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Spiker! Spiker! burning bright
Whether kickoff's day or night
What immortal hand or eye
Could make you throw too low and high?
Week five turned into a points orgy where the cops never showed up to shut things down, which means we had to do a little barrel-scraping here at the Spike Factor. (Per usual, you can find the cumulative numbers, or at least the ones we've managed to calculate so far, right here.) But there is still hope for we, the hateful - whenever Joker Phillips closes a fumble door, he opens an interception window, after all.
Kentucky turned in a second straight competitive week in the competition for the Tetanus Spike, going 27 for 63 for a grand total Spike Factor of 42%. You're going to win this thing soon, Wildcats, I just know it. It's about taking the time to look at what you're doing right and make the necessary changes to start fucking that up, too. Step one: more Morgan Newton. WAY more.
NORTH CALLOUS FORTY
A casual observation from this point in the project: if your team hits 40% or higher on the Spike Factor, you're almost certainly going to lose. There are exceptions, of course, because this is just a crude measure of offensive ineptitude, so it won't account for successes on defense or special teams that can save your sorry-ass running game from itself.
For example, besides Kentucky this week:
- Stanford had 26 plays out of 63 that failed to advance the line of scrimmage, for a Spike Factor of 41%, and lost a close game to a Washington team that stayed right below this danger zone (26/68, 38%).
- Colorado hit 43% (28/64) and got hammered at home, because Colorado football is proof that everything youth sports coaches say about trying your best is total bullshit.
- Arkansas may well have set the record for most Spike Factor plays in a game with 46, which is also their percentage for the week since they managed to run 98 plays overall.
First, Minnesota - a reasonably respectable Spike Factor of 30% (20/65), edging out Iowa's score of 32% (18/55). If only you hadn't turned the ball over four times, this game might have only been a loss by eight points instead of eighteen!
