When you examine the common opponents logic prevails

Adding Up Alabama & Auburn’s Common Opponents This Season

By: Larry Burton

This season Alabama and Auburn have played six common opponents, they are Mercer, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, LSU, Arkansas and Texas A&M. Alabama has defeated them all, Auburn was defeated by LSU.

 

In a breakdown of each common opponent,

Auburn defeated Mercer 24-10                             Alabama defeated Mercer 56-0                       Advantage Alabama

Auburn defeated Miss St. 49-10                            Alabama defeated Miss. St. 31-24                    Advantage Auburn

Auburn defeated Ole Miss 44-23                          Alabama defeated Ole Miss 66-3                     Advantage Alabama

Auburn was defeated by LSU 27-23                      Alabama defeated LSU 24-10                           Advantage Alabama

Auburn defeated Arkansas by 52-20                     Alabama defeated Arkansas 41-9                     Same difference

Auburn defeated Texas A&M 42-27                      Alabama defeated Texas A&M 27-19               Advantage Auburn

Summary: Alabama did better against three of the six opponents, Auburn did better in two of the six and one game was the same margin of defeat.

In those games against common opponents Auburn scored 234 points and gave up +117 for a difference of 117. Against those same opponents Alabama scored 245 points and gave up just 65 for a difference of +180.

In other words, Alabama defeated all those opponents, by an average score of 40.8 to 10.8 and a difference of 30 points per game. Auburn on the other hand lost to one of the six but had an average score against those same teams of 39 to 19.5, or a difference of just less than 20 points a game. To add logic to these numbers, Alabama would appear to be 10 points better than Auburn and certainly a better team for defeating them all while Auburn had a loss against one.

I’ve already gone on record once saying Alabama will win by at least nine. Las Vegas has it around 4. I may have said 10 points but I believe that home field is worth at least one point, no matter how focused the visiting team is.

But if you’ve read my column over the years, you know I’ve said that you can use statistics to argue both side of most arguments. So all of this may be just pure conjecture, but statistics do ring true most of the time. That’s not opinion, that’s just fact.

Larry has been published in almost every media outlet for college sports and now primarily writes here for Touchdown Alabama. Follow Larry on Twitter for inside thoughts and game time comments at https://twitter.com/LBSportswriter

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