the Last Year

Greetings, all. It's been awhile, I know. Usually I take a break during the offseason and then start to ramp things up again about this time of year, getting ready for the new season. The only difference between this year and the last few is that I'm getting the site ready for one more season and that'll be it. All of the stats, essays, and game stuff will still be available, but sometime in mid-January next year I'll pen my last post. I've had a blast working on this site, the projects, the games, the numbers, all of it, over the last five years. And I still enjoy those things. But life moves on - it's a good thing.

I started this site with the goal of providing a slew of different perspectives on college football, the way the national champion is crowned, the BCS, conferences, coaches, etc, just trying to show that there's more than one or two sides to it all. A lot of it was stats-heavy, and it took a good deal of time to compile, analyze, and write up - time that I'm happy to have to spend on other pursuits in the future.

Sports analysis, athletic information management, whatever you want to call it, has been booming the last few years. I've met and talked with a lot of people who find it fascinating, and who want to get involved somehow. My advice, if it's worth anything, is to just get started and take the plunge. You don't have to have a background in statistics or knowledge of specialized software - I didn't. I haven't taken a math class since high school and my degrees are in English. But that doesn't matter - you just have to want to learn how to do it and soon you'll figure out your own niche, wherever that might be.

So if you're interested, to help you get started here's my database.

It's got all the games, teams, rankings, and years since the BCS started in 1998, as well as all NCAA stats since 2000. All of this information is available in the public sphere, somewhere on the web or in newspapers, but as far as I know this collection isn't available all in one place (or in downloadable files) anywhere else. So take it, use it, crunch your own numbers, post your own studies, and create your own unnecessarily long and confusing tables. Combine it with other data you have or that you've found to make it an even more robust dataset. Enjoy.

I'll have more thoughts on the state of the game in the upcoming weeks and during the season, and we're gonna try to end this thing on a high note. Thanks for reading, today and all the other days -

Ed