SIAP - The Richt-er Scale (Data on Richts worst losses - cited from Reddit post)

[Mcanes305]

Nice read found on reddit.



"When the “Richt being Richt” memes began to flow Sunday night, I started to wonder if I could perhaps quantify how special (or not) LSU's beat down of Miami truly was. I don’t mean how special it was in my heart (every Miami loss is); rather, how special it was in comparison to Richt’s other losses. How did it compare to other failings on The Richt-er Scale?

TL;DR:
Miami's loss to LSU scored a 4.3 on The Richt-er Scale, which is just a Moderate Loss. My complete analysis of Richt's losses is here (open it in its own browser tab, the text is small):

Methodology:
Richt has had 59 losses as a head coach since his tenure began at Georgia in 2001. As I scrolled through the info on these losses, I immediately realized many of the them shouldn’t register at all on my Richt-er Scale because they didn’t really represent “Richt being Richt.” To me, the Richt meme is about 1) losing to lesser teams or 2) losing when “on the brink.” With that in mind, my methodology was as follows:

• I removed every Richt loss the occurred when his team was unranked, reducing our n from 59 games to 44 games.
• To account for losing to lesser teams, I counted every loss to unranked or lower-ranked teams (a whopping 30 of 44 lost games, or about two-thirds)
• To account for losing when on the brink, I counted every November or December loss when Richt's team was ranked Top 10 (11 of 44 lost games)
• Pairing these features of losing resulted in four distinct Loss Categories on the Richt-er Scale: Epic Losses (6); Major Losses (5); Moderate Losses (24); and Minor Losses (9)
• Losses within each Loss Category descended in order by the rank of Richt's team at the time of the loss; ties were broken by the rank of the opponent

Analysis:

• **** Florida.
• Although Miami's loss to LSU on Sunday was middling by Richt standards, my methodology suggests that Miami fans have experienced Richt's most Epic Loss ever. Miami's defeat at the hands of Pitt last year is the only to occur when a Richt team was ranked number 2. And Pitt was unranked.
• At first I hated my methodology because it didn't rank 2012's SEC Championship as the worst loss for Georgia with Richt. But then I remembered I'm measuring "Richt being Richt." It's fine for me to think that's our worst loss under him, but it wasn't the most Richt-ish by our meme standards.
• Richt teams should avoid being ranked 8. That was the mode rank for the 44 losses under consideration.

Notes:

• Clearly my definition of "on the brink" is up for debate. Maybe a loss at rank 12 in late October should be considered on the brink? I don't know. But I had to draw the line somewhere, and I personally have been disappointed too many times by too many teams over the years to really start believing until November.
• A third dimension I considered adding to amplify the magnitude of a loss was the agony of a loss to a rival, but that type of thing is difficult to quantify.
• Ideally, in future analyses I would compare Richt to other head coaches along these measures, to assess the fairness of the Richt meme. But it took a long time to collect and clean the data just for him.
• I intentionally scored the highest loss as a 9.8 magnitude, to leave room for Richt to guide Miami to a number 1 ranking and then lose to an unranked opponent. 10! 10! 10!

This analysis was conducted under the auspices of Entertainment Sports Misery, which is committed to telling the stories of losers.

EDIT: If you'd like to interact with the data on a Tableau dashboard, you can do so here: Tableau Public"