What Larson can learn from past Indy 500-Coke 600 Doubles
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
The Memorial Day Double. Double Duty. The Indy-Charlotte Double. The 500/600 Double.
What Kyle Larson will attempt to do this weekend — contest the Indianapolis 500, IndyCar’s biggest race, and the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, NASCAR‘s longest race, on the same day — has so many nicknames that reading the list will leave you with double vision. That’s fitting. Because Larson’s goal will be not only to complete the Double, perhaps even win one or both ends of it, but also do what he can to ensure he and the two teams depending on him are not placed in double jeopardy.
To understand the difficulty of driving two races on two very different racetracks in two race cars that might as well be from two different galaxies, let’s look back at the two-lane road that was paved for Larson by his NASCAR/IndyCar double duty forefathers. A five-pack of drivers who have attempted — or will attempt — to wrap their two hands around the steering wheels of two dissimilar machines and depending on a fleet of other varied vehicles to get from one event to the other, all while staring at the weather radar, gloved fingers crossed.
The Early Years: 1911-93
The Indianapolis 500 took its first green flag on May 30, 1911, on what was then known as Decoration Day. The 500, like Decoration Day, was always on the 30th, no matter what day of the week that fell upon, and quickly became recognized as one of the world’s most prestigious sporting events. In 1960, NASCAR ran its first World 600, also scheduled around Decoration Day, but instead of the 30th it was held on the closest Sunday to the holiday.
The separate dates allowed for a handful of crossover moves. NASCAR stars such as Junior Johnson, Curtis Turner, Neil Bonnett attempted to qualify at Indy but came up short. Drivers such as Bobby Johns and “Chargin'” Charlie Glotzbach also chose to skip Charlotte to concentrate on Indy efforts. NASCAR legend Bobby Allison made a pair of Indy starts. In 1965, Ford flew in NASCAR’s famed Wood Brothers crew to pit the cars of Johns and Jim Clark. Clark won the race, which was a huge boost toward his second Formula One world title (Indy was included in the F1 schedule then).
From 1967 to 1971, a total of six drivers ran both races. The first was Cale Yarborough, suffering a mechanical failure at Charlotte and finishing 41st, and three days later finished 17th at Indy after a late spin. In 1969, LeeRoy Yarbrough won at Charlotte but finished 23rd at Indy. The most successful Double Duty racer was Donnie Allison, who won the World 600 on May 24, 1970, and finished fourth at Indy six days later. The next year he earned top-six finishes in back-to-back days, running sixth behind Al Unser in the Indy 500 on Saturday, finishing second behind Glotzbach at Charlotte, and then flying back to Indy for the awards dinner that night.
In 1974, following the standardization of Memorial Day as a Monday holiday, the Indy 500 permanently moved to Sunday, the same day as what was about to be renamed the Coca-Cola 600. Double Duty was parked.
“It was fun, but it would also kick your butt, even when the races were several days apart,” Allison remembered in January on the night of his induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “But me and Cale and brother Bobby, we looked at running both as a badge of honor. Like, OK, you are a real racer’s racer if you can pull that off. And Kyle Larson certainly fits that description, though I don’t know how he’s stacking up that schedule to do it. Just tell him to get some fluids in him. I think I sweated out half myself, and I had time to recover. He won’t.”
The OG, John Andretti: 1994
Hydration wasn’t John Andretti’s problem on May 29, 1994. It was quite the opposite. The man needed somewhere to pee.
The modern-age Double Duty godfather had no plans to attempt both races in 1994. He had entered the season merely hoping to secure a ride for one or the other. On the NASCAR side, he had landed a ride with the sponsor-less and cash-strapped team of owner Billy Hagan. But he also had made a half-dozen Indy 500 starts and was riding a streak of three consecutive top-10 finishes. That’s why Charlotte Motor Speedway president and P.T. Barnum-esque promoter Humpy Wheeler called Andretti into his office that spring. Wheeler said he had done the math and believed it was possible for someone to run both races, all 1,100 miles, in one day, and he told Andretti that if anyone could pull it off, it was him.
The seed was planted. Andretti, son of Aldo and nephew of Mario, couldn’t resist. So, he went to his godfather, A.J. Foyt, and secured a car for Indy. Then he mapped out a schedule of 11 flights, crisscrossing the 580-mile distance between Concord, North Carolina and Speedway, Indiana. Then he cut a deal with a private jet company to manage that crisscrossing … and, oh yeah, the much longer, 2,220-mile trips the weekend before, between the Cup Series event at Sonoma Raceway and Indy 500 qualifying.
On race day, Andretti finished a solid 10th at Indy after starting on Row 3 and running as high as third. From there, the real race was on.
In a striking contrast to Larson’s harmonic cross-series coordination efforts this year, in 1994, Indianapolis Motor Speedway refused to allow Andretti to land a helicopter at the racetrack. That cost him 20 precious minutes, going from a golf cart to a van and through race day traffic to a chopper blocks away from the track. Once he was in the air, however, he received help from air traffic controllers; a pilot who had once wheeled Air Force One; and Wheeler, who not only allowed Andretti to land inside Charlotte Motor Speedway but had a helicopter parked at the end of the runway in Statesville, North Carolina, and had it buzz the grandstand en route to a touchdown on the front straightaway to the roar of the crowd, all just as the national anthem was beginning.
“The good news is that we were smart enough to have IV bags on the plane so that I would be plenty hydrated and I felt great when we got there,” Andretti recalled in 2019, roughly a year before he died of cancer. “The bad news is that I was too hydrated and I had to pee so bad, but there was no time. They ran me to the car. I’ve never been one of those guys who can just pee in his suit during a race, so I was dying. The crankshaft broke halfway through the race and we were out. I was bummed, but I was also really happy because I could finally get to the bathroom!”
Smoke on the Water (he didn’t drink), Tony Stewart: 1999, 2001
Tony Stewart spent the mid-’90s juggling two big league day jobs as a full-time racer in the Indy Racing League and NASCAR’s Busch (now Xfinity) Series, winning the 1997 IRL championship while also making the transition into his first ride with Joe Gibbs Racing. So, when Gibbs gave Stewart permission to run the 1999 Indy 500 for his old IRL crew chief Larry Curry, the transition of getting back into an IndyCar was easy.
Running both races was not.
“Man, I was such an idiot that first year. Nutrition was not really my thing, and I sure proved it,” Stewart recalls, laughing, and reminding how proud he used to be of his three-trips-to-McDonald’s-a-day diet. “The morning of the 500, I think I had a couple of mini bagels. I put an energy bar in my car, but when I dug it out, it was all melted from the heat. On the plane to Charlotte, I drank a Gatorade and maybe ate a hamburger or something. That was it. I swear to you, when we got the final 100 laps of the 600, I was hallucinating. A piece of trash flew by the car and in my mind, it looked like a pink-spotted elephant running down the back straightaway.”
Still, he finished ninth at Indy, although four laps down, and followed that with a fourth-place run in Charlotte over a total of 7 hours, 13 minutes and 41 seconds of racing. When he climbed from his car, Stewart’s legs gave out and he collapsed.
“I said that night there was no way I was doing it again, but two years later I had the chance with Chip Ganassi at Indy. Joe said I could, but this time he was getting me help.”
Gibbs, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, called the Carolina Panthers and recruited a trainer to spend the entire month of May with Stewart, monitoring and coaching up his food and water intake, as well as his sleep habits. The racer responded with sixth- and third-place finishes, becoming the first and still only driver to complete all 1,100 miles.
“That’ll be the biggest challenge for Kyle, and it’s probably the part he’s not yet thought about, not the nutrition or any of that, but the length of the day,” Stewart says of Larson, who he believes could win one or even both races. “And the adrenaline spikes. He’s going to have one after Indy. He’s going to have one during driver introductions before Indy. He’s going to have one when he lands at Charlotte before he even gets in the car … but he’s driving a great race car at Indy [Arrow McLaren Racing] and he’s driving a great race car in Charlotte [Hendrick Motorsports]. He’s got a great group of people around him. You have to have the people to help you manage all of that. Like I did.”
Mr. Five-Time (sort of), Robby Gordon: 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004
Robby Gordon has won in stock cars, open wheels, motorcycles, sports cars and off-road trucks, so it seems only natural that he would be the racer who has attempted Double Duty the most. In fact, he’s the one who officially turned that phrase into racing jargon and even sold “Double Duty” fan packages to ride along with him on his flight from Indiana to North Carolina. Gordon has pulled off more two-race weekends than can be listed, from Indy Racing League/CART double entries that crossed over political divisions to NASCAR-to-Baja 1000 commutes that streaked across the U.S. map from Atlantic to Pacific.
The Californian’s first attempt was the second ever, when he ran both races in 1997, but the 500 was delayed two full days because of rain. In 2000, rain delayed the Indianapolis green flag three hours. Gordon decided to stay at Indy and let backup driver P.J. Jones start the 600. It was the right call, as Gordon finished sixth, then took over his stock car in Charlotte midrace and finished 35th. Rain also foiled his last attempt, in 2004, as Indy was red-flagged with a storm so strong it was assumed the event would be postponed, so Gordon left for Charlotte. However, the 500 was restarted; backup driver Jaques Lazier dropped out with a broken axle while Gordon finished 20th in the 600.
His other two Double Duty runs — the dry ones — were a mixed bag of finishes, although in 2002 he came within one lap of completing the full 1,100 miles.
“Unfortunately, rain is kind of the theme of my Double attempts,” Gordon recalled last month as he raced in the Stadium Super Trucks Series during IndyCar’s Long Beach Grand Prix weekend. “When I watch Larson, that’s the one thing I hope he doesn’t have to deal with. Not even the rain, but the decisions that have to be made because of the rain. For me, the childhood dream was always Indy, but for most of those years, my full-time job was in NASCAR with Richard Childress. So, making that call, of where to go when you can only run one, that’s no fun, man.”
The last Double (until now), Kurt Busch: 2014
After Gordon’s final Double Duty, Indianapolis made sweeping changes to its May schedule, including moving the waving of green flag for the first time since 1963, a full one hour later, from noon to 1 p.m. ET. Andretti, Gordon and Stewart had all cut it close to making it to Charlotte, missing prerace drivers meetings and literally running to their stock cars for the Coca-Cola 600’s 5:30 p.m. ET start. The move was made to grab a bigger West Coast TV audience (full disclosure: ESPN/ABC didn’t fight the idea), but it also eliminated the chances for Double Duty attempts from the likes of Indy 500 winners Juan Pablo Montoya and Dario Franchitti or even NASCAR aces Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.
“This is dumbest thing I’ve seen the Indianapolis Motor Speedway do,” Stewart said at the time.
When Indy finally did move its start time back to the traditional high noon, it didn’t take long for another Double Duty attempt to go on the books. Kurt Busch, who had tested an open-wheel racer for Bobby Rahal in 2003, drove for Andretti Autosport at Indy in 2014 and wowed the IndyCar regulars as he took his time, picked his spots, and worked his way up to a sixth-place finish and Indy 500 Rookie of the Year honors. His trip to Charlotte was flawless, having conferred with John Andretti and his new Cup Series car owner, Stewart. He soaked up a bag and a half of saline IV; drank a 20-ounce concoction of B12 vitamin, liquid oxygen, sugar, potassium and beet juice; scarfed down an energy bar, a bag of beef jerky and a box of raisins; and even sneaked in a 20-minute nap.
Unfortunately, none of that could help his No. 41 Chevy, which blew an engine two-thirds of the way through the 600. The next year he completed another sort of Indianapolis Double Duty, winning the Brickyard 400 for the first time.
“The way the racing business works now, at least the way it has worked as my generation was coming up, they want you to specialize,” Busch says now. “Us racers, we hate that. We want to drive everything before our careers are over. That’s the way that Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt and Cale Yarborough, all those old-school guys, did it.
“Kyle Larson has always been one of those guys. So, to see him do the Double, it will be fine. But it’s been a decade since I did it, and it had been a decade since anyone did it before me. Maybe this will open the door for guys who deserve a shot from being denied in the future.”
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Greg Wyshynski
The Winnipeg Jets defended star goaltender Connor Hellebuyck after another disastrous performance on the road, a 5-2 loss Friday night in which the St. Louis Blues forced Game 7 in their Stanley Cup Playoff opening-round series.
Hellebuyck was pulled after the second period in favor of backup Eric Comrie, the third straight game in St. Louis that he failed to finish. Hellebuyck surrendered five goals on 23 shots, including four goals on eight shots during a 5-minute, 23-second stretch in the second period that cost the Jets the game.
As has become tradition in this series, Blues fans mockingly chanted, “We want Connor!” after Hellebuyck left the game and the Jets’ bench.
“This isn’t about Connor,” Winnipeg coach Scott Arniel said. “Tonight was not about Connor. Tonight, we imploded in front of him. Now, it’s a one-game showdown. It’s our goalie against their goalie, our best players against their best, our grinders against theirs. I have a lot of confidence in our [entire] group — not just Helly.”
Hellebuyck won the Vezina Trophy last season as the NHL’s top goaltender, as voted on by the league’s general managers. He also won the award in 2019-20 and is the favorite to win it for a third time this season. Hellebuyck is also a finalist for the 2024-25 Hart Trophy, awarded to the NHL’s most valuable player. He was the starting goaltender for Team USA at the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament in February and was expected to do the same for the U.S. in next year’s Winter Olympics in Italy.
But his recent performances in the Stanley Cup playoffs have been the antithesis of that success.
Over the past three postseasons, two of which the Jets lost in the first round in just five games, Hellebuyck is 5-11 with an .860 save percentage.
Hellebuyck failed to finish any of the three games played in St. Louis during the series. He was pulled with 9:28 left in regulation in Game 3, having given up six goals on 25 shots. In Game 4, Hellebuyck was pulled 2:01 into the third period after surrendering five goals on 18 shots. Hellebuyck has allowed four or more goals in seven straight road playoff games, tying the second-longest streak in Stanley Cup playoff history
At home against the Blues in this series, it has been a different story, if not necessarily a great one: Hellebuyck is 3-0 in Winnipeg, with an .879 save percentage and a 2.33 goals-against average.
His home numbers in the regular season: 27-3-3 with a .938 save percentage and a 1.63 goals-against average in 33 games. His road numbers: 20-9-0 with a .911 save percentage and a 2.43 goals-against average. Hellebuyck was not pulled in his 63 appearances in the regular season.
Even with Hellebuyck’s multiple seasons of playoff struggles, his team exonerated him from blame for the Game 6 loss.
“I don’t need to talk about Bucky,” said forward Nikolaj Ehlers, who returned to the lineup for the first time since April 12 after a foot injury. “He’s been unbelievable for us all year. He’s continued to do that. We’ve got to be better.”
Said forward Cole Perfetti, who had a goal in Game 6: “Things got carried away. We lost our game for four or five minutes. They got a couple pucks through, and they found the back of the net. It’s frustrating. Happened a couple of times now this series where we fell asleep and they jumped on us.”
Perfetti said the Jets have rebounded from losses like this — one reason their confidence isn’t shaken ahead of Sunday’s Game 7.
“We had a loss like that in Game 4 [in St. Louis],” he said. “We went home and got the job done in Game 5. We’ve got the home ice. We’ve got the fans behind us and our barn rocking.”
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Bill Connelly
Almost no word in the English language makes a college football fan more defensive than the L-word: luck.
We weren’t lucky to have a great turnover margin — our coaches are just really good at emphasizing ball security! We’re tougher than everyone else — that’s why we recovered all those fumbles!
We weren’t lucky to win all those close games — we’re clutch! Our coaches know how to press all the right buttons! Our quarterback is a cool customer!
We weren’t lucky to have fewer injuries than everyone else — our strength-and-conditioning coach is the best in America! And again: We’re just tougher!
As loath as we may be to admit it, a large percentage of a given college football season — with its small overall sample of games — is determined by the bounce of a pointy ball, the bend of a ligament and the whims of fate. Certain teams will end up with an unsustainably good turnover margin that turns on them the next year. Certain teams (often the same ones) will enjoy a great run of close-game fortune based on some combination of great coaching, sturdy quarterback play, timely special teams contributions … and massive amounts of unsustainable randomness. Certain teams will keep their starting lineups mostly intact for 12 or more games while another is watching its depth chart change dramatically on a week-to-week basis.
As we prepare for the 2025 college football season, it’s worth stepping back and looking at who did, and didn’t, get the bounces in 2024. Just because Lady Luck was (or wasn’t) on your side one year, doesn’t automatically mean your fortunes will flip the next, but that’s often how these things go. Be it turnovers, close-game fortune or injuries, let’s talk about the teams that were dealt the best and worst hands last fall.
Jump to a section:
Turnover luck | Close games luck
Injuries and general shuffling | Turnaround candidates
Turnover luck
In last year’s ACC championship game, Clemson bolted to a 24-7 halftime lead, then white-knuckled it to the finish. SMU came back to tie the score at 31 with only 16 seconds left, but Nolan Hauser‘s 56-yard field goal at the buzzer gave the Tigers a 34-31 victory and a spot in 2024’s College Football Playoff at Alabama’s expense.
In the first series of the game, Clemson’s T.J. Parker pulled a perfect sack-and-strip of SMU QB Kevin Jennings, forcing and falling on a loose ball at the SMU 33-yard line. Clemson scored two plays later to take a 7-0 lead. Late in the first quarter, Khalil Barnes picked off a Jennings pass near midfield, ending what could have become a scoring threat with one more first down. A few minutes later, Clemson’s Cade Klubnik fumbled at the end of a 14-yard gain, but tight end Jake Briningstool recovered it at midfield, preventing another potential scoring threat from developing. (Klubnik fumbled seven times in the 2024 season but lost only one of them.)
Early in the third quarter, after SMU cut Clemson’s lead to 24-14, David Eziomume fumbled the ensuing kickoff at the Clemson 6, but teammate Keith Adams Jr. recovered it right before two SMU players pounced.
Over 60 minutes, both teams fumbled twice, and Clemson defended (intercepted or broke up) eight passes to SMU’s seven. On average, 50% of fumbles are lost and about 21% of passes defended become INTs, so Clemson’s expected turnover margin in this game was plus-0.2 (because of the extra pass defended). The Tigers’ actual turnover margin was plus-2, a difference of 1.8 turnovers in a game they barely won.
Clemson was obviously a solid team in 2024, but the Tigers probably wouldn’t have reached the CFP without turnovers luck. For the season, they fumbled 16 times but lost only three, and comparing their expected (based on the averages above) and actual turnover margins, almost no one benefited more from the randomness of a bouncing ball.
It probably isn’t a surprise to see that, of last year’s 12 playoff teams, eight benefited from positive turnovers luck, and six were at plus-3.3 or higher. You’ve got to be lucky and good to win, right?
You aren’t often lucky for two straight years, though. It might be noteworthy to point out that, of the teams in Mark Schlabach’s Way-Too-Early 2025 rankings, five were in the top 20 in terms of turnovers luck: No. 5 Georgia, No. 7 Clemson, No. 9 BYU, No. 11 Iowa State and No. 17 Indiana (plus two others from his Teams Also Considered list: Army and Baylor).
It’s also noteworthy to point out that three teams on Schlabach’s list — No. 6 Oregon, No. 8 LSU and No. 15 SMU — ranked in the triple-digits in terms of turnovers luck. Oregon started the season 13-0 without the benefit of bounces. For that matter, Auburn, a team on the Also Considered list, ranked 125th in turnovers luck in a season that saw the Tigers go just 1-3 in one-score finishes. There might not have been a more what-could-have-been team in the country than Hugh Freeze’s Tigers.
Close games
One of my favorite tools in my statistical toolbox is what I call postgame win expectancy. The idea is to take all of a game’s key, predictive stats — all the things that end up feeding into my SP+ rankings — and basically toss them into the air and say, “With these stats, you could have expected to win this game X% of the time.”
Alabama‘s 40-35 loss to Vanderbilt on Oct. 5 was one of the most impactful results of the CFP race. It was also one of the least likely results of the season in terms of postgame win expectancy. Bama averaged 8.8 yards per play to Vandy’s 5.6, generated a 56% success rate* to Vandy’s 43% and scored touchdowns on all four of its trips into the red zone. It’s really hard to lose when you do all of that — in fact, the Crimson Tide’s postgame win expectancy was a whopping 98.5%. (You can see all postgame win expectancy data here)
(* Success rate: how frequently an offense is gaining at least 50% of necessary yardage on first down, 70% on second and 100% on third and fourth. It is one of the more reliable and predictive stats you’ll find, and it’s a big part of SP+.)
Vandy managed to overcome these stats in part because of two of the most perfect bounces you’ll ever see. In the first, Jalen Milroe had a pass batted at the line, and it deflected high into the air and, eventually, into the arms of Randon Fontenette, who caught it on the run and raced 29 yards for a touchdown and an early 13-0 lead.
In the second half, with Bama driving to potentially take the lead, Miles Capers sacked Milroe and forced a fumble; the ball sat on the ground for what felt like an eternity before Yilanan Ouattara outwrestled a Bama lineman for it. Instead of trailing, Vandy took over near midfield and scored seven plays later. It took turnovers luck and unlikely key-play execution — despite a 43% success rate, Diego Pavia and the Commodores went 12-for-18 on third down and 1-for-1 on fourth — for Vandy to turn a 1.5% postgame win expectancy into a victory. It also wasn’t Alabama’s only incredibly unlikely loss: The Tide were at 87.8% to beat Michigan in the ReliaQuest Bowl but fell 19-13.
(Ole Miss can feel the Tide’s pain: The Rebels were at 76.0% postgame win expectancy against Kentucky and 73.7% against Florida. There was only a 6% chance that they would lose both games, and even going 1-1 would have likely landed them a CFP bid. They lost both.)
Adding up each game’s postgame win expectancy is a nice way of seeing how many games a team should have won on average. I call this a team’s second-order win total. Alabama was at 10.7 second-order wins but went 9-4. That was one of the biggest differences of the season. Somehow, however, Iron Bowl rival Auburn was even more unfortunate.
Based solely on stats, Arkansas State should have won about four games, and Auburn should have won about eight. Instead, the Red Wolves went 8-5 and the Tigers went 5-7.
Comparing win totals to these second-order wins is one of the surest ways of identifying potential turnaround stories for the following season. In 2023, 15 teams had second-order win totals at least one game higher than their actual win totals — meaning they suffered from poor close-game fortune. Ten of those 15 teams saw their win totals increase by at least two games in 2024, including East Carolina (from 2-10 to 8-5), TCU (5-7 to 9-4), Pitt (3-9 to 7-6), Boise State (8-6 to 12-2) and Louisiana (6-7 to 10-4). On average, these 15 teams improved by 1.9 wins.
On the flip side, 19 teams overachieved their second-order win totals by at least 1.0 wins in 2023. This list includes both of 2023’s national title game participants, Washington and Michigan. The Huskies and Wolverines sank from a combined 29-1 in 2023 to 14-12 in 2024, and it could have been even worse. Michigan overachieved again, going 8-5 despite a second-order win total of 6.0. Other 2023 overachievers weren’t so lucky. Oklahoma State (from 10-4 to 3-9), Wyoming (from 9-4 to 3-9), Northwestern (from 8-5 to 4-8) and NC State (from 9-4 to 6-7) all won more games than the stats expected in 2023, and all of them crumpled to some degree in 2024. On average, the 19 overachieving teams regressed by 1.9 wins last fall.
It’s worth keeping in mind that several teams in Schlabach’s Way-Too-Early Top 25 — including No. 6 Oregon, No. 8 LSU, No. 11 Iowa State, No. 13 Illinois and, yes, No. 21 Michigan — all exceeded statistical expectations in wins last season, as did Also Considered teams like Army, Duke, Missouri and Texas Tech. The fact that Oregon and LSU overachieved while suffering from poor turnovers luck is (admittedly) rather unlikely and paints a conflicting picture.
Meanwhile, one should note that three Way-Too-Early teams — No. 12 Alabama, No. 23 Miami and No. 25 Ole Miss (plus Washington and, of course, Auburn from the Also Considered list) — all lost more games than expected last season. With just a little bit of good fortune, they could prove to be awfully underrated.
Injuries and general shuffling
Injuries are hard to define in college football — coaches are frequently canny in the information they do and do not provide, and with so many teams in FBS, it’s impossible to derive accurate data regarding how many games were missed due to injury.
We can glean quite a bit from starting lineups, however. Teams with lineups that barely changed throughout the season were probably pretty happy with their overall results, while teams with ever-changing lineups likely succumbed to lots of losses. Below, I’ve ranked teams using a simple ratio: I compared (a) the number of players who either started every game or started all but one for a given team to (b) the number of players who started only one or two games, likely as a stopgap. If you had far more of the former, your team likely avoided major injury issues and, with a couple of major exceptions, thrived. If you had more of the latter, the negative effects were probably pretty obvious.
Despite the presence of 1-11 Purdue and 2-10 Kennesaw State near the top of the list — Purdue fielded one of the worst power conference teams in recent memory and barely could blame injury for its issues — you can still see a decent correlation between a positive ratio and positive results. The six teams with a ratio of at least 2.8 or above went a combined 62-22 in 2024, while the teams with a 0.5 ratio or worse went 31-56.
Seven of nine conference champions had a ratio of at least 1.3, and 11 of the 12 CFP teams were at 1.44 or higher (five were at 2.6 or higher). Indiana, the most shocking of CFP teams, was second on the list above; epic disappointments like Oklahoma and, especially, Florida State were near the bottom. (The fact that Georgia won the SEC and reached the CFP despite a pretty terrible injury ratio speaks volumes about the depth Kirby Smart has built in Athens. Of course, the Dawgs also enjoyed solid turnovers luck.)
Major turnaround candidates
It’s fair to use this information as a reason for skepticism about teams like Indiana (turnovers luck and injuries luck), Clemson (turnovers luck), Iowa State (close-games luck), Penn State (injuries luck) or Sam Houston (all of the above, plus a coaching change), but let’s end on an optimistic note instead. Here are five teams that could pretty easily enjoy a big turnaround if Lady Luck is a little kinder.
Auburn Tigers: Auburn enjoyed a better success rate than its opponents (44.7% to 38.5%) and made more big plays as well (8.9% of plays gained 20-plus yards versus 5.7% for opponents). That makes it awfully hard to lose! But the Tigers made exactly the mistake they couldn’t make and managed to lose games with 94%, 76% and 61% postgame win expectancy. There’s nothing saying this was all bad luck, but even with a modest turnaround in fortune, the Tigers will have a very high ceiling in 2025.
Florida Gators: The Gators improved from 41st to 20th in SP+ and from 5-7 to 8-5 overall despite starting three quarterbacks and 12 different DBs and ranking 132nd on the list above. That says pretty spectacular things about their overall upside, especially considering their improved experience levels on the O-line, in the secondary and the general optimism about sophomore quarterback DJ Lagway.
Florida Atlantic Owls: Only one team ranked 111th or worse in all three of the tables above — turnovers luck (111th), second-order win difference (121st) and injury ratio (131st). You could use this information to make the case that the Owls shouldn’t have fired head coach Tom Herman, or you could simply say that new head coach Zach Kittley is pretty well-positioned to get some bounces and hit the ground running.
Florida State Seminoles: There was evidently plenty of poor fortune to go around in the Sunshine State last season, and while Mike Norvell’s Seminoles suffered an epic hangover on the field, they also didn’t get a single bounce: They were 129th in turnovers luck, 99th in second-order win difference and 110th in injury ratio. Norvell has brought in new coordinators and plenty of new players, and the Noles are almost guaranteed to jump up from 2-10. With a little luck, that jump could be a pretty big one.
Utah Utes: Along with UCF, Utah was one of only two teams to start four different quarterbacks in 2024. The Utes were also among only four teams to start at least 11 different receivers or tight ends and among five teams to start at least nine defensive linemen. If you’re looking for an easy explanation for how they fell from 65th to 96th in offensive SP+ and from 8-5 to 5-7 overall, that’s pretty succinct and telling.
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