But Can You Do It Again?

There is some streak in the NFL about a team that wins the Super Bowl doesn’t even make the playoffs the next year.  Or maybe it’s the team that loses the Super Bowl doesn’t make the playoffs the following year.  Or maybe that streak is over and it’s old history.  I don’t know because, well, it’s just football.

BUT, that did get me to thinking about how the CFCL Champion does the year after they win the championship.  Building a consistent winner in the CFCL is very difficult.  First of all, the ten owners we have are all highly knowledgeable.  It is tough to dominate people who know what they are doing.

Second it often becomes necessary to give up good, inexpensive future talent to fill in the few holes you may have that will assure victory.

So I did some looking.  I did some figuring.  I did some calculating.  Here’s what I found out.

There are 25 seasons to look at to see how the champion fared the following year.  Remember, three owners resigned after they won the championship.  And we don’t know yet how the 2012 champion will finish.  So that leaves us with 25 seasons.

The calculations tell us that, on average, if you won the CFCL one year the following year you would finish in 3.8 place.  So I’ll round that to 4^th place.  Not that big of a drop off.  For every year except two in this study the CFCL had at least eight teams and for sixteen years we had at least ten teams.  So the former CFCL champion, on average finished above the middle of the pack.

Study over, right?  Not so fast.  In those 25 seasons one team won 11 times.  Remember David’s Copperfields?  They had one three-peat and two repeats during that time.  That just might sway the numbers.

If we factor out the Copperfields, in the fourteen remaining seasons the former CFCL champion finished in 4.9 place – I’ll round it to 5^th place.  Take out one team and the average dropped one place in the standings.  Amazing.  So, on average, if your team isn’t named the Copperfields and you win the CFCL title you will finish in the middle of the pack the following year.

One final observation, just to prove I’m not playing favorites.  If you take away the years when the CFCL champion repeated (Lambchops in 2003 and Ruffins in 2011), the average finish was 5.58 place.