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Bye-Bye Baby

An in-depth look at the performance of the Miami Hurricanes Football program after a bye week.

By KappaCane
NCAA Football: Florida at Miami Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

I’ve examined the last ten full seasons of Miami Hurricanes football (2009-2018) to come up with some alarming stats that should give pause to ANYONE claiming to love this program.

During the 2009-2018 seasons we have:

  • A paltry 61% winning percentage over 10 seasons (rounded up).
  • Won only 78 games while losing 50.
  • Had 5 different Head Coaches during that stretch [Mark Richt (26-13) 0.667 winning %, Larry Scott (4-2) 0.667 winning %, Al Golden (32-25) 0.561 winning %, Jeff Stoutland (0-1) .000 winning %, Randy Shannon (16-9)] 0.640 winning %].
  • Won only 1 bowl game but lost 8 during that 10-year stretch.

The was the bad news... now on to some “better” news.

In looking at our struggles, I noticed a trend. We don’t fare well coming off of a bye. The first game back from a bye week (10 days or more between games), we have a .692 record in 13 games having won 9 games and lost 4 games. This isn’t too shabby, but you have extra time to prepare for these opponents and that number should be higher in my opinion.

The struggle increases dramatically when we include bowl games (28+ days off between games) with Miami having won 1 game and lost 8 games. That means our record is 10 wins out of 22 games for an anemic .454% winning percentage.

I looked further and included our opening games of the season (where we fared better), and noted a 7-3 winning advantage during this timeframe. That improves the record overall for games that come after a 10-day or longer layoff to 17 wins out of 31 games. There is a marked improvement to a .548% winning percentage, but that is still an unacceptable number considering the time allowed to prepare for these opponents.

Looking at the breakdown of these matchups I see that of the 17 wins, 10 have been at home and 7 have been on the road. Of the 14 losses, Miami only has 1 loss at home, with the other 13 occurring on the road.

What does that mean? We play better at home than we do on the road.

This should bode well for Miami this weekend as it prepares to take on Virginia Tech at Hard Rock Stadium.

What are your thoughts? Share them in the comments below.