#ThrowbackDataThursday Choose Your Own DataViz Adventure

This week, we're featuring two similar, but separate datasets in our first ever "Choose Your Own DataViz Adventure" challenge. The first looks at the College Football champions from the beginning of the poll era (more on that below) to present. The second looks at the bowl revenue breakout by conference from the end of the BCS era into the College Football Playoff. Whichever you choose, it's sure to be an interesting dataset to look at.

Click here to download the 'Champion' dataset as a CSV from Data.World

Click here to download the 'Champion' dataset as a Hyper Extract from Data.World

Click here to download the 'Revenue' dataset as a CSV from Data.World

Click here to download the 'Revenue' dataset as a Hyper Extract from Data.World

Data Storytelling & Dataviz Approach

So, I chose the 'Champion' dataset for my #ChooseYourOwnAdventure #ThrowbackDataThursday. After a dataset last week with just a few years worth of data, I wanted to tear into something a bit bigger. Anyway, on to my approach...

I'm pretty sold on the timeline approach, and really thought this was a good dataset to revisit Ken Flerlage's curvy timeline. I modified some of Ken's calculations to split the timeline for the years that had two champions. Additionally, I also modified the template to force the timeline to display the data points only on the 'front' of the timeline keeping each decade reading left to right.

I used the school's logo on the year when they won (or were selected as) the championship. What I was hoping to do was give some visibility to patterns, or periods of domination, for instance the trading of championships between Notre Dame and Army in the 40's or Alabama from 2009 to present. I addition to showing the dominance of schools over time, I also wanted to be able to do the same for the Conferences. I an effort to avoid the viz being to busy, I used a dashboard button to switch between two dashboards.

The button really simplifies dashboard switching versus sheet selectors and dashboard actions. A quick click of the button sends the user to the conference view, where some other patterns become visible. For example, the lack of an SEC championship until 1951 and their gap between 1981 and 1992. The user can also notice the sole championship for the WAC in 1984. Overall, I'm really satsified with how the viz turned out.

There's still time to put your spin on this week's dataset - we'd really love to see what you can do! Download the data and see what you can do. Create your viz and post your work to Tableau Public and Twitter with the hashtag #ThrowbackDataThursday, tagging @TThrowbackThurs. We're really looking forward to seeing what the Tableau Community can come up with!

Data Source

Both of this week's datasets comes from the NCAA. Please be sure to cite the source on your viz.