I have been toying around with the idea of projecting the winner of every college football game in 2008. It's a fool's errand, I know, but it would be fun—it's something to do during the long offseason, and it would give me something semi-solid to base a preseason top 25 on.
I went ahead and started going alphabetically in the conferences, beginning with the ACC. I got all the way to the second team on the list before running into one of the biggest conundrums of 2008: how good will Clemson be?
Tommy Bowden has been there since 1999, and he hasn't won a conference title yet. He has the longest tenure of any I-A coach who hasn't won his conference. I don't know about every guy who has ever run a program, but it seems unlikely that many coaches suddenly get better after nine years on the job.
In my prior piece about following coaching legends, the only legendary coach on the list who didn't win at least six conference titles was Shug Jordan at Auburn. He had only one SEC title in his 25 seasons on the plains, but it came in his seventh year. Tommy Bowden has obviously passed that point already.
With that in mind, I went ahead and took a look at his record. Here it is broken down by site, in glorious PivotTable-o-vision.
| Site | Wins | Losses | Totals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home | 39 | 16 | 55 |
| Away | 23 | 21 | 44 |
| Bowls | 3 | 5 | 8 |
| Totals | 65 | 42 | 107 |
These totals exclude games against I-AA schools. He wins about 71 percent of his home games, is roughly even on the road, and he's not so great in bowls.
What about his opponents though? Here's another table with his opponents broken down by tiers. The fourth tier is made of opponents with a winning percentage of .000-.249, the third is for teams with a winning percentage of .250-.499, the second is for teams with a winning percentage of .500-.749, and the fourth is for teams with a winning percentage of .750-1.000.
| Tier | Wins | Losses | Pct. | Avg. Scored | Avg. Allowed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First | 4 | 21 | .160 | 17 | 27 |
| Second | 28 | 17 | .622 | 27 | 22 |
| Third | 22 | 3 | .880 | 36 | 18 |
| Fourth | 11 | 1 | .917 | 44 | 17 |
He's awful against the best teams, wins two thirds of them against pretty good teams, and he cleans up against bad and mediocre teams. The one loss against a fourth tier opponent, if you're curious, was a 16-13 loss to 2-9 Duke in 2004.
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