I've enjoyed writing this column for CaneSport this year. I'm also thrilled that CaneSport publisher Gary Ferman enjoyed it and has invited me to keep writing the column next season. The University of Miami is a leader in academics and sports, so leading in innovative football analysis is par for the course. Good people including Don Shula, Lesley Visser, Tom Flores, Jim "Crash" Jensen, and Steve Sabol of NFL Films supported or contributed to the MPI and my new football book, and this column is based on those same principles. It's exciting to keep following and writing about this UM football team, and I believe coach Al Golden will steer us back to the top. I hope in some way the MPI will help the team. The MPI system will be discovered by more and more as a marvelous tool that enhances game analysis and provides media and teams a major advantage.
I've endeavored in all my ratings and columns to be extremely accurate. Without accuracy you might as well forget measurement. The Mental Performance Index (or MPI for short) was shown in my 2011 book by the same name to predict success (correlating with winning) in the Super Bowl better than all traditional statistics. It was positively related to winning even more than points scored or given up, even though this seems impossible! It was a very exciting finding because the way I score the MPI has nothing to do with points and everything to do with more controllable factors like consistently executing in the trenches, and avoiding mistakes, and playing smart, and this is what coaches want from a team. Now we know why since this behavior that I measure either wins or loses games.
The findings helped me realize that I was onto something fascinating and important. A big part of the MPI is how well a team performs mentally, so it made sense that the MPI correlated highest with outcome in a world where nobody is measuring mental performance. The scores also targeted every meaningful play in the game, so it was more comprehensive than any less inclusive statistic such as yards gained, points, or turnovers. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is a major discovery in sports, but many have never read my book or seen this column yet. It was an amazing finding that something so important to winning in sports had simply been forgotten or ignored, but when it was finally given the consideration it deserved it blew away other statistics! This is all explained in my book "The Mental Performance Index: Ranking the Best Teams in Super Bowl History" and I hope you will get a copy soon if you have not yet. You will then fully understand this amazing finding in sports science, and realize this need for the MPI the same way Steve Sabol, Tom Flores, and Lesley Visser have.
I've kept this summary of the 2011 Miami Hurricanes football team short and sweet, using two major graphics to show you how your team performed. You can always go back and review the 13 previous columns for more detailed descriptions of each game. Obviously 6-6 was an average season at best, but below average for the U, and losing to Boston College at the end of the season was disappointing. Still, there were a lot of positives for this young program.
To illustrate the entire season in one MPI graph (above) I gathered the data from all 12 games and computed MPI scores using every meaningful play in the season. As you see, Special Teams was the best unit overall (.594), Offense was next best (.523) and Defense was the weakest (.462). Of the 14 MPI scores, Miami was better than their opponents on 8 measures, worse on 5, and tied on 1. Overall, Miami did perform significantly better than their opponents on the MPI total score (MPI-T=.511 to .482) but this can hardly be seen as dominant when the average score for MPI-TD, 2.9 percent, was at the 21st percentile. Most everything about this season seemed average in review.
The second graph (below) is even easier to read as it shows each of the 14 MPI statistics in percentiles and also explains exactly what that statistic measures in case you had any doubts. Reviewing these graphs, it is clear that Special Teams (83rd percentile) did the right thing most of the season, and should keep their formula as intact as possible in 2012. While they had some slips, they were overall quite strong, and posted a 79th percentile on dominance.
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Miami did not dominate well in pressure situations on defense and overall (9th and 12 percentiles) which is another way to say that the Miami defense gave up too many plays in critical 3rd and 4th down and red zone situations to their opponents. It is in these areas that Miami can make the most growth as they prepare to improve their team in 2012.
Overall pressure play can improve and a big part of this is training players who have mental toughness and welcome being put into difficult critical moments and come up big. This is what I do for a living every week, talk with athletes (often on the phone) and get them ready for competition, so that by the time the game starts they have played the game over and over in their head and have anticipated many possible problems. It takes a lot of time and effort, as success always does, but it is well worth the effort when the player plays at his best and even better when his efforts help the team win a championship.
So I will close this 2011 column by thanking Gary Ferman again for the chance to share and for wishing Coach Al Golden and the entire Hurricanes team a great off-season and serious improvement in 2012. I am thrilled that Coach Golden will be here for a while, and I think I know what the goal will be: to make this the best program in the country again, and even better than before.
Go Canes and see you next season!
Dr. John F. Murray, described as "The Freud of Football" by the Washington Post, is a South Florida native and licensed clinical and sports psychologist in Palm Beach. He provides mental coaching and sports psychology services, counseling, speeches and seminars. He recently authored his second book, "The Mental Performance Index: Ranking the Best Teams in Super Bowl History," destroying stigmas about the mental game in sports and showing football teams how to perform better and win more games by enhancing team performance assessments and training. For further information call Dr. Murray at 561-596-9898, visit johnfmurray.com or email johnfmurray@mindspring.com.
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