About

After another Sunday wasted watching my team squander a lead to lose a game, I wondered, "How bad was this choke? How could this be objectively measured?" There are other rankings but the methodologies are subjective and only show the top 5 or 10. I wanted a way to look at a game and see how bad the losing team choked.

Introducing the Choke Index! Each game is assigned a 'Choke Number' which is calculated based off the score and time of the game's scoring events. See the methodology section below for a more detailed explanation of how the scoring works.

The site is divided into sports (only Football now, with other sports to follow). Each sport is then subdivided by League (or conference for NCAA), and then into seasons. You can find any past game to see where it ranks on the Choke Index.

Each Game will have a Choke Number, which will determine a few key rankings:

All-Time Rankings
  • Choke Rank
  • Choke Rank by Team
  • Choke Rank by League
Season Rankings
  • Choke Rank by Week
  • Season Choke Rank by Team
  • Season Choke Rank by League

These can be used to compare chokes between other games. For example, the game that inspired this site (which is also the example below) was only ranked #2 choke of that week, neat!

Methodology

First, let's look at how scoring normally works. Teams start 0-0 and through Scoring Events (TD, FG, Home Run, Goal, etc.), gain points in discrete incriments. So let's look at an example of a scoring table below:

GT CHI TEN Description Time
Q1 15:00 0 0 Game Start 0
Q1 0:41 0 7 Tony Pollard 26 yard rush (Nick Folk kick) 859
Q2 14:06 0 10 Nick Folk 40 yard field goal 954
Q2 3:44 0 17 Chigoziem Okonkwo 17 yard pass from Will Levis (Nick Folk kick) 1576
Q2 0:27 3 17 Cairo Santos 24 yard field goal 1773
Q3 9:07 10 17 Jonathan Owens 21 yard blocked punt return (Cairo Santos kick) 2153
Q4 14:47 13 17 Cairo Santos 50 yard field goal 2713
Q4 9:52 16 17 Cairo Santos 48 yard field goal 3008
Q4 7:35 24 17 Tyrique Stevenson 43 yard interception return (D'Andre Swift pass from Caleb Williams) 3145
Q4 0:00 24 17 Game End 3600

Nothing wild here. Just one team choking away a 3 possession lead. Normal Titans stuff. Now let's see what a step-line chart of each's team score looks like below:

CHI vs TEN Scoring Chart

Elapsed Time (seconds)

Here we can graphically see that TEN jumped to a big lead then did diddly-squat with all that time in the second half to increase their lead. And that brings the element that we need to add in here: TIME. What if there was a way to make the scoring dynamic in time? So instead of getting 3 points once you kick a FG, you get 3 points EVERY MINUTE afterward (If you are familiar with 'King-of-the-Hill' type scoring in Video games, this is basically that). Well now we can with PISS!

Parham <- my last name

Integral

Scoring

System

Notice that the area underneath the scoring lines make nice little rectangles. These rectangles simply equal Score * Time and will be our basis of PISS. Note that this is the INTEGRAL of the scoring line, so let's calculate the PISS scores for both the home and away teams using the formula below:

PISS = ∑ ( CurrentScore i ⋅ TimeElapsed i 60 )
GT CHI TEN Description Time HP AP CN
Q1 15:00 0 0 Game Start 0 0 0 0
Q1 0:41 0 7 Tony Pollard 26 yard rush (Nick Folk kick) 859 0 0 0
Q2 14:06 0 10 Nick Folk 40 yard field goal 954 0 11 -11
Q2 3:44 0 17 Chigoziem Okonkwo 17 yard pass from Will Levis (Nick Folk kick) 1576 0 114 -114
Q2 0:27 3 17 Cairo Santos 24 yard field goal 1773 0 169 -169
Q3 9:07 10 17 Jonathan Owens 21 yard blocked punt return (Cairo Santos kick) 2153 19 276 -257
Q4 14:47 13 17 Cairo Santos 50 yard field goal 2713 112 434 -322
Q4 9:52 16 17 Cairo Santos 48 yard field goal 3008 175 517 -342
Q4 7:35 24 17 Tyrique Stevenson 43 yard interception return (D'Andre Swift pass from Caleb Williams) 3145 211 555 -344
Q4 0:00 24 17 Game End 3600 393 683 -290

CHI vs TEN PISS Chart

Elapsed Time (seconds)

So now with HP and AP we have dynamic scoring! Each line displays the score the team had multiplied by each minute they had that score.

Now we can just subtract the Home Team PISS from Away Team PISS and we get the CHOKE NUMBER! If the CN is positive the home team has more PISS and should've won the game, and if the CN is negative the away team has more PISS and should've won the game.

CHI vs TEN Choke Chart

Elapsed Time (seconds)

Now that we have the CN, we need to determine if a choke occurred or not (with the CN being the magnitude of the choke). For this, we simply analyze the 4 possibilities:

  • Score Difference Positive, Choke Number Positive
    Home Team won and Home Team should've won. No Choke
  • Score Difference Negative, Choke Number Positive
    Away Team won and Home Team should've won. Home Team CHOKE
  • Score Difference Positive, Choke Number Negative
    Home Team won and Away Team should've won. Away Team CHOKE <- This Example
  • Score Difference Negative, Choke Number Negative
    Away Team won and Away Team should've won. No Choke

And that's it! That's how can determine if a team choked or not. For the CHI vs TEN example, TEN held a big lead for almost half the game and racked up a lot of PISS. However CHI came roaring back and eventually won the game. Home Team won but Away team should've won, so an Away Team CHOKE! Once determined to be a choke, all choke numbers are converted to their absolute values in order to be compared with other chokes.

Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. Notice how none of this formula is inherit to just football; It is score multiplied by time. That means that this process can be used on virtually any sport to determine chokes and that's what I intend to do. But there is a small caveat. Other sports have varying levels of points scored. A normal football team scores around 20 points a game, baseball maybe 6, and basketball sometimes even over 100! So the PISS scores and Choke Numbers of each sport will vary too greatly in magnitude to compare directly. Stay tuned for how to compare chokes across sports! (Hint: It has to do with Standard Deviations)

Contact

ChokeIndex@gmail.com