Aggie Hardcount: Season Prelude
The Aggies’ recent record does not spell success, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be fun.
The UC Davis Aggies College Football team (The Aggies) will probably not have a great season. There, now that we’ve dispensed with the grimmest and potentially most obvious news, we can turn our attention to more interesting topics of discussion.
Setting the Table
The Aggies are, perhaps fairly, a mostly unheralded team to whom, to this blogger’s knowledge, not a great deal of ink nor attention are generally paid. Want proof? Let’s go to the numbers.
During the 2016–17 season, the Aggies combined attendance for all home games was 47,698 compared to the total away attendance they faced as visitors of 102,521. Now to be fair, one of those games was against Oregon, and Autzen stadium can fit as many as 60,000, making that game a major outlier. But even if we drop Oregon from the sample entirely, the Aggies still saw 16,773 more fans on the road than they did at home. What’s more, Aggie Stadium (the unironically named home of the Aggies) seats 10,743, and the best attended home game, gated 8,426 fans, meaning the best attended home game was a stadium at 78% capacity.
Why the tepid enthusiasm from the fan base? Well as I said at the top, the Aggies aren’t a good football team, and they haven’t been for the past several years.
During the 2016 season, the Aggies finished with a 3–8 record, meaning they won 27% of their games. Impressively, that result was an improvement over the 2015 campaign, during which the team went 2–9, good for an 18% winning percentage. These lackluster results, actually extend as far back as the 2003 season when the Aggies upgraded to Division I. Unfortunately, this move up in competition led to a move down in winning percentage. From 1970 to 2003, the team won an average of 75% of its games, upon transitioning to Division I and entering the Great West however, the team’s average winning percentage dropped to 53%. A further change of scenery to the Big Sky Conference has not helped, as the school has won an average of 39% of its games since joining its latest conference. So perhaps it’s no wonder not much attention has been paid to the team, students, and residents of a town boasting arguably the country’s best farmer’s market, may be disinclined to pay too much attention to a consistently beleaguered team.
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A Brief Digression on me and the Impetus for this Blog
You may by this point find yourself asking, “who is this person, and what gives him the right to dump all over my college football team?” First, let me reply that I in no way mean to disparage the Aggies, I’m merely trying to provide context beyond the normal, nowhere to go but up, milquetoast, brand of bland optimism.
I myself am not a football, professional or otherwise, expert. I’m an Aggie alumnus, with a background in data analysis, economics, and statistics, who currently works in public policy. I do not mean to disparage my school’s football team, rather I’d like to write this data-driven blog to provide a level of analysis, as yet not brought to bare on this team. Because even if our school’s team is not especially successful, that doesn’t mean they’re going to be any less fun. That’s what we’re doing here, giving it the old college try: data analysis style, and having some good amateur, unpaid fun along the way (just like our student athletes right?).
My inspiration for writing this blog comes from a buddy of mine who writes about Cal football, for California Golden Blogs. In the weeks ahead, I hope to use data and the principles of social science to provide deeper insights on what the Aggies are doing well or not so well in their weekly games. I might try out some funky methods, but as I said I’m by no means an expert, and would be happy if you wrote in with constructive suggestions.
A less bland version of optimism
But none of the above changes the fairly bleak picture I’ve painted for you thus far, and like I said college football and this blog are meant to be fun. So how might the Aggies be entertaining, even if they’re not good? Well they generate a lot of yards, and a lot of points, and who doesn’t love offense in their college football, just ask Cal, another team that generates a ton of offense without generating many W’s.
In 2016, the Aggies generated an average of 481.1 all purpose yards per game, an exact tie with Washington State, who ranked 17th and was one of the FBS’s most prolific offenses last year. Do we have reason to think this will continue? We sure do, with Quarterback Ben Scott returning for his senior season after coming in as the 30th most prolific FCS passer by yards per game last season. And given the Aggies gained an average of 6.8 yards per pass play compared to 4.8 yards per rush last season, expect more of the same high flying attack in the weeks to come.
In fact, half of all times Scott took the field last year (he only played 10 games, missing week 6), he was league average or better in total passing yards on the day. That also means in half of all games he was worse than the Big Sky Conference average, but hey we’re looking for bright spots heading into the season and I’m still getting to know my reclaimed hometown team, so let’s just go with it.
Another point of optimism, Davis has 46 players returning, including their three all-conference performers, in wideout Keelan Doss, return specialist Joshua Kelley, and kicker Matt Blair. How good those returning lettermen are remains to be seen.
Regardless, the Aggies open on the road, Saturday, September 2nd, against the San Diego State Aztecs. Till then, sing our purportedly plagiarized fight song, and Go Ags.
