The following was submitted to me from a guy I have known from the Cyclone interwebs for years. He goes by Cygarin over on Paul Clark's board. I really enjoy his analysis. He said it'd be ok if I shared with you all. Enjoy.
Below you will find a comparison of performance between Iowa State and Notre Dame, broken down into opponent strength ranges.
Make note.....
All opponent’s power rankings have been adjusted for home field advantage.
The over/under performance of each game has been normalized by considering both Iowa State and Notre Dame as having an exactly equal power rating. Thus, all performances can be equally compared.
TOP 15 EQUIVALENTS
95.81 @ OKLAHOMA LOSS +18 POINT OVER PERFORMANCE
95.71 @ GEORGIA LOSS +12
92.84 @ MICHIGAN LOSS -16
88.25 @ BAYLOR LOSS +10
Summary:
Win-Loss....
Neither team had any success, and thus neither team showed an advantage.
Margin....
Iowa State clearly had advantage having two double-digit over performances.
Notre Dame suffered a double digit underperformance to Michigan mid-season.
TOP 16-30 EQUIVALENTS
84.20 @ KANSAS STATE LOSS -2
81.29 H TEXAS WIN +7
80.28 H IOWA LOSS +3
79.32 H OKLAHOMA STATE LOSS -4
78.11 H USC WIN +3
78.06 @ TEXAS TECH WIN +12
Summary:
Win-Loss...
Arguably advantage Iowa State by virtue of having two wins in this range to Notre Dame's just one.
Arguably advantage Notre Dame by virtue that Iowa State has three losses to Notre Dame's none.
Overall I would call this one slight advantage Iowa State due to Texas being a higher ranked win, and also that Iowa State beat Texas Tech on the road.
Margin....
A wash of sorts.
In one game, Notre Dame had a 3-point over performance.
Iowa State "averaged" a 3.2 over performance.
Almost impossible to discern is what Notre Dame would have done with more games in this range, but all indicators suggests that 50-50 success would be highly probable.
TOP 31-45 EQUIVALENTS
77.05 H VIRGINIA TECH WIN +1
76.52 H TCU WIN +25
75.23 H NAVY WIN +29
75.22 @ WEST VIRGINIA WIN +23
Summary:
Win-loss....
Tie
Margin.....
Slight advantage Iowa State by virtue of having two 20-plus over performances.
Notre Dame had one 20-plus over performance ,but also had just a 1-pointer
TOP 45-55 EQUIVALENTS
73.49 @ STANFORD WIN +17
73.45 H VIRGINIA WIN +11
73.03 @ DUKE WIN +26
Summary: None.....Iowa State played no games in this range.
TOP 55-75 EQUIVALENTS
70.06 @ LOUISVILLE WIN +10
67.80 H BOSTON COLLEGE WIN +23
Summary: None…..Iowa State played no games in this range.
SUB-75 EQUIVALENTS
60.40 H KANSAS WIN -6
55.31 H NORTHERN IOWA WIN -21
55.03 H ULM WIN +31
54.22 H NEW MEXICO WIN +28
42.73 H BOWLING GREEN WIN +17
Summary:
Win-Loss: Tie- all games were won
Margin: Huge advantage Notre Dame, but largely irrelevant.
GRAND SUMMARY:
What is most notable is that Notre Dame payed only three opponents in the 16th to 45th range....and all three of these were played at home.
This is a VERY small sample to assess Notre Dame’s performance against credible opponents outside the top-15, and the home advantage arguably skews things a bit...at least from the standpoint of not knowing how Notre Dame can do on the road.
Conversely, where Notre Dame played only three... Iowa State played seven opponents in this mid-range....giving ample data, and showing that Iowa State has been heavily battle tested in this range.
It does appear that Notre Dame fared better at home than on the road, but lack of data makes it difficult to validate that premise.
The only range where Notre Dame has a performance advantage over Iowa State is in the sub-75 equivalent range...where Notre Dame smoked all of their opponents, and Iowa State struggled. Both teams won all their games, and so far as the bowl goes, the data in this range is irrelevant.
Iowa State had by far the more difficult "upper half" and "last half" strength of schedule, and is difficult to say what impact season fatigue played on the season-long performance, when compared to Notre Dame's.
Indeed, the only time all season that Notre Dame played back-to-back top-30 opponents was USC followed by Michigan....which resulted in a royal arse-kicking by the Wolverines.
To compare....Iowa State had only one three-game stretch where they did not play a top-30 team.
More critically in Iowa State's last six games....the Cyclones played only one team not top-25.
Whereby Notre Dame played not single team top-30 in their last five games after Michigan, and that one was a relatively lightweight 30th ranked Navy at home.....a 45th ranked equivalent.
To conclude......
All indications are that this 10-2 team and 7-5 team are equals regardless of the record disparity.
The data not only shows that Notre Dame's ten-win season was biased by the schedule....it was a direct product of the schedule.
At worst, as can be clearly seen......both teams are pretty much equal in all performance categories in the top-45 ranges.
If anything, the data suggests that Iowa State has been the better performer based on margin performance, even in their losses.
