2025 WEEK 1 SCORES - VARSITY FINALS ONLY

[ModeratorMike]

All the scores are in, and here are this week's final stats:

Total games: 133 (2 forfeits, which aren't included)
Average points by winning teams: 53.02
Average points by losing teams: 15.5
Mercy rule invoked: 76 (57.17%)
Close games: 15 (11.28%)
Shutouts: 35 (26.32%)

 

[dammitbobby]

Here are some stats from last night's games. I'll give an updated total after tonight's scores are all in and/or after Saturday's scores are all in. Also, "close games" are games that ended within 10 points.

Total games: 25 (1 forfeit, which isn't included)
Average points by winning teams: 48.96
Average points by losing teams: 10.04
Mercy rule invoked: 16 (64%)
Close games: 2 (8%)
Shutouts: 8 (32%)

This is super interesting - did you do this for last year, I'd be curious to know what the % of mercy rule games were. I track scores for all playoff games (1A through 6A) I never thought of looking at mercy rule % or shutouts (there aren't many at any level in playoffs)

 

[ModeratorMike]

This is super interesting - did you do this for last year, I'd be curious to know what the % of mercy rule games were. I track scores for all playoff games (1A through 6A) I never thought of looking at mercy rule % or shutouts (there aren't many at any level in playoffs)

I did until I didn't.

Here are last year's final stats:

	Games	Winners	Losers	Mercy rule	Close games	Shutouts	Forfeits
Week 1	134	52.74	21.13	57 (42.54%)	21 (15.67%)	23 (17.16%)	1
Week 2	139	54.86	20.04	66 (47.48%)	19 (13.67%)	29 (20.86%)	1
Week 3	136	55.18	20.07	69 (50.74%)	24 (17.65%)	25 (18.38%)	1
Week 4	125	56.38	19.33	71 (56.8%)	12 (9.6%)	28 (22.4%)	3
Week 5	134	57.41	21.01	67 (50%)	9 (6.72%)	25 (18.66%)	1
Week 6	120	59.4	22.78	65 (54.17%)	15 (12.5%)	22 (18.33%)	1
Week 7	110	58.21	20.11	63 (57.27%)	9 (8.18%)	23 (20.91%)	5
Week 8	108	58.83	19.46	67 (62.04%)	6 (5.56%)	26 (24.07%)	5
Week 9	121	60.35	21.43	70 (57.85%)	12 (9.92%)	23 (19.01%)	6
Week 10	111	58.26	21.74	64 (57.66%)	17 (15.32%)	21 (18.92%)	5
Week 11	106	57.36	19.28	66 (62.26%)	12 (11.32%)	20 (18.87%)	12
Week 12	65	63.86	28.68	31 (47.69%)	7 (10.77%)	7 (10.77%)	0
Week 13	34	64.18	31.59	14 (41.18%)	5 (14.71%)	2 (5.88%)	0
Week 14	17	63.47	30.82	8 (47.06%)	3 (17.65%)	0 (0%)	0
Week 15	8	66.13	34.5	1 (12.5%)	1 (12.5%)	0 (0%)	0
Week 17	2	62	16	2 (100%)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	0
Totals	1470	57.64	21.39	781 (53.13%)	172 (11.7%)	274 (18.64%)	41

 

[dammitbobby]

Wow - over half of all games were mercy rule.

Just thinking out loud, not necessarily advocating for this, but you could make an argument that there could/should be rule changes to try to bring some parity back into games to make them more competitive. I've no idea what that would look like, like I said, just thinking out loud.

 

[CVguy]

All it takes is to have 1 team in the district that is in a rebuilding year or that just isn't very good and gets beat by the mercy rule by all the other teams in the district. For example, a 5 team district and the the bottom team loses 4 times by the mercy rule, and a really good team beats a couple of other teams by the mercy rule, then 6 out of 10 (60%) of the games were decided that way.

 

[dammitbobby]

By my count, 5 playoff games were shutouts in 2024 in 6-man, both divisions, not counting one forfeit (Richland Springs vs Calvert.)

Manually counting, I have 48 shutouts across all divisions, out of 691 games, or 14%. While I am sure there is some merit to the idea that one really bad school can tank the numbers, I'm not sure that holds up when compared to the group as a whole. Need to chew on this some more.

 

[CVguy]

This week, there are 138 games scheduled. 74 of them are picked to be won by the mercy rule. As for shutouts, I think those numbers are misleading. There have been a lot of games that when the winning team was way ahead, they pulled the starters and played their 2nd and 3rd team players and the losing team was able to score on them to prevent a shutout.