Mathematical Proof That Friday Night Lights' Eric Taylor is the Best Football Coach in History

Ed. note: The stats in this story reflect all of the show's 73 episodes, two of which haven't yet aired on NBC. If you have an amazing memory and recall how many games over the five-season run have been won by a seven-point margin, you'll know how the series finale turns out near the end of the episode. Otherwise, read on.

We all know that Eric Taylor is a fine head coach. He gives better speeches than any coach in history, real or fictional. (Extended side note: Vince Lombardi did not coin "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." That line is famous because of a 1953 John Wayne movie called Trouble All the Way, and it wasn't even Duke who said it. And while Hoosiers's Norman Dale did, yes, give a damn fine one, Coach Taylor puts out eloquent, inspirational, fist-pumping rousers pretty much every week. I write for a living and don't think I can do that.)

But how good is Taylor, statistically speaking? Asking the question presents a few caveats: Since the actual football games of Friday Night Lights are shown as extended highlights, we don't see full game stats—so it's really difficult to quantitatively compare Taylor with real-world coaches. Plus, all the really deep real-world stats are on pro coaches rather than college ones. And the idea is kind of apples and oranges, because a great high school team would probably face a number of cupcake games each season—whereas in the pros, there's much more parity (existence of the NFC West notwithstanding).

So I suppose it's lucky that the statistic I think best reflects a coach's performance and ability across the high school, college, and pro levels is something we actually can measure from what FNL shows us: how well a coach does in clutch games. I'll define a clutch as a win or loss that's decided by a touchdown or less. Your average coach would win about half their games—a .500 win percentage. Since FNL shows all but a few games' final scores, we can determine, with relative certainty, Taylor's clutch win percentage.

In his five years as a head coach of a Texas high school football team (three with the Dillon Panthers, then two with the East Dillon Lions), Taylor's record in clutch situations is—(drumroll, please)—an incredible 23-4 (.852)! Compare that with the pro coach of the modern era with the best clutch percentage, John Madden. From 1969-78 he went a paltry 35-14 (.714).

Not to mention the fact that in football in the real world, there's a massive conflict between some people's amateur sports ideals and reality. Taylor has dealt with all kinds of thorny issues during his tenure in Texas. Yet somehow he maintains integrity that's almost as pure as the driven snow, every year. He's a molder of men, dammit. If it weren't for the couple of vaguely shady tactics he's used—not reporting Smash's steroid use, and keeping deliberately ignorant of the vacant lot used for recruiting while he was at Dillon—his character would be even less realistic than his gaudy clutch percentage.