We all know about and regularly follow the conventional football stat facts you find in the box scores, like total offense and defense, rushing and passing yards and turnovers. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more beneath the surface that is even more revealing.
Most fans are quite satisfied just knowing the final score and a few telling numbers that led to the end result. Stat heads, on the other hand, don’t feel that have the full story until they have turned over every rock and examined all the variables.
Athlon Sports, in the Big 12 edition of its 2018 college football preview magazine (and presumably its other regional editions), identifies five statistical categories — a grouping of telltale stats the Athlon editors are calling the “Five Factors” — that offer a little deeper dive into what went right or wrong in a game or over an entire season.