Man, what a "damned stat" that one might look like after 2009.

--
Sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes I rhyme quick.

I'm working on a BGS post that lists out returning playing time at each position. Now that I've done the post for a few years, I threw all the numbers into a very basic spreadsheet and noted the low point for each position (red) and high point (yellow).

Nothing surprising, but another visual representation of returning experience during the Charlie Era.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pgVYtu2gX2Z9vL6wGDLMOBw

The downfall of this metric though is that it doesn't account for guys like Paul Duncan, Mike Ragone, or Darrin Walls for 2009. Maybe I should do a little more work and come up with a cumulative career returning minutes measure. That would look mostly like Funk/Savage's data, but would also include important backups.

And it's also makes clear that the only "inward" point on the 2009 squad is linebacker, which also conveniently happens to have gotten one of the largest talent boosts via recruiting. Could be a very interesting year.

They look like the results of one those Briggs-Meyers personality tests!

2007 was definitely an "Introvert."

aside from the fact that we generally will be an experienced team, is that we are experienced in the most important positions. Although all experience helps, I think the three most important positions in which to have experience are QB, OL, and DL.

QB and OL are obvious, I think. With the DL, I would equate experience with physical maturity, which is important. A 5-star stud is probably better as a senior than a freshman. In contrast, experience seems less critical at positions like WR and RB (and maybe even DB, although I might be talking out my can on that).

At any rate, we are extremely experienced at QB and OL and, surprisingly, decently experienced at DL.

I wanna party with you, cowboy.

Seriously, that's great work. Thanks.

Really well done. I use this kind of graph with teachers and their students' assessment profiles. I had read the original post and am embarrassed to admit that my original thought was that tables would be just as sufficient as graphs in this case. I'm always happy to be wrong and it happens a lot.

It's interesting to see the bizarre shaped of 2007, as is 2005. Obviously big circles are ideal, small circles not so much.

I wonder what ND's historical data and also what top 10 teams' charts would look like (not a request for additional work).

I'm going to guess that 1 or 2 major indentations could be tolerated (producing the pac-man shape), but more than 1 major indentation on one side of the ball I would find it unlikely to be successful.

Savage, excellent job!

Another thought - if you anchored the maximum, you could overlay 'talent' rather than the second year on the graph by multiplying star rating by a common factor. For example, if you set your maximum to 25, you could multiply star-rating by position by 5 (which would still be fairly easily interpretable) and you could see the 'talent' by 'experience' interaction. I suppose the maximum possible would be closer to 40 than 25 (a 3-year starter heading into his 4th season on a team playing 13 games per year).

Good stuff.

However, if we finish in the Top Ten, I'm good with that.