Category Archives: Sports

Sports

No HOF For Me

I was a little annoyed when I heard a writer had refused to vote in baseball’s hall of fame balloting. But reading his statement he makes a great point:

Anybody who has a HOF vote now was writing then. Also I recall that when I wrote about McGwire and andro, wondering why we celebrated him while crucifying Ben Johnson, the fan/public response I received was almost one hundred per cent negative. Leave McGwire alone, they said. Totally different thing. Don’t wreck a great story.

So the same writers who were celebrating Big Mac back then, and pissing on the reporter who wrote the andro story, suddenly got religion last year. I got sick reading all of those ‘what will I tell my children if I vote for him’ columns.

To my mind, baseball created the working conditions under which players felt comfortable using steroids, amphetamines, and god knows what else. There were ‘rules’ and there was a law — but with no testing and no enforcement, that was like posting speed limits with no radar.

After the fact, I am not willing to stand in moral judgment, deciding who gets in to Cooperstown and who doesn’t. I didn’t sign up for that. And I think it’s wildly hypocritical for anyone else to do it, given how willfully blind they were, but that’s up to them. (The whole idea of sports writers standing in moral judgment of anyone is a bit hard to take.)

So I opted out. Wrote a little note on my ballot saying I declined to participate, and sent it in. Don’t know if they’ll send me another one next year, but I can’t see getting back into the voting unless baseball somehow rules that alleged drug use should not be taken into account.

The great irony is that had McGwire lied to that congressional kangaroo court rather than awkwardly taking the Fifth, he’d be in Cooperstown now. There’s a great moral lesson for the kids.

Sports

The Emotional Packers Live Blog

This is going to be a tough game for me. I love the Packers. And I hate the Giants. I hate Eli Manning and Jeremy Shockey and Tom Coughlin. And I hate the “story” of the Giants surging into the playoffs.

[[Later — this post is a lot more profanity-laden than my usual stuff. I told you, I get emotional when my Packers are involved.]]
Continue reading The Emotional Packers Live Blog →

Sports

Pats Again

A few thoughts on today’s Pats game:

God, does New England block well. Late in the game, Brady faked a handoff and tossed a screen to Stallworth. Stallworth stepped backward but still gained six yards — because New England blocked so well.

Is Kevin Faulk a useful player or what? In several of New England’s close games, he has gotten so many key catches and runs for first downs.

So much for the meme that New England “can’t run”. Not only did Maroney have a game-defining second half, but NE threw a lot of screens that were basically fancy runs. You can do that when you have a QB as precise as Brady.

How interesting that Randy Moss has basically been invisible for two playoff games but the Pats have won anyway. Part of the reason is the defenses are obsessed with Moss and leaving the short part of the field open. And Brady is slicing them up.

One last thought: GO PACK GO!

Sports

Gotta Be the Double-D’s

Once again, Jessica Simpson is being blamed because Tony Romo didn’t play terribly well. My friend Steve — no, other Steve — has the Hot Girlfriend Theory, that many failures in life can be traced to having a hot girlfriend. This applies more to sports stars — who tend to get playboy bunnies and such — and a little less to astronomers.

But, you know, Romo faded toward the end of last year and honked the playoffs as well — without having access to Jessica’s breasts.

Sports

A Good Step

My NFL team is the Green Bay Packers, for a variety of reasons. But I try to like the Falcons as well, since I grew up with them. That they’ve hired New England’s scouting director as GM is the first piece of good news I’ve heard about this team since Arthur Blank bought them. Now if we can just get a coach who is not a conceited dickhead (Parcells) or a job-jumping scoundrel (Petrino), we’ll be in good shape.

The draft is going to reveal a lot about where this team is going. If they reach and draft a QB in the first round, they have no idea what they are doing. They can take Brohm or Brennan in a later round and be set. If they take Jake Long or somebody to build from the lines, they’re in good shape.

We’ll see.

Sports

JoePo

Just added Joe Posnanski’s blog to the roll. I just discovered it and it fantastic. Joe writes brilliant analysis every day.

By coincidence, I happen to be reading his Soul of Baseball right now. It’s good, but mainly because Buck O’Neill was such a great man.

Sports

Comparisons

Fire Joe Morgan has been doing a bang up job tearing apart the HOF rationalizations of various writers. I thought I’d point out something. A lot of ignorant writers are comparing Bert Blyleven unfavorable to Jack Morris, saying that Morris was a dominant pitcher while Blyleven racked up impressive totals thanks to a long but mediocre career. This is, like most things SMTs say, the complete opposite of the truth.

Courtesy of baseball reference, here are Morris’s *career* highs combined to a theoretical single best year:

21-8, 293 2/3 IP, 20 CG, 6 SHO, 232 K, 3.05 ERA 133 ERA+

ERA+ is a comparison of ERA to the league, to account for varying offense levels. So if you combined the best years of Morris’s career into one uber year, he was 21-8, 3.05, 33 percent better than the rest of the league.

Bert Blyleven had *ten years* in his career that were as good or better, except in the W-L column. Innings pitches, ERA, ERA+, strikeouts, whatever you want. There were ten years were Bert Blyleven was a better pitcher than Jack Morris on the best year of his life.

Sports

#1 Failings

Gregg Easterbrook probably said one of the dumbest things in his distinguished career as TMQ when he pointed out that no player who has led the league in passing yards has gone on to win the superbowl.

Ahem.

Last year, Peyton Manning won the superbowl. He finished 2nd in passing yards by 21 yards (and led the league in passer rating).

In 2005, Ben Roethlisberger was 3rd in passer rating.

I’ll just go year by year. how about that? I’ll list championship quarterback and rank in yards and rating where they placed in the top 10.

2004 – Tom Brady – 6th/10th
2003 – Tom Brady – 6th/9th
2002 – Brad Johnson – 8th/3rd
1999 – Kurt Warner – 2nd/1st
1997 – John Elway – 6th/7th
1996 – Brett Favre – 4th/2nd
1994 – Steve Young – 4th/1st
1993 – Troy Aikman – 10th/2nd
1992 – Troy Aikman – 4th/3rd
1991 – Mark Rypien – 2nd/2nd
1989 – Joe Montana – 4th/1st
1988 – Joe Montana – 8th/6th

You get the point. In a lot of those years, the superbowl champ had a QB that placed high on QB efficiency but not in the top 10 in yards. The reason is the same reason that it’s rare for a league leader in passing to win the superbowl — great teams tend to be running the ball and burning the clock late in games. Running up the score the way the Patriots do is kind of rare. The numbers are also distorted because some of the most prolific passers in NFL history — Warren Moon, Dan Marino and Dan Fouts — spent their careers dragging mediocre teams to the playoffs. They were one-dimensional. The Patriots aren’t.

Having a great QB is key to winning a superbowl. Gregg Easterbrook knows this.

Sports

Whither Smith

The fantasy idiots are coming out with their “biggest disappointments of 2007” lists, tops of which is Steve Smith.

Ahem..

2002 – 54 catches, 872 yards, 3 TD
2003 – 88 catches, 1110 yards, 7 YD
2004 – injured, only played one game
2005 – 103 catches, 1563 yards, 12 TD
2006 – 83 catches, 1166 yards, 8 TD
2007 – 87 catches, 1002 yards, 7 TD

2005 was the outlier, not 2007.

Sports

A>B, B>C; A>C?

One of things I hammer on sometimes is that there is no such thing as a transitive property in football. We’re hearing a lot of this while the Bowls wind down. And it’s garbage.

The argument goes like this: Team A beat Team B; Team B beat Team C; therefore Team A is better than Team C. To put a face on it, I heard Mike Tirrico arguing that since Mizzou whomped Arkansas and Arkansas beat LSU, that must mean the SEC sucks and Mizzou should be a title contender (this was obviously before the Big 12 champ got dismantled by West Virginia). Another example was someone who claimed USC belongs in the championship because they beat Illinois and Illinois beat Ohio State.

The problem with this is that:

  • Using the transitive property ends up with silly results. Based on the transitive property, I know have to assume that Pittsburgh, lowly 5-7 Pittsburgh, would dominate the Big 12. After all, they beat West Virginia in a must-win game. And West Virginia crushed Big 12 Champ Oklahoma. All hail Pittsburgh, the best team in the country!
  • You often wind up going in circles. Tennessee beat Kentucky. Kentucky beat LSU. LSU beat … Tennessee. So who is the best of those three teams? The only way out is to not get hung up on a single game and consider the entire body of work.
  • And that brings me to my most important point. A team’s performance can vary dramatically from game to game. A few years ago, I looked at Sagarin’s system, which assigns each team a numeric value and claims to predict margin of victory based on the difference between the numbers. So if LSU is 95 and Georgia is 87, LSU should beat Georgia on a neutral field by 8 points.

    I found that team performance varied by an average of 7 points from the numerical values. In other words, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if Oklahoma (Sagarin’s current #1) lost to UConn. Sagarin’s system can give you a probability (if he chose to run it that way). But a certainty? No sir. Not with the way football works in the real world.

    The point is this: it is foolish to base your opinion of a team on a single game. On College Gameday, they were going on about how USC can’t be the best team in the country because they lost to Stanford. But flukes happen. If USC plays Standford ten times, they beat them nine times. But the game only happens once in reality. And sometimes, reality lies. Sometimes, a team has a bad day. Sometimes, a team is really motivated (think Michigan two days ago). Sometimes a field goal drifts wide or a fumble bounces into the wrong guy’s arms or the pass is dropped. Shit happens. It’s why football is so fun to watch.

  • Even if you could assign each team some objective measure of quality, it still wouldn’t be precise enough to evaluate how two teams match up. Football is all about matchups. A lousy team can beat a better team because they are able to exploit their weakness. Let’s pretend that a lowly 3-8 team sucked at everything but passing while a high-flying 8-3 team excelled at everything but pass defense. Put them on the field and the 3-8 team has a good chance at an upset. Not because they are better but because the matchup favors the underdog.

    Concrete Example: Weeks ago, Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders predicted that the Giants would be the toughest test for the Patriots down the stretch. Not because they were a great team but because their strength — pass rush and defensive line play — was a problem for New England.

    Mizzou found that Arkansas’ power rush defense was terrible and exploited it for a record-setting game. that proves Mizzou can beat Arkansas. They still lost to Oklahoma. Twice.

  • When it comes to picking a national champ, you want a team that can do everything. A team that’s good on both sides of the ball, has speed, brawn and brains. Can stop anything. Can score in any fashion. There’s probably no team like that in college football right now. There rarely is. So what do you do when you can’t pick out two teams that can do it all, that clearly stand out from the pack?

    Well, a playoff might be a good idea.

    • Sports

    Cheerleaders and Ratings

    I’ll update this as the day goes on:

  • Sports announcers are so dumb. I was just watching Michigan-Florida and a Michigan player took a screen pass and, with tacklers all over, turned around, ran backward, then across the field and got 23 yards. The announcers shouted about what a great play it was.

    It was not. It was a stupid play that got lucky. Nine times out of ten he’s dropped for a bigger loss than if he’d just tried to advance the ball. One of the things that drives me crazy is watching running backs and screen receivers trying to dance and reverse field only to lose lots of yardage. It is incredibly stupid and almost always hurts their team. But when it comes up with the occasional big advance, the cheerleaders in the press box jump up and down about what a great play it was.

    He got 23 yards because Michigan blocked well and Florida over-pursued. Against a good defense, he would have been dropped for a ten yard loss.

  • I think Mizzou, by shellacking Arkansas, just showed why they, not Kansas, should have gotten the BCS bid.
  • As I said last year, the Bowl Challenge Cup, which rewards the conference that does the best in the bowls, is incredibly stupid. It basically gives it to the conference that has best winning percentage with three or more bowls. This year, the Mountain West will take it by virtue of winning the Poinsetta, Texas, Las Vegas and New Mexico bowls. Woo-hoo. Last year, I put forward a system that gave each conference 2 points for a bowl 1, -1 points for a bowl loss and 3 points for a BCS bowl win. This is just off the top of my head and is a MUCH better system. I’ll post the standing after tonight’s games.
  • Tim Tebow deserved the Heisman. To win with that terrible defense and O-line is remarkable.
  • One of the things that concerns me with Georgia is bad sportsmanship. They’re up by 31 and still playing hard. But that last personal foul was uncalled for. And going for it on 4th and 5? Mark Richt was smart to give his players more leeway, but he has to strike a better balance of discipline and sportsmanship our this team will sink to Miami levels of nastiness.
    • Sports

    Collective Cowardice Redux

    Earlier this year, I blasted ESPN’s gang of experts for making utterly spineless predictions for the upcoming season. Let’s see how they did.

    All 16 picked New England to win the division. Check.

    Eleven picked Baltimore for the division, while two more tapped them for wild card. Bzzt.

    Fourteen of 16 expect Indy to repeat in the AFC South, with the other two bodly predicted a wild card. Check.

    All but one expected San Diego to take the AFC West once more, with the outlier only predicting Denver would knock them back to the wild card. Check.

    Nine of 16 expected Philadelphia to repeat as NFC East champ. Seven more said they would take the wild card with Dallas winning the division. Bzzt.

    All 16 expected Chicago to repeat as NFC North champ and New Orleans to repeat as NFC South champ. Double Bzzt.

    9 of 16 expected Seattle to repeat as NFC West champ and five of the remainder expected a wild card with St. Louis or San Fran taking the division. Partial Bzzt. St. Louis and San Fran were terrible.

    Eight expected Dallas to repeat as wild card; seven tapped them to win the division. Check.

    No one one thought the Giants would repeat. Bzzt.

    No one picked KC to repeat. Ding!

    The most common wild card picks were Denver (Bzzt) and Cincinnati (Bzzt), Dallas and Philly (15 of 16 expect both to make the playoffs. Bzzt-ding) and Seattle (ding!).

    Buffalo, Miami, Cleveland, Tennessee, Houston, Kansas City, Oakland, Giants, Minnesota, Atlanta, Tampa Bay and Arizona were given no chance at the playoffs. Washington, Green Bay and Detroit are given only one vote. I said at least one of those would make the playoffs and at least one would win the division. Green Bay and Tampa took their divisions. Washington and New York made the playoffs. One of Tennessee or Cleveland will win it. Meanwhile, Buffalo, Minnesota and Arizona made runs. Bzzzt bzzzt bzzzt bzzzt bzzzt!

    Going expert by expert, Palantonio and Smith won the pool by going 7 for 12. Pasquerelli, Jackson, Schlereth, Clayton, and Mosley got 6 of 12, while McAllister, Scouts Inc, Theismann, Tafoya, Chadiha, Hoge, Allen, Sando and Symmes got 5/12. So all their conservatism meant they would have been as well off — probably better, just randomly selected six of last year’s playoff teams and six of last year’s non-playoff teams.

    I told you that only half the teams would make the playoffs again at best. And sure enough, six teams repeated from 2006. My own predictions got 6 of 12 right. And no one pays me to do analysis.

    And the computer idiots at Football Outsiders? They got 7 of 12 but with far more insight as to which teams had a chance and which teams didn’t.

    I would also like to point out — since no one else has noticed — that, as of this writing, the “weak” NFC basically matched the “strong” AFC this season head-to head. People forget this because the AFC has two monster teams. But they also have the Jets, Fins, Ravens, Raiders and Chiefs, who were awful all year.

    A few years ago, the AFC was far stronger than the NFC and Easterbrook hysterically and unnecessarily called for the wild card teams to be drawn at large. The cycle swings back, doesn’t it?