I work in the news business (and moonlight as a football columnist in this space. Hi Mom, thanks for reading.) and one of my biggest pet peeves is people who don't understand the scientific concept about correlation and causation.
Basically, the simple fact that two trends are correlated does not mean that one causes the other. It just means there could be some sort of relationship.
Here's one for ya.
Did you know that as ice cream sales increase, so do burglaries?
That's an actual factual.
So we should ban ice cream, right?
No.
It means that burglaries happen more often when the weather is sunny and warm, which also happens to be when people buy ice cream.
See? They are correlated, but that doesn't mean one necessarily causes the other.
With that in mind, I've compiled a fun little list of correlated historical trends as they relate to Georgia football.
Science!
1) Georgia has fared (slightly) better overall when a Democrat is President.
I say slightly in the most literal sense. The numbers are astoundingly close, but I think overall it's slightly in favor of a blue White House, though it's almost a wash.
Under Republican administrations, the Bulldogs are 404-216-26 overall, which comes out to a .646 winning percentage.
On the other side of the political coin, Georgia is 391-194-28 under Democrats, or .661.
Almost a push, but worth noting that both of the Bulldogs national championships (1942 and 1980) came under Democrats, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter, respectively.
Here's the top five records by administration.
Reagan (R): 72-21-4 (.860)
G.W. Bush (R): 82-22-0 (.788)
Carter (D): 32-13-1 (.707)*
Truman (D): 58-26-5 (.680)
FDR (D): 80-39-6 (.664)*
*Won national championship
The two winningest administrations didn't bring home a national title, weirdly enough.
2) Georgia is more likely to win a conference championship in an even-numbered year.
We're heading into 2017, and I'm sorry to say the Bulldogs have never won a conference championship in a year that ends in seven.
Georgia claims 14 conference championships (12 SEC titles and two Southern Conference titles), and of those 14, 11 of them have come in an even-numbered year.
The Dogs have never claimed a conference championship in years that end in three, four or seven, but they've claimed four in years that end in six.
3) Georgia is undefeated while "Sweet Child O Mine" by Guns 'n' Roses is No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
And during this time, the Bulldogs outscored their opponents by an average score of 40-22.5.
Okay, it was just two games. A 38-10 win over TCU on Sep. 10, 1988 and a 42-35 over Mississippi State a week later.
Still, though, we can't be sure it wasn't because of the song with such a small sample size.
4) Since 1960, Georgia has an 83-percent chance of qualifying for a bowl game when the most popular Christmas toy is a game or gaming system.
This includes table top board games, video game systems and tablets, if you're wondering.
Over that 56-year span, games were No. 1 a total of 23 times. Of those 23, the Dogs qualified for bowls 19 times.
And here's another fun stat, the Dogs have won eight conference titles over that span.
Four of them (1966, 1976, 1980 and 2005) came in years when a game/gaming system was the hot toy of the year.
You go, capitalism.
5) Georgia hasn't won a national championship since the birth of Eli Manning.
The youngest Manning brother was born Jan. 3, 1981, a mere two days after the Bulldogs bested Notre Dame 17-10 in the Sugar Bowl to claim the national championship.
No more natty's since then.
The defense rests, your honor.
6) Georgia never wins more than eight games when a hurricane makes landfall on the Georgia coast.
This stat only includes storms that were still hurricanes when they hit the Peach State. So storms like Opal and Charlie aren't included, since they weren't hurricanes when they passed in and around Georgia.
Georgia has had 14 hurricanes hit its coast during the time that its flagship university had a football program, including two in the same year in 1898.
During those years it amassed a 69-42-7 record (.661), but never won more than eight games (2016, 8-5, Hurricane Matthew). Its best statistical season was a 4-0-0 campaign in 1896, when a Category 2 storm hit the coast.
Its worst hurricane season was 1949, when the Bulldogs went 4-6-1 the same year an unnamed Category 1 hurricane made landfall.
7) Georgia never loses to Auburn in years when a Terminator sequel is released.
The Bulldogs lost when the original came out (1984), but they've won every matchup in the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry in each year that one of the sequels was released (1991, 2003, 2009 and 2015).
There's at least one more sequel in the books, though its release date hasn't been set just yet.
When it's announced, I'm headed to Vegas.
8) Georgia wins the SEC Championship and Sugar Bowl in years when the No. 1 NBA draft pick is from China.
This one is misleading, but whatever. I'm writing, so you have to listen to me.
In 2002, Yao Ming became the first (and thus far only) Chinese player to be taken No. 1 overall when the Houston Rockets drafted him.
That year, the Bulldogs went 13-1, obliterating Arkansas 30-3 in the SEC Championship and topping Florida State 26-13 in the Sugar Bowl.
I .... don't have a snarky response to that fact, so I'm just gonna poorly transition to the next one.
9) Georgia is somewhat likely to have a losing record in years when the U.S. hosts the summer Olympics.
America has hosted the Olympics seven times, and in three of those years the Bulldogs went on to have losing records.
Georgia's record during American-hosted-summer-Olympics years is 34-25-3, highlighted with its 13-1 season in 2002.
Take that season out of the equation, and the Dogs are 21-24-3 when the U.S. hosts the Olympics.
The 2020 Olympics are in Tokyo, if you're wondering.
10) Georgia never loses to Georgia Tech when a new Halo game is released.
There's really only one caveat to this one, and it's 2014, when Halo: The Master Chief Collection was released for the Xbox One. This isn't technically a new game. It's a re-release of four old games on a new system, which I don't count for this stat. Sue me.
So, the other years where a new game was released in the Halo universe: 2001 (31-17), 2004 (34-17), 2009 (30-24), 2010 (42-34), 2012 (42-10), 2013 (41-34, 2OT) and 2015 (13-7).
There's a new game coming out in 2017, if you were wondering.
(I chose Halo because it's my favorite video game franchise of all time. Deal with it, Call of Duty fans.)
11) Georgia is more likely to beat Florida when July 4th falls on a Saturday.
The World's Largest Cocktail Party has been played a total of 14 times in years when the Fouth of July fell on a Saturday, and the Dogs were victorious in nine of them.
The most recent meeting was 2010 (a 34-31 overtime victory for the Gators) and the next such meeting will happen in 2020.
Hey! It's an Olympic year, too!
12) Georgia wins the SEC Championship in years that Snape kills Dumbledore.
If you aren't a Harry Potter fan, bare with me on this one. And — obviously — spoilers ahead, but if you haven't read them by now, you probably don't care.
In the Harry Potter universe, we see in the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Professor Severus Snape, a seedy bully of a teacher who I will never regard as a "good guy," kill Albus Dumbledore, arguably the most powerful wizard in the series. We later find out Snape was a good guy, and the "murder" wasn't actually a murder but a staged event, and yada yada yada.
Feel free to email me if you ever want to discuss in-depth Harry Potter stuff. Or Tweet me @BStewartWDUN.
Anyway, the book came out in 2005, the summer before D.J. Shockley led the Bulldogs to an SEC Championship. So every year that Snape kills Dumbledore (not acknowledging the dreadful movies, sorry) the Dogs win a 'ship.
13) Georgia has a three-in-five chance of beating Tennessee since Kenya's literacy rate topped 80-percent.
In 1998, Kenya's literacy rate topped 80-percent, and hasn't dropped below that rate since then.
Since that year, the Dogs are 11-7 against the Vols (.611).
Keep reading, Kenya.
14) Georgia is more likely to have a losing record when an American breaks the record for the fastest men's marathon.
An American has broken the record in 1908, 1909, 1925, 1963 and 2002.
Of those five years, three of them ('09, '25 and '63) were losing seasons.
2002 was pretty good though.
And in case you're wondering, the fastest official marathon time is 2:02.57 by Dennis Kimetto of Kenya, so I'll go ahead and file today's work into the "Times when I didn't think I'd mention Kenya twice" file.
15) Georgia always has a No. 1 ranking in years that the Phillies win the World Series.
Philadelphia has only won the World Series twice — 1980 and 2008.
We all know what happened in 1980. Herschel Walker slayed Emporer Palpatine and saved the galaxy.
In 2008, the Bulldogs started No. 1, only for the Sith to return and cloud everyone's judgement.
Georgia finished 10-3, in its best effort to waste the talents of Matt Stafford, Knowshon Moreno and A.J. Green.
#Richt.
***
I hope you've enjoyed this fun little piece. I enjoyed putting it together, but holy moly did it take longer than I thought. Like three hours, dude.
If you'd like to see another column like this in the future ... we'll see. It requires a certain amount of motivation that I wouldn't count on from me.
But, hey, you never know.
I'm much more likely to write this kind of piece when North Georgia is in a drought, which it is.
