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Knockout Times: Week 1

Reminder: A knockout occurs after the losing team's last offensive play while within one score (8 points).

The Fighting Illini gave the Golden Flashes the second fastest KO of the week.
The Fighting Illini gave the Golden Flashes the second fastest KO of the week.
Mike Granse-USA TODAY Sports

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.