Does a high team PPV turn into wins?

Chad Clum (21)

I have to start this article by mentioning that I have no idea how PPV is calculated. This would be much more interesting if I could give you an equation to better explain what PPV is, but that’s one of the few UH secrets that I haven’t been granted access to.

My basic understanding of PPV is it’s really high when you put up good stats and really low when you put up bad stats. For example, Chad Clum’s PPV of $22,961,209 is the highest in UH history (minimum 100 games). He has career averages of 25.6/13.3/6.9 while shooting 62% from the field. That all adds up. On the other end of the spectrum, you have my career PPV of $4,388,814, which is a combination of career averages of 6/4.2/1.9 and 51% shooting from the field.

Naturally, you’d imagine that having a team with a high average payroll would be the key to having success in UH. The more high-profile players you have, the more wins, right? There’s nothing definitive to prove or disprove that, but let’s look at some teams and leagues to see what we can conclude.

If you look at the national payroll rankings on our leagues website, which ranks every team across UH Nation based on average payroll, and take the win-loss record of the top 10 teams based on average payroll (excluding national tournament teams) it adds up to 60-34 (.638).

That’s a decent start, but that accounts for multiple teams across a few different leagues. Let’s narrow it down to Arizona draft teams (which makes sense, considering eight of those top 10 teams are Arizona draft teams). Here are the teams with the highest-seed entering the draft tournament from the four draft leagues in Arizona:

Gilbert: City Boys - average payroll of $10,507,521 (7th out of 10 teams)

Palm Valley: Free Smoke - average payroll of $11,846,903 (1st out of 7 teams)

Scottsdale: X Over Draft - average payroll of $7,614,351 (7th out of 7 teams)

Tempe: Hungover Hoopers - average payroll of $9,436,955 (6th out of 12 teams)

These were the four best teams in Arizona this summer, as all four of them made the semifinals in the draft tournament. Free Smoke is the only one that led their league in average payroll (and they also won the tournament, so that’s notable) but the rest of them were average to below-average.

Free Smoke had the fourth-highest average payroll across all 36 draft teams this past season. The three teams ahead of Free Smoke had a combined record of 16-14.

That’s informative, but it’s still not a large enough sample size. Let’s use all of UH Nation to get a better look. There are 34 teams that have won championships from the summer season (not including Arizona draft teams, since we already broke them down). Of those 34, 15 teams had the highest average payroll in their respective leagues, good for 44% of league champions. That’s not conclusive, but a more telling stat is that of those 34 champions, none of them had the lowest average payroll in their respective leagues.

I’m sure all of this information isn’t going to change many draft strategies this week, as there is no perfect way to construct a team. Having the highest PPV in the league doesn’t guarantee a championship, but having good players that put up good stats is a way to have success. How about that for some expert analysis?