I went back over the last half century; actually, I couldn’t in good conscience start with 1969 so I went back 51 years to 1968.

I was wondering what significance, if any, there might be to being the home team vs what significance, if any, having a higher ranking matters in The Game.

While it’s possible I messed up computing this, it appears that the visiting team has won only 19 times going back to 1968; and the lower-ranked team has won only 17 times.  But, with respect to rankings, in several instances (of those 17) the teams were separated by only one spot in the polls—which indicates a toss-up to me—and so the truly higher-ranked team won in all but roughly 13 games out of 51.

I’m not an analytics expert but it seems that a higher ranking is a more significant predictor of outcome than home-field advantage—notwithstanding some of the more stunning or surprising results we might remember over the years.

In a partial defense of Coop: his teams were the lower-ranked squad in 8 out of the 13 games they played against TTUN.

One last stat I discovered: Harbaugh is now 0 for 9.  By that I mean Harbaugh’s teams have never won a major conference championship in his 9 combined seasons in the Big Ten and what was the Pac-10.  So why is he considered such an esteemed coach?