Wednesday, November 17, 2010

My Top 25 is Utah-free



So if I were to tell you before the year that one of Texas, Florida, and USC would be missing from the top 25 in mid-November, you would not have guessed that the Lane Kiffin team would be the one, right?

I went back and forth on TCU and Boise State. I like TCU more as a team, but I can't really justify ranking the Horned Frogs above the Broncos when TCU had a close call at home (and in the process gave up 35 points, thus cutting against the image of TCU having a dominant defense) and TCU's two big scalps - Utah and Baylor - both fell out of the rankings. Meanwhile, Boise State trucks right along, albeit against a really bad Idaho team. If they hold serve by dominating Fresno State and Nevada, then they'll be in poll position to play for the national title if Oregon or Auburn loses.
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Clay Travis on Camkampf

I've enjoyed Clay Travis's writing on the Cam Newton story, but yesterday's column rubbed me the wrong way in a couple respects. Here's the first:


6. Cam Newton is, however, neither guilty nor innocent.

Those are terms reserved for criminal trial defendants. Right now Newton is something entirely different -- either eligible or ineligible. So please stop with all the Duke lacrosse e-mails about how people are innocent until proven guilty. These situations have nothing in common. Zero. The Duke lacrosse players faced years behind bars and were charged with a serious crime. Right now, all Newton faces is ineligibility in football. Let's be clear about this, there is nothing illegal, yet, about these Newton accusations.

What's more, saying that we need to reserve judgment until the "facts" are in -- as SEC commissioner Mike Slive did on Friday -- isn't fair because college football judgment is based upon our perceptions of the relative strength of teams. College football isn't a sport that's judged on "facts," it's a sport judged on our perceptions. Would Slive say it's unfair, for example, not to elect someone to the Senate if they faced a serious ethical charge during the campaign? Probably not, right, you should allow that to influence your opinion.

If my perception is, rightly, that Newton and Auburn aren't going to be able to keep any titles or awards they win this season, why is it then inappropriate to react based upon that perception? After all, every bit of the college football season is based upon perception. There's no playoff to determine which are the best teams, we have to come to a conclusion based upon what we see.

If anything, not reacting to these allegations is the irresponsible thing to do. That requires us to ignore what we clearly see before us -- that Newton and Auburn are in a world of trouble. Why is pretending that nothing is the matter better than considering that something is the matter?

It isn't.

You have to make a judgment in this situation. Either you believe Newton and Auburn are completely in the clear and you can support their title run or you believe that they aren't and you can't. Failing to make any decision at all isn't noble, it's the height of stupidity.
I was with Travis on the guilt and innocence point, but he goes off the rails with the perception point. Yes, college football has a two-team playoff and therefore perception matters, but it is perception of the teams' merits that matters. There is no Sagarin ranking for elgibility questions. There is no yards per game stat that accounts for Cecil Newton. If Auburn, the SEC, and the NCAA say that Cam Newton is eligible, then voters have an obligation to vote accordingly. There have been plenty of NCAA scandals that have not resulted in the forfeiture of games, so it is incumbent on us to see how this process plays out. It is possible that the NCAA will determine that Cecil Newton did ask for money from Mississippi State, but it won't force Auburn to forfeit its wins because Auburn neither knew, nor should have known about the issue. (I'm honestly interested in the answer to that question. Is Auburn strictly liable for its players' eligibility issues? Or does there have to be some level of negligence on Auburn's part?) In short, Travis is conflating relevant perceptions - how good is Auburn relative to other teams in college football - with irrelevant perceptions - how will the Newton story play out - in an effort to justify ... not voting for Auburn in the top 25?

And then this argument is really naive for someone with a legal degree:

11. Do you blame the Newton family if allegations of soliciting cash prove true?

Here's the rub: no, I really don't. As I've written and said a thousand times, my position is simple. If you're 18 years old, you should be able to make a living pursuing your chosen talent. The only people who can't in the entire United States are college football and basketball players. For some reason, we require that they serve an apprenticeship at college that makes universities a ton of money.

Again, we don't demand that Taylor Swift sing in the Vanderbilt chorus. Nope, we let her go pro.


This claim would be news to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. There is a collective bargaining exemption to the Sherman Antitrust Act. A union is free to bargain with an employer to set guidelines for entry into the workforce. The NFLPA has negotiated with the NFL to require that football players be three years out of high school before playing in the NFL. The NFLPA can do this in the same way that IBEW can create apprenticeship requirements for electricians. Stepping out of the union context, when I was 18, I wasn't permitted to start representing clients and trying cases. I had to go to college, then law school, then pass a bar exam. That's called a licensing requirement and I'm pretty sure that it's constitutional. I'd prefer a society that does not allow any 18-year old to perform surgery. So no, Clay, football players aren't the only people who can't do whatever they want when they're 18.
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Monday, November 15, 2010

The Sunday Splurge is Happy to Have a Heel

For much of the season, it felt like something was missing. Without most of the major powers in contention for the national title, I had a hard time working up the energy to dislike a team in the Glendale mix. Outside of Seattle, how does someone work himself into a lather about Donald Duck? Or about TCU and Boise State? We've lacked a really hateable program in the BCS discussion. We've also lacked a star player who gets so force-fed to us by the media that we all rebel and root against that player. Then, Saturday provided us with what the season has been missing: a heel. Say hello to this season's Snidely Whiplash: the Auburn Tigers. I'm not sure if it was: (1) the fawning coverage of Cam Newton having to go through the trauma of multiple credible reports suggesting that Auburn paid handsomely for his services; (2) Nick Fairley's attempts to mimic Darnell Dockett (what is it with outwardly religious coaches who preside over teams that seek to maim opposing quarterbacks to the echo of the whistle and beyond? And where is Chaz Ramsey when Auburn opponents really want him around?); or (3) Auburn fans showing their (cl)ass by booing an injured Georgia player, but at some point Saturday, I decided that a fifth straight SEC national championship is not worth the feelings of nausea that I would have rooting for this Auburn team.

Some of my frustration from the game was caused by the realization that Auburn is a Pac Ten team in disguise. SEC fans have routinely mocked teams from the Left Coast and, more recently, the Big XII for being offense-heavy units that are not truly great because they can't stop their opponents. Does that remind you of any team you saw on Saturday? Auburn's defense isn't exactly '98 UCLA, but if an opponent can block their front four, there are options aplenty going on in the secondary. Mike Bobo drove me crazy on Saturday because he didn't recognize that Georgia needed to be scoring touchdowns on every possession and the surest way to do so would be to keep throwing the ball to A.J. Green until Auburn showed that they could stop him by shifting their secondary. Green had a monster first half and then Georgia seemed to forget that they had the best NFL prospect on the field. The third down screen pass at 35-28 was an especially egregious example. If Auburn can't stop your downfield passing game generally and A.J. Green specifically, then why would you ever go away from it? If Steve Spurrier has something working, he'll call it ten times in a row until the opponent stops it. To use an example from another sport, Coach K is the same way. Bobo was either too cute or too committed to balance to realize that he had one major advantage and that he should just keep using that advantage. The Senator concurs:

But then there are the times when Sharp Bobo defers to Dogmatic Bobo, and we saw that yesterday when the Dawgs got the ball back in the second quarter leading 21-14. That’s the Bobo who reminds himself about things like time of possession, balance and number of plays run and forces his offense into an ideological straightjacket, because there’s a book on what an offensive coordinator is supposed to do to be successful and it’s important not to stray from those principles.

The thing is, Auburn’s defense has its flaws, too. The single worst unit I saw on the field yesterday was the Tigers’ secondary. As Danielson noted, they literally couldn’t cover A.J. There were several pass plays during which you could see on replay that Georgia had multiple receivers running open. And Murray was getting decent protection for the most part. The strategy there should have been to stick with what was working in the first quarter (at one point, Murray’s average yards per completion was an eye-popping 21.3) and damn the time of possession and number of plays stats. But that’s not what Bobo elected to do, and Georgia’s scoring pace slowed considerably from that point forward through the rest of the game.

I’ve always believed that the first rule of being a good offensive coordinator is to take what the defense gives you. In his heart, I think Bobo believes that as well. The difference is that he doesn’t trust his judgment enough to stick with it for an entire game. That’s what separates him from a coordinator like Malzahn. In the end, I think it’s the biggest (although not the only) reason for yesterday’s loss. And the question for Mark Richt is whether he can get Sharp Bobo to convince Dogmatic Bobo to take a hike.


The Malzahn comparison is dead on. Auburn didn't throw a single pass in the third quarter. Why? Because their basic running plays were working and there was no reason to deviate. Dan Mullen did the same thing against Georgia this year. To use a counter example, in the 2006 Rose Bowl, USC went from 3-3 at the half with Michigan to 32-10 ahead by abandoning the running game and throwing 29 straight passes. There's no need for balance when one aspect of your offense is working beautifully. Bobo needs to learn that lesson. I suspect that he's too traditional and would be offended by the notion of throwing 29 straight times, but that was the way that Georgia was going to avoid losing its sixth game of the year.

Speaking of Malzahn and Mullen, I kept waiting for Gary Danielson to acknowledge that his never-ending claim that the Spread is dying might be a tad weak in light of the fact that Auburn has overcome a mediocre defense to go 11-0 on the basis of an unstoppable Spread attack. Crickets.

A few other thoughts from the weekend:
  • I love the way some members of the media uses the term "style points" with such disdain when describing TCU's close call against San Diego State. Leaving aside the fact that "style points," a.k.a. scores, are statistically significant, how exactly does one separate unbeaten teams without them? Does anyone really want to parse out TCU's and Boise State's schedules?
  • Another benefit to Auburn losing one of their last two games: a non-AQ conference team will almost certainly make the national title game, which will puncture the air out of Mark Shurtleff's balloon.
  • Just to show that he does have something in common with Bo Schembechler, Rich Rodriguez mimicked Bo's decision to kick twice to Rocket Ismail by leaving his right tackles one-on-one with Ryan Kerrigan. Kerrigan repeatedly blew up Michigan's passing plays while Michigan's right guard Patrick Omameh looked for someone to block.
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Thursday, November 11, 2010

I Can’t Help it if I’m (un)Lucky, Michigan Edition

Following on my post arguing that Georgia is better than their record, I thought that I would do the same analysis for Michigan. This has been a strange year for Michigan fans to grasp. The offense and defense are both record-setting ($) in their own special ways. The team is hard to evaluate, especially in the context of deciding whether the future under Rich Rodriguez is promising enough to retain him as opposed to placing a call to Palo Alto. It’s strengths are so pronounced, as are its weaknesses. But is 6-3 a fair reflection of Michigan’s merit. On the one hand, Michigan is 4-0 in games decided by one score, so the record flatters them. On the other hand, Michigan yardage numbers are good, so maybe this team has been undone by sometimes fluky factors like turnovers, red zone performance, and special teams. To the chart we go!

YPP Off.YPP Def.YPP Mar.SagarinSRS
Ohio State6.14.2+1.988.2215.36
Iowa6.24.9+1.386.1715.29
Mich. State6.05.2+.879.5612.16
Wisconsin5.95.4+.579.3711.59
Illinois5.15.2-.179.299.06
Michigan6.96.3+.674.485.21
Penn State5.55.9-.473.845.02
NW5.45.8-.466.94-0.63
Indiana4.77.3-2.663.63-0.08
Purdue4.25.3-1.159.62-6.07
Minn.5.06.4-1.458.57-9.43

(Note: the yardage numbers come only from games against BCS conference opponents. This includes games against Notre Dame.)

The “Michigan has been unlucky” case is more of a mixed bag than the same case for Georgia. If you rely on yards per play margin, then Michigan is better than their record. By that measure, the Wolverines are in the conference’s second tier with Michigan State and Wisconsin, behind Ohio State and Iowa. Additionally, Michigan has only played one team in the bottom tier of the league (Indiana), so they should be even better in yards per play normalized for schedule. (Naturally, Michigan doesn’t play Northwestern and Minnesota, so the Big Ten’s schedule rotation has the Wolverines avoiding half of the bottom tier. If you want to know whether a Big Ten team is going to have a bad year, check to see if they are playing Michigan.) On the other hand, if you look at the computer ratings, which focus on points and strength of schedule, then Michigan and Penn State represent the proletariat of the conference, beneath Ohio State, Iowa, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Coming back to the one team from the Big Ten’s lower class that does appear on Michigan’s schedule, the Wolverines beat Indiana on a touchdown in the final minute despite outgaining the Hoosiers by a significant margin on a per-play basis. Yardage dominance did not translate into dominance on the scoreboard.

This gets back to an issue that vexed me on the morning after the “it’s not you, it’s me” loss to Penn State: Michigan’s poor special teams (namely their kickoff returns, kickoff coverage, and field goal kicking) and turnovers (namely the bad defense’s inability to force a turnover) meant that Michigan was not converting yardage into points:

Michigan lost by ten last night, despite virtual parity in total yards and an advantage in yards per play. Likewise, Michigan outgained Iowa by 139 yards and lost by ten in its previous game. Michigan lost the Iowa game by turning the ball over four times, but the Wolverines didn’t have a single turnover last night. How does a team outgain its opponent on a per play basis, not the ball over, and still lose by double-digits? A massive disparity in field position is a good place to start. Penn State started three drives in Michigan territory; Michigan didn’t start a single drive in Penn State territory. The same was true in the Iowa game. How’s this for your stat of the day: in four Big Ten games, Michigan has started a drive in its opponent’s territory once. Part of this is because the defense doesn’t force turnovers, but it’s also because Michigan is terrible on special teams. Is it possible that Rich Rodriguez sealed his fate by his decision not to bring back Bryan Wright, a disappointing scholarship kicker who could do one thing well: kick the ball high and deep on kickoffs. If so, that would be a fitting coda on Rodriguez’s tenure: a short-sighted decision that didn’t put proper value on a small, but important part of the game. It’s not enough that Michigan fans are tortured by Jim Tressel’s record against the Wolverines; we now have to watch our head coach’s tenure wither on the vine because Michigan gives away a truckload of hidden yards as a result of insufficient attention to special teams.

As you can gather from this paragraph, Rich Rodriguez can’t say that it’s purely a matter of luck that Michigan loses to teams that it outgains. The special teams problems should be fixable going forward. It’s not surprising that a team that has to start a bevy of underclassmen on defense would struggle on special teams, since those underclassmen would normally be focusing on special teams tasks. Likewise, a better coaching staff on defense, combined with natural maturation of young defenders, should improve the turnover numbers. For the purposes of this season, there are non-luck explanations for why Michigan’s points and record slot the team a tier below where their yardage says they belong.

The Wisconsin game becomes very important for Michigan. Assuming that Michigan doesn’t spit the bit this weekend in West Lafayette, Rich Rodriguez will have reached the seven wins that most people think will get him a fourth year in Ann Arbor. If Michigan can beat one-loss, top ten Wisconsin in the home finale, then the season will move from inconclusive to a success. (I know it’s dumb to put so much on any one game; I’m talking about the way that Michigan fans will feel emotionally about the season.) If you look at the team’s yardage margins, then Michigan is slightly better than Wisconsin and with homefield advantage, should be a slight favorite in the game. If you look at the computer ratings, then Michigan should be a 2-3 point underdog, which still gives the Wolverines a good chance in the game. Michigan-Wisconsin is not unlike Georgia-LSU; one team has had a much better season, but the yardage numbers reflect that they are quite close in terms of total merit. The problem is that Michigan has already played two teams like Wisconsin this year – Michigan State and Iowa – and lost by a combined total of 27 points. We’ve been here before.

Other thoughts from the numbers:

  • Ohio State and Iowa are the class of the conference. The game between those two teams should decide the conference title. Ohio State is a little better by every measure (although the yards per play number flatters them because they have played the three worst teams in the conference), but Iowa is at home. That should be a fun game. Also, it’s interesting that Iowa’s offense was their albatross last year, but it’s second in the Big Ten in yards per play this year.
  • The SEC is a little better than the Big Ten this year, but not by that much. The differences are that the SEC has three elite teams – Alabama, Auburn, and Arkansas – while the Big Ten has two, and the Big Ten has three terrible teams – Indiana, Purdue, and Minnesota – while the SEC has only one that truly meets that definition. That said, the middle classes of the two conferences look fairly similar.
  • I’ll say the same thing about Michigan that I said about Florida and LSU: they’re a coordinator from being elite. If Michigan had the defenses of either Illinois or Michigan State, then their yards per play margin would put them up with Iowa and Ohio State at the top of the conference. Michigan’s defense probably has as much talent as those of the Illini and Spartans, although UM is definitely younger. I’m going to shill for Rodriguez yet again, but if he could just find a defensive staff to make the defense average, then his teams would contend for the Big Ten title.
  • The yards-per-play numbers don’t correlate with the computer rankings as tightly in the Big Ten as they did in the SEC.
  • If Michigan State and Wisconsin win out, they will be the worst 11-1 teams since … 2006 Wisconsin?
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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Barnhart: Mike Slive Should Take a Page from Carmelo Anthony's Book

I heartily co-sign on the Senator's post suggesting that Mike Slive needs to get SEC coaches together and deliver a Stop Snitchin' rant. What a classic good ol' boy response from Barnhart. Let's not worry about the fact that #2 ranked Auburn may have paid $200K for its star quarterback. (If I were Mississippi State's coaches, I'd be livid. There's a very good chance that Mississippi State would be unbeaten if not for the alleged payments by Auburn.) Let's not worry about the fact that the SEC is extremely successful on the field, but that success can be tarnished if the media narrative changes to "they're cheating again!" Let's instead worry about the fact that coaches are running their mouths to the press. (And it's interesting that Barnhart assumes that a coach is the the source for the allegation that Newton was accused of cheating at Florida. There are any one of a number of potential Deep Throats in Gainesville who could have leaked the information, most of whom would not be in the room when Slive reads the riot act that Barnhart recommends.)

Here's a better idea: Mike Slive convenes a meeting of SEC program decision-makers and tells them that paying players is a bad idea.
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My Top 25 Will Need More than a Scholarship

Random Thoughts on the Ballot

To be totally consistent with my love for computer rankings that take margin-of-victory into account, I should have TCU over Auburn. In the end, I can't drop an unbeaten SEC team out of the top two, even if the Tigers did need late heroics to beat Clemson and Kentucky. I suspect that the issue will be mooted when Auburn loses one of their final three games, at which point we'll have to split hairs between TCU and Boise State.

Upon reflection, I don't have enough Pac Ten teams on my ballot. The Pac Ten has been good this year, so I ought to have more than three teams on my ballot. USC would make sense, but on the other hand, they escaped from a game with Arizona State by the skin of their teeth, so is that really much of an oversight? Oregon State is good, but they are 4-4. Cal can't win a game on the road and nearly gave Washington State their first conference win in a dog's year. At least one of those teams should have gone in toward the end so I could stop alternating SEC and Big XII teams.

I probably put Florida too high. And I feel dirty for ranking a Mike Sherman team. This is surely going to end badly for Texas. By the way, what deal with the devil did people in Texas make to get the Rangers to the World Series?

Brian Cook pointed out last week that I had Arkansas three spots higher than anyone else. We'll see if that remains true after the Hogs looked great in Columbia. Sagarin and SRS both slot Arkansas at #13, which is lower than where I have them on the ballot. Consider this vote an endorsement of their good yards-per-play margin.

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Tuesday, November 09, 2010

I Can’t Help it if I’m (un)Lucky, Georgia Edition

There are a number of ways in which a team can be “lucky” in football. It can have a good record despite being outgained on the season. It can have a positive turnover margin that is heavily influenced by recovering lots of fumbles, both its own fumbles and those of its opponents. It can score a lot of points relative to its yards. I have a sense that Georgia is much better than its record this year, but I’d like to prove it. Let’s go to the numbers!

  YPP Off. YPP Def. YPP Mar. Sagarin SRS
Alabama 6.6 5.0 +1.6 92.03 17.66
Auburn 7.0 5.5 +1.5 85.66 18.38
Arkansas 7.0 5.6 +1.4 85.42 13.92
LSU 5.2 4.7 +.5 84.75 16.28
Florida 5.3 4.8 +.5 83.29 13.27
USC 6.1 5.7 +.4 82.04 11.08
Georgia 6.3 5.6 +.7 81.03 7.89
MSU 4.6 4.9 -.3 78.02 10.61
Kentucky 5.5 6.2 -.7 71.84 3.75
Tennessee 5.1 6.2 -1.1 70.12 -0.60
Ole Miss 5.2 6.4 -1.2 68.38 -0.38
Vandy 4.0 5.8 -1.8 60.62 -6.35

(Note: the yards per play numbers are from games against BCS conferences only. Also, I am using the Sagarin Predictor, which takes scoring margin into account. Think about this chart as a way to look at three factors: yardage, scoring, and strength of schedule.)

There’s a pretty compelling case to be made that Georgia’s 5-5 record doesn’t reflect the team’s underlying quality. The Dawgs are in a cluster with LSU, Florida, and South Carolina, both in terms are yards per play margin and also Sagarin ranking. LSU and South Carolina have had good seasons (by their standards), but statistically speaking, they aren’t that different from Georgia and Florida, both of which have had very disappointing seasons.

Think of it this way: LSU is 8-1 and ranked #5 in the country. Georgia is 5-5 and unranked. Going into the season, both Les Miles and Mark Richt were on warm seats. Not “win this year or else” seats, but rather “win this year or else 2011 will be uncomfortable” seats. Miles has firmly pulled himself off of the warm seat, pending the final several games of the year. Richt has not. But if you look at the numbers, there isn’t much to separate the teams. LSU would be a 3.5 or four point favorite on a neutral field. (In Athens, the game would be a pick ‘em.) Georgia has been the superior team on a per-play basis. So what’s the line between national title contender and disappointment? LSU is 5-1 in games decided by one score; Georgia is 0-3 (and that doesn’t include the South Carolina and Mississippi State games, both of which were one-score games in the fourth quarter). Is that disparity because of Les Miles being a genius at the end of games and Mark Richt being a dolt in those situations? Hardly. Does anyone think that Richt has forgotten how to win a close game after he won those games repeatedly earlier in his career? Does anyone think that Georgia’s record in close games wouldn’t be better if: (1) opponents dropped winning touchdown passes on multiple occasions (LSU vs. UNC); (2) opponents committed too many men on the field penalties to bail the Dawgs out of final play debacles (LSU vs. Tennessee); or (3) Georgia got magical bounces to convert fake field goals that their opponents knew were coming (LSU vs. Florida)? In short, Georgia is a 7-3 team that has a 5-5 record; LSU is a 6-3 team that has an 8-1 record.

Other thoughts from the numbers:

  • The Sagarin rankings match pretty closely to the yards per play margins. Alabama is a little better on a points and schedule basis than they are on yardage, while Georgia is a little worse. However, no team jumps out as one that has drastically over- or under-performed its underlying yardage. If you just looked at record, then there would be wide disparities, but that’s why it’s better to look at big sample sizes (yards and points) as opposed to smaller ones (games won and lost).
  • Alabama is going to be favored in the Iron Bowl, mainstream media people are going to say “huh?,” and then Alabama is going to win.
  • Look at LSU’s and Florida’s meager yards per play numbers. Both teams are a better offensive coordinator away from national title contention. If either team had Georgia’s offense, they would be Auburn.
  • This Mississippi State team reminds me of the 2007 team that went 8-5, but was not nearly as good as its record suggested. That might cool the talk of Dan Mullen being a rising superstar coach, although in his defense, he’s only in year two. We are far from Mullen having a finished product. I’ll be interested to see how Mississippi State does in recruiting this year and next. Will they be able to leverage a good season into better talent?
  • Arkansas looks very good by this measure. They are in a cluster with Alabama and Auburn atop the conference. Sure enough, they lost a tight game at home against Alabama and a tight game on the Plains. Yes, they lost by 22 at Auburn, but they led by six in the fourth quarter despite playing most of the game without Ryan Mallett. If Arkansas wins out, then they deserve consideration for a BCS bowl, depending on what happens to Alabama and Auburn. If Alabama loses one of its last two or say Auburn loses one of its last two and then loses the SEC Championship Game, then Arkansas ought to get a spot. You know those fans will travel.
  • Florida and South Carolina look evenly matched this weekend. With Florida playing at home and South Carolina playing in November, one would have to give the edge to the Gators. That said, the game should be very close. All of the games in the LSU-Florida-South Carolina-Georgia cluster have been very close.

[Update: I added a column for SRS rankings to have a second computer ranking that accounts for scoring margin.  SRS comes out with some more conventional results.  Georgia doesn’t do as well in SRS, whereas LSU and Mississippi State do better.]

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Monday, November 08, 2010

The Sunday Splurge is a Nerd

All Hail Non-Fuzzy Math

The last two weekends have illustrated why margin-of-victory is a relevant consideration. Take Sagarin's Predictor, for instance. The Predictor takes MOV into account. It was much higher on TCU than Utah because TCU doesn't have close calls against teams like Pitt and Air Force. The Predictor was very high on Stanford and the Cardinal dominated Arizona, the other challenger to Oregon in the Pac Ten. The Predictor was not high on Michigan State because of their multiple close games and the Spartans were duly exposed by Iowa. The Predictor was much higher on Arkansas than South Carolina and that played out on the field. Although the Predictor was reasonably high on Oklahoma, the Sooners' poor performance in College Station was presaged by their repeated narrow escapes earlier in the season.

Has anyone ever done a study comparing the predictive power of: (1) the human polls; (2) computer polls that do not account for MOV; and (3) computer polls that do. I know what the answer would be, but it would be nice to see a major outlet lay out the numbers in a mathematically sound manner. (The New York Times' filleting of the computer rankings is a good starting point.) There's a lot of self-interest in the media because most of the candidates to write such a piece are voters themselves and would not want to admit the fact that human polls are of limited value. That said, college football puts outsized importance on rankings, so someone ought to lay out the definitive case that we are using the wrong data in ranking our apples and oranges. On a related note: I'm genuinely interested as to the percentage of opposition to the BCS because of anger at the very idea of a two-team playoff as opposed to the ham-handed way in which the enterprise is managed (using inferior ranking methods, guaranteeing spots in BCS games for weak conference champions, etc.).  Put another way, would people like the BCS more if it were run by technocrats instead of boobs.

Their Epitaph Plain: Not Enough Offense in their Game

In July, I posited the following question about preseason #1 Alabama:

Has Saban ever coached a team with a "ridiculous" offense? The only one that comes to mind is his first SEC Championship team, the 2001 LSU team that survived an appalling pass defense to win the conference and the Sugar Bowl on the strength of Rohan Davey throwing to Josh Reed. Just as the 2007 LSU team was the weakest in recent memory to win a national title, the 2001 LSU team was one of the weakest in recent memory to win the SEC (unless you think that losing 44-15 at home to Florida is a sign of strength). Since 2001, Saban's teams have come off of an assembly line: functional offenses with quarterbacks who don't make mistakes, a rotation of athletic running backs pounding away, and a superlative defense highlighted by defensive backs who demonstrate the fruits out outstanding coaching. If the defense is a notch below that (and I'm not expecting TOO much of a regression), then the Bama offense will have to improve for the team to be better than 10-2. Can that happen? Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer met in the 2006 national title game with teams that played against their coaches' types. I'm fascinated to know if Saban can do the same.

We now how our answer.  Alabama has lost two games and will not make Atlanta without a bizarre succession of events involving losses by Auburn and LSU.  In the two games that the Tide lost, they scored 21 points each time.  Bama ran for 138 yards on 60 carries in the two games.  (Admittedly, sacks color this number.  It drives me crazy that college stats count sacks against the rushing game as opposed to the passing game.  This is one area in which college should mimic the NFL.)  Shouldn’t a team with two first-round picks at tailback and a bunch of returning starters on the offensive line do better than this?  Nick Saban is an outstanding coach in all sorts of ways, but he failed the test of being able to forge a championship team that is headlined by the offense instead of the defense.  Or maybe he just needs a better offensive coordinator.

How Much Old News Should we Read?

We’re headed for a new debate in deciding who goes to Glendale (assuming that at least one of Oregon or Auburn lose): should we account for evidence from previous seasons.  Boise State supporters are immediately going to latch onto their victory over TCU in Glendale.  Normally, this argument wouldn’t carry a lot of weight, but with the Broncos being almost entirely the same as last year (at least personnel-wise) and TCU also being fairly similar, the argument isn’t totally meritless.  SEC fans shouldn’t be dismissive of the argument, as one of the first arguments that we would make in favor of Auburn or LSU going to Glendale would be that SEC teams have won the last four national titles and are unbeaten in BCS Championship Games. 

This may be the one instance in which taking a prior year’s results into account makes sense.  We’re always dealing with a shortage of data in in-season college football debates, so why not, right?  (And I say this as someone who likes TCU more than Boise State and would prefer to see the Horned Frogs in Glendale.)  Knowing the BCS, Boise State will make the title game in part because of last year’s Fiesta Bowl, the Broncos will lose, and then the BCS will pass some ridiculous rule that will make the formula even shoddier than it is right now.

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Thursday, November 04, 2010

The Hawks are 5-0. Do I Care?

When I started this blog, I wrote about the Hawks as much as any of Atlanta’s teams.  This made little sense when the team was 13-69 and seemingly headed to drafting Chris Paul.  It made more sense as the team gradually improved.  This fall, I’ve found it hard to get back into the Hawks, despite the fact that they are coming off of a 53-win season.  There are a couple reasons for this.  First, I was dispirited last year by the fact that this market didn’t respond to finally having a winner in the NBA.  The Hawks finished 18th in attendance despite putting a quality product on the floor.  After years of defending basketball fans in this city by saying that they would support a winner and fans who support a loser send the wrong message to ownership, it hurt to see plenty of empty seats when the Hawks finally produced a winner.  (And yes, I see the contradiction in a post in which I complain about not feeling connected to the Hawks because other people don’t feel connected to the Hawks.)  The lesson I took from last year is that this is a good basketball market and a good NBA market (the ratings for the NBA playoffs are consistently strong here), but it isn’t a good Hawks market.  We’re like a town in Spain where all of the locals support Real Madrid or Barca instead of the local team.

The second source of my ennui is the Hawks’ performance in the playoffs last year.  The performance against the Bucks was ugly.  I can’t get the fourth quarter of game five out of my head, when the Hawks got clobbered by a short-handed Bucks team and seemingly pissed away the season.  The team did fight back to win games six and seven, but the overriding question was why the Hawks were even in the position to have to fight against a Bucks team without Andrew Bogut.  Then, the performance against the Magic was embarrassing.  The Hawks had built for five years towards that series: a second-round tilt against one of the three favorites in the East.  The team barely showed up.  I went to game three and left at the end of the third quarter with a rancid taste in my mouth.  That taste lasted for the entire offseason.

The third reason why I’m having a hard time getting back into the local pro basketball collective is that it doesn’t seem to have a future.  The response of management to the embarrassing playoff exit was to re-sign Joe Johnson to a massive contract, thus cementing in place a nucleus that had just failed on the big stage.  Maybe Atlanta Spirit and Rick Sund made the best of a collection of bad options, but it is hard to get excited knowing that we are going to see the same collection of players for the next several years after that collection reached a nadir against the Magic.  Maybe the team will keep growing together, but there is an overriding feeling that we are set of for repeated disappointment with the team’s bete noire – the Magic – in the same division to deliver more punishment four times per year.  The fact that the Heat assembled their mega-squad in the Southeast division is also a problem.  It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Hawks are condemned for eternity to third-place finishes (and that assumes that the John Wall-led Wizards don’t rise up).

The Michael from 2005 would have punched 2010 Michael in the face for being less than enthusiastic about a Hawks teams that has made the second round of the playoffs twice and had the #3 seed last spring.  2005 Michael was excited when Section 317 got free burritos because the team on the court was rarely competitive.  Put another way, I feel a little guilty about my sense of ho-hum about these Hawks.  Still, the pervading sense that the Hawks have no chance against the Magic and Heat is dispiriting.  When the Hawks were good in the second half of the 80s, the town was excited by the team not only because Nique & company were fun to watch, but also because they had a chance of competing with the Celtics and Pistons.  The ‘94 Hawks were less pleasing to watch, but they had a chance of winning the NBA title.  The late 90s Hawks were never going to beat the Bulls, but there was always the hope that they would be in position to win the East after Jordan retired.  (Hence the disappointment after the sweep at the hands of the Knicks in ‘99 and the resulting decision to blow the team up.  That rebuilding process lasted until this current group of Hawks matured.  Come to think of it, Atlanta Spirit’s decision to keep this team together makes sense if you use the last decade as a guide.)  This team is as good as those three iterations of the Hawks, but the combination of the struggles against the Magic and the Heat putting a top team together is dispiriting because it removes the hope (illusion?) that this Hawks team can play into June.

So, here we are.  The Hawks are 5-0.  Their victims are collectively 5-12 in their games against the Hawks and it’s not as if the Hawks have been beating their opponents like drums.  The next two games – at Minnesota and home against Phoenix – are both winnable.  That would make the Hawks 7-0 for their first trip to Orlando.  That game will be very important, at least for my level of interest in the team.  I want to see this core show something that they haven’t shown before.  A good performance against the Magic would qualify. 

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Wednesday, November 03, 2010

My Top 25 is Thinking about Finches


On the one hand, this ballot was very easy. Whenever I get to the end of the ballot entry widget and Wisconsin is the 25th team that I'm adding to the rankings, I know that my internal clock for whom should be ranked is correct. This week, there were 25 teams in my head that deserved to be ranked. No more, no less.

On the other hand, check out the list of college football powers that are missing from the first ballot in November: Michigan, Notre Dame, Texas (those are the three winningest programs of all-time), USC, Tennessee, Penn State (we're now up to 60% of the all-time top ten), Georgia, Miami, and Florida (that's nine of the all-time top 15). This has not been a good year for the landed gentry. We've all been wondering since the summer if we are seeing 2007, but maybe we're actually seeing 1789. It would make perfect sense in a season like this to have Oregon play TCU or Boise State in the national title game.

Since we're on the subject, here are the factors that seem to be working against the college football elite right now:

1. Scholarship reductions, combined with an increase in the player pool. The obvious explanation that is offered for the difficulties in sustaining a major program is the 85-scholarship limit. That's true, but it's an incomplete answer. There are also far more available players than there were 20-30 years ago because of improvements in high school football, talent scouting, summer camps, nutrition, etc. Thus, the pool of top players is bigger at the same time as the ability of top programs to monopolize those players is smaller.

2. The rewards and pressures of coaching are greater. This works in a couple different ways. First, a coach can be set for life based on about ten years as a top coach (especially with a three-year stint in the NFL thrown in at the end for a final, massive payday). Thus, early retirement is a better option. Additionally, with a massive increase in the amount of media and with every Tom, Dick, and Michael having a blog, the scrutiny is greater, so the chances for burnout increase. (See: Carroll, Pete or Meyer, Urban.) Thus, we expect top coaches to burn hotter and shorter than they did before.

3. The Stephen Jay Gould explanation for why we don't have any more .400 hitters comes to mind with coaches:

Q: In your book you examine the inability of baseball players to hit .400 anymore and argue that it's because hitting has improved.

A: The overall batting average has been about .260 throughout the history of baseball. But the variation around that average has shrunk. It's at least plausible that variation declines because play improves. A batting average is a comparison between hitting and pitching. So if everybody's improving, as long as they improve at the same rate, the batting average will remain constant. But it gets to the point where everyone is so good that there's just not much variation anymore. Hitting .400 in baseball is a good example because there's a "right wall," if you will, of human limits. Given how our muscles work, there's just so much that the human body can do. There will always be a few individuals who, by dint of genetic gifts and obsessive commitment and training, will stand close to that right wall. That's where Ty Cobb was in 1911 and where Tony Gwynn is today. But there is this limiting wall. What has happened in baseball is that all aspects of play have improved enormously. Back in 1911, average play was so far inferior to where Ty Cobb was that his batting average could be measured as .420. Today, Tony Gwynn is just as good, maybe even closer to the wall than Cobb was. But the average player has improved so much that Gwynn's performance -- equal to or better than Cobb's -- is not measured as high.

On a program level or on a coaching level, it's harder to stand out anymore. It's harder to be Bear Bryant if the overall level of coaching is so high. Additionally, when a major program makes a bad hire, especially at the coordinator level (see: Robinson, Greg or Addazio, Steve), that bad coach will stand out like a sore thumb in a deeper pool. Likewise, major programs are less likely to get away with a mistake (like, say, converting from the Spread offense that has worked for a decade to a conventional style because of Garrett Gilbert) in a more competitive pool.

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