Somehow I completely forgot to run the final Distribution/Concentration of Power (DCOP) stats for 2007. I only had about eight weeks of data in the spreadsheet so today I finished the analysis up. It turns out that last year was a pretty historic season.

The thing everyone will remember most about 2007 is obviously New England going 18-0 and then losing the Super Bowl to the underdog New York Giants. DCOP offers a perspective on the season that is very similar to most other models, but let’s run through the stats anyway.

The Patriots led the league in DCOP by capturing 7.43% of league power. We haven’t seen a team that dominant since the 1991 Washington Redskins who posted a 7.94% mark. The “best” team ever? That would be the 1967 Oakland Raiders who posted an 8.16% DCOP score. The Patriots were upended by a Giants team that only held 3.38% of league power. There has never been a team, ever, that won the Super Bowl with a DCOP so low. Only one other team, the 2003 Patriots, has ever won the championship with a DCOP under 4. As far as I can tell the Giants are the biggest underdog to ever win the Super Bowl, and even though I think the whole thing was a crock they should be commended for their efforts.

The AFC lost a lot of their dominance in 2007, especially in terms of inter-conference play. The NFC hasn’t come this close to regaining some dominance since 2003 and in another few years we may be watching a league very reminiscent of the 1980s. AFC teams were weaker across the board with the exception of New England while the concentration of power in the NFC was very low, giving more teams a shot at the playoffs.

If every team in the league held an equal share of power, they would all have 3.125% concentration (100/32). What we’ve seen over time is that when the number of teams increases the concentration decreases, which makes complete sense. I wrote an article about parity a while ago and basically what I figured out is that all these changes made to the league (rules, salary caps, etc.) have had little or no effect whatsoever on parity. The greatest equalizer has simply been the number of teams. Since the AFC peaked in 2004 we’ve seen a steady trend towards a more balanced league and in the next few years we’ll see the NFC overtake the AFC and begin another era of dominance.

I think it is fantastic that I can look at these new stats (WTM, DCOP, RSI) and they all tell the same story. As the more popular stat sites like Football Outsiders get more and more complicated (just look at their latest change to DYAR) our analysis stays the same - just look at the trends.