A message to all Maryland fans from a Texas Tech student/Leach loyalist

First off, let me say that if Maryland does infact hire Mike Leach as their next head coach, they will immediately gain me as a fan and I have decided I will legitimize this by purchasing a Maryland Terrapins hat and watching every UMD game on espn3. Let's just say that it's hard to be proud of your school when they conspire to fire the winningest coach in school history in likely the most unethical manner possible, so I now vicariously live through your football program. I can't tell you how painful it now is watching Tommy T make a fool of not only himself, but every player on our team.

Anyway, I made this post on doubletnation.com a long time ago to get an in-depth look at just how much production Leach gets out of his players compared to the other 11 teams in the big 12. It's a lot to read, but I promise it is worth it, as I was amazed when I finished making it at what the statistics presented. This is my way of emphasizing how excited I am to see Mike Leach back in football. It's very refreshing for me to see that the University of Maryland is smart enough, open-minded enough, and decisive enough to see through all the bullshit that Leach had to put up with at Tech and realize that this is a good man who cares about his players, academics, and is a damn good coach with a damn good scheme to boot. Enjoy and go Terps!!!! Below is the original post.

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I had a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to try and figure out a way to truly examine the performances of every Big 12 team since 2002 in such a way that it took each program's advantages or disadvantages from a recruiting standpoint into consideration and could give a real number to gauge their productivity relative to the type of recruit they get. In this calculation, teams are rewarded for acquiring wins while having lesser recruits, while teams are punished for failing to acquire wins while having greater recruits. As we all know, Tech has been able to massively overachieve given the current pecking order in recruiting that exists in the Big 12, while schools such as, o I dunno, Texas A&M maybe, have managed to massively underachieve despite having what many "experts" (from rivals.com) declare great recruits/recruiting classes. 

The information that I came up with resulted in each team earning what I call a "Power Score" in that it is a great indication of how much "boom for your buck," if you will, each team gets per recruit based on how many wins they earn with said recruits. This score consists of the amount of wins earned by each team beginning with the 2002 season and ending with the 2008 season (both total wins and conference wins) divided by the average star rating of a recruit their team signed, according to rivals.com, beginning with the class of 2002 and ending with the class of 2008. By doing this, every possible signee who could have contributed in any way to any teams' total win number over this time period is included in the calculation. Below is a table displaying the results:

Team               Wins from '02-'08 (Conference Wins)  Avg. Stars per player ('02-'08)   Power Score (Conf. Power Score)

Baylor                               25 (10)                                                           2.27                                              11.01 (4.41)

Colorado                          42 (27)                                                           2.86                                              14.69 (9.44)

Iowa State                        32 (15)                                                           2.49                                              12.85 (6.02)

Kansas                             45 (22)                                                           2.66                                              16.92 (8.27)

Kansas State                   48 (26)                                                          2.85                                               16.84 (9.12)

Missouri                           55 (29)                                                           2.86                                               19.23 (10.14)

Nebraska                         53 (28)                                                           3.13                                               16.93 (8.95)

Oklahoma                        78 (53)                                                           3.64                                                21.43 (14.56)

Oklahoma State             51 (27)                                                            2.88                                                17.71 (9.38)

Texas A&M                      42 (24)                                                           3.09                                                13.60 (7.77)

Texas                                77 (47)                                                          3.66                                                 21.04 (12.84)

Texas Tech                      62 (35)                                                          2.71                                                 22.88 (12.92)

As I mentioned before, as Tech fans we all know our team regularly overachieves, but I found this result to be pretty surprising! Your Texas Tech Red Raiders have the #1 power score in the overall wins category, and the #2 power score in the conference wins category! Below is the complete rankings list:

OVERALL:

#1 Texas Tech - 22.88

#2 Oklahoma - 21.43

#3 Texas - 21.04

#4 Missouri - 19.23

#5 Oklahoma State - 17.71

#6 Nebraska - 16.93

#7 Kansas - 16.92

#8 Kansas State - 16.84

#9 Colorado - 14.69

#10 Texas A&M - 13.60

#11 Iowa State - 12.85

#12 Baylor - 11.01

CONFERENCE:

#1 Oklahoma - 14.56***

#2 Texas Tech - 12.92

#3 Texas - 12.84

#4 Missouri - 10.14

#5 Colorado - 9.44

#6 Oklahoma State - 9.38

#7 Kansas State - 9.12

#8 Nebraska - 8.95

#9 Kansas - 8.27

#10 Texas A&M - 7.77

#11 Iowa State - 6.02

#12 Baylor - 4.41

***OU's conference power level is particularly high because Big 12 championships accounted for extra wins against conference foes, thus further rewarding their performance.  

Unsurprisingly, Baylor and Iowa State finished 12th and 11th respectively in both lists, because they quite simply could not accumulate wins. Also unsurprisingly, the Aggies, one of only 4 teams in the conference to have an average star rating above 3, finished 10th in overall wins and conference wins despite having what would seem like a considerable advantage as far as recruiting is concerned compared to most teams. Texas Tech, on the other hand, had only the 9th highest average star rating, but was able to finish very high on both lists. What else does these calculations tell us though? These observations are fairly obvious and do not require calculations to agree upon, only common sense. What may surprise you, however, lies ahead. Consider this: 

For Texas Tech, you can multiply their power score (22.88) and their average star rating (2.71) and you will come up with an answer of 62.0048, or 62, the number of wins Tech had from 2002 to 2008. What really makes this table interesting is that you can apply this formula to any team and see how they would perform with another team's talent. For comparison's sake, let's see how our team would have fared from this time period if they had the talent level of UT:

22.88 (Tech's power level) X 3.66 (UT's avg. star rating) = 83.7408 

WOW! What a whopping number! If we had the same talent level as UT over the same time period based on the information presented in the table, we would have achieved 84 wins (if we round up) compared to UT's 77 wins that were actually accumulated over that time!  Even with A&M's talent level we theoretically achieve about 71 wins compared to their 42 over the same time period! Of course, these calculations must be taken with a massive grain of salt, as they do not factor in uncontrollable variables of football such as turnovers, injuries, etc. But from simply a comparison of performance standpoint based on past trends acquired strictly from the information presented in the table, they are a great indicator of how much production a team gets, or would have got, out of their, or another team's players!  

You can also multiply the power level of a team by the avg. star rating of a team to get the total wins the team would acquire, and then divide by 7 (2002 season through 2008 season) to discover how many wins the team would average over that span. Let's compare Tech with Baylor here: 

22.88 X 2.27= 51.9376 
51.9376 / 7 = 7.41965.... 

Even with we had BAYLOR'S talent level from 2002-2008, we would have theoretically still averaged 7 wins a season!!!!!  

If this does not indicate what a wonderful, outstanding, remarkable, incredible job our staff does working with and developing our players, than I truly do not know what does. This also shows that our guys are FULL of heart and are willing to be taught from this great staff and work hard to reach what many people don't think is possible from them. I hope anyone who reads all this can appreciate it as much as I did, because I now have even MORE respect for my football team!