When you ask a football coach about stats, you get the broken record: "Wins" are all the matter…and Oh, yeah, turnovers. And beyond emperical statistics that proves the significance of the said stat, its pretty darn obvious, that when you turn the ball over less than your opponent, you have a better shot to win (and vice versa). And as that same coach will tell you, and likely has implemented drills/certain focus on creating/preventing turnovers, there is one thing they will never be able to control: the bounce of a free football. Yes, there is skill to holding on to the ball, understanding clear throwing lanes, and stripping the ball as a defender. But, when a football is on the ground, whether you lost it, or a defender raring to recover it, once a ball is on the ground no one can predict who will recover it. Because of this, there is a legitimate "luck" factor involved for teams that have recovered more fumbles than they have given up. And when luck comes into play Mathematiscisns will tell you, "don’t forget the tendency towards the mean", or really just a fancy way of saying "luck will change".

Sparing you the Math lesson, when a team has gotten "lucky", i.e. recoved the ball on the ground at a higher rate than the norm, that same team will eventually "even out their luck" (just a matter of when). NOW, let me be clear…this is very specific to fumbles, because there is a lot more skill in not throwing picks/intercepting the ball as a defender (relative to recovering a fumble). So, yes, luck/tendency towards the mean touches the overall stat of "turnover margin", but "Net Fumbles Gained vs. Lost" flirts with the luck factor at a much higher rate, which will give us some quality insight on teams that have gotten lucky so far, and are in line to slow down (and vice versa).

*Disclaimer: Like all stats, espcecially in football, there are so many moving parts that one invdividual piece of data is impossible to provide any predictive insight. And, this is not to mention the sample size is barely ½ a season…

**You can find where I got the raw data here.

With that being said, here is what I found:

Teams that have been lucky in this department:

1. EMU

2. WMU

3. Ohio

4. Kent State

Teams that have been unlucky:

1. CMU and Miami (OH)

Again, will this be a 100% determinant on the remainder of the season? Of course not. But at the same time, I would not be surprised to see a team like Miami (OH) leap frog Ohio to represent the East…we will see.

Ryan Newman

www.Newmanomics.com