Final Project Proposal

Group Members: Zach Ventura, Jack Centurelli, Tyler Mastronardi, Stefan Pavlovich

Group Tag: #BeyondTheBoxScore

1. Project Topic and Objectives

For our final project, we want to look at Carleton Football and how the program has changed since 2004. We originally thought about mapping where different players came from, but after looking through the Carleton Athletics website, we found that there are detailed statistics available for almost every season going back to 2004. We figured this would give us a lot more to work with and would make for a more interesting project.

The main question we’re trying to answer is how Carleton Football has changed over the past two decades. We’re particularly interested in how the team’s playing style has changed, whether certain statistics are connected to winning, and which players have stood out over the years.

One thing we want to look at is how much Carleton has relied on passing compared to running the ball. We also want to compare how many points the team has scored and allowed each season and see how those numbers relate to the team’s record. On top of that, we want to highlight individual players who put up impressive statistics or received All-MIAC honors.

We think this could be a cool way to look back at the program’s history, especially for current players and alumni who might be interested in comparing their teams to others.

2. Proposed Methodology

Most of our information will come from the Carleton Football Statistics Archive. The website has statistics for each season, including team records, passing and rushing numbers, defensive statistics, and individual player performances. We will put this information into Google Sheets so that we can compare different years. We may also use OpenRefine to clean up the data if we run into inconsistencies.

We’re thinking of splitting the website into a few different sections.

The first will focus on how Carleton has changed over time. We want to make line graphs showing things like passing attempts compared to rushing attempts, points scored and allowed per game, and winning percentage. Having all the seasons on the same graph should make it easier to notice changes that wouldn’t be as obvious looking at each season separately.

Another section will let people compare two seasons. For example, someone could look at the 2004 and 2025 teams side by side to see how their offenses, defenses, and records differed.

We also want to have a section for individual players. This would include statistical leaders in categories like passing yards, rushing yards, receiving yards, tackles, sacks, and interceptions. We would also like to include All-MIAC selections to show which players earned conference recognition.

One other question we’re interested in is what statistics seem to matter most when Carleton wins. We could compare winning percentage with things like turnovers, points allowed, and total offense to see if there are any noticeable relationships.

Finally, we want to make a short timeline of important events in Carleton Football history. This might include coaching changes, especially successful seasons, or players breaking records. We don’t want the timeline to be a huge part of the project, but we think it would help connect the numbers to what was actually happening with the team.

For the website itself, we plan to use WordPress. We’ll likely use Flourish for the graphs and TimelineJS for the timeline. We’ll also include some writing throughout the site to explain what we found rather than just showing a bunch of statistics.

3. Proposed Timeline

Week 1

Our first priority will be collecting the statistics and getting them into a spreadsheet. We will divide up the seasons and figure out which categories we want to use. We’ll also start looking for All-MIAC selections and important events for the timeline. By the end of the week, we’d like to have at least one working graph and the basic WordPress site set up.

Week 2

Once we have the data organized, we’ll start making the different graphs and comparisons. We’ll also work on the individual player section and put together the historical timeline. At this point, we should have most of the main parts of the website started.

Week 3

The last week will mostly be spent putting everything together, checking that our numbers are correct, and writing explanations for the different sections. We’ll also make sure the website is easy to navigate and get ready to present it.

4. Digital Humanities Model Projects

One project we looked at was Carleton Professors’ Degrees. We liked how it used information about Carleton professors to make different visualizations. Our project would be similar in that we’re taking information already available on a Carleton website and organizing it in a way that makes it easier to compare and explore.

We also looked at Carleton’s Traditions over the Decades. This one gave us the idea of including a timeline. We think it would be interesting to have a similar feature showing some of the bigger moments in Carleton Football history.

5. Individual Reflections

Zach

I am excited to work with the data and find key trends for Carleton Football and wonder what has changed the most.

Jack

I am excited to look at individual performances and see who have been the best Carleton football players over this time period.

Tyler

As a quarterback for the football team I am excited to compare our offense history and see if passing the ball more leads to more wins.

Stefan

I am excited to make the timeline and highlight key events for Carleton football since 2004.