Remember when I said I was going to count down my favorite songs on this blog? Me either. Let's do it anyway.
Note: I combined these two songs into one post for two reasons. One, both bands are from Canada, so they can share a post title. Two, both songs use the phrase "your kind" to talk about groups of people, which I find to be one of the oddest phrases in the English language (Maybe it's a Canadian thing, eh). Three, I didn't have that much to say about Broken Social Scene that hasn't been said elsewhere.
#20: KC Accidental - Broken Social Scene
BSS is an amalgamation of various Canadian indie musicians that have been touring and releasing music for over a decade (You could call them a supergroup, but they prefer collective, instead). Their albums keep you listening because of the quick shifts between style and tone. While that description may seem exhausting, transitions between songs are genrally quite seemless, and almost always pleasant. I could have easily chosen their most famous song, 7/4 Shoreline (don't worry - there'll be a song with a weird time signature on the list shortly), or the tremendous World Sick off of their most recent album. In the end, KC Accidental is such a splendid, odd little song that I had to choose it.
#19: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) - Arcade Fire
I've been listening to the Arcade Fire for a while now, and I still can't quite put my finger on how I feel about them. On one hand, I probably listen to them more than any other band, save for a few. Their ability to consistently craft great, traditionally structured songs is nearly unparalleled in modern music (they really don't have a lot of clunkers that you need to skip when you listen to a whole album). Arcade Fire features seven band members which normally screams too much, but they have a knack for being able to incorporate all of their instrumentation without feeling bloated. Furthermore, they seem to be dedicated to crafting complete albums; the themes running through each album (death of loved ones for Funeral, disillusionment with societal institutions in Neon Bible, and you can probably guess what The Suburbs is about, at least superficially) give a sense of importance and focus to the proceedings.
In spite of all this, I still find myself not being as warm towards them as I am with other bands. I think that the very thing that limits their ceiling for me is one of their strengths mentioned above: their adherence to chosen themes. What Arcade Fire hasn't yet done is create a moment of music that sounds as if it were truly spontaneous. Now of course, perceived spontaneity is not a prerequisite for great music. Many of the artists and songs later in the countdown will be just as calculating and self-serious if not moreso when compared with the Arcade Fire. But me to adopt a band as one of my favorites, there has to be the occasional sense of giving in to the music in some sort of primal way, and I rarely, if ever, feel that from them. Their treatment of issues and emotional responses to those issues can be seen as rather clinical. This might sounds strange coming from me, but when you think about how they put together their albums and songs, it almost seems too logical. I'd really like to see them get weird with their next album, if only to see what they're capable of producing on the margins of semi-radio-friendly alternative rock.
That's enough railing on the Arcade Fire, though. If I was doing a countdown of my favorite bands, they'd probably be higher than 19th, so I can't complain too much. I debated about a dozen different songs of theirs for this list, but ultimately chose Sprawl II. It summarizes The Suburbs basic themes of alienation and belonging nicely, which is good because it's seemlingly the dramatic conclusion to the record. If you pay close attention throughout the album, you can hear how the Arcade Fire slowly builds up your tolerance to the synth throughout the album and then unabashedly blare it in the penultimate song.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Beer Pong Sabermetrics II
If you thought I was going to stop at one post about beer pong, then you were sorely mistaken. I wanted to address a few things related to my previous post, and since I'll be all graduated soon, time was running out to use the software. Thus, I spent some time during this gorgeous day where I didn't have school in a nearly-empty computer cluster running simulations. Yup, I'm awesome.
So maybe some of my previous results were exaggerated. My bad.
My original intention for this post was to add some graphs to show what I was describing in the original post. Specifically, I wanted to show the distribution of results for the GB vs. AA match that had very different outcomes depending upon which team started. As I did this, I noticed that about 4% of the games simulated ended in a tie. It turns out that the 25 simulated turns in my spreadsheet weren't enough for some of the games, and this skewed my results towards the team that went first. The stat I was using to determine who won averaged a cell that should have only been returning 1 or 2 depending on which team won. Since some games were ending without a victor, this cell would return a 0, and skew the results. Thus, all the numbers from my original post were wrong (oops). Here are the correct results for select scenarios:
GG vs. GG: The team that goes first wins 50.25% of the time.
GB vs. AA: GB wins 37.1% of the time when it goes first and 35.56% of the time when it goes second. The expected cup differentials for GB turned out exactly the same for both scenarios (-1.12).
GA vs. AA: GA wins 66.15% of the time when it goes first and 66.26% of the time when it goes second. Cup differential was once again the same for both (+1.43).
As you can see, the base scenario is still basically even while the effects of the others are greatly lessened if not completely eliminated. It appears that GB should still elect to go first in that scenario, but it doesn't actually increase win probability by 15%. I was pretty surpised by the initial results, so this correction makes sense to me.
33% made is a strong player? That seems low.
I selected 33% since that was roughly my skill level during practice and no one at the tournament severely outplayed me. Thus, I theorized that that was a good estimate for a typical strong player. Yes, I realize that people who play beer pong for a living probably have higher true talent levels than that, but I was mostly concerned with the majority of players who aren't as good.
That being said, a friend brought up an interesting point. If all four players in a game could make every shot, then the team that goes first would win every time (ignorning rebuttals and overtime). Thus, he theorized that as talent levels go up, there is an added benefit to going first. Here is what the sim said:
All four players hit 40% of shots: The team that goes first wins 50.09% of the time
All four players hit 50% of shots: The team that goes first wins 49.19% of the time
All four players hit 80% of shots: The team that goes first wins 45.83% of the time
All four players hit 95% of shots: The team that goes first wins 55.78% of the time
It appears that higher talent levels remain even for quite a while. At 80%, there is actually a slight dip for the team that goes first, but then it looks to satisfy our hypothesis as we get closer to 100%. Regardless of this, it looks like the difference is never too extreme, and of course you're unlikely to encounter a true talent 80% anywhere (Yes, I'm sure we've all had games where we've hit 80% of our shots, but good luck averaging that rate).
Doesn't beer pong get harder as it goes along?
The other thing my friend proposed was that it's harder to hit cups later in the game. While I normally wouldn't want to make this assumption without some empirical data on whether this is true, it's definitely worth simming. Since we don't have any idea of what this effect is, I did a quick and dirty estimate where each cup removed reduces the odds of hitting a cup by 5% (Thus, you're only 55% as likely to hit a one cup rack as you are a full rack). Since the initial true talent level now only represents one's likelihood of hitting a full rack, I upped the numbers a bit. Here are the results for a couple of tests:
All four players with initial true talent of 40%: The team that went first won 49.18% of the time.
All four players with initial true talent of 50%: The team that went first won 49.28% of the time.
It looks like we still get pretty even results, although these simulations show a slight advantage to the team that defers. This could suggest the building advantage for the second team that I described in the original post could come more into play here. Still, the effect is so small that it probably won't make a practical difference.
So maybe some of my previous results were exaggerated. My bad.
My original intention for this post was to add some graphs to show what I was describing in the original post. Specifically, I wanted to show the distribution of results for the GB vs. AA match that had very different outcomes depending upon which team started. As I did this, I noticed that about 4% of the games simulated ended in a tie. It turns out that the 25 simulated turns in my spreadsheet weren't enough for some of the games, and this skewed my results towards the team that went first. The stat I was using to determine who won averaged a cell that should have only been returning 1 or 2 depending on which team won. Since some games were ending without a victor, this cell would return a 0, and skew the results. Thus, all the numbers from my original post were wrong (oops). Here are the correct results for select scenarios:
GG vs. GG: The team that goes first wins 50.25% of the time.
GB vs. AA: GB wins 37.1% of the time when it goes first and 35.56% of the time when it goes second. The expected cup differentials for GB turned out exactly the same for both scenarios (-1.12).
GA vs. AA: GA wins 66.15% of the time when it goes first and 66.26% of the time when it goes second. Cup differential was once again the same for both (+1.43).
As you can see, the base scenario is still basically even while the effects of the others are greatly lessened if not completely eliminated. It appears that GB should still elect to go first in that scenario, but it doesn't actually increase win probability by 15%. I was pretty surpised by the initial results, so this correction makes sense to me.
33% made is a strong player? That seems low.
I selected 33% since that was roughly my skill level during practice and no one at the tournament severely outplayed me. Thus, I theorized that that was a good estimate for a typical strong player. Yes, I realize that people who play beer pong for a living probably have higher true talent levels than that, but I was mostly concerned with the majority of players who aren't as good.
That being said, a friend brought up an interesting point. If all four players in a game could make every shot, then the team that goes first would win every time (ignorning rebuttals and overtime). Thus, he theorized that as talent levels go up, there is an added benefit to going first. Here is what the sim said:
All four players hit 40% of shots: The team that goes first wins 50.09% of the time
All four players hit 50% of shots: The team that goes first wins 49.19% of the time
All four players hit 80% of shots: The team that goes first wins 45.83% of the time
All four players hit 95% of shots: The team that goes first wins 55.78% of the time
It appears that higher talent levels remain even for quite a while. At 80%, there is actually a slight dip for the team that goes first, but then it looks to satisfy our hypothesis as we get closer to 100%. Regardless of this, it looks like the difference is never too extreme, and of course you're unlikely to encounter a true talent 80% anywhere (Yes, I'm sure we've all had games where we've hit 80% of our shots, but good luck averaging that rate).
Doesn't beer pong get harder as it goes along?
The other thing my friend proposed was that it's harder to hit cups later in the game. While I normally wouldn't want to make this assumption without some empirical data on whether this is true, it's definitely worth simming. Since we don't have any idea of what this effect is, I did a quick and dirty estimate where each cup removed reduces the odds of hitting a cup by 5% (Thus, you're only 55% as likely to hit a one cup rack as you are a full rack). Since the initial true talent level now only represents one's likelihood of hitting a full rack, I upped the numbers a bit. Here are the results for a couple of tests:
All four players with initial true talent of 40%: The team that went first won 49.18% of the time.
All four players with initial true talent of 50%: The team that went first won 49.28% of the time.
It looks like we still get pretty even results, although these simulations show a slight advantage to the team that defers. This could suggest the building advantage for the second team that I described in the original post could come more into play here. Still, the effect is so small that it probably won't make a practical difference.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Beer Pong Sabermetrics
Two weekends ago, I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural tournament hosted by State Line BPL. While my team's fake meijer.com sponsorship didn't quite propel us to victory, I had quite the good time. However, it was not all fun and games in Rock-ford. Important philosophical questions were raised. That is, when given the choice, should you go first or defer?
For those of you not familiar with the official WSOBP rules, the start of the game is slightly different from how you probably played beer pong in college. Instead of a face-off, one team gets to select going first (with the caveat that the first turn of a game is only one shot) or deferring. My team chose to defer whenever we had the choice, since it would provide us the first chance at a bonus shot (other difference: if you make both cups, you don't get a full send-back, just one extra shot). The prevailing wisdom, however, was that the first shot was better because it essentially gave you an extra shot before the "real game" started. I figured that either way, it probably didn't swing things too much. Of course, that didn't stop me from spending a bunch of time trying to find out for sure.
First, I did a little thought exercise, just to get my bearings. Let's say you're a pretty good player who can hit 1/3 of your shots (as is your teammate). If you went first, then your first turn would have an expected value of 1/3 cup, since only one of you would shoot. If you went second, you would both have a 1/3 chance of making a cup, which means you would have a 1/9 chance of making both of your shots. You would then have a 1/3 chance of making your bonus shot. Doing the math, this gives you an expected value of 19/27 cups on your first turn (1(4/9) + 2(2/27) + 3(1/27) = 19/27). Thus, going second gives you an advantage of 10/27 expected cups through one full turn. Of course, the team that went first then gets to take their turn, and will then have their own advantage, although this time only by 1/3 expected cup (assuming the same skill level).
If we extend this out for this example (with two completely balanced teams), then Team A will always have an expected value of 1/3 more cups made after their turn. Likewise, Team B will always have a slightly higher expected value of 10/27 more cups made after their turn. This means that Team A will have the advantage early on since they went first, but eventually those small differences in favor of Team B will swing the overall advantage their way. All in all, this seems pretty balanced, and the hypothesis that comes from this is that it doesn't matter who goes first if the teams are equally matched.
Of course, if you have noticed the length of this post, I didn't stop there. In one of my MBA classes, we've been using process simulation software to estimate various wacky things like fast-food drive through wait times and roulette strategies. One such tool, an Excel add in called @Risk, allows you to use various distributions to run Monte Carlo simulations. I used this to simulate beer pong games with various skill levels of players in order to determine if there are times when going first is an advantage or disadvantage. Before I share my findings, a few assumptions and limitations:
1. I started out with three levels of beer pong players for simplicity's sake: A good player with a mean shot percentage of 0.33 and a standard deviation of 0.1, an average player with a mean shot percentage of 0.25 and a standard deviation of 0.08, and a bad player with a mean shot percentage of 0.1 and a standard deviation of 0.03. These players will be henceforth known as good (G), average (A), and bad (B).
2. I assumed a normal distribution for one's shot-making ability. This may or may not be appropriate for the matter at hand, but until someone does an empirical study on this, I'm just going to use a normal distribution.
3. I didn't account for "hot streaks" or anything like that. Since it's been shown in studies of other sports that hot streaks are generally just random variation, I would assume that beer pong is not any different (And yes, I'm classifying beer pong as a sport for the purposes of this exercise). Yes, there could be a magical zone between sober and drunk where you're especially awesome, but odds are you're probably just remembering your best games and forgetting all the times you lost.
4. I didn't account for rebuttals/overtime, since I couldn't think of a simple way to implement it. Perhaps I will follow up on this later, but I can't imagine it will sway the results by much. In the situations where one team has a superior player, it may sway the numbers slightly towards that team if I was to include it.
Without further ado, here are my findings:
Good team vs. good team (GG vs. GG)
The original objective of this investigation was to see if two evenly matched teams could gain an advantage by going first or deferring. As with all future tests, I ran 10000 simulations of a beer pong game with players of the afforementioned skill levels. For this scenario, the team that went second won 50.26% of the time. From this, it would appear that deferring is the better strategy, but there are caveats. First, I ran this a few other times, and occasionally got values slightly less than 50%, so this is not a hard and fast value. Second, even if we accepted 50.26% as the true probability, that isn't really enough of an advantage to have practical application.
Good team vs. average team (GG vs. AA)
Next, I wanted to see if various "mismatches" change the equations. In this case, I pit an all-star team against a more average outfit. Here is the superior team's chances of winning for the different choices:
Going first: 77.67%
Deferring: 77.88%
Once again, we see a slight advantage in deferring. Of course, that advantage is too small to make a practical difference.
One stud vs. another stud (GA vs. GA)
Let's split up the good team from the previous example to see if "mixed" teams get different results. In this case, the odds of winning for the team that goes first is 50.56%, which suggests a slight reversal for this case. Still, this is close enough to even to be dismissed.
Mixed bag vs. average team (GB vs. AA)
This is where it gets interesting. Here's the familiar scenario where one player carries a team against a more balanced opponent. The hope was to see if a more extreme situation might tip the balance one way. The results for the "mixed bag" team (GB):
Going first: 45.45%
Deferring: 29.37%
I ran this several more times to confirm the wide spread, and every time I got very similar results. It appears that you can add over 15% win probability just by going first if you find yourself in such a situation.
Of course, this wide of a spread is very unexpected, so I had to dig deeper. I actually had been calculating the average "cup spread" of each simulated game, but I haven't yet shown it because the metric hadn't added anything to the previous analyses, as it mirrored the win percentage results. For this example however, the results are quite interesting and shine a bit of light on the previous findings:
GB going first: GB wins by an average of 2.53, AA wins by an average of 3.90
GB going second: GB wins by an average of 3.43, AA wins by an average of 3.22
This shows that while GB is less likely to win in the second scenario, they are generally expected to produce larger wins. This is likely because the second scenario gives the best player in the game more chances to hit bonus shots. Thus, it looks like the difference between the two choices is actually pretty even. By multiplying the two statistics together and subtracting, we can find the average cup margin between the teams:
GB going first: GB expects a cup margin of -1.09
GB going second: GB expects a cup margin of -1.2
Here we find a very small difference overall in how many cups the team is expected to hit regardless of the initial decision. Of course, getting the win is usually the main objective, so teams that find themselves in these situations are advised to only concern themselves with the first set of results. Of course, if you find yourself in pool play of a tournament that only cares about cup differential, you might want to gamble on a bigger victory by going second (if you are indeed GB). Additionally, if you find yourself needing a big win (in terms of cups) in the final game of pool play to make the tournament, gambling on option 2 might be a better selection.
One stud vs. average team (GA vs. AA)
Here's another familiar scenario where everyone is competent, but one person excels. Here are the probabilities of victory for the team with the stud (GA):
Going first: 67.53%
Deferring: 64.52%
Once again, we see the team with the best player seeing an advantage to going first. It's not as pronounced in a more "balanced" game, but you'll still see an advantage going first in these scenarios. Once again the cup statistics show the reason for this imbalance:
GA going first: GA wins by an average of 3.70, AA wins by an average of 3.08, GAs expects a cup margin of +1.42
GA going second: GA wins by an average of 3.75, AA wins by an average of 2.87, GA expects a cup margin of +1.41
We see again that the actual difference in cup margin is very slight and that the option with lower win probability for GA actually has a higher cup probability. Once again, it seems to be a matter of risk versus reward.
Conclusion
Overall, it doesn't seem to matter which option you choose for most scenarios. There are a few things to consider when one player is better than everyone else, but in practice it may be hard to determine the true talent of a player, so these findings may not apply as often as you think.
For those of you not familiar with the official WSOBP rules, the start of the game is slightly different from how you probably played beer pong in college. Instead of a face-off, one team gets to select going first (with the caveat that the first turn of a game is only one shot) or deferring. My team chose to defer whenever we had the choice, since it would provide us the first chance at a bonus shot (other difference: if you make both cups, you don't get a full send-back, just one extra shot). The prevailing wisdom, however, was that the first shot was better because it essentially gave you an extra shot before the "real game" started. I figured that either way, it probably didn't swing things too much. Of course, that didn't stop me from spending a bunch of time trying to find out for sure.
First, I did a little thought exercise, just to get my bearings. Let's say you're a pretty good player who can hit 1/3 of your shots (as is your teammate). If you went first, then your first turn would have an expected value of 1/3 cup, since only one of you would shoot. If you went second, you would both have a 1/3 chance of making a cup, which means you would have a 1/9 chance of making both of your shots. You would then have a 1/3 chance of making your bonus shot. Doing the math, this gives you an expected value of 19/27 cups on your first turn (1(4/9) + 2(2/27) + 3(1/27) = 19/27). Thus, going second gives you an advantage of 10/27 expected cups through one full turn. Of course, the team that went first then gets to take their turn, and will then have their own advantage, although this time only by 1/3 expected cup (assuming the same skill level).
If we extend this out for this example (with two completely balanced teams), then Team A will always have an expected value of 1/3 more cups made after their turn. Likewise, Team B will always have a slightly higher expected value of 10/27 more cups made after their turn. This means that Team A will have the advantage early on since they went first, but eventually those small differences in favor of Team B will swing the overall advantage their way. All in all, this seems pretty balanced, and the hypothesis that comes from this is that it doesn't matter who goes first if the teams are equally matched.
Of course, if you have noticed the length of this post, I didn't stop there. In one of my MBA classes, we've been using process simulation software to estimate various wacky things like fast-food drive through wait times and roulette strategies. One such tool, an Excel add in called @Risk, allows you to use various distributions to run Monte Carlo simulations. I used this to simulate beer pong games with various skill levels of players in order to determine if there are times when going first is an advantage or disadvantage. Before I share my findings, a few assumptions and limitations:
1. I started out with three levels of beer pong players for simplicity's sake: A good player with a mean shot percentage of 0.33 and a standard deviation of 0.1, an average player with a mean shot percentage of 0.25 and a standard deviation of 0.08, and a bad player with a mean shot percentage of 0.1 and a standard deviation of 0.03. These players will be henceforth known as good (G), average (A), and bad (B).
2. I assumed a normal distribution for one's shot-making ability. This may or may not be appropriate for the matter at hand, but until someone does an empirical study on this, I'm just going to use a normal distribution.
3. I didn't account for "hot streaks" or anything like that. Since it's been shown in studies of other sports that hot streaks are generally just random variation, I would assume that beer pong is not any different (And yes, I'm classifying beer pong as a sport for the purposes of this exercise). Yes, there could be a magical zone between sober and drunk where you're especially awesome, but odds are you're probably just remembering your best games and forgetting all the times you lost.
4. I didn't account for rebuttals/overtime, since I couldn't think of a simple way to implement it. Perhaps I will follow up on this later, but I can't imagine it will sway the results by much. In the situations where one team has a superior player, it may sway the numbers slightly towards that team if I was to include it.
Without further ado, here are my findings:
Good team vs. good team (GG vs. GG)
The original objective of this investigation was to see if two evenly matched teams could gain an advantage by going first or deferring. As with all future tests, I ran 10000 simulations of a beer pong game with players of the afforementioned skill levels. For this scenario, the team that went second won 50.26% of the time. From this, it would appear that deferring is the better strategy, but there are caveats. First, I ran this a few other times, and occasionally got values slightly less than 50%, so this is not a hard and fast value. Second, even if we accepted 50.26% as the true probability, that isn't really enough of an advantage to have practical application.
Good team vs. average team (GG vs. AA)
Next, I wanted to see if various "mismatches" change the equations. In this case, I pit an all-star team against a more average outfit. Here is the superior team's chances of winning for the different choices:
Going first: 77.67%
Deferring: 77.88%
Once again, we see a slight advantage in deferring. Of course, that advantage is too small to make a practical difference.
One stud vs. another stud (GA vs. GA)
Let's split up the good team from the previous example to see if "mixed" teams get different results. In this case, the odds of winning for the team that goes first is 50.56%, which suggests a slight reversal for this case. Still, this is close enough to even to be dismissed.
Mixed bag vs. average team (GB vs. AA)
This is where it gets interesting. Here's the familiar scenario where one player carries a team against a more balanced opponent. The hope was to see if a more extreme situation might tip the balance one way. The results for the "mixed bag" team (GB):
Going first: 45.45%
Deferring: 29.37%
I ran this several more times to confirm the wide spread, and every time I got very similar results. It appears that you can add over 15% win probability just by going first if you find yourself in such a situation.
Of course, this wide of a spread is very unexpected, so I had to dig deeper. I actually had been calculating the average "cup spread" of each simulated game, but I haven't yet shown it because the metric hadn't added anything to the previous analyses, as it mirrored the win percentage results. For this example however, the results are quite interesting and shine a bit of light on the previous findings:
GB going first: GB wins by an average of 2.53, AA wins by an average of 3.90
GB going second: GB wins by an average of 3.43, AA wins by an average of 3.22
This shows that while GB is less likely to win in the second scenario, they are generally expected to produce larger wins. This is likely because the second scenario gives the best player in the game more chances to hit bonus shots. Thus, it looks like the difference between the two choices is actually pretty even. By multiplying the two statistics together and subtracting, we can find the average cup margin between the teams:
GB going first: GB expects a cup margin of -1.09
GB going second: GB expects a cup margin of -1.2
Here we find a very small difference overall in how many cups the team is expected to hit regardless of the initial decision. Of course, getting the win is usually the main objective, so teams that find themselves in these situations are advised to only concern themselves with the first set of results. Of course, if you find yourself in pool play of a tournament that only cares about cup differential, you might want to gamble on a bigger victory by going second (if you are indeed GB). Additionally, if you find yourself needing a big win (in terms of cups) in the final game of pool play to make the tournament, gambling on option 2 might be a better selection.
One stud vs. average team (GA vs. AA)
Here's another familiar scenario where everyone is competent, but one person excels. Here are the probabilities of victory for the team with the stud (GA):
Going first: 67.53%
Deferring: 64.52%
Once again, we see the team with the best player seeing an advantage to going first. It's not as pronounced in a more "balanced" game, but you'll still see an advantage going first in these scenarios. Once again the cup statistics show the reason for this imbalance:
GA going first: GA wins by an average of 3.70, AA wins by an average of 3.08, GAs expects a cup margin of +1.42
GA going second: GA wins by an average of 3.75, AA wins by an average of 2.87, GA expects a cup margin of +1.41
We see again that the actual difference in cup margin is very slight and that the option with lower win probability for GA actually has a higher cup probability. Once again, it seems to be a matter of risk versus reward.
Conclusion
Overall, it doesn't seem to matter which option you choose for most scenarios. There are a few things to consider when one player is better than everyone else, but in practice it may be hard to determine the true talent of a player, so these findings may not apply as often as you think.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Bracket Thoughts
Two posts in one day? It's spring break, why not?
Overall thoughts
For the second straight year, I have absolutely no obligations during the first four days of the tournament. Unlike last year though, I think this will be a great tournament for several reasons:
- The bracket as a whole is well-seeded. Only a couple of teams are greatly underseeded (Memphis and Cal), and there aren't any ridiculous high seeds. I only have one major complaint over who was included as I would have taken Drexel over USF. USF lost to three non-tourney teams in non-conference play, with the low-light being a 40 point effort against an awful Auburn team. Honestly, I would take another 10-15 teams that didn't make it over USF.
- The top two lines are quite strong. Last year, the two line was as weak as ever with relatively weak teams like SDSU, Florida, and yes, Notre Dame. This year, I can see any of the top 8 teams in the championship game. Duke is the only questionable team from this group, but they did beat three of the 1 seeds, so I can't count them out.
- Bid theives were few and far between this year. In fact, there were only two: St. Bonaventure, who's actually pretty good (51st in KenPom), and Colorado, who isn't really any worse than any other PAC-12 team, sans California.
- For the most part, the small conference tournaments didn't knock out the best teams. The only two high mid-majors that lost out to inferior teams were Iona and Middle Tennessee, and Iona got into the dance anyway. Many strong teams, such as Belmont, Harvard, and Long Beach won their conference championships as expected. While it may seem that we're missing out on some strong regular season conference champs like Nevada and Oral Roberts, the two-seeds in those conferences (New Mexico St and South Dakota St respectively) were actually superior teams. As a result, the 12-14 lines are probably the strongest we've seen in a long time. The 14 line of South Dakota St, Belmont, St Bonaventure, BYU and Iona alone is completely ridiculous. I wouldn't be shocked if two of them make the round of 32.
- This is a bit more of a random note, but the 5 line is really strong. Wichita and New Mexico are probably the two best mid-major teams, and Vandy is finally playing up to their top ten potential after dealing with injuries and inconsistency all season. Temple isn't quite as great as the other three, but is still quite strong with victories over Duke and St. Louis on its resume. We may not see a 12 over 5 this year, even though the 12s are also quite good.
Put that all together, and I think we'll see a tournament that gives us a great first few days as well as a superb final four. Here's a region by region breakdown.
EAST
Although I think all of the brackets are pretty even, this one might be the most wide open. This is the only region where I could see any of the top 5 seeds making the final four. Yes, Wisconsin isn't the sexiest team, but they do everything well which is reflected in the advanced metrics (6th in KenPom, 13th in LRMC). All the other tops seeds have made their case, with Syracuse and Ohio St being awesome all season and Vandy and FSU winning their conference tournaments in impressive fashion.
This bracket also has my second-favorite first round matchup: Cincinnati vs. Texas. Cincinnati certainly feels like a team that has improved over the course of the season, so I wouldn't be shocked if they play better than their seed. Texas is a team that does everything well on the offensive end except shoot (That sounds weird, but they limit turnovers, grab boards and get to the line quite well). That deficiency will probably limit them from advancing far, but J'Covan Brown can definitely lead them to a win or two.
Preliminary pick: Ohio St, but this will probably change several times by Tuesday
SOUTH
This is definitely the oddest bracket. Kentucky-Wichita would be an amazing sweet 16 game between the most talented team in the tournment and the most senior-laden team. Of course, Indiana and UConn, among others, will have their chances to prevent that matchup. If Indiana can play well without Verdell Jones, then the top half of this bracket is probably the best half-bracket in the tournament.
Of course, there are two halves to this bracket and the bottom is decidedly less good. Duke's inability to defend the perimeter and Baylor's apathy towards rebounding make them both quite susceptible to upsets. In fact, Nate Wolters and the Jackrabbits could take down the Bears in the first round if they shoot well enough....their 19 point win at Washington shows exactly what they can do. Even though I don't have a lot of faith in my Irish, there's an actual chance that they could get to the elite eight. ND's main problem in the tournament in recent years has been running up against great defensive units (FSU and ODU the last two years). The highest ranked defense in this half of the bracket is UNLV (28th according to KenPom), so they won't have that problem this year.
Preliminary pick: I'll bet anyone a dollar that it's either Kentucky or Wichita. I'll go with Kentucky for now.
WEST
This is probably the strongest bracket. The top half of the bracket features 5 of the top 20 teams in KenPom's ratings and 5 of the top 23 in LRMC. Long Beach ain't too shabby either. The bottom half of the bracket isn't quite as good, but it does feature some of the best undersized teams in the nation. It's nice that Missouri, Marquette, Florida and Murray St are all clumped together, so that none of them will have to go home early because they run into an inferior team with more size. To top it off, this bracket features one of my favorite players in the land, 5th-year senior forward Mike Scott of Virginia. His stats of 18 points and 8 rebounds don't jump off of the page, but when you factor in Virginia's snails pace on offense, he is actually one of the most productive players in the nation. If I could only pick one bracket to watch, this would be the one.
Likewise, if I could only pick one first round game to watch, and didn't care about ND and Creighton, then it would be the 8-9 matchup: Memphis vs. St Louis. This is a sweet-sixteen level matchup in the first round (KenPom has Memphis 9th in the nation and St Louis 15th, while LRMC has them 10th and 19th). Memphis' athleticism against St Louis' amazing defense should be an absolute treat to watch. I feel very sorry for Michigan St, because regardless of who wins this game, they will get a tough game in the round of 32.
I didn't think this was possible, but the 15 seed in this bracket, Norfolk St, is overseeded.
Preliminary pick: Missouri - the top of this bracket is just too tough to pick any of one of those teams, so I'll pick the team that has the best chance at the elite eight.
MIDWEST
This bracket probably gives its one seed, UNC, the clearest path to the final four of any of the brackets. There's a lot of good teams in here, but nobody is massively underseeded. Kansas is the only major threat to the Heels, and of course, the Jayhawks have a history under Self of underperforming against mid-majors (losses to UNI, Bucknell and Bradley and close calls against SIU, Davidson and Holy Cross), so they're hardly a lock to reach the regional final with St.Mary's and Belmont as possible matchups.
I'm pretty excited about the prospect of a Doug McDermott-Harrison Barnes matchup in the round of 32, should the Jays be able to get past Bama. If you've watched any Creighton game this season, then the announcer told you that they were high school teammates (they really can't get enough of that storyline). I'm also psyched that my wish came true in the 3-14 matchup. I really think Belmont can pull off the upset against Georgetown. While both teams are very smart and experienced, Belmont has the edge in offense. Even if Georgetown has a good day shooting, Belmont should be able to keep up. For the record, advanced metrics love Belmont as they are 23rd in KenPom and 9th(!) in LRMC.
Preliminary pick: UNC, if Henson is at or near 100%. If not, I'll probably go with Kansas.
Title pick: Notre Dame over Creighton in double OT.
Real title pick: UNC over Kentucky
Overall thoughts
For the second straight year, I have absolutely no obligations during the first four days of the tournament. Unlike last year though, I think this will be a great tournament for several reasons:
- The bracket as a whole is well-seeded. Only a couple of teams are greatly underseeded (Memphis and Cal), and there aren't any ridiculous high seeds. I only have one major complaint over who was included as I would have taken Drexel over USF. USF lost to three non-tourney teams in non-conference play, with the low-light being a 40 point effort against an awful Auburn team. Honestly, I would take another 10-15 teams that didn't make it over USF.
- The top two lines are quite strong. Last year, the two line was as weak as ever with relatively weak teams like SDSU, Florida, and yes, Notre Dame. This year, I can see any of the top 8 teams in the championship game. Duke is the only questionable team from this group, but they did beat three of the 1 seeds, so I can't count them out.
- Bid theives were few and far between this year. In fact, there were only two: St. Bonaventure, who's actually pretty good (51st in KenPom), and Colorado, who isn't really any worse than any other PAC-12 team, sans California.
- For the most part, the small conference tournaments didn't knock out the best teams. The only two high mid-majors that lost out to inferior teams were Iona and Middle Tennessee, and Iona got into the dance anyway. Many strong teams, such as Belmont, Harvard, and Long Beach won their conference championships as expected. While it may seem that we're missing out on some strong regular season conference champs like Nevada and Oral Roberts, the two-seeds in those conferences (New Mexico St and South Dakota St respectively) were actually superior teams. As a result, the 12-14 lines are probably the strongest we've seen in a long time. The 14 line of South Dakota St, Belmont, St Bonaventure, BYU and Iona alone is completely ridiculous. I wouldn't be shocked if two of them make the round of 32.
- This is a bit more of a random note, but the 5 line is really strong. Wichita and New Mexico are probably the two best mid-major teams, and Vandy is finally playing up to their top ten potential after dealing with injuries and inconsistency all season. Temple isn't quite as great as the other three, but is still quite strong with victories over Duke and St. Louis on its resume. We may not see a 12 over 5 this year, even though the 12s are also quite good.
Put that all together, and I think we'll see a tournament that gives us a great first few days as well as a superb final four. Here's a region by region breakdown.
EAST
Although I think all of the brackets are pretty even, this one might be the most wide open. This is the only region where I could see any of the top 5 seeds making the final four. Yes, Wisconsin isn't the sexiest team, but they do everything well which is reflected in the advanced metrics (6th in KenPom, 13th in LRMC). All the other tops seeds have made their case, with Syracuse and Ohio St being awesome all season and Vandy and FSU winning their conference tournaments in impressive fashion.
This bracket also has my second-favorite first round matchup: Cincinnati vs. Texas. Cincinnati certainly feels like a team that has improved over the course of the season, so I wouldn't be shocked if they play better than their seed. Texas is a team that does everything well on the offensive end except shoot (That sounds weird, but they limit turnovers, grab boards and get to the line quite well). That deficiency will probably limit them from advancing far, but J'Covan Brown can definitely lead them to a win or two.
Preliminary pick: Ohio St, but this will probably change several times by Tuesday
SOUTH
This is definitely the oddest bracket. Kentucky-Wichita would be an amazing sweet 16 game between the most talented team in the tournment and the most senior-laden team. Of course, Indiana and UConn, among others, will have their chances to prevent that matchup. If Indiana can play well without Verdell Jones, then the top half of this bracket is probably the best half-bracket in the tournament.
Of course, there are two halves to this bracket and the bottom is decidedly less good. Duke's inability to defend the perimeter and Baylor's apathy towards rebounding make them both quite susceptible to upsets. In fact, Nate Wolters and the Jackrabbits could take down the Bears in the first round if they shoot well enough....their 19 point win at Washington shows exactly what they can do. Even though I don't have a lot of faith in my Irish, there's an actual chance that they could get to the elite eight. ND's main problem in the tournament in recent years has been running up against great defensive units (FSU and ODU the last two years). The highest ranked defense in this half of the bracket is UNLV (28th according to KenPom), so they won't have that problem this year.
Preliminary pick: I'll bet anyone a dollar that it's either Kentucky or Wichita. I'll go with Kentucky for now.
WEST
This is probably the strongest bracket. The top half of the bracket features 5 of the top 20 teams in KenPom's ratings and 5 of the top 23 in LRMC. Long Beach ain't too shabby either. The bottom half of the bracket isn't quite as good, but it does feature some of the best undersized teams in the nation. It's nice that Missouri, Marquette, Florida and Murray St are all clumped together, so that none of them will have to go home early because they run into an inferior team with more size. To top it off, this bracket features one of my favorite players in the land, 5th-year senior forward Mike Scott of Virginia. His stats of 18 points and 8 rebounds don't jump off of the page, but when you factor in Virginia's snails pace on offense, he is actually one of the most productive players in the nation. If I could only pick one bracket to watch, this would be the one.
Likewise, if I could only pick one first round game to watch, and didn't care about ND and Creighton, then it would be the 8-9 matchup: Memphis vs. St Louis. This is a sweet-sixteen level matchup in the first round (KenPom has Memphis 9th in the nation and St Louis 15th, while LRMC has them 10th and 19th). Memphis' athleticism against St Louis' amazing defense should be an absolute treat to watch. I feel very sorry for Michigan St, because regardless of who wins this game, they will get a tough game in the round of 32.
I didn't think this was possible, but the 15 seed in this bracket, Norfolk St, is overseeded.
Preliminary pick: Missouri - the top of this bracket is just too tough to pick any of one of those teams, so I'll pick the team that has the best chance at the elite eight.
MIDWEST
This bracket probably gives its one seed, UNC, the clearest path to the final four of any of the brackets. There's a lot of good teams in here, but nobody is massively underseeded. Kansas is the only major threat to the Heels, and of course, the Jayhawks have a history under Self of underperforming against mid-majors (losses to UNI, Bucknell and Bradley and close calls against SIU, Davidson and Holy Cross), so they're hardly a lock to reach the regional final with St.Mary's and Belmont as possible matchups.
I'm pretty excited about the prospect of a Doug McDermott-Harrison Barnes matchup in the round of 32, should the Jays be able to get past Bama. If you've watched any Creighton game this season, then the announcer told you that they were high school teammates (they really can't get enough of that storyline). I'm also psyched that my wish came true in the 3-14 matchup. I really think Belmont can pull off the upset against Georgetown. While both teams are very smart and experienced, Belmont has the edge in offense. Even if Georgetown has a good day shooting, Belmont should be able to keep up. For the record, advanced metrics love Belmont as they are 23rd in KenPom and 9th(!) in LRMC.
Preliminary pick: UNC, if Henson is at or near 100%. If not, I'll probably go with Kansas.
Title pick: Notre Dame over Creighton in double OT.
Real title pick: UNC over Kentucky
Favorite Songs Countdown
When I fired the blog back up in December, I warned that I might get the itch to write about things other than sports. The month of March gives me a pretty good opening. We're still a little bit away from baseball, and there's already enough people on the internet writing about bubble teams. Thus, I'll turn my thoughts towards something else I've thought about doing for a while: A countdown of my favorite songs. Without further ado, here's the guidelines:
1. One song per band makes the list. I don't think anyone wants to read 10 blog entries about different Isis songs, so I'll keep it simple.
2. I'm keeping the list to 20 songs. 20 seems like about enough entries to get a good, diverse mix of music without blathering on about a bunch of crap that no one cares about. Of course, part of the goal of this is to write about the music I love, and hopefully expose y'all to a few bands you might not have otherwise heard about (althought you've probably heard of most of the bands). But still, I don't want to overindulge myself.
3. That said, there'll be more than 20 songs. When I went through the primary list of songs, I had entirely too much trouble picking one song for some bands. Hence, I'll probably have a section at the end of each entry about some honorable mentions for each band. While the completely arbitrary rankings will still refer to the songs, each entry will be a sort of monument to the band in question. There'll also be a list of honorable mentions at the end of this post, because there's a few bands I at least wanted to acknowledge, including one which I am a member of.
4. The list will skew towards newer music. Yep, I'm 27. Most of the music will be from my lifetime. It happens. I do have two songs from before 1990 on the list, so that's something.
And that's about it. Four guidelines is enough. Here's the songs/bands that didn't quite make the cut for the top 20, in no particular order:
Everything in its Right Place - Radiohead
When I did the first draft of my list, I was a little surprised that Radiohead didn't make the cut. They've earned every bit of the critical praised that's been heaped upon them with their dynamic body of work. However, as I reflected on what makes Radiohead great, I realized that this omission makes sense. While they've had a few hits, and a few of their songs are singled out as their best, Radiohead seems to care more about crafting complete albums. I suppose you could say that the "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" cliche applies here. After all, this is the band that's sold their last two albums online, in part trying to avoid the trend of people downloading individual songs on ITunes and whatnot. If I did have to pick a song, it would probably be the odd table setter from my favorite of their albums Kid A, just beating out There, There and Exit Music (For a Film).
How Near How Far - And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead
...Trail of Dead's best album, Source Tags and Codes, is an absolute gold mine of fantastic music. There are few, if any, records that find their way into my car's CD player more often. While it's hard to pass up the title track or Heart in the Hand of the Mat for recognition, I think How Near How Far is the band at their sharpest. ...Trail of Dead rarely drag songs on necessarily, but they're also comfortable enough with their work to not rush it. How Near How Far leads in with instrumentals for almost a minute, which pays off when the same theme is repeated in the bridge. ...Trail of Dead knows how to create near-perfect 4 minute songs, and this is perhaps their best example.
Mother Earth - Jesu
Speaking of bands that take their time, here's Jesu. A perfect blend of metal and shoegaze, the Justin Broadrick-led band isn't afraid to explore every aspect of a musical thought. The theme that plays in the first 20 seconds of this song is pretty much the whole song. Of course that description doesn't do justice to what follows. Jesu makes the same progression of notes sounds optimistic, then foreboding, and finishes off with a slow burn into contentment.
Champagne From a Paper Cup - Death Cab For Cutie
This is still one of the best 2 minute long songs I've heard. Unique structure and and simple instrumentation. The quality of Death Cab's more recent albums has declined gradually, but they're generally still worth a listen.
Between the Bars - Elliott Smith
The other awesome two-minute long song on this list. It's a tragedy that the Omaha-born Elliott Smith ended his life so soon, but at least he left a great library of music behind. I'd have loved to see what he would have come up with nowadays.
PDA - Interpol
Turn on the Bright Lights is another CD that finds its way into my car pretty often. PDA is probably my favorite song on the album, but you could make a good case for Obstacle #1 as well.
Teen Age Riot - Sonic Youth
The mandatory song from the 80's on my list. Sorry, Toto.
Misunderstood - Wilco
Wilco is a band much like Radiohead where even though I would consider them one of my 20 favorite bands, it's tough for me to justify putting one of their songs in my top 20. If I had to pick one, I'd probably go with my and Adrienne's song, Misunderstood, but Hell is Chrome off of A Ghost is Born would also be a worthy pick. Fun fact: This song is from the one album on my computer that iTunes lists as "Country."
Your Woman - White Town
Unfortunately, DJ Drew does not have this song on his Backer playlist. One of the great shames of our time. If you want to blow your mind, here is the song from which the main sample of the song is taken:
Wait (You Guys) - Bing Bong Brothers
You can probably tell I'm to the "joke" part of the list. This makes the list over roughly 20,000 songs that are better than it because it is perhaps the only thing that will make me laugh every time I see/hear it. To prove it, I'm giggling as I type this.
Money - Donut Hymen
That's right, no caps no caps no caps.
1. One song per band makes the list. I don't think anyone wants to read 10 blog entries about different Isis songs, so I'll keep it simple.
2. I'm keeping the list to 20 songs. 20 seems like about enough entries to get a good, diverse mix of music without blathering on about a bunch of crap that no one cares about. Of course, part of the goal of this is to write about the music I love, and hopefully expose y'all to a few bands you might not have otherwise heard about (althought you've probably heard of most of the bands). But still, I don't want to overindulge myself.
3. That said, there'll be more than 20 songs. When I went through the primary list of songs, I had entirely too much trouble picking one song for some bands. Hence, I'll probably have a section at the end of each entry about some honorable mentions for each band. While the completely arbitrary rankings will still refer to the songs, each entry will be a sort of monument to the band in question. There'll also be a list of honorable mentions at the end of this post, because there's a few bands I at least wanted to acknowledge, including one which I am a member of.
4. The list will skew towards newer music. Yep, I'm 27. Most of the music will be from my lifetime. It happens. I do have two songs from before 1990 on the list, so that's something.
And that's about it. Four guidelines is enough. Here's the songs/bands that didn't quite make the cut for the top 20, in no particular order:
Everything in its Right Place - Radiohead
When I did the first draft of my list, I was a little surprised that Radiohead didn't make the cut. They've earned every bit of the critical praised that's been heaped upon them with their dynamic body of work. However, as I reflected on what makes Radiohead great, I realized that this omission makes sense. While they've had a few hits, and a few of their songs are singled out as their best, Radiohead seems to care more about crafting complete albums. I suppose you could say that the "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" cliche applies here. After all, this is the band that's sold their last two albums online, in part trying to avoid the trend of people downloading individual songs on ITunes and whatnot. If I did have to pick a song, it would probably be the odd table setter from my favorite of their albums Kid A, just beating out There, There and Exit Music (For a Film).
How Near How Far - And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead
...Trail of Dead's best album, Source Tags and Codes, is an absolute gold mine of fantastic music. There are few, if any, records that find their way into my car's CD player more often. While it's hard to pass up the title track or Heart in the Hand of the Mat for recognition, I think How Near How Far is the band at their sharpest. ...Trail of Dead rarely drag songs on necessarily, but they're also comfortable enough with their work to not rush it. How Near How Far leads in with instrumentals for almost a minute, which pays off when the same theme is repeated in the bridge. ...Trail of Dead knows how to create near-perfect 4 minute songs, and this is perhaps their best example.
Mother Earth - Jesu
Speaking of bands that take their time, here's Jesu. A perfect blend of metal and shoegaze, the Justin Broadrick-led band isn't afraid to explore every aspect of a musical thought. The theme that plays in the first 20 seconds of this song is pretty much the whole song. Of course that description doesn't do justice to what follows. Jesu makes the same progression of notes sounds optimistic, then foreboding, and finishes off with a slow burn into contentment.
Champagne From a Paper Cup - Death Cab For Cutie
This is still one of the best 2 minute long songs I've heard. Unique structure and and simple instrumentation. The quality of Death Cab's more recent albums has declined gradually, but they're generally still worth a listen.
Between the Bars - Elliott Smith
The other awesome two-minute long song on this list. It's a tragedy that the Omaha-born Elliott Smith ended his life so soon, but at least he left a great library of music behind. I'd have loved to see what he would have come up with nowadays.
PDA - Interpol
Turn on the Bright Lights is another CD that finds its way into my car pretty often. PDA is probably my favorite song on the album, but you could make a good case for Obstacle #1 as well.
Teen Age Riot - Sonic Youth
The mandatory song from the 80's on my list. Sorry, Toto.
Misunderstood - Wilco
Wilco is a band much like Radiohead where even though I would consider them one of my 20 favorite bands, it's tough for me to justify putting one of their songs in my top 20. If I had to pick one, I'd probably go with my and Adrienne's song, Misunderstood, but Hell is Chrome off of A Ghost is Born would also be a worthy pick. Fun fact: This song is from the one album on my computer that iTunes lists as "Country."
Your Woman - White Town
Unfortunately, DJ Drew does not have this song on his Backer playlist. One of the great shames of our time. If you want to blow your mind, here is the song from which the main sample of the song is taken:
Wait (You Guys) - Bing Bong Brothers
You can probably tell I'm to the "joke" part of the list. This makes the list over roughly 20,000 songs that are better than it because it is perhaps the only thing that will make me laugh every time I see/hear it. To prove it, I'm giggling as I type this.
Money - Donut Hymen
That's right, no caps no caps no caps.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Fantasy Football
I promise this won't be a boring recap of my fantasy football season. That being said, here's how I did in fantasy football this year. I had some bad luck with fantasy football this year. In two of my three leagues, we play weekly head to head matchups. Here's how I did in those leagues:
League A: Finished 5th out of 12 in points scored with a 6-8 record. I missed the 4-team playoffs
League B: Finished 10th out of 14 in points scored with a 3-10 record (tied for worst). I missed the 8-team playoffs.
So in both leagues, I did a little worse record-wise than expected given my team's performance. I definitely wasn't amazing in either league, but I should of had a little better chance of making the playoffs. I don't have any real complaints; if I wanted to do better, I should have drafted better players. Moreover, there's going to be good and bad luck in any fantasy football league (or pretty much any game). Completely trying to eliminate that randomness would obfuscate the game to the point of not really being fun anymore.
However, looking at the champions of those leagues, we get some more extreme examples:
League A: The eventual champion finished 10th out of 12 in points scored (over 200 points back of first place) with an 8-6 record.
League B: The eventual champion finished 9th out of 14 in points scored (almost 300 points back of first place) with a 7-6 record.
It's hard to begrudge either of those champions, since they did win all their playoff games, and were good enough during the regular season to be in the mix. However, it shows how pointless and random the regular season can sometimes be. To that end, I have two simple proposals for fantasy football going forwards:
1. Pure points - You may notice that I haven't mentioned my third fantasy football league. That is because head to head matchups are completely irrelevant in it. We play for all 17 weeks, and the person who has the most points at the end wins the trophy. It's beautifully straightforward and simple. While I prefer this method, you could also have 13-14 weeks of pure points and then playoffs, if you still want head to head excitement.
A criticism of this that I've heard is that you can get buried after just a few weeks. However, this isn't really any different from head to head. If you start 0-4 in a 13 week league, you need to just about win out to have a chance. Of course, the 0-4 record can be much more easily the result of bad luck than a low overall points total would be. Basically, if you get buried in a pure points league, then you have no one to blame but yourself (and maybe injuries).
2. Defense - No, this isn't about increasing the importance of defenses or using individual defensive players. Rather it's about defense coming into play in your weekly matchups. If you're going to use head to head matchups, shouldn't you be able to do something about your opponent? As most leagues are right now, you and your opponent select your best lineups, and then the highest scorer wins. This only mirrors real football in that there is a winner and a loser. Allowing you to have some affect on your opponents' lineup would raise the stakes a bit and make the matchup aspect a little more meaningful.
There would be many ways to implement this, but I think that the best would be this: Before a certain time of the week (say, Friday), you would be able to select any three players on your opponent's roster. If your opponent chooses to play any of those players, then they get -5 points added to their total per player. Think of it as double coverage on those players. This would lead to a lot of fun scenarios:
- Do you play Aaron Rodgers with the -5 penalty, or a lesser quarterback?
- Do you tag three players at the same position, making your opponent play someone with the -5 penalty, or do you try to spread it around to force more of these tough decisions?
- Do you tag the highest scoring positions, or do you go for something like kicker where your opponent is less likely to have a backup (your might have to make the penalty only -3 or something for non QB-RB-WR positions, because otherwise people might do that every time)?
An alternative would be to not notify opponents of which players were tagged each week, so you have to guess what your opponent would do. This would be fun, because it could lead to incredibly paranoid decision-making processes. The first time that someone doesn't play their stud player because they thought they were tagged but actually weren't would be priceless. I would still prefer the option where you know which players were selected, because it's a little less of a guessing game, but the alternative could be fun.
One counter-argument could be that this would unreasonably supress the value of the best players. However, I don't think this would be true. In the league in which I owned him, Aaron Rodgers scored 448 points in 15 weeks for an average of almost 30 points. Subtracting 5 points from him every week would drop him to only the 5th-highest scoring QB, and that doesn't account for the fact that the other top 5 QBs would also likely be tagged a lot. Furthermore, having a strong player like Rodgers that could still be awesome in spite of the penalty would still be valuable. If anything, it would make opponents less likely to tag other players, freeing them up to score more points. In the end, you would still want to have the strongest team possible.
League A: Finished 5th out of 12 in points scored with a 6-8 record. I missed the 4-team playoffs
League B: Finished 10th out of 14 in points scored with a 3-10 record (tied for worst). I missed the 8-team playoffs.
So in both leagues, I did a little worse record-wise than expected given my team's performance. I definitely wasn't amazing in either league, but I should of had a little better chance of making the playoffs. I don't have any real complaints; if I wanted to do better, I should have drafted better players. Moreover, there's going to be good and bad luck in any fantasy football league (or pretty much any game). Completely trying to eliminate that randomness would obfuscate the game to the point of not really being fun anymore.
However, looking at the champions of those leagues, we get some more extreme examples:
League A: The eventual champion finished 10th out of 12 in points scored (over 200 points back of first place) with an 8-6 record.
League B: The eventual champion finished 9th out of 14 in points scored (almost 300 points back of first place) with a 7-6 record.
It's hard to begrudge either of those champions, since they did win all their playoff games, and were good enough during the regular season to be in the mix. However, it shows how pointless and random the regular season can sometimes be. To that end, I have two simple proposals for fantasy football going forwards:
1. Pure points - You may notice that I haven't mentioned my third fantasy football league. That is because head to head matchups are completely irrelevant in it. We play for all 17 weeks, and the person who has the most points at the end wins the trophy. It's beautifully straightforward and simple. While I prefer this method, you could also have 13-14 weeks of pure points and then playoffs, if you still want head to head excitement.
A criticism of this that I've heard is that you can get buried after just a few weeks. However, this isn't really any different from head to head. If you start 0-4 in a 13 week league, you need to just about win out to have a chance. Of course, the 0-4 record can be much more easily the result of bad luck than a low overall points total would be. Basically, if you get buried in a pure points league, then you have no one to blame but yourself (and maybe injuries).
2. Defense - No, this isn't about increasing the importance of defenses or using individual defensive players. Rather it's about defense coming into play in your weekly matchups. If you're going to use head to head matchups, shouldn't you be able to do something about your opponent? As most leagues are right now, you and your opponent select your best lineups, and then the highest scorer wins. This only mirrors real football in that there is a winner and a loser. Allowing you to have some affect on your opponents' lineup would raise the stakes a bit and make the matchup aspect a little more meaningful.
There would be many ways to implement this, but I think that the best would be this: Before a certain time of the week (say, Friday), you would be able to select any three players on your opponent's roster. If your opponent chooses to play any of those players, then they get -5 points added to their total per player. Think of it as double coverage on those players. This would lead to a lot of fun scenarios:
- Do you play Aaron Rodgers with the -5 penalty, or a lesser quarterback?
- Do you tag three players at the same position, making your opponent play someone with the -5 penalty, or do you try to spread it around to force more of these tough decisions?
- Do you tag the highest scoring positions, or do you go for something like kicker where your opponent is less likely to have a backup (your might have to make the penalty only -3 or something for non QB-RB-WR positions, because otherwise people might do that every time)?
An alternative would be to not notify opponents of which players were tagged each week, so you have to guess what your opponent would do. This would be fun, because it could lead to incredibly paranoid decision-making processes. The first time that someone doesn't play their stud player because they thought they were tagged but actually weren't would be priceless. I would still prefer the option where you know which players were selected, because it's a little less of a guessing game, but the alternative could be fun.
One counter-argument could be that this would unreasonably supress the value of the best players. However, I don't think this would be true. In the league in which I owned him, Aaron Rodgers scored 448 points in 15 weeks for an average of almost 30 points. Subtracting 5 points from him every week would drop him to only the 5th-highest scoring QB, and that doesn't account for the fact that the other top 5 QBs would also likely be tagged a lot. Furthermore, having a strong player like Rodgers that could still be awesome in spite of the penalty would still be valuable. If anything, it would make opponents less likely to tag other players, freeing them up to score more points. In the end, you would still want to have the strongest team possible.
LSU vs. Alabama
This isn't going to be a post previewing the BCS title game. I think we all know what we're in for tonight: A well fought defensive battle, where one or two explosive plays may make all the difference. No, this entry is about all of the debate that has led up to this game.
And no, this entry isn't about the debate about the BCS system either. That argument is for a different time. For the record, I don't really mind the underlying idea of the BCS (a two team tournament), because it generally guarantees the highest quality of champion of any American sports league. My preference would be for a seeded four-team playoff for reasons that will soon become clear.
The issue I do want to discuss is the debate over Alabama and Oklahoma St. for #2. My personal opinion is that they're pretty equal quality teams. Alabama was a little more dominant, but Oklahoma St. played a tougher schedule. Alabama has an amazing defense and Oklahoma St. has a prolific offense. In the end, I ranked Oklahoma St. #2, but I had no problem when it was revealed that Alabama would be playing in the title game. The two teams are so close given the evidence at hand, that it's impossible to say definitively that one is more deserving.*
*And that's really my main issue with the BCS. The BCS is trying to ensure that the team that is truly the best gets to play in and win the title game. However, a mere 12-13 games against highly variable levels of competition is often not enough to definitively narrow this down to two teams. A couple examples off of the top of my head:
2001: Miami and Nebraska play in the title game. Colorado and Oregon are omitted.
2003: LSU and Oklahoma play in the title game. USC is omitted.
2004: USC and Oklahoma play in the title game. Auburn is omitted.
2007: LSU and Ohio St. play in the title game. Georgia, USC, Oklahoma and VT are omitted. Also Hawaii and Kansas were a combined 21-1, but didn't really beat anyone of note.
In all of the years where there has been controversy, the problem was that there were 3 or 4 teams with a legitimate claim to #1 or #2. 2007 is the only real example of a larger clump of teams, and quite frankly, we probably won't ever see many more years like that again. Expanding the field from 2 to 4 would greatly increase the probability of actually including the true top 2 teams without watering down the field too much.
Since I have such strong opinions about this, and follow college football to a ridiculous degree, I've been reading and listening to everyone's arguments for the past month. Over that time, there are four arguments in particular (for both sides, mind you) that have been rubbing me the wrong way. They are:
1. Two teams from the same conference shouldn't be in the title game.
This argument has been pretty well debunked by most reasonable folks, but I thought I would include it for the sake of completeness.
The BCS is a lot of things, but one thing it is not is unclear about its goal: Matching up #1 and #2 in the title game. That's the main reason it was formed. For a little context, look at three of the four seasons leading up to the BCS:
1994: #1 Nebraska and #2 Penn St. do not play each other in a bowl. #1 Nebraska wins the title.
1996: #1 Florida St. and #2 Arizona St. do not play each other in a bowl. Both teams lose their bowl games and #3 Florida wins the title.
1997: #1 Michigan and #2 Nebraska do not play each other in a bowl. They split the title.
College football fans were frustrated because the Rose Bowl kept preventing the bowl game matchups they wanted to see, and then the voters semi-randomly picked who would be crowned champion. Hence the Bowl Coalition added the Rose Bowl and became the BCS, which would attempt to match up the top two teams at the end of the year. At no point since has there ever been a rule not allowing a non-conference champion to play. It is simply what it is. For all the faults of the BCS calculations, there is no formal distinction of which conference you play in for the sake of the rankings. Just because the (potentially) two best teams happen to come from the same conference this year doesn't mean they shouldn't play in the title game. Given that conference memberships are becoming increasingly arbitrary (remember when TCU was in the Big East for something like 6 months?), it should continue to matter less and less.
You could also continue the argument and say that an 8 or 16 team tournament could result in an all-SEC title game, or point to the fact that teams from the same conference play in other league's playoffs all the time, but that's not really germane to the debate of who the top two teams in college football are.
2. Oklahoma St. is 107th in total defense. They're terrible!
Yes, I'm not disputing the fact that Oklahoma St. was 107th in total defense. The Fiesta Bowl announcers seemed enamored with this fact. However, it's pretty misleading to use this fact to say that the Oklahoma St. defense is bad, and thus they shouldn't be in the title game. One could argue that it doesn't matter that the defense is bad as long as the offense can always outscore the opponent. However, I would go beyond this and argue that the Cowboy defense is actually really good. Consider the following:
A. Oklahoma State's offense is insanely good at scoring quickly. In fact they're so quick that they were 115th out of 120 teams in time of possession. This means that the other team had the ball for almost 34 minutes per game, which means opponents had a lot more opportunities to rack up yards.
B. Oklahoma State had a few games where they quickly put opponents out of reach. The best example of this was when they led Baylor 49-3 after 3 quarters of play. Once the game was out of reach, and the Cowboys started resting their starters, Baylor was able to put up 233 yards and 3 meaningless touchdowns in the final quarter. Kansas, Tulsa and ULL, among others were also able to put up big yards late in blowouts. This yardage skewed OSU's raw defensive numbers upwards.
C. Oklahoma State played perhaps the best collection of offenses that anyone played this season. In terms of raw yardage per game, here is where their opponents ranked:
2: Baylor
5: Oklahoma
7: Texas A&M
8: Stanford
12: Missouri
13: Texas Tech
16: Arizona
27: Tulsa
51: ULL
54: Texas
60: Iowa State
101: Kansas State
106: Kansas
Yes, that would be 7 of the top 16 offenses in the nation. I'm surprised they didn't finish lower in total yards allowed.
When all of this is factored in, Oklahoma State's defense comes out looking a lot better. Football Outsiders' main ranking system F/+ uses two different methods to evaluate teams (one is play by play based, and the other is drive based). When they put those methods together, and account for all the things listed above, Oklahoma St. ends up ranked #3 in defensive efficiency. The two teams above them are the ones playing tonight. While statistical margin of error allows for the fact that OSU's D may actually be the a little lower than third, I think this pretty thoroughly debunks the horrible defense argument.
3. The SEC is the best conference; hence ROLL TIDE!
Yes, the SEC has generally been the best conference in the land for the last 6 years or so, occasionally dominating the nation as in 2007. Yes, the conference was very good this year. But no, the SEC was not as good as the Big XII this year. All of Sagarin's ratings show this, and the Big XII's nation-leading 33-5 record against non-conference opponents seems to confirm this. Of course, the larger point is that simple conference membership doesn't really matter in team to team comparisons, which I'll drive home a little more in the final and most infuriating argument below.
4. Oklahoma State is more deserving because they have more quality wins
Once again, I'm not doubting the surface evaluation. Oklahoma St. beat more top 25 caliber opponents than Alabama did (SOS: OSU 5th, Alabama 26th). What bothers me is that some people seem to believe that these wins automatically make then more "deserving" than Alabama without further analysis. Furthermore, this attitude seems to suggest that "deserving" and "best" are two different concepts when it comes to qualifying for the title game. This implies that the title game shouldn't necessarily match the two best teams in the nation. A good example of this comes from Mandel's mailbag (see the question from John in the first section). What is disturbing about this is that this definition of deserving seems to encourage simply adding up a teams' best wins and evaluating the teams based on this. This is problematic for several reasons:
A. Losses count, too - Most Alabama proponents bring this argument up, but it bears repeating. Alabama lost to the best team in the nation in overtime, while Oklahoma State lost to a 6-6 Iowa State team. I don't think the Cowboys loss is as bad as most make it out to be, but it is still clearly a major disadvantage for OSU's resume.
B. Margin of win counts, too - Oklahoma St. does have more wins against impressive teams. However, they also played many more close games than Alabama. The Cowboys beat A&M by 1, Kansas State by 7, and Texas by 12. On the other hand, Alabama didn't have a single win that was decided by less than 16 points. We should certainly expect Oklahoma State to have closer wins given their better schedule, but it's still important to consider in our evaluation.
C. Opportunity to win - This is the area of my argument that disagrees the most with those who I will now refer to as the "deservers." The deservers seem to look at teams with the same record, and then pick the one with the most quality wins as the best team. The problem with choosing Oklahoma St. over Alabama solely for this reason is that Alabama didn't have the chance to get that same amount of wins. It's not their fault that the SEC wasn't as good as the Big XII. It's not their fault that they didn't have Georgia and South Carolina on their schedule this year. It's not their fault that Penn State chose to play the awful Rob Bolden at QB for most of their contest against the Tide. The point is that if we eliminate teams simply because of factors beyond their control, then we may be eliminating a true top 2 team. The deservers need to take more information into account when making their assert. Simply using the 12 win-loss data points is not enough when there is more to the whole picture.
This argument leads directly to my main point of the day: We need to use all the information available to us to make a decision. This really applies to all aspects of life, but especially to things as relatively cut and dry as sports. Oklahoma St. and Alabama both have pros and cons to their arguments, and it should be difficult to form a strong conclusion either way. It's OK to not be sure. And that's the beauty of college football; the arguments live forever.
And no, this entry isn't about the debate about the BCS system either. That argument is for a different time. For the record, I don't really mind the underlying idea of the BCS (a two team tournament), because it generally guarantees the highest quality of champion of any American sports league. My preference would be for a seeded four-team playoff for reasons that will soon become clear.
The issue I do want to discuss is the debate over Alabama and Oklahoma St. for #2. My personal opinion is that they're pretty equal quality teams. Alabama was a little more dominant, but Oklahoma St. played a tougher schedule. Alabama has an amazing defense and Oklahoma St. has a prolific offense. In the end, I ranked Oklahoma St. #2, but I had no problem when it was revealed that Alabama would be playing in the title game. The two teams are so close given the evidence at hand, that it's impossible to say definitively that one is more deserving.*
*And that's really my main issue with the BCS. The BCS is trying to ensure that the team that is truly the best gets to play in and win the title game. However, a mere 12-13 games against highly variable levels of competition is often not enough to definitively narrow this down to two teams. A couple examples off of the top of my head:
2001: Miami and Nebraska play in the title game. Colorado and Oregon are omitted.
2003: LSU and Oklahoma play in the title game. USC is omitted.
2004: USC and Oklahoma play in the title game. Auburn is omitted.
2007: LSU and Ohio St. play in the title game. Georgia, USC, Oklahoma and VT are omitted. Also Hawaii and Kansas were a combined 21-1, but didn't really beat anyone of note.
In all of the years where there has been controversy, the problem was that there were 3 or 4 teams with a legitimate claim to #1 or #2. 2007 is the only real example of a larger clump of teams, and quite frankly, we probably won't ever see many more years like that again. Expanding the field from 2 to 4 would greatly increase the probability of actually including the true top 2 teams without watering down the field too much.
Since I have such strong opinions about this, and follow college football to a ridiculous degree, I've been reading and listening to everyone's arguments for the past month. Over that time, there are four arguments in particular (for both sides, mind you) that have been rubbing me the wrong way. They are:
1. Two teams from the same conference shouldn't be in the title game.
This argument has been pretty well debunked by most reasonable folks, but I thought I would include it for the sake of completeness.
The BCS is a lot of things, but one thing it is not is unclear about its goal: Matching up #1 and #2 in the title game. That's the main reason it was formed. For a little context, look at three of the four seasons leading up to the BCS:
1994: #1 Nebraska and #2 Penn St. do not play each other in a bowl. #1 Nebraska wins the title.
1996: #1 Florida St. and #2 Arizona St. do not play each other in a bowl. Both teams lose their bowl games and #3 Florida wins the title.
1997: #1 Michigan and #2 Nebraska do not play each other in a bowl. They split the title.
College football fans were frustrated because the Rose Bowl kept preventing the bowl game matchups they wanted to see, and then the voters semi-randomly picked who would be crowned champion. Hence the Bowl Coalition added the Rose Bowl and became the BCS, which would attempt to match up the top two teams at the end of the year. At no point since has there ever been a rule not allowing a non-conference champion to play. It is simply what it is. For all the faults of the BCS calculations, there is no formal distinction of which conference you play in for the sake of the rankings. Just because the (potentially) two best teams happen to come from the same conference this year doesn't mean they shouldn't play in the title game. Given that conference memberships are becoming increasingly arbitrary (remember when TCU was in the Big East for something like 6 months?), it should continue to matter less and less.
You could also continue the argument and say that an 8 or 16 team tournament could result in an all-SEC title game, or point to the fact that teams from the same conference play in other league's playoffs all the time, but that's not really germane to the debate of who the top two teams in college football are.
2. Oklahoma St. is 107th in total defense. They're terrible!
Yes, I'm not disputing the fact that Oklahoma St. was 107th in total defense. The Fiesta Bowl announcers seemed enamored with this fact. However, it's pretty misleading to use this fact to say that the Oklahoma St. defense is bad, and thus they shouldn't be in the title game. One could argue that it doesn't matter that the defense is bad as long as the offense can always outscore the opponent. However, I would go beyond this and argue that the Cowboy defense is actually really good. Consider the following:
A. Oklahoma State's offense is insanely good at scoring quickly. In fact they're so quick that they were 115th out of 120 teams in time of possession. This means that the other team had the ball for almost 34 minutes per game, which means opponents had a lot more opportunities to rack up yards.
B. Oklahoma State had a few games where they quickly put opponents out of reach. The best example of this was when they led Baylor 49-3 after 3 quarters of play. Once the game was out of reach, and the Cowboys started resting their starters, Baylor was able to put up 233 yards and 3 meaningless touchdowns in the final quarter. Kansas, Tulsa and ULL, among others were also able to put up big yards late in blowouts. This yardage skewed OSU's raw defensive numbers upwards.
C. Oklahoma State played perhaps the best collection of offenses that anyone played this season. In terms of raw yardage per game, here is where their opponents ranked:
2: Baylor
5: Oklahoma
7: Texas A&M
8: Stanford
12: Missouri
13: Texas Tech
16: Arizona
27: Tulsa
51: ULL
54: Texas
60: Iowa State
101: Kansas State
106: Kansas
Yes, that would be 7 of the top 16 offenses in the nation. I'm surprised they didn't finish lower in total yards allowed.
When all of this is factored in, Oklahoma State's defense comes out looking a lot better. Football Outsiders' main ranking system F/+ uses two different methods to evaluate teams (one is play by play based, and the other is drive based). When they put those methods together, and account for all the things listed above, Oklahoma St. ends up ranked #3 in defensive efficiency. The two teams above them are the ones playing tonight. While statistical margin of error allows for the fact that OSU's D may actually be the a little lower than third, I think this pretty thoroughly debunks the horrible defense argument.
3. The SEC is the best conference; hence ROLL TIDE!
Yes, the SEC has generally been the best conference in the land for the last 6 years or so, occasionally dominating the nation as in 2007. Yes, the conference was very good this year. But no, the SEC was not as good as the Big X
4. Oklahoma State is more deserving because they have more quality wins
Once again, I'm not doubting the surface evaluation. Oklahoma St. beat more top 25 caliber opponents than Alabama did (SOS: OSU 5th, Alabama 26th). What bothers me is that some people seem to believe that these wins automatically make then more "deserving" than Alabama without further analysis. Furthermore, this attitude seems to suggest that "deserving" and "best" are two different concepts when it comes to qualifying for the title game. This implies that the title game shouldn't necessarily match the two best teams in the nation. A good example of this comes from Mandel's mailbag (see the question from John in the first section). What is disturbing about this is that this definition of deserving seems to encourage simply adding up a teams' best wins and evaluating the teams based on this. This is problematic for several reasons:
A. Losses count, too - Most Alabama proponents bring this argument up, but it bears repeating. Alabama lost to the best team in the nation in overtime, while Oklahoma State lost to a 6-6 Iowa State team. I don't think the Cowboys loss is as bad as most make it out to be, but it is still clearly a major disadvantage for OSU's resume.
B. Margin of win counts, too - Oklahoma St. does have more wins against impressive teams. However, they also played many more close games than Alabama. The Cowboys beat A&M by 1, Kansas State by 7, and Texas by 12. On the other hand, Alabama didn't have a single win that was decided by less than 16 points. We should certainly expect Oklahoma State to have closer wins given their better schedule, but it's still important to consider in our evaluation.
C. Opportunity to win - This is the area of my argument that disagrees the most with those who I will now refer to as the "deservers." The deservers seem to look at teams with the same record, and then pick the one with the most quality wins as the best team. The problem with choosing Oklahoma St. over Alabama solely for this reason is that Alabama didn't have the chance to get that same amount of wins. It's not their fault that the SEC wasn't as good as the Big X
This argument leads directly to my main point of the day: We need to use all the information available to us to make a decision. This really applies to all aspects of life, but especially to things as relatively cut and dry as sports. Oklahoma St. and Alabama both have pros and cons to their arguments, and it should be difficult to form a strong conclusion either way. It's OK to not be sure. And that's the beauty of college football; the arguments live forever.
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