A recent tweet from ESPN’s Chris “The Bear” Fallica caught my eye:
No team won more games by 7 or fewer last year than Oklahoma. The Sooners were 6-1 in such games.
— Chris Fallica (@chrisfallica) June 20, 2022
This stat often gets portrayed as a harbinger of doom for a team in the upcoming season. (For the record, I definitely look at a team’s record in one-score games from the previous season when assessing teams that may underperform or beat expectations in the coming year.) For instance, college football data guru Phil Steele writes every year in his season preview about what a good or bad record in one-score games in the prior season portends for the coming one.