Worcester named as Oxford’s sportiest college

Merton produces firsts, Wadham gives us activists and Corpus, well Corpus must do something.

But now The Tab can reveal that Worcester is Oxford’s sportiest college.

We tabulated all 196 men’s and 128 woman’s blues awarded last year. Where a half blue is given half weight and men and women are equal.

Worcester’s success is hardly a turn up for the books.

Dominating the JCR premier league and blessed with an abundance of pitches they top our blues table with an unassailable 18 awarded last year.

Unsurpassed in three of four blues categories and with almost 6% of total blues awarded they are rightful champions.

All is not well across Oxford however, traditional sporting powerhouse Teddy Hall barely scrapes in 20th place. Just three full blues and five half blues awarded last year, they fall to 25th when accounting for size. Without their sporting prowess what else does Teddy Hall have going for them?

Existential issues for St Edmund?

While Wadham may claim to rule the roost when it comes to gender equality our statistics offer a different story. Nine male identifying Wadhamites were awarded blues compared to just one Wadham woman.

Although they are the worst offenders Wadham are certainly not alone. Over 70% of colleges saw more men than women honored and across all colleges 51% more blues were awarded to men in 2014.

It’s graduate college Green Temple whose women should be feared across the pitches of Oxford however. They romp home with three full blues and two halfs, in rich contrast to the lone half blue awarded to a male member of Oxford’s newest college.

Oxford’s “at least you tried” award is shared by New and St Hugh’s, achieving a respectable 9 and 8 half blues respectively each could only manage one paltry full blue.

Serious business

Although college size does have a part to play on blues awarded there are enough Linacres and Trinities to make the relationship between size and sporting success a weak one. Scientists both social and actual will be horrified that the coefficient of regression R squared is just 0.2 (for humanities students; 1 means a perfect linear correlation, 0 no linear correlation). Meaning that perhaps for Oxford at least, size doesn’t matter.

Blues data was culled from the Oxford University Sports Federation’s website, approximate student numbers from Wikipedia