Further to an earlier post one year ago to the day, the same result occurred upon conclusion of the 2011 NFL season as in EVERY previous season since the re-alignment to 32 teams in 2002 – that the NFL is even more competitively balanced when the standings are adjusted for strength of schedule (than on the basis of raw standings) .
Even though this season was noticeably less balanced than (the recent) average without adjustment, the difference from the adjustment was even more pronounced than any other season during this period (with the exception of 2003), making adjusted competitive balance about average over the same period.
On this occasion, the actual-to-idealized standard deviation ratios are 1.611 (unadjusted) and 1.462 (adjusted); the Gini coefficients are 0.292 (unadjusted) and 0.260 (adjusted); and the Herfindahl indexes of CB are 1.162 (unadjusted) and 1.134 (adjusted).
Ultimately, this result reinforces further the need to account for strength of schedule in producing standard competitive balance metrics for various empirical studies!
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