Adjusted Winning Percentage for Big 10 Coaches

I've often felt that winning percentage is not a great look at how good coaches actually perform as it does not factor in a multitude of items including environment, player talent and competition. As a result I devised a formula to try and tackle some of that problem and give a more accurate portrayal of what part of the wins and losses the head coach was responsible for. 

This metric, the adjusted win percentage for FBS coaches, tries to take into account at least the players that each coach is responsible for. For example when a new head coach wins in their very first year the credit only lies somewhat with them. Many of the players they are winning with were recruited by the previous staff. Often these coaches go on to not be successful in the long term. The best examples I can think of are Ed Orgeron at LSU or Gene Chizik at Auburn. Both should be noted actually had their best year a few years in, but neither lasted after a prolonged time. On the flip side new coaches often lose heavily in their first year because it takes time to recruit and install new systems and to get a full buy-in from players. Think Sabin's first year at Alabama or Bobby Petrino's first at Arkansas.

The basic thrust of the formula is this, the longer a coach has coached a team the more accountable he is for their wins and losses. The transfer portal has changed some of this in that the formula now holds coaches more accountable sooner. Gone are the days when you had four years to show some results.

Special notes, these statistics are based on fbs wins and losses only. The time period for the coaches is endless so all the coaches years are included, but it is only an evaluation of current coaches not coaches from the past.

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The coach with the best adjusted winning percentage for the Big 10 is technically Sherrone Moore. Who as an interim coach won one game. You can see in the chart below that the Adjusted metric only credits Moore with 12.5% of that win, but with no losses that gives him a 100% winning percentage. Beyond him Ryan Day has the highest winning percentage despite having a worse adjusted win percentage than traditional. 

The other coach with a worse adjusted win percentage than traditional was Lincoln Riley. Both Riley and Day have very good winning percentages, but started their coaching careers in very successful programs. As such the adjusted winning percentage see's both as not quite as good as their traditional win percentage would suggest. 

The other most notable thing for Big 10 coaches in the adjustable win percentage is the amount of coaches that have a much better  adjusted than traditional win rate. The Big 10 has six coaches with over a 5% better rate. Other large conferences have zero coaches with that large of difference. What does that mean? Mostly that those coaches are a bit undervalued in traditional winning percentage. 

The largest of those differences belongs to Nebraska's Matt Rhule with an adjusted rate of 61.7%. That's 10.7% higher than his traditional. Rhule is of course in his second year with Nebraska and seems to be on the rise. The Cornhuskers played a ton of close games last year and 5-7 was an improvement on seasons before.  

Here are the total results:

Big 10 Coaches	Team	W	L	Adjusted W Pct	Traditional W Pct	Difference
DeShaun Foster	UCLA	0.0	0.0	#DIV/0!	0.0%	#DIV/0!
Sherrone Moore	Michigan	0.1	0.0	100.0%	100.0%	0.0%
Ryan Day	Ohio State	46.9	7.5	86.2%	87.5%	-1.3%
Curt Cignetti	Indiana	15.0	2.5	85.7%	82.6%	3.1%
Dan Lanning	Oregon	17.0	3.5	82.9%	81.5%	1.4%
LIncoln Riley	USC	53.5	14.0	79.3%	80.4%	-1.1%
Luke Fickell	Wisconsin	53.8	15.8	77.3%	69.6%	7.7%
James Franklin	Penn State	88.8	37.5	70.3%	67.5%	2.8%
PJ Fleck	Minnesota	66.0	35.8	64.9%	58.8%	6.1%
Kirk Ferentz	Iowa	192.0	105.8	64.5%	62.2%	2.3%
Matt Rhule	Nebraska	38.3	23.8	61.7%	51.0%	10.7%
David Braun	Northwestern	2.0	1.3	61.5%	61.5%	0.0%
Bret Bielema	Illinois	89.5	58.3	60.6%	59.9%	0.7%
Jonathan Smith	Michigan State	31	25.75	54.6%	49.3%	5.3%
Greg Schiano	Rutgers	78.3	78.0	50.1%	47.8%	2.3%
Jedd Fisch	Washington	15.6	15.6	50.0%	43.6%	6.4%
Mike Locksley	Maryland	27.4	35.4	43.6%	34.4%	9.2%
Ryan Walters	Purdue	2.0	4.0	33.3%	33.3%	0.0%

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