A political scientist writing for the Southern Political Report applied a statistical model to examine legendary Alabama Crimson Tide Coach Paul W. “Bear” Bryant’s axiom that “offense sells tickets; defense wins championships.” In the article, LaGrange College associate professor John A. Tures concludes: “It shouldn’t surprise you that statistics for the 2008 NFL season indicate that how many points a team scored is correlated with their win total, just as teams that give up fewer points tend to win more games. But the correlation coefficient was stronger for defense statistics than offense scoring. Furthermore, a regression model indicates that the number of points given up (however few) has much a higher adjusted R-square than points scored in explaining the number of victories for each team. That’s fancy talk for saying a team’s defense does a better job of accounting for wins in a statistical model.”
I should have paid more attention in stats class instead of admiring the pretty blond teaching the class. Who knew it could help explain why those axioms from the great coaches really are true? Score one for the political science departments.
3 thoughts on “PROOF: Defense more important than offense”
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Someone needs to tell this to the basketball teams in the big 12.
They do everything but play defense.
I agree ….The display between Oregan and Okie State wasnt too bad in the first half last night. Okie showed a little defense. But I went to bed at halftime. So Im sure the came out at the half and turned into a revolving door.
Just checked the scoreboard. 42-31. I was right.