Days Off Before the BCS National Championship Game

The BCS Trophy

I'm going to come clean. I am a Florida Gators fan. It's where I went to school and where I did a lot of growing up. This blog isn't about that, but I wanted to let everyone know where I'm coming from. I was in my car the other day when out of nowhere I remembered how people said that the reason Ohio St. lost to Florida in the 2007 BCS title game was because of how many days off the Buckeyes had between their last game and the title game. I have a different hypothesis: the Gators were better.
But the argument some still make to this day sparked some curiosity in me. Does the length of time between a team's last game and the national title game have an impact on that team's performance? Since we are in the BCS era, I looked at BCS national title games in addition to bowl games that figured in split national titles. The numbers are interesting. Of the nine bowl games with national title implications where the teams had different days off between games, six of them were won by teams with fewer days off.
Of the three teams that had more days off and won, the only team that had a difference greater than eight games was.....Ohio State, which had 16 more off-days than Miami leading up to the 2003 title game. For the 2007 title game, Ohio State had 14 more off days than Florida. As evidenced, it seems as if teams that have many more off days tend to not do as well as teams that have played more recently. The data is very limited, however, as it only looks at nine games. I will expand the research in the days to come.
HOWEVER, when it comes to Ohio State, how can you argue one way for one game, but be unable to explain how they beat a potentially all-time great team in Miami in 2003 with many more days off? I'll say this much in Ohio State's defense, the 50 days off is the most - by five days - of any team to compete in the title game, and they did it twice. The average winning team had 35 days off between games, which seems to be about the optimal amount of time between games.
Here's an interesting stat from the research: When teams have a difference of seven or more off-days, the team with fewer days off has a 6-2 record. I will look at other games to increase sample size.

**Teams in bold are the winning teams when there was a difference in off-days
1999 BCS Title Game - Florida State (44 days off) vs. Tennessee (28 days off)
2000 BCS Title Game - Florida State (44 days off) vs. Virginia Tech (38 days off)
2001 BCS Title Game - Florida State (45 days off) vs. Oklahoma (31 days off)
2002 BCS Title Game - Nebraska (41 days off) vs. Miami (32 days off)
2003 BCS Title Game - Ohio State (42 days off) vs. Miami (26 days off)
2004 BCS Title Game - LSU (28 days off) vs. Oklahoma (28 days off)
2004 Rose Bowl - Michigan (40 days off) vs. USC (25 days off)
2005 BCS Title Game - USC (30 days off) vs. Oklahoma (30 days off)
2006 BCS Title Game - Texas (31 days off) vs. USC (31 days off)
2007 BCS Title Game - Ohio State (50 days off) vs. Florida (36 days off)
2008 BCS Title Game - Ohio State (50 days off) vs. LSU (36 days off)
2009 BCS Title Game - Florida (32 days off) vs. Oklahoma (32 days off)
2010 BCS Title Game - Alabama (32 days off) vs. Texas (32 days off)
2011 BCS Title Game - Auburn (36 days off) vs. Oregon (36 days off)
2012 BCS Title Game - Alabama (44 days off) vs. LSU (36 days off)