Unlocking the Ultimate Debate: Which Era Truly Dominates College and Pro Football?

The data we use depends on the sport, but it’s basically how many points per 10 drives (in football) better or worse the team was to that average-club baseline. In basketball, it’s how many points per 100 possessions. It’s baseball, it’s how many runs per nine innings and for hockey, it’s goals scored/allowed per game in comparison.
The post Introducing TRACR: How We Compare College and Pro Teams Across Different Eras appeared first on Opta Analyst.

Here’s what the final 2023-24 NBA regular season TRACR standings looked like:

Ever wondered if there’s a secret decoder ring that can level the playing field when comparing teams across wildly different sports and eras? That’s exactly where TRACR steps in — it’s the clever little engine that strips away the noise from league quirks and gives you a clear picture of how a team really stacks up against the average club, whether in college football, the NBA, or the NHL. Instead of just eyeballing wins and losses, TRACR dives deep into advanced metrics, translating everything from points per 10 drives in football to runs per nine innings in baseball into a single, comparable score. Intrigued by how the ’95-96 Bulls still reign supreme or curious about the Celtics’ dominance in 2023-24? TRACR’s got you covered, breaking down offensive and defensive strengths with precision—even if it’s ticking backward, looking at history rather than forecasting futures. You might say it’s the sports analyst’s high-tech crystal ball, only with a rearview mirror. Ready to dive deeper into how this game-changing model reshapes how we evaluate greatness? LEARN MORE.

That’s done with a model that uses advanced metrics and other factors to calculate how teams compare or compared to the league-average club during a given season.

So the Celtics, who finished 64-18 to earn the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, ended up 11.39 points per 100 possessions better than the league-average club during the 2023-24 season. That was far ahead of the West-best Thunder at 7.84.

Because it normalizes a team’s performance (for any sport) from league factors that can either inflate or deflate its numbers.

What makes TRACR equally important in college football, college basketball, NBA, MLB, NFL and NHL?

There are a couple of other things to remember. The typical college basketball game is about 75 possessions, so keep that in mind when looking at the NCAA TRACR rankings, which are scaled at points per 100 possessions.

Getting back to TRACR, using the NBA as an example, the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, who set a league record at the time by going 72-10 before winning it all behind Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman, have the top adjusted team ratings we’ve recorded in the NBA since the 1986-87 season at 14.14.

Also, the model is backward-facing, so it’s based on how well a team has played and not necessarily how well a team will play.

We can also take it one step further and rank teams by offensive TRACR (O-TRACR) and defensive TRACR (D-TRACR) in addition to overall TRACR. Note that lower is better for defensive ratings in each sport.
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