Math vs. History

In which Michigan football repeatedly breaks math and college coaching hires break everyone's brains.

The probability of dropping this was low. [Photo: Bryan Fuller/MGoBlog]

Before I was a college history major, I was a baseball stat geek poring over Bill James books in high school. I learned to lean on probabilities, value sound process over unreliable results, and understand that small-sample outliers almost always regress to the mean.

History teaches many of the same lessons in a different way. There’s one particular tenet, however, that doesn’t always line up with math: history repeats itself, particularly when we don’t learn from it.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh [Game on Paper]

Michigan football is doing its best to dispel my belief in math. Here’s an incomplete list of one-score defeats since Jim Harbaugh took over as head coach in 2015. I can guarantee you that the odds of losing every one of these was damn near negligible:

• 2021 Michigan State: took 30-14 lead with 6:47 left in third quarter, missed more ways to put this game away than I care to enumerate, also had a touchdown overturned on replay evidence one could argue wasn’t conclusive;

• 2019 Penn State: won total yardage 417-283, dropped potential game-tying touchdown pass in fourth quarter;

• 2017 Michigan State: couldn’t drive to win the game down 14-10 in fourth quarter, John O’Korn was QB because Purdue broke Wilton Speight’s back the previous week;

• 2016 Orange Bowl: Michigan clawed back from a game-long deficit to go ahead 30-27 with 1:57 to go, then allowed a 66-yard kickoff return to put Florida State in position for the winning touchdown;

• 2016 Ohio State: the spot was debatable and frankly gets too much attention, but the missed pass interference calls and Michigan’s inability to stop a dead-to-rights Curtis Samuel in the backfield in overtime unquestionably turned this game;

• 2016 Iowa: Michigan blows a 10-0 lead in part because of a safety, regains a 13-11 edge in the fourth, intercepts CJ Beathard with 1:49 to play, then goes three-and-out in 26 seconds to set up Iowa’s game-winning field goal as time expires;

• 2015 Michigan State: trouble with the snap.

Math looks at this as a near-impossible run of bad luck. It attempts to contextualize the inexplicable. Sure, Michigan lost another heartbreaker, but by the numbers, they should’ve won!

Not nice, in this case. [via CFBNumbers]

History, on the other hand, tells us this is what we should expect. May I direct your attention back to the bulleted list? No? You hate it? Fair enough.

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