | Western Michigan | 24 | Michigan St. | 37 | 48:05 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | North Carolina St. | 49 | Troy | 21 | 46:52 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Florida St. | 59 | Texas St. | 16 | 46:28 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | USC | 55 | Arkansas St. | 6 | 45:40 | ||
| 1 | 09/03/15 | Tulane | 7 | Duke | 37 | 44:39 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Oklahoma | 41 | Akron | 3 | 39:44 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Auburn | 31 | Louisville | 24 | 36:54 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Tennessee | 59 | Bowling Green | 30 | 31:04 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Southern Miss | 16 | Mississippi St. | 34 | 30:02 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Alabama | 35 | Wisconsin | 17 | 26:59 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | UCLA | 34 | Virginia | 16 | 26:48 | ||
| 1 | 09/04/15 | SMU | 21 | Baylor | 56 | 22:03 | ||
| 1 | 09/03/15 | Arizona | 42 | UTSA | 32 | 20:57 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Northwestern | 16 | Stanford | 6 | 17:42 | ||
| 1 | 09/07/15 | Virginia Tech | 24 | Ohio State | 42 | 17:18 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Temple | 27 | Penn St. | 10 | 14:01 | ||
| 1 | 09/03/15 | Central Michigan | 13 | Oklahoma St. | 24 | 13:54 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Texas A&M | 38 | Arizona St. | 17 | 11:26 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Kentucky | 23 | Louisiana-Lafayette | 26 | 11:19 | ||
| 1 | 09/03/15 | Utah | 24 | Michigan | 17 | 7:58 | ||
| 1 | 09/03/15 | South Carolina | 17 | North Carolina | 13 | 3:29 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Northern Illinois | 38 | UNLV | 30 | 1:20 | ||
| 1 | 09/06/15 | Marshall | 41 | Purdue | 31 | 1:20 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Nebraska | 28 | BYU | 33 | 0:48 | ||
| 1 | 09/03/15 | Vanderbilt | 12 | Western Kentucky | 14 | 0:33 | ||
| 1 | 09/03/15 | Central Florida | 14 | Florida International | 15 | 0:25 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Eastern Michigan | 34 | Old Dominion | 38 | 0:18 | ||
| 1 | 09/04/15 | Boise St. | 16 | Washington | 13 | 0:15 | ||
| 1 | 09/03/15 | Hawaii | 28 | Colorado | 20 | 0:00 | ||
| 1 | 09/03/15 | Minnesota | 17 | TCU | 23 | 0:00 | ||
| 1 | 09/05/15 | Tulsa | 47 | Florida Atlantic | 44 | 0:00 |
Good job, Charlotte, Illinois, and Georgia! Too bad, Georgia State, Kent State, and Louisiana Monroe.
In the SEC, Georgia, Arkansas, and Florida knocked their opponents out in the first quarter. Auburn, Tennessee, and Mississippi State did so late in the second. Alabama followed suit in the third and Texas A&M, Kentucky, and South Carolina finally pulled away in the fourth.
Oh, and Vanderbilt at least lasted until just 33 seconds remained in its game with Western Kentucky...
Anything interesting jump out to you? Again, this is an alternative to margin of victory, so look for times when the MOV is big but the KO time is small or vice versa. In the future, not only will I get this published much sooner, but I'll try to make the MOV/KO time discrepancy easier to see.
And as the season continues, I'll start averaging the KO times for a rudimentary ranking of sorts. No adjustments for strength of schedule or anything like that. (Who do you think I am? Bill Connelly?) Just a simple ranking of how quickly teams jump out to insurmountable leads.