2008 College Football Scoring at Oklahoma's Pace

Pace was one of the hot button issues in the 2008 college football season. Oklahoma's highly publicized switch to a fast-paced offense in reaction to the new clock rules was the major reason for it. The Sooners ended up leading the country in plays at 1,106 (79 per game), and they set a record with 716 total points scored.

The Sooners weren't the only team to crank it up. Tulsa, under no-huddle guru Gus Malzahn, was second in plays behind OU. Houston, TCU, and Nevada also broke 1,000 plays for the season.

The average number of plays per team for the whole season was 858.52. The average number of games played was 12.68. Therefore, the average number of plays per game for any given team was 67.7.

But what if everyone played at Oklahoma's pace? Here is a look at what the top-10 in scoring would look like if everyone ran 79 offensive plays a game.

This would be the point where I mention that this is based on the NCAA's "scoring offense" stat, which includes defense and special teams scores in the totals.

Because this study is looking at pace in terms of plays, and it proportionately increases or decreases each team's total plays, it still works out under the assumption that teams would continue to get defense or special teams scores at the same pace as before.

Top Ten Points per Game at Oklahoma's Pace

Team	Total Pts	Pts/Game	Pts/Play	Adj. Total Pts	Adj. Pts/Game
Florida	611	43.64	0.70	773	55.23
Oklahoma	716	51.14	0.65	716	51.14
Tulsa	661	47.21	0.60	666	47.60
Missouri	591	42.21	0.60	666	47.54
Oklahoma St.	530	40.77	0.58	599	46.11
Texas Tech	569	43.77	0.58	597	45.92
Texas	551	42.38	0.58	593	45.58
Oregon	545	41.92	0.57	584	44.90
Penn St.	506	38.92	0.57	581	44.71
Rice	537	41.31	0.56	572	43.96

Tulsa edges out Missouri in points per game, even though rounding to the nearest point makes them equal in total points per game.

What we can see here is that Oklahoma was pretty much ahead of everyone at scoring points. Adjusting for pace, they still were ahead of most of the nation and earned a record 716 total points in 2008.

Florida was the one exception. Thanks to the Gators' ability to get points in many ways other than just offense (INT returns, blocked punts for TDs, in the return game, etc.) while running an average number of offensive plays, Florida would have shattered the Sooners' new record in the very year they broke it.

The Gators could have topped out at a little over 55 points a game. That means Army's all-time record would have been safe, but barely. In 1944, Army scored exactly 56 ppg, less than one point more than Florida's hypothetical total.

It is almost a little surprising to see Missouri so high since the Tigers were a bit of a disappointment this season. It goes to show that the offense was still good at turning plays into scores, but that defense just didn't quite work out.

As great as Florida and Oklahoma were at turning plays into points by having relatively high points per play ratios, they weren't the best of the decade. Since 2000, the team with the highest points per play was the 2006 Hawaii squad with 0.72. At Oklahoma's pace over 14 games, that would come out to 795 points on the season.

One would figure though that if they were that close to 800, they'd find a way to get one last touchdown to get to 802.

Maybe something like the Florida Flop?