Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

https://www.facebook.com/secshortspresents/videos/520834842006998/

Funny.  Very funny!  

The SEC Shorts folks are nearing old Saturday Night Live territory at times.  They do a wuuf some, but their shorts are funny, and short.

The most important thing in comedy ...

I was just thinking that a pastry is playing mostly other pastries, to a P5 team would look a lot better in general against them.

But relative performance in some sense is what counts, not absolute.

You can do it against conference opponents obviously, even 100% and get useful data.

If OU gave up 325 yards against Oklahoma State, but they averaged 425 yards, that is a good outing relatively.

I think every P5 team should play 10 P5 opponents each year.  My Dawgs have a couple of pastries over the next two weeks and it's boring.  Of course, the Vols had a pastry that didn't go down well.

I still can't believe that game.

basically meaningless, but has some meaning

You can do it against conference opponents obviously, even 100% and get useful data.

If OU gave up 325 yards against Oklahoma State, but they averaged 425 yards, that is a good outing relatively.

I think every P5 team should play 10 P5 opponents each year.  My Dawgs have a couple of pastries over the next two weeks and it's boring.  Of course, the Vols had a pastry that didn't go down well.

I still can't believe that game.

Well sort of, but I believe what we were originally trying to tease out here, is whether B12 defensive absolute stats are higher than... say... SEC absolute defensive stats because the defenses are worse?  Or because they face better offenses on average?  

So separating out the conference and OOC stats is a key way to help make that determination.  

For individual teams, rather than the entire conference, if you're trying to figure out if that ONE defense is better than the absolute stats might make it appear, then sure, the average of ALL games played could be used.  In that case, if you're looking at Texas' 2018/19 defense then you'd look at the absolute yards/points allowed against an opponent, and then compare it to that opponent's average yards/ppg against all non-Texas opponents. Overall I think last year Texas' defense was pretty good and usually allowed fewer points/yards than the opponent scored otherwise, although I haven't looked too closely at the numbers.  

And hopefully this year the defense will be even better, although we lost quite a few starters. 

A good question, and I think I can give an interesting answer.

I started with that 2017 UGA team, was there a Big 12 team that year with a good D? Based on advanced stats, which adjust for opposition and often tempo, the answer is yes. Texas.

That year UGA was 12th in S&P+ defense, Texas 14th, about a point difference. In FEI, based on drive data, UGA was 4th, Texas 7th, though there was a bit of a gap with them being that close.

In terms of raw stats, Texas vs UGA.
Texas allowed 4.8 more PPG (6th vs 29th)
0.5 yards per play (10th vs 37th)
71.7 YPG (6th vs 43rd)
7.5 more plays (16th vs 72nd)

They were pretty close in points per drive as well, factoring out FCS.

Horns don't play FCS.

Interesting.  How specifically do the advanced stats take into account that Texas is likely playing more high-scoring/high yardage offenses in the B12 than Georgia is in the SEC?