Various Thoughts on SPORTS

I like to think and I like to watch sports.  This means that at any given time, I have a lot of thoughts about sports.  This happens to be one of those times.  Usually these thoughts are all focused on the sport that happens to be in season.  However, in November all three of my favorite sports are in season, which means I have thoughts about all of them.  In honor of the guy holding up the generic "SPORTS" sign on Gameday this past weekend, let's combine all of those thoughts into one messy post about SPORTS.

SPORTS pic.twitter.com/sv69FiEIcm
— ParadigmShift35 (@NAWTADIGM) November 16, 2013

BASEBALL

Another year of MLB award voting came and went, and once again, there was controversy.  AL MVP winner Miguel Cabrera had a truly great year, but he was still clearly behind Mike Trout in terms of being the best all-around player in baseball.*  That said, the rest of the voting was actually pretty reasonable.  I even agreed with 4 of the 5 other winners (and Max Scherzer was a fine selection for the other award, although I know at least some of the writers did it for the wrong reasons).

*In the NL, the voters went the other (and correct) direction, picking the all-around CF over the slugging corner infielder.  This would be interesting if it weren't for the one variable that explains everything: playoffs.  McCutchen and Cabrera's teams made the playoffs, hence they won the awards.  Sigh.

While none of the winners surprised me, I can always count on examining the full results (on the BBWAA site) for a few interesting nuggets (and good laughs).  Full ballot reveals also lead to some new areas of discussion about the relative merits of other players besides the main contenders.  These discussions are usually glossed over in advance of the awards because people mostly like to speculate on who will win.  This singular focus does a disservice to all the great players who come up short, which is too bad when there is a loaded year like the NL in 2013.

Of special interest to me (for reasons that will quickly become clear) were Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt, and Carlos Gomez.  These are not the only notable runners up.  In fact, they probably aren't even the three best runners up.  However, every single one of their stat lines indicates an MVP-type season:

Goldschmidt: .302/.401/.551 (156 wRC+), 36 HR, 15 SB, 6.4 fWAR

Votto: .305/.435/.491 (156 wRC+), 24 HR, 1 infield flyball (!), 6.2 fWAR

Gomez: .284/.338/.506 (130 wRC+), 24 HR, 40 SB, +26 UZR, +38 DRS (!), 7.6 fWAR

Gomez leads the other 2 by a bit in fWAR, but you probably want to regress those defensive numbers a bit (while still acknowledging his awesomeness in CF), so they all appear to make a pretty even case.  They are so even, that I put them 6-7-8 in my own meaningless ballot.  However the voters, being the lovers of RBI that they are, put Goldschmidt ahead of these other two by a good margin.  Not every voter agreed with this line of thinking, as a few put Goldy in the same range that I did.  This angered fellow Diamondback and noted Twitterer Brandon McCarthy.  His tweet about the matter evolved into a long chain about the relative merits of other candidates as well.  Here was my contribution:

Now, Brandon McCarthy is one of the most stat-friendly major leaguers there is, so I don't want to pillory him for this.  When you spent the vast majority of the past 8 months playing with someone as awesome at baseball as Paul Goldschmidt, I can certainly understand the desire to see him celebrated as much as possible.  That said, this whole debate between Votto, Goldy, and Gomez gets to the heart of an important thing about Sabermetrics that is too often glossed over: There is very rarely a correct answer to debates such as these. 

You may very well point to WAR or something like that and say that Goldschmidt is better than Votto because he was 0.2 WAR ahead of him.  The problem with that is that there are enough margins for error in the components that make up WAR (especially the defensive components), that we can't say anything definitively for such small separations.  Furthermore, there are a lot of things that aren't in WAR that may very well determine value.  Areas such as sequencing and clutch hitting haven't been found to be particularly predictive, but that doesn't mean there aren't  some aspects of those areas that may indicate real value.  And then there are small things like defensive shifts that almost certainly have value, but we haven't been able to turn them into useful individual stats yet.  WAR is awesome and is our best look yet at the total value of a player, but it isn't yet the final word on the matter.

The main point to take away from all of this is that, like most things in the world, very few of these awards debates have clear-cut answers.  Yes, I'm pretty sure Mike Trout is the best player in baseball, but after that there are a bunch of gray areas.  Rather than thinking we have all of the answers, let's embrace debate honestly, and appreciate great players for what they are.  Goldschmidt's dinger prowess, Votto's insane eye, and Gomez's range are all things that should be celebrated by baseball fans everywhere.  Don't let the awards process convince you otherwise.


COLLEGE FOOTBALL

This past Saturday was as good of a day of football as we've seen this season.  Ed Orgeron pulled off the biggest win of his career, beating Stanford in the Coliseum.  Duke ran for all the yards against Miami, in a game that put them into the driver's seat in the Coastal division.  UCF held off a surprisingly feisty Temple team with one of the best catches you'll ever see.  Michigan beat Northwestern largely due to an insanely well-disciplined field goal unit.  And of course, Auburn beat Georgia with a deflected heave on fourth down in one of the craziest final quarters ever.

Of course, if you know me, you'll know that I want to talk about something much more mundane. In this case, it was something from the Oklahoma-Iowa State game during the early timeslot.  Chris Simms was the color man, which continues the trend of ex-Buccaneer players invading the media.  While I generally support this as a good thing, it unfortunately gives them a lot of chance to say stupid things.

I'll paraphrase what he said, because Google tells me that apparently no one else on the internet heard this and was inspired enough to write about it.  The setup was that he was asked about whether or not he thought Baylor deserved consideration for the title game, and responded with something like this: "They're really good, but we haven't seen if their style of football can win a title yet, so I can't put them in the top two."  There are a couple of hopefully obvious problems with this:

1. There's a massive circular reasoning problem there.  If the people in power (of which Chris Simms isn't one, thankfully) don't consider teams that haven't won titles before, then titleless teams they shall remain.

2. Chris Simms said this with presumably a straight face while broadcasting a game involving the first team to win a title with a spread offense (Oklahoma in 2000....you can make an argument for Florida's 1996 team as well).  Yes, Baylor's iteration of the spread is dialed up to 11, but a lot of the principles are similar to what Oklahoma still does to this day.

This leads to my main point:  Sometimes people are so blinded by tradition and the golden days of college football past, that they fail to see what's right in front of them.  In this case, stick-in-the-muds who shrug off Baylor's success this year are missing out on one of the most exciting teams of all time.  One of the strengths of college football is its adherence to tradition.  The hallowed ghosts that live in the decades-old stadiums are often brought to mind when we see a classic uniform like Alabama's, or hear a name like Notre Dame.  In spite of how much this respect for the past gives life to college football, it can also hold it back.  Thankfully, there seems to be enough impetus within the game to overcome the lines of thinking that Simms' statement embodies.  More and more people are appreciating and even celebrating the uniqueness of what Baylor does.  Next year, we will have a four-team playoff, and finally playing players for their work appears to be close to happening as well.  The traditions of college football are good, but when they become they alone are the only reason for continuing them, it's time for them to come to an end.



COLLEGE BASKETBALL

I was in Carbondale, Illinois visiting a friend this past weekend.  We spent most of the time watching football, playing pong, and eating pizza and platters of meat.  All of that was great, but being the Valley fan that I am, I just had to make my way over to the SIU Arena to catch a game while I was in town.  As luck would have it, the Billikens from St. Louis were in town.  Ever since the 2012 squad pushed Michigan State to the brink in the round of 32, I've been a big fan of this group of players.  A lot of the key contributors are still around for one more season, so I'm making sure to catch as many games as I can.  But until I saw this game on the schedule a couple days before my trip, I had no idea I'd be able to see them in person.

The SIU Arena is quite nice.  It was difficult to judge just how rowdy it could be since it was only about three quarters full, but the set up seemed conducive to creating a difficult atmosphere.  The stands on the baselines go all the way up to the ceiling without a break in the middle, which would create an impressive wall of noise and mayhem if entirely filled with students (it was not).

The game itself was quite good.  SIU jumped out to an early lead as big as 13 on their ability to get to the basket, both through one-on-one drives and deft passing.  This led to a bunch of free throws for the Salukis and a little early foul trouble for the Billikens.  Luckily for SLU, their shooting heated up right before halftime, with Mike McCall and Jake Barnett both making multiple threes.  When the teams came back out for the second half, Saint Louis looked like a team that remembered how to play defense, and quickly built up a lead that they would not relinquish.  It wasn't their greatest game (Evans didn't dominate, and Jett only made 0.5 spectacular defensive plays), but it was a relatively easy win on the road against a decent opponent.

After watching one game and looking at a couple of other box scores, I don't know exactly what to make out of this year's Saint Louis squad.  The defense is still good, but it's probably not quite up to the level of the last couple of teams (losing Cody Ellis, Cory Remekun, and Kwamain Mitchell will do that).  The Billikens don't shoot particularly well from 3 (34% last year, 28.3% this year), though the quick spurt that got them back in the game suggests that their best offense might be one where they launch a lot of threes.  Dwayne Evans is the reigning player of the year in the A-10, but he had a pretty non-descript day against a team without a lot of effective size (318th in the country).  I still think that St. Louis is one of the teams to beat in their conference (along with VCU), but there will be a few questions that Jim Crews and his staff will have to answer if they want to make a deep run in the tournament.

Curvilinear

This is a very long post in which I get very nerdy about a very specific subject.  You have been warned (very).

During my time as an MBA student, my career coach was an interesting presence.  He was at times very helpful and insightful, putting me in contact with some great people at the places I wanted to work.  He could also be a little aloof, often forgetting what we had talked about in past meetings and not always offering the most actionable advice.  In the end, his work with me could have been better and it could have been worse.

Of course, I'm not going to write an entire post about the efficacy of my career coach.  What I am interested in, and what led me down the rabbit hole I take you through in this post, relates to something he said during one of our meetings.  In this meeting, we were discussing what I thought my strengths were and how I would be able to communicate them to interviewers.  Because I've done quite well in school and have always aced standardized tests, I said that my main strength was being really, really smart.  My career coach rebuffed this saying that a lot of people were smart, and that I needed to communicate what my "special sauce" was.  He then followed that up by saying that people on the super-high end of the intelligence spectrum were actually less good at managing than others than people of somewhat high intelligence.  That is, he said there was a "curvilinear" relationship between intelligence and management abilities. 

While I certainly took his "special sauce" advice to heart (learning agility is not only a better way to phrase what I was trying to get at; it's also more meaningful), I was taken aback by his second assertion.  It definitely surprised me that added intelligence could hinder my career opportunities, but I ended up not thinking much more about it and moving on.

...Until the next semester.  I was enrolled in a class pertaining to management and HR, which I actually enjoyed a great deal.  One of the books we read was (predictably) entitled 100 Things You Need to Know: Best People Practices for Managers & HR.  The book is sectioned into 100 small chapters with bits of insight and research pertaining to HR-related questions.  One subset of the chapters deals with intelligence and how it relates to managerial success.  One of those chapters included this quote (emphasis added):

"Intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient cause of adulthood success in careers that demand creativity or leadership.  Further findings reveal that excessive intelligence seems to hurt, with the most effective people being somewhat smarter than average for their group, but not too much smarter." (Eichinger, 2006)

Upon reading that, I remembered what my career coach had said, and began to wonder if it was true.  I could definitely understand how added intelligence might have diminishing returns when it comes to managing people, but it seemed strange and counter-intuitive that such skills would actually decrease with added intelligence.  If one's intelligence naturally causes them to be aloof or something like that around others, wouldn't he or she be able to use that intelligence to avoid this?  I know that this assertion may seem rather trivial in the grand scheme of things (and it's definitely a big generalization, which the 100 Things book itself keeps advising against).  However, I was in the middle of trying to map out my post-MBA career, which meant that information that tells me that I may not be as great of a manager or leader as I thought was (and still is) very relevant. 

Luckily for me, one of the other classes I was enrolled in at the time involved a deep dive into the academic side of marketing.  As part of this class, we had just completed a "library quest" where we went to Hesburgh and read from a lot of different journals, magazines, and other publications in order to better understand the depth and breadth of knowledge that was available to us.  Because of my increased confidence and research skills that arose from this activity, and because the 100 Things book is well cited, I undertook the process of finding out whether or not this assertion was true.

*                      *                          *

 

The obvious place to start was with the citation from the book.  I was hoping this would lead directly to a study with data that supported this statement, but that was not the case (more on this in a minute).  While most of the journals I investigated during my library quest were available online, the Annals of Child Development, which was discontinued in 1998, was most certainly not.  Thus, I journeyed all the way up to the 13th floor of Hesburgh to find the necessary volume.  I ended up getting the following quote from a book that sits about 20 feet from Hesburgh's office, so that's pretty cool.  Returning to the main subject, here is the quote that almost certainly is the source of the 100 Things reference:

"The literature on both creativity and leadership frequently contains the speculation that an excessive intelligence might even militate against personal influence. (...) Will likely yield a curvilinear, concave downward function between intelligence and creativity or leadership.  Under many common conditions, for example, the highest odds of exercising personal influence in a group is enjoyed by that individual with an IQ only around 1.2 standard deviations above the mean IQ of the group." (Simonton, 1987)

One thing I learned from both the marketing academia class and this line of investigation was that academic papers pile citations on top of citations.  If something is cited from somewhere else, then that somewhere else is not always (or perhaps, is not usually) the first source of the finding.  As you might imagine, this can give rise to the same problem we see in the "telephone game."  Since I hadn't yet arrived at the end of this investigative road, I continued along my journey.

The Simonton article had two citations related to the above passage.  There was another article from another psychology journal and something called Stogdill's Handbook of Leadership.  What was interesting about this was how the sources came from two completely different disciplines, which shows how much interconnectedness there is between different areas of study.  Here is the passage from the management book:

"Five competent studies (out of 25) suggested that 'one of the most significant findings concerning the relation of intelligence to leadership is the extreme discrepancies between the intelligence of potential leaders and that of their followers militate against the exercise of leadership....'  Ghiselli reported supporting evidence.  In a study of three groups of managers, he found that 'the relationship between intelligence and managerial success is curvilinear with those individuals earning both low and very high scores being less likely to acheive success in management positions than those with scores at the intermediate level." (Bass, 1981)

And here is the quote from the journal article:

"Though a curvilinear relationship between intelligence and creativity has often been suggested, the only formal test (with negative results) of this hypothesis we are aware of was conducted by Simonton in a reanalysis of Cox's historical geniuses - a sample quite probably too rarified to be a particularly good test of the curvilinear hypothesis." (Barron, 1981)

There are quite a few takeaways from these passages.  First, you can see how both of these cite past studies which means each of them will lead me (and you, if you are still reading) further down the rabbit hole.  Second, the Ghiselli test sounds like it might be fairly conclusive, so that will be particularly interesting to follow up on.  Third, the journal article quotes a study from Simonton, who just happens to be the author of the article that 100 Things draws upon.  This means that Simonton quotes someone in his article who then quotes his own study.  Just cite your own study, man!  Finally, the Simonton study mentioned in the article seems to indicate that there isn't any proof of this curvilinear relationship, so it will be interesting to put this up against the Ghiselli test.

Let's start by following up on the first passage from the Stogdill's book.  It was rather difficult to determine exactly what the author meant by the "supporting evidence" from Ghiselli.  The book cited many studies by Ghiselli as well as others.  The study that seemed the most promising at first didn't seem to address the issue, as the results of the data analysis supported the introductory assertion that "...a positive relationship exists between the occupational level of jobs and the validity of intelligence tests is, of course, well known." (Ghiselli, 1963a).  This assertion was stated as a conclusion of one of his earlier studies which contained much of the same analysis and wording. What this study basically shows is that people higher up in management tend to be more reliably intelligent.  It doesn't offer any findings on whether or not intelligence determines success in those roles, so this appears to be a dead end.

Another potential font of supporting evidence was a 1948 article by the namesake of the book, Ralph Stogdill himself.  Much of the text from that is very similar, but I will quote from the original source:

"...Extreme discrepancies between the intelligence of potential leaders and their followers miliate against the exercise of leadership.  Hollingworth found that 'among children with a mean IQ of 100, the IQ of the leader is likely to fall between 115 and 130 IQ.  That is, the leader is likely to be more intelligent, but not too much more intelligent than the average of the group led." (Stogdill, 1948)

The article goes on to talk about how the reason behind this is likely communication.  A child with average intelligence is not likely to be able to understand the words and/or ideas coming from the child with superior intelligence.  This makes sense, and I don't really have any problems with the study or the conclusion.  However, I'm not sure how a study of children would necessarily lend itself to making similar conclusions about adults.  First, the leaders of the child groups are not necessarily being selected with the same goals in mind, and they are not being graded on the success of their leadership.  This shows a fundamental difference with what the 100 Things book is trying to demonstrate.  Second, adults with very high intelligence should typically be able to understand that they are very intelligent and thus be able to make the level of their communication appropriate to their audience, which weakens the theoretical underpinning of the argument.  This passage appears to be getting us closer to our goal, but it still seems incomplete.

In the end, a second study by Ghiselli seems to be the best support of the assertion from the Stogdill book.  This is a one page article (!) that details a brief study assessing intelligence levels and managerial success.  The conclusion states that:

"It appears that the relationship between intelligence and managerial success is curvilinear with those individuals earning both low and very high scores being less likely to achieve success in management positions than those with scores at intermediate levels." (Ghiselli, 1963b)

Jackpot!  Looks like the 100 Things book was right.  My blog post is finished.

Actually, I just remembered something my professor said (the one from the marketing academia class).  He said, in as many words, that "all studies are flawed."  What this means, is that no study is perfect since they are all based on making certain assumptions or only studying certain samples of the population.  In this case, I don't think this particular study is very useful.  First, there are no theoretical underpinnings to this study (as I said, it's a one page article).  It's entirely possible that there is some mechanism in the brain that makes those with extreme intelligence bad at management, but rather than providing some insight into how this might work, the study really just shows some interesting data and leaves it at that.  Second, the study treats success as a binary distinction, which is a little simplistic for my taste.  Third, and most importantly, the data do not hold up to statistical rigor.  If you click the above link, you'll see the presentation of the data, which makes it look like the highest-end group is indeed less successful as a manager.  Of course, you will also notice that the highest-end group is comprised of a total of 13 people.  Thus, I did some late night chi-square analysis to see if the observed percentage are statistically meaningful:

The summary answer is that no, the data do not indicate that these results aren't simply the product of random chance.  The long answer is that the p-value of 0.76 is far too large for us to reject the null hypothesis that all of the intelligence groups produce the same ratio of successful managers (for more info on how the chi-square goodness of fit test works, see the link from earlier).  These results do suggest that there is something worth investigating, but they are hardly conclusive one way or the other.  If this ends up being the main source of the assertion from the 100 Things book, then I will feel confident in my feeling that it isn't true (or at least that we don't know if it's true).

I have finished following up on the sources from the Stogdill book, so let's take a look at the sources behind the Barron article.  If you will recall, that article shared in my skepticism of the curvilinear claims.  As I also said, the article quotes a study from Simonton, who we have already heard from in this post.  This will help us to better understand where he was coming from in his quote.  The study in question performs multivariate analysis on the data from Cox's historical geniuses subset mentioned in the article quote above.  What is most interesting about this is that once the author adds control variables such as year of birth to the equation, "intelligence...exhibits neither a linear nor a curvilinear relation with ranked eminence." (Simonton, 1976).  At this point, other variables correlated with intelligence, such as education, do a better job of explaining leadership success than just intelligence itself.

That article does throw out the curvilinear hypothesis in the beginning, so I did want to quickly address that.  The author states:

"Moreover, since individuals can also be too intelligent to make successful leaders, the association between intelligence and leader eminence may be curvilinear." (Simonton, 1976)

This passage cites two studies.  The first study simply reiterates what all the others have said, without offering up anything else, so it's not particularly useful for our purposes.  The second study is more interesting.  That study examines the results of multiple studies concerning individual behavior in groups in order to come to some sort of consensus about the effects various factors have on such behavior.  In the section concerning intelligence's effect on leadership there is a lot of data that suggests that "the positive association between intelligence and leadership is found to be highly significant.... However, the magnitude of the relationship is less impressive; no correlation reported exceeds .50, and the median r is roughly .25." (Mann, 1959).  Nowhere in that section, nor the final conclusion is there any mention of the curvilinear relationship.  It seems that this avenue, too, is a dead end.



*               *                *

In the end, it appears from my (admittedly amateur) research that the assertion from the 100 Things book has two primary sources:

- The research that indicates leaders among children typically don't deviate far from the norm.  I didn't spend much time verifying this because it seemed to be pretty much accepted in many of the articles I read, and it's somewhat tangential to the topic at hand.  This may indeed be an avenue towards proving the statement from the 100 Things book, but it doesn't directly address it, so we can't really be confident in the conclusion from this alone.

- The (flawed) 1963 study from Ghiselli that shows the curvilinear relationship between intelligence and leadership.

Given this shaky foundation, it seems difficult to say we should apply this assertion substantively.  This is, those in charge of hiring managers should not necessarily be wary of hiring those with very high intelligence if they are otherwise qualified.  Let me be clear that I am not rejecting the hypothesis at all; it may indeed be true.  What I am saying is that it isn't an extensions of some basic common sense/logic, and I haven't found any ironclad support for it in the research that would make me question that logic.  In whole, this exercise taught me a number of things:

1. Don't be afraid to check facts.  We can't each spend the amount of time it would take to check every fact we come across.  Given our constraints, we have to determine what sources of information and reliable and go from there.  However, if something seems especially fishy and that thing affects your life in some way, you should take the time to investigate it further.  It did not take me a great deal of time to track down the information contained in this post, which certainly helps (luckily for me, I had some time between graduation and moving where I was able to do this).  Given the proliferation of information on the internet, it is continuously getting easier and easier to do this.

2. Academic writings, in spite of their vaunted air, are not perfect.  It is certainly tempting to see that something is highly researched and peer-reviewed and accept that as truth.  In reality though, the people who assemble such findings are just as biased, resource-starved, and imperfect as you or me.  I certainly give a lot of credence to what I read in academic publications, but it's good to play the part of the skeptic at least every now and then.

3. Findings that come from abnormalities in data need to be supported by some theoretical foundation.  Saying that it appears that there is a curvilinear relationship between leadership and intelligence because of the data is fine.  However, without some plausible explanation (or at least idea of how to determine an explanation), all it is is data.  The communication gap theory that I saw in other articles (mostly the ones that talk about data related to children) certainly could explain that relationship, but I never really saw the connection spelled out in what I read.

I very much enjoyed going through a little research project like this.  It shined the light on some of the great things about the academic world, while also putting some of its imperfection on display.  Most importantly, it got me a little bit closer to learning the truth about that which I set out to learn, and it showed me that I had the ability to do this.  Although the focus of college is often classes, grades, and extra-curriculars, this activity helped me get to the heart of what it's all about: the unabashed pursuit of knowledge.  I heartily recommend it if there's something that you want to learn more about.


Works cited:

Barron, F. and Harrington D.M. (1981).  "Creativity, intelligence and personality."  Annual Review of Psychology, 32, 439-476.

Bass, B.M. (1981).  Stogdill's Handbook of Leadership.  New York: Free Press.

Eichinger, Robert W, Michael M Lombardo, and Dave Ulrich (2006).  100 Things You Need to Know: Best People Practices for Managers and HR.  Lominger Limited Inc.

Ghiselli, E.E (1963a).  "The Vailidity of Management Traits in Relation to Occupational Level."  Personnel Psychology.  1963, 16, 109-113.

Ghiselli, E.E (1963b).  "Intelligence and Managerial Success."  Psychological Reports, 1963, 12.1, 898.

Gibb, CA (1969).  "Leadership." Handbook of Social Psychology (volume 4, ed 2).  Addison-Wesley.

Mann, RD (1959).  "A Review of the Relationships Between Personality and Performance in Small Groups."  Psychological Bulletin, 1959, 56, 241-270.

Simonton, DK (1976).  "Biographical Determinants of Achieved Eminence: A Multivariate Approach to the Cox Data."  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 218-226.

Simonton, DK (1987).  "Developmental Antecedents of Achieved Eminence."  Annals of Child Development, 4, 131-169.

Stogdill, RM (1948).  "Personal Factors Associated with Leadership: A Survey of the Literature."  Journal of Psychology, 1948, 25, 35-71.




A Mike Bogacz Sports Primer

Ever since I began my blog three years ago, I've always had the idea in the back of my head of doing a post where I explain my allegiances, both to teams and to sports.  I offhandedly mention in some of my posts that college football is the best, or that I hope my Irish or my Huskers or my Bluejays do well, or that I don't have an NBA team.  While these mentions probably give you all an idea of how I feel about things, there probably isn't enough context there to really understand where I am coming from.  Additionally, it has felt like I get a lot of people wondering if the latest ND loss has crushed me, or asking why I didn't do an NFL preview in addition to my college one.  Given all of this, it seems like now would be as good of a time as any to write a post like thus.  Enjoy?

Favorite Sports (as of 10/22/2013)

1. College Football

This one is pretty simple.  I grew up in Nebraska, which is obsessed with the Huskers.  I went to Notre Dame, which is one of the most football-crazed campuses you'll see.  I've been watching college football for twenty years, which gives me some perspective and history with the sport that I don't have with every other sport.  And finally, there isn't another sport that I know of where every single game matters as much as it does in college football.  The 14 or 15 fall Saturdays loaded with football are among the very best sporting days of the year.  Everything about them, from the always-surreal Corso mascot head moment to the late-late games (also known as nap time), helps to make college football my favorite sport.

2. College Basketball

The glowing tone of the previous paragraph probably makes it seem like college football is far and away my #1 sport.  And when I'm in the middle of my weekly 14-hour marathon of games, it really doesn't seem like anything else could compare.  That said, college basketball comes close.  The game itself is awesome, packing a ton of drama into a relatively compact two-hour window.  The 35-second shot clock allows for meaty possessions and provides a stern test to on-ball defense.*  While other sports dismiss the little guy, college basketball embraces the smaller teams, giving nearly 350 squads their chance at a day in the sun.  The colorful coaches and their personalities make their marks on their programs unlike any other sport, which results in an interesting paradox: While playing careers are shorter in CBB than in any other sport, the presence of legendary coaches and programs creates a sense of continuity that no other sport (not even college football) can match.  And finally, the NCAA tournament is quite simply the best sporting event of the year, mixing drama and high-level play in perfect amounts.

*Shortening the clock is not the answer to the scoring "problem", although I could probably live with a 30-second clock.

3. MLB

Having college sports in my top two spots requires a bit of mental gymnastics.  Yes, many of the teams I watch are very, very good at their sports, but they are clearly not playing at the level of NFL/NBA teams.  That doesn't really seem to phase me though, as the intensity and importance of the college games have made them my favorite sports.  When it comes to baseball though, I like watching the best.  Seeing the best defensive plays, the craziest pitches, and the raw power of major leaguers is far superior to the college product in my opinion. 

This distinction results in part from the fact that college football and basketball are more pervasive in our culture, but I think there is another reason as well.  Whereas basketball and football are primarily about the fluidity, teamwork, and togetherness of a team, baseball is a very individualized sport.  Yes, you need to work together with your teammates from time to time (most notably catchers and pitchers need to be on the same page), but most duties of a baseball player are performed largely by individuals acting alone.  Because of this, watching lesser players just doesn't work quite as well, and MLB rules the day in baseball.

4. Tennis

If I made this list a few years ago, tennis would have been ranked much lower.  The last couple of years have seen a big change for me, for a couple of reasons.  First, I've started playing tennis a lot, so watching tennis takes on a bit of an educational bent for me.  Second, and more importantly, the top players in tennis right now are just so good.  Watching a match between two of the top 6 or 7 men, or between Serena and Azarenka is unlike any other current sporting event in terms of pure insane quality.  I have yet to start regularly following non-grand slam tournaments, but tennis has settled in nicely in the middle of my list.

5. NFL

Hey there NFL.  You are great.  Dramatic playoff games, insanely high level play, actual focus on defense, fantasy football, year-round coverage of ridiculous minutia (draft combines, anyone?), minimal alternate uniforms.

However, you are also terrible.  Concussion problems that aren't getting fully addressed.  A weird penchant for pink, when it isn't that beneficial.  A weird insistence on parity at the expense of all else.  A terrible programming strategy that forces consumers to go through Direct TV to be able to watch the games they want to.

When I was younger, the NFL would have been #1 or #2 on this list.  Now, it has drifted down the list (and I was tempted to put it lower).  I still watch plenty of games, and I still root for my Buccaneers every chance I get, but the NFL just doesn't do it for me.  Maybe that's why all of my fantasy teams are so terrible this year.

6. NBA

This one is easy.  The playoffs are awesome.  The regular season is terrible.  Last season, I watched one regular season NBA game (and it was a doozy).  I understand the business reasons for playing 82 games, but there is just no need to play that many games.*  The lack of importance of individual games shows in the often lackadaisical playing you'll often see in regular season games.  Additionally, this sort of practice leads to tired teams, commissioners fining coaches for resting players, and ridiculous spates of injuries.  Just last year, we were without Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, Rajon Rondo, Kobe Bryant, Andrew Bynum, Danny Granger, and a boatload of others for the playoffs.  In turn, this makes the playoffs a little bit worse, as simply being healthy is often the difference between winning a ring and going home early.  I will probably always tune in for the NBA playoffs, but until they fix the regular season, the NBA will stay here on the list.

*NBA team talent stabilizes almost as quickly as NFL team talent, but they play 5 times as many games.  So that's a little unnecessary.

7. Golf

Major championships in golf are one of my absolute favorite sporting events, just behind the NCAA Tournament and just in front of game 163s.  While I normally do my best to catch as much of them as I can, a funny thing happened this year; I was out of town for every single one of them.  The funnier thing was that I didn't really seem to notice that much.  I still love watching golf, but I think it's taken a backseat to a few other sports, and I'm not really sure why.


Favorite Teams (as of 10/22/2013)

1. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

There's no getting around it:  The current Raheem Morris/Josh Freeman/Terrible Defense/MRSA/Greg Schiano/GIRAFFENSE era has seriously tried my patience as a Buccaneer fan.  The team's results have been terrible and there is nothing to indicate that this is a good organization struck by bad fortune.  In fact, the only recent season with promise was 2010, in which the Bucs excelled down the stretch in spite of some terrible bad luck with injuries.  The Bucs play on national TV twice in the next two weeks, and while I'll most certainly watch, I'm not particularly excited about it.  So yeah, things are rough.

All that said, they still take the #1 spot on this list, and it isn't particularly close.  I've been a fan for so long, and there's so many great memories associated with the team that they aren't going anywhere on this list in the near future.  They still have one of the best and most unique uniforms (Pewter wasn't really a color before 1997).  They still play in a great stadium.  There is still a lot of young, awesome talent that isn't too far away from being playoff worthy.*  And if there is nothing else, there will always be the memory of Super Bowl XXXVII.  The Buccaneers have always been something that is uniquely me, and I don't see me giving that up anytime soon.

*Call me crazy, but if they draft Marcus Mariota and a tight end (strong year for that with Eric Ebron, Austin Seferian-Jenkins, and Colt Lyerla) and then sign someone like David Shaw to be coach, I think this can be a ten win team next year.

2. Notre Dame Men's Basketball
3. Creighton Men's Basketball

Rooting for a college basketball team is particularly unique.  The back and forth pace of play combined with the importance of each individual game.  Yes, each game doesn't matter quite as much as they do in college football, but given the egalitarian nature of the Tournament, playing for seeding is much bigger of a deal than playing for bowl position.  This leads to a minute-to-minute tension, at least for me, that makes college basketball fandom more a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome than any other sport.  Thus, ND and Creighton check in just behind the Buccaneers.

4. Oakland Athletics

The A's are the hardest team to peg on this list.  In a lot of ways, they should be higher.  MLB has the best year-round visibility for me, so my offseason awareness of them is higher than that of my other teams.  Baseball has the summer to itself, so I spend four months rooting for no one other than the A's.  And most importantly, Billy Beane has been smartly leading the team for a decade and a half, which helps to ensure that there's always a method to the madness.  That sort of confidence in an organization is important to me as a fan, because it helps to smooth over the bad periods (2007-2011) with assurance that success is around the corner.

In spite of all of that, I can also make the argument that they should be lower.  While Billy seems pretty entrenched as GM, there's always the chance that he could leave.  Since he's been with the team for the whole span of my baseball-aware life, that would bring about a pretty big sea-change for the A's.  If they are suddenly no longer on the forefront of analytical thought, would I have the same connection to the team?*  Additionally, the whole stadium fiasco could blow up at some point, which wouldn't necessarily result in a happy ending for the club.  Considering that the franchise hasn't had a ballpark built specifically for it in 104 years, I don't feel particularly optimistic about the situation.  Finally, they have by far the least personal history of any of these teams, as I've rooted for the Bucs and the "hometown" teams for twice as long, and I of course attended Notre Dame.

*I became a fan around the time of Moneyball, but the main thing that curated my fan-ship was the dominance of the Big Three (Hudson, Mulder, and Zito), as well as guys like Eric Chavez.  The analytical process behind the team has been something that kept me coming back through the years, and helped to reinforce and strengthen my allegiance.  Also, those uniforms are purty.

In the end, I think I'll always be an A's fan.  While there is a lot of potential future variance in exactly how much I like them, the last decade has provided enough memories for me to hold onto through thick and thin.

5. Nebraska Football
6. Notre Dame Football

Whereas college football is my favorite sport, my college football allegiances fall towards the bottom of my team-specific list.  Part of that is happenstance, but part of that is causal.  I've always been a big college football fan, but the 2007 season is probably the most responsible for my current state of being more of a sport-wide fan than a team-specific fan.  While the Irish and Huskers were busy going 8-16 (and it was a bad 8-16), the rest of football was having an insane season* (read my ten games post, and you'll see which of the write-ups seems the most gushing and enthusiastic).  As a result, I drifted further towards being a fan of the whole sport.  Of course, this low ranking doesn't mean I don't care deeply about these teams.  Rather, I just care about them a little less than the others on the list.

*Best example of this: We went out to a bar to watch ND play UCLA.  ND was winless and UCLA wasn't very good either.  I spent most of the time focusing instead on the ridiculous LSU-Florida 4th-down bowl.  That might be the very day where I made my final transition from specialist to general practitioner.

College Football: The First Month (and a week)

Coming into the 2013 college football season, I had planned to write about college football at large about once a month, just like I did last year.  I still plan on doing this, but this entry ended up being a little late.  Trying to figure out one's career and preparing for a visit from the parents will do that to a guy.  Fortunately, I have some time now.  Let's talk about the greatest sport for a bit.

Six Weeks Makes a Difference

Before the season, I posted my thoughts on the upcoming season, complete with a rundown of what I thought would be the top 40 or so teams.  Given those prognostications, let's see what went right and what went terribly wrong.


Prediction: Alabama and Oregon are the two best teams
Grade thus far: A

A few other teams could stake their claim to one of the top two spots at this point, but I would still take these two against the world.  The Tide have a flaw or two, but they've been able to minimize those and navigate through the toughest part of their schedule with aplomb.  As for Oregon, Mark Helfrich may not be as good of a coach as Chip Kelly, but he can at the very least coast on the immense amount of talent he has on hand.  After all, Larry Coker did win his first 25 games with Miami.


Prediction: Florida State would be really good
Grade thus far: A

In spite of all the Florida State angst from the past decade that seemed to keep voters from giving the Noles a high ranking early on, it was pretty easy for me to think that this team could buck the school's recent trend.  Adding an insane prodigy like Jameis Winston* to a program already loaded with talent seems like a pretty strong formula for a top five team.  This is probably my biggest "win".

*At the beginning of the season, I bet Fro that The Wonderful Monster would win the Heisman with 10-1 odds.  Current odds from Bovada: 9-1.  Sweet.


Prediction: Missouri and Arizona State would be "surprise" teams
Grade thus far: A-

For once, my surprise teams are actually doing well.  Arizona State was gaining some mainstream hype in the preseason, so I didn't go out on a huge limb with them, but they've come through regardless.  I thought they would split their difficult four game stretch, and that's exactly what they did (Sorry, Badgers).  Their defense hasn't been as strong as I would have thought, but Taylor Kelly and Marion Grice have proven able to lead a very strong offense (7th in S&P+) that should contend for the Pac-12 South.

Missouri on the other hand, was a little more off of the radar due to their 5-7 campaign from last year.  With a healthy James Franklin and Henry Josey, the Tigers have been able to pick off where they left off in 2011, when they were a fringe top-25 team.  They haven't played any great teams en route to their 5-0 start, but that will change with the "big three" of the SEC East in the next three weeks.  I think Missouri will win one of those games and maybe even two.


Prediction: USC, Northwestern, and Ole Miss supporters should all slow down a bit
Grade thus far: B+

Most voters had at least a couple of these teams ranked, but I omitted all three from my preseason top 25.  These teams have had some bright moments, but I think I've been largely vindicated in not fully trusting any of them.  Yes, Northwestern has a great offense, USC has a great defense, and Ole Miss has a lot of young, exciting talent.  However, all of these teams have stumbled a bit (or in USC's case a lot).  There's reason for optimism, but I think there are a lot of teams better than this group.


Prediction: Notre Dame will still be pretty good
Grade thus far: B-

I knew that Everett Golson and Manti Te'o would be missed, but I just didn't know how much.  This is still a good team that has done alright considering the tough schedule, but the Irish are clearly worse than they were last year, especially on defense.  My long term hopes for the program under Brian Kelly are still high, but that doesn't mean there won't be bumps in the road like this season.


Prediction: Baylor is a little overhyped
Grade thus far: C-

I knew their offense would be good, but I didn't know it would be historically good.  They are literally first in everything, and they are coming off of this performance:

Baylor 1st-half TD drives: 75 (3 plays), 75 (12 plays), 47 (1 play), 80 (1 play), 80 (14 plays), 77 (8 plays), 77 (4 plays), 74 (7 plays).
— Travis Haney (@TravHaneyESPN) October 6, 2013

And they are scoring more than almost everyone in half the time:

So … if Baylor had never once scored after halftime, the Bears would be fourth in the country in PPG.
— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) October 7, 2013

Yes, they haven't played anybody yet (although West Virginia has been at least decent at defense), but a lot of other teams have also had easy schedules and none of them have come even close to doing this.  It's entirely possible that they will falter a bit when their much more difficult November slate rolls around, but I think they have a legitimate chance at winning the conference, and perhaps even making the title game.


Prediction: Texas will be good
Grade thus far: D

OOOOOPS!  Oh well.  Sometimes teams just collapse.  Couldn't happen to a nicer program.


Rankings

1. Oregon
2. Alabama
3. Stanford
4. Florida State
5. Clemson
6. Ohio State
7. Texas A&M
8. Georgia
9. Washington
10. LSU
11. Baylor
12. Oklahoma
13. Florida
14. UCLA
15. Louisville
16. South Carolina
17. Miami (FL)
18. Michigan
19. Oklahoma State
20. Missouri
21. Wisconsin
22. Michigan State
23. Virginia Tech
24. Fresno State
25. Northwestern

Also considered: Notre Dame, Arizona State, Auburn, Texas Tech

I'm pretty happy with the top part of the rankings.  I feel we've seen enough from these teams to say that they're the best in the land at this point.  Once I get to Louisville at #15 though, it's pretty much a crapshoot from there.  The next 15 teams feel like a blurred mess to me, so don't get too offended if you think I have someone ranked too high or too low. 

Lest you think I dropped Northwestern a bunch because of their extremely close loss to the Buckeyes, let me say that I had them #24 the prior week.  I don't have the Wildcats as high as the voters, primarily because of their mediocre defense (48th in S&P+).   While their offense mostly helped them stay close, their inability to stop Ohio State's running game is what ultimately doomed them.  Their game against Wisconsin this week will go a long way in determining whether or not they can defend a power rushing game, and perhaps contend for a Big Ten title.


All Defense, No Offense

If you head on over to the S&P defense ratings page, you'll see a very interesting top four.  For those that don't like to click on things, those four teams are Florida, Michigan State, Virginia Tech, and USC.  Even if you're not a fan of advanced metrics, it's hard to deny that those aren't four of the best defenses in the country.  After all, Florida held a great Miami offense to 212 yards on the road, and Virginia Tech only allowed two offensive touchdowns to the #1 team in the country.  What is especially strange about this group though, is that all of these teams combine their great defenses with much, much worse offenses.  By the same S&P+ metrics, here are those teams' offensive rankings:

Florida: 69th
USC: 75th
Virginia Tech: 94th
Michigan State: 96th

Now, if you go just a little bit further down the list of top defenses, you will start to see a few teams (like Stanford and Alabama) that are just about equally great on both sides of the ball.  It's clear that a great defense doesn't mean you can't also have a great offense.  But I do find it quite strange that this season's very best defenses reside on teams that are less than stellar overall.  One of the most interesting second-half storylines for nerds who like defense (like me) will be watching just how much these teams can accomplish while being extremely one-sided.

Another Word on Scheduling

In my preseason post, I wrote about how bad the in-conference schedules were this season, with the main culprits being an easy road for Alabama and a terrible slate of cross-conference battles in the Big Ten.  I didn't talk about the terribleness of non-conference schedules, mainly because it's generally assumed to be true.  While I do agree that the best teams don't challenge themselves enough, I think the lack of good games can sometimes be overstated.  Case in point is this tweet, and the article to which it links:

#KPIBlog 1: The Non-Conference Mismatch. Only 7.8% of all non-conference games are between 2 top-5 conference teams: http://t.co/1okEvdyDUN
— KPIsports (@KPIsports) October 9, 2013

There are a few problems with this statement.  First of all, it's a little strange that he doesn't include Notre Dame, since they are the main annual non-conference opponent for many top-5 conference teams (which I will refer to as B5 for the rest of this section).  Secondly, BYU is basically in the same boat as Notre Dame now, with non-conference contests against a lot of pretty good B5 teams like Utah, Georgia Tech, Texas, and Wisconsin (not to mention ND).  Thirdly, a couple of the B5 leagues (Pac 12 and Big 12) play nine conference games, which means that those leagues have fewer non-conference games in the first place, which will skew the overall percentage of non-conference games towards the smaller conferences.  Even if all of the B5 teams played half of their games against other B5 teams (a reasonable expectation, since that group makes up about half of FBS), only a little more than 15% of non-conference games would be played between two B5 teams.  This shows that the divide between the current state and ideal state of scheduling isn't as wide as the 7.8% number alone would have you believe.

In sum, I would say that the author buries the lede when it comes to the root of non-conference scheduling problems.  If you click through to the article, you will see that he mentions that "34.4% of all non-conference games (this season) will involve FCS teams."  I wouldn't necessarily advocate for completely throwing these games away; they do send a lot of money to programs in need of it, and the little guys even get wins out of these games occasionally.  Rather, I would like to see the number of these games greatly reduced.  Hopefully, the upcoming playoff (and the playoff committee that comes with it) will encourage teams to shift the balance back towards stronger non-conference scheduling.


SEC Dominance

Much has been made over the last eight years about the SEC's dominance over the rest of college football.  While the margin of separation between them and other conferences has been overstated, the SEC has indeed been the best conference ever since their BCS title streak began.  That said, we might be seeing a small changing of the guard this year.  With the sudden improvements at programs like Washington and UCLA, the PAC-12 may actually be the best conference this year.  For some evidence, here is a chart that shows the average F/+ rating by conference for the past seven years:

A simple average of the ratings probably isn't the best methodology, but it is simple and transparent, so we'll go with that for now.  As you can see from the chart, the SEC has been the best conference every year from 2007 to 2012, and has occasionally towered over the rest.  This year though, we are starting to see a challenger arise from the West.  The Pac-12 hasn't seen this level of play since the tail end of the USC dynasty.  A few lean years gave way to a new group of coaches that have mostly succeeded in bringing the conference back.  Since we are almost out of non-conference games, most of the differentiation between the conferences at this point will take place in the big remaining non-conference games like Stanford-ND and Florida-FSU.  It will be interesting to watch and see if the SEC "dynasty" finally comes to an end this year.

Weekend Predictions

Wisconsin 52, Northwestern 28

I've heard a lot of narratives that say Northwestern will be too exhausted from the Ohio State game, both mentally and physically, to win this game.  While I don't normally subscribe to such theories, that could certainly be true.  Regardless of that, I simply think that Wisconsin is the better team, and I don't think the Wildcats have the ability to consistently stop a team as physical as the Badgers.  If Wisconsin does win this game, they'll have a good chance at getting to 10 wins, because look at this.  I honestly think they have as good of a chance of winning the rest of their regular season games as anyone not named Alabama.

Missouri 35, Georgia 31

We all know that Georgia will be without their two best running backs, and a couple of their top receivers.  Still, Aaron Murray has improved to the point that I'm nervous to pick against him.  I'll continue to ride my "surprise" team here, but don't be surprised if Mizzou's big upset (or upsets) happens in the next two weeks instead, at home against Florida and/or South Carolina.

LSU 27, Florida 17

This is probably the hardest game to pick, in part because of the imbalance between the different sides of the ball that I mentioned earlier for Florida.  While LSU won't have the best unit on the field, they are far more balanced than the Gators (6th in offensive efficiency, 13th on defense).  Loucheiz Purifoy is a great cover corner, but he can only cover one of the Odell Beckham Jr./Jarvis Landry duo.  I can see Florida limiting LSU's offense, but not quite enough to get the win.

Oregon 38, Washington 31

I didn't write anything about Washington meteoric rise in the predictions section, because I never even mentioned them in my preseason post.  In my defense, they had basically been the most average team in the nation for the past decade (excluding that 0-12 season).  Thus, when they turned into a championship-level team overnight (7th in Sagarin, 11th in F/+), I was a little surprised.  Oregon is still the better team, but they will get one of their biggest tests of the season here.  Mariota should outpace Keith Price in the battle of QBs, but the Huskies defense and the insanity of Washington's home field advantage should keep it close.

2013 MLB Awards

With the events of September 29th, we finally reached the end of a long, culturally important phenomenon....the 2013 MLB regular season.  OK, so this year of baseball wasn't as awesome as Breaking Bad, but there were still a lot of great and captivating stories.  The Pirates shook of the rust and qualified for the postseason for the first time since the release of Jurassic Park.  The A's proved that last year wasn't a fluke by matching last year's win total.  The Red Sox completed their very quick rebuilding phase by locking up the best record in baseball just a year after cratering out.  We'll have the playoffs to complete the narratives of these and other teams, but when it comes to stories involving individuals, the MLB awards are one of the best ways to finish those chapters.

As I did last year and in 2010, I will list out my winners for 6 of the awards, along with the runners-up.  I choose not to write about manager of the year, because we just don't have a great idea of exactly what value managers provide.  Their impact is nearly impossible to isolate, so I generally just leave it alone.  The BBWAA generally just picks the managers from the most surprising teams, which is honestly as good or better than I could do, so I'll just go with whatever they pick.  One other things to note is that I don't usually follow the guidelines for ballot size (10 for MVP, 5 for Cy, 3 for Rookie) because this is my blog and I don't care.  As usual, if you don't agree with something, I look forward to your dissent in the comments.

Note: For more info on any of the stats within, see the Fangraphs Library.  I won't detail everything here, but I will say that FIP and xFIP try to strip out the effects of defenders and chance on a pitchers performance, wRC+ measures a hitters prowess relative to league averages, and WAR tries to measure a players complete value towards winning games.  None of these stats are perfect (although, wRC+ is close), but they're a good deal better than the regular stuff you see.

NL Rookie

1. Felix Hernandez, Jr.  Jose Fernandez - SP, Miami
2. Yasiel Puig - OF, LA Dodgers
3. Julio Teheran - SP, Atlanta
4. Shelby Miller - SP, St. Louis
5. Hyun-Jin Ryu - SP, LA Dodgers

These five players helped lead a very strong batch of new players in the NL this year.  This doesn't even count a bunch of players who provided some strong defense (AJ Pollock, Nolan Arenado), but I generally expect young players to be pretty great on that side of the ball, so those guys can't quite keep up with the top five.  I also left off a couple of great pitchers (Gerritt Cole, Tony Cingrani) that didn't throw as many innings as the others.  I generally don't let a lack of innings hurt pitchers in the rookie award, since they can't control when they're called up, but this was such a strong class that I didn't have room on my (technically unlimited) ballot.

Of these five, the top two separated themselves from the pack a bit.  It wasn't luck that Yasiel Puig's call-up coincided with the Dodgers ascendance to the top of their division.  Puig isn't the greatest defender nor baserunner, but his ability to hit just about anything to any part of the park makes him one of the most exciting young batters in the league.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, Jose Fernandez didn't help the Marlins avoid the 100 loss mark, but he did give their fans (and fans of awesome pitchers) something to watch on this otherwise awful team.  The tiebreaker between these two goes to Fernandez as he is two years younger than Puig, and had never played above A ball before this season.  Being able to do great things (2.19 ERA, 2.73 FIP) at that young of an age is rare, and should be rewarded.

NL Cy Young

1. Clayton Kershaw - LA Dodgers
2. Adam Wainwright - St. Louis
3. Matt Harvey - NY Mets
4. Cliff Lee - Philadelphia
5. Jose Fernandez - Miami

In spite of Clayton Kershaw's comical 1.83 ERA, this race is a lot closer than the mainstream media would have you believe.  For all the hubbub surrounding Kershaw, Adam Wainwright just had an excellent season as well.  In fact he was even better in some regards (Wainwright had a Cliff Lee-ian 3.7 BB%, which was just a millimeter behind Cliff Lee himself for the league lead).  Wainwright and Kershaw were 1-2 in the league in innings pitched as well, which is doubly impressive considering just how good they were by rate stats (2.38 FIP for Kerhsaw, 2.55 for Wainwright).  In the end, the main difference in their results was BABIP, where Kershaw ended up more than 50 points better than Wainwright.  While it's likely that most of this variation is due to chance, Kershaw has posted well below average BABIPs every year since 2009, so it's likely that his insane command is to thank for at least some of this "luck."  Since the race is so close, I'll let it come down to that and give my vote to Kershaw.

The next two guys on this list would have made for an awesome, interesting Cy Young race on their own, but are relegated to third and fourth because of the dynamic duo on top.  On a rate stat basis, Matt Harvey was even better than the top two (league-leading 2.00 FIP and 2.63 xFIP), but his elbow injury cost him a bunch of innings, and number of innings pitched counts.  I actually think that some of his peripherals understate his greatness, because some of those normalize HR/FB rate (namely, xFIP).  His low HR/FB rate of 4.7% may seem unsustainable, but research shows that fastballs over 95 mph are harder to hit out of the park.  Harvey led all qualified starters in baseball with an average fastball velocity of 95.8 mph, so it stands to reason that he owns some of his ridiculous homer prevention.  In all, this makes him an extremely strong #3.

One spot below Harvey, Cliff Lee had just a regular old Cliff Lee season*, finishing third in innings pitched while leading the league in BB% and striking out just under a batter per inning.  In the three years I have done this, Lee has now finished 1st, 2nd, and 4th.  You could say I really like him (which I do), but I would just respond that he is crazy awesome and leave it at that.

*I missed catching his start in Milwaukee by one day.  So close.

NL MVP

1. Andrew McCutchen - OF, Pittsburgh
2. Yadier Molina - C, St. Louis
3. Clayton Kershaw - SP, LA Dodgers
4. Adam Wainwright - SP, St. Louis
5. Matt Carpenter - 2B (and others), St. Louis
6. Joey Votto - 1B, Cincinnati
7. Paul Goldschmidt - 1B, Arizona
8. Carlos Gomez - OF, Milwaukee
9. Andrelton Simmons - SS, Atlanta
10. Jayson Werth - OF, Washington

The rookie and Cy decisions were pretty hard this season, but the MVP awards were quite easy.  McCutchen has both the numbers (NL-leading 8.1 fWAR, an insane .317/.404/.508 line from a centerfielder) and the narrative (leading the Pirates to the playoffs) to both win the award and justify it.  Enjoy your second straight Bogacz MVP, Andrew - you've earned it.

Behind him are a bunch of other great players who fell just short.  Yadier was great, and most modern metrics probably underrate his defensive and game-calling skills, which suggests that he might have been even more valuable than McCutchen.  Unfortunately, he missed a few too many games due to injury, so he falls short.  The pitchers at 3 and 4 both had amazing seasons (see the previous section), but they weren't quite the pantheon-level efforts that it takes to win an MVP.  The Votto-Goldschmidt pairing is interesting because of how similar their seasons were overall (157 wRC+ for both), but the different ways they went about it (Votto had a league best .436 OBP, while Goldschmidt had a league best .250 ISO).  Finally, Carlos Gomez had his breakout season that he's been teasing us with for a while now.  I don't know if I fully buy the extremes measures from the fielding metrics (+25 UZR, +38 DRS), but he's still probably the best defensive outfielder in the game, and he can hit a bit, too.

AL Rookie

1. Wil Myers - OF, Tampa Bay
2. Danny Farquhar - RP, Seattle
3. Sonny Gray - SP, Oakland
4. Jose Iglesias - SS, Boston/Detroit

The AL crop of rookies wasn't great this year, but that is understandable considering the mother lode of prospects that graduated last year.  Still, a couple players stood out enough to earn recognition.  Wil Myers didn't play a full season, because the Rays are necessarily shrewd with their prospects' service time, but his performance (wRC+ of 129) was almost certainly crucial to their postseason hopes.  Danny Farquhar started out with a high ERA, but luckily for him the Mariners saw through that, and he has pitched in high leverage situations ever since.  Sonny Gray only pitched 60 innings, but they were really great innings, and they give my A's a legitimate chance at having an ace-level pitchers for the postseason (Parker and Colon are good, but they aren't that good.  Brett Anderson is that good, but his body has become quite good at betraying him).  Finally, Jose Iglesias still probably doesn't have a future as a major league regular, but he was good enough this year to help a couple playoff teams stay afloat during injuries (Stephen Drew) and suspensions (Jhonny Peralta).

AL Cy Young

1. Felix Hernandez - SP, Seattle
2. Chris Sale - SP, Chicago White Sox
3. Max Scherzer - SP, Detroit
4. Yu Darvish - SP, Texas
5. Anibal Sanchez - SP, Detroit
6. James Shields - SP, Kansas City
7. David Price - SP, Tampa Bay

This one was tough.  There were a glut of really good pitchers this year, but none stood out enough to make this pick easy.  David Price came back from a brief DL stint and just decided to stop walking people. James Shields was huge for the Royals, leading the league in innings while making the Wil Myers trade not look completely terrible.  Anibal Sanchez might be the best pitcher in the AL (league leading 2.39 FIP), but he missed a month, which costs him dearly in a tight race like this.  Yu Darvish struck out everybody (league best 32.8% strikeouts), but his relatively pedestrian walk and home run rates kept him from running away with the award.

Even though all of those pitchers were great, it came down to the top three for me.  While Max Scherzer will win the award (and I'll be fine with that - he was awesome), a case can be made that the main difference between him and Chris Sale was related to schedule.  Most notably, Scherzer got to avoid pitching against his teammates who scored the second-most runs in baseball, while Sale didn't get to feast on the Sox, who scored the second-fewest runs.  Because of that, I'll move Sale above Scherzer, but he still doesn't get the top spot.

Instead, my fake Cy Young vote goes to Felix Hernandez, who had just as good of a season as he did when he won the award in 2010.  Felix led the AL in xFIP (2.66, just behind Harvey for best in MLB) in spite of the diminished speed on his fastball (91.3 mph, down from 94.4 in his Cy season).  The fact that Felix didn't show any decline in his results (his walk rate was actually a career best 5.6%) shows just how good King Felix is at the art of pitching.  And for that, he gets my vote.

AL MVP

1. Mike Trout - OF, LA Angels
2. Miguel Cabrera - 3B, Detroit
3. Josh Donaldson - 3B, Oakland
4. Ben Zobrist* - All Positions, Tampa Bay

*OK, I don't think Ben Zobrist is really the fourth most-valuable player in the AL (it's probably Longoria or Chris Davis), but I'm just in constant awe of how his game has no discernible flaws.  He isn't particularly amazing is any one area, but he's so good at all areas of that game that he can churn out 5 WAR seasons like they're easy.

You can read all about this race everywhere on the internet, so I won't go into depth here (after all, I did that last year).  Yes, Cabrera was an even better hitter than he was last year, but so was Trout, and his defense and baserunning still stand miles above Cabrera's.  Most of the arguments that put Cabrera over Trout involve odd mental gymnastics that make the concept of "valuable" something other than the definition of the word.*  In reality, "valuable" and "best" are effectively the same thing in this context, and should be treated as such.  For this individual award, who cares that the Angels were terrible?  Mike Trout was the best player in baseball for the second straight year.  For that, he should be the MVP.

*Many of these arguments also say that Cabrera was playing under more pressure since the Tigers were in a pennant race.  Putting aside the fact that the Tigers have been in good shape for a while (and putting aside that the concept of pressure is pretty questionable in the first place), we can question this by laughing at the contrapositive: Since the Angels weren't in the race, Trout was under little pressure to perform.  Are baseball writers seriously trying to say that being the only player pulling his weight on a colossal failure of a team is all fun and games?  I haven't played major league baseball before, but I'm thinking that Mike Trout faced a whole different, less glorious type of pressure to perform.

Ten Games

In the opening chapter of his fantastic book, Study Hall: College Football, Its Stats and Its Stories, Bill Connelly lists ten games that explain who he is as a college football fan.  It's a great list that shows both his passion for his team (Missouri) and why he is a fan of the sport in general.  He also enlists help from friends (like the Solid Verbal guys) to share their own lists, which of course, show much different trajectories.  In light of that exercise, I thought I would share my own list of games.  I believe it does a great job of highlighting all aspects of my fanhood, from the Huskers to the Irish to all of the other teams.  Here they are in chronological order:

#1: January 1, 1994 - Florida State 18, Nebraska 16

In spite of its pre-eminence in Nebraska, football was not the first sport I started watching.  Blame Michael Jordan.  That said, I was still only 9 when I became a fan, so its not exactly like I was dawdling.  On the professional side, I caught a few upsets involving the Buccaneers, which started me down that interesting road.  On the college side, my allegiance was much more pre-ordained due to geography.  Luckily for me, Nebraska was about to enter a ridiculous five-year stretch where they would go 60-3 with three national titles.

I had caught at least parts of a few Nebraska games earlier in the season.  I watched some of the Colorado game (which I believe to be my first college football watching experience), and got legitimately excited for the game against Oklahoma.  However, as best as I can remember, this was the first game in which I was fully immersed in my Nebraska fanhood.  My parents and I watched as the Blackshirt defense mostly shut down Heisman winner Charlie Ward.  Unfortunately, that wasn't enough, as some (possibly) bad calls and some poor kicks would ultimately doom Tom Osborne's bid to win his first title.  The game may not have ended the way I wanted it to, but a young Husker fan had been born.  Over the next two years, Nebraska would take care of their "unfinished business" in the best way possible for me.  In spite of the positive impact on me of this tight loss to FSU, nothing quite gets an impressionable kid to root for you more than winning every game.

Runner-up: I was really tempted to go with ND-FSU for the first game, but decided against it.  Until recently, college football had tended to be more of a regional sport, so what better of a game to show how college football became what it is today than the first one to host College Gameday.  Also, since this is a personal list, I must note that it was probably the second or third game I ever watched.  That said, there's enough other ND games on this list, so I thought I'd go with Nebraska-FSU.

Fun note: Nebraska and Florida State played 8 times in 14 seasons, culminating in this game.  They haven't played since.


#2: January 2, 1996 - Nebraska 62, Florida 24

I don't feel like I need to say much about this one.  Nebraska dominated the much hyped Gators in every facet of the game en route to their second straight title (fourth overall).  After the game, 72nd and Dodge was filled with people celebrating one of the best teams of all time, and certainly one of the top three I've ever seen.  It was good to be a Cornhusker fan.

Oh, and this happened:




#3: August 24, 1996 - BYU 41, Texas A&M 37

If you've scanned the list of games, and are just coming back to read the capsules, you're probably confused as to why this game is on the list.  As far as you know, I've never been a BYU fan, and there wasn't anything extraordinarily amazing about this game.  Rather, what makes this game notable is how it represents my transition from a Nebraska-centric homer to a fan of the whole game of college football.

Of course, this wasn't the first non-Nebraska game I watched.  In addition to the aforementioned ND-FSU "Game of the Century," I managed to catch a lot of other games those first few years.  For example, I watched several games involving the amazing 1995 Northwestern team that made the Rose Bowl.  Overall though, I would say that 1996 was the year when I became a full-fledged college football junkie, in large part because of just how great the first game of the season was.

Coming into the season, Texas A&M was ranked #13, which made BYU the underdog for this game.  However, the Steve Sarkisian-led Cougars were more than ready for the task as they won a back and forth game with a 45-yard touchdown pass in the final minute.  BYU would go on to win a super-sized WAC conference full of feisty teams with a 14-1 record*.  The strength of BYU in this game would help propel me to pay attention to a lot of those feisty teams.  I remember regularly staying up as late as I could to watch the end of some very random Thursday night games between teams like San Diego State and Wyoming.  And thus the junkie was born.

*That record is still unique in FCS football to this day.  BYU played their regular 11 games, plus the now-defunct Kickoff Classic, at Hawaii, the WAC title game, and a bowl in order to get to 15 games.  This record will likely be matched yearly now that we have the playoff system in place.


#4: November 23, 2001 - Colorado 62, Nebraska 36

The three Nebraska games on this list combine to form quite the dramatic arc.  With the FSU game, we saw the closest shot at a title in 20 years evade the Huskers at the last second, which set up the team to seek vengeance in the following years.  With the Florida game, we saw a national power at the height of its peak turn in one of the greatest performances of all time.  And with this game, we saw the unofficial end of Nebraska's run of dominance.  The Huskers had seen a lot of success in Frank Solich's first four years (largely because Eric Crouch was awesome), but that fateful day in Boulder would mark the end of that.  The Huskers would go just 16-10 for the rest of Solich's tenure, and then fade into relative obscurity under the terrible Bill Callahan.

About the game itself, it was notable mainly for how shocking it was to see Nebraska play this poorly.  There weren't any major warnings for this performance: Nebraska entered the game #2 in the country, and had only given up more than 21 points once (to Mike Leach, of course).  Colorado had a fantastic stable of running backs, but this was really the high point of the season for them.  They would go on to avenge a previous 41-7 defeat by squeaking by Texas in the Big 12 title game, and followed that with a loss to Oregon by three scores in the Fiesta Bowl.  Regardless of what came after, the win that may have been the Buffaloes' best ever made every Nebraska fan feel like this:




#5: September 6, 2003 - Notre Dame 29, Washington State 26 (OT)

The cratering out of Nebraska was most certainly disappointing, but on the positive side, it did clear out just enough room in my heart for me to start rooting for my new team.  I began classes at Notre Dame in the fall of 2003, and the game against the Cougars would be my first in the student section.  In fact, this was the first college game I had attended at all.  Expectations were reasonable, but still high following Ty Willingham's miraculous debut season.  While the season wouldn't go according to plan, the Irish would keep hope alive for one week at least with a fantastic comeback victory over a decent Washington State team.  A combination of a thrilling game, learning all of the cheers associated with Notre Dame fandom, and teaching Rahul (the kid from India across the hall from me) about the sport* made this game a truly unique experience that started me down the bumpy road that is rooting for the Irish.

*He was skeptical at first, but then he really ended up enjoying it.  In turn, he would try to teach us cricket later on.  That didn't go as well.

#6: October 15, 2005 - USC 34, Notre Dame 31

Since I became a fan, Notre Dame hasn't had the same kind of triumphant wins that Nebraska had in the 90s and early aughts.  Our victory over Oklahoma in Norman last year was a thing to behold, and numerous upsets of Michigan are always nice, but there's never been that moment where one can say that this team is the best there is.  The closest we've come to such a win in the last decade (in my eyes, at least) was the culmination of the biggest spectacle I've ever witnessed firsthand.

The week leading up to the USC game my Junior year was nuts.  Pretty much every celebrity was rumored to be attending, most notably Bon Jovi (because ND kids can't get enough Bon Jovi).  The pep rally was a super-sized version held in the stadium, complete with multiple football alums and a Trojan horse.  To top it all, Gameday was coming to campus for the first time in five years, so of course I had to go there.  I left my dorm around 6 AM and was able to get a spot roughly in the middle of the crowd.  The experience of Gameday live was OK.  At the time, it was basically impossible to follow along with what was happening, so we mostly just cheered whenever the camera started moving*

*I hung around the fringes of the set for a bit at the Stanford game last year, and it is much, much better now.

And then came the game, which was even crazier than all of the buildup.  In a testament to ridiculous gamesmanship, ND had let the grass grow extra long to slow USC's speed, while Pete Carroll chose not to use replay.  Once the game started, Brady Quinn and Matt Leinart both played like the amazing future pros that they would become (whoops).  Reggie Bush had one of his best games en route to winning the Heisman.  And finally, a crazy fourth quarter was capped by the Bush Push, and more egregiously a forward fumble that probably should have counted as a pass.  As we sulked back to the dining hall for our post-game meal, we hung our heads in defeat.  In the back of my mind though, I was thinking about how this would probably be the best game I would ever see in person.


#7: January 4, 2006 - Texas 41, USC 38

I have two points to make about this game, so here they are:

Point 1:
I like watching sporting events at home because it's where I'm most comfortable, and there are usually minimal distractions.  That said, games like this are best enjoyed in the company of others.  As we would often do, my friends and I met up at Olson's house to watch this game in the comfort of his basement.  Olson's family didn't have the fanciest basement, nor the most spacious one.  However, it was by far the coziest place to meet up and spend the evening.  As much as I remember the game for the contest itself, I also remember it as one of the many good times I had at 523 Crestridge.

Point 2:
Somewhere between the crazy OSU-Miami title game and this one, I turned into someone who roots for favorites a lot more than I first did.  When I was younger, I mostly wanted as many ranked teams to lose as often as possible, just so I could do crazy things with my rankings.  I still take up the underdog cause quite often to this day, but when it comes to playoffs and title games, I generally like to see the best teams succeed.  This meant I was the only person in the room rooting for the Trojans to prevail.  USC was a little annoying as ESPN had been lavishing praises upon them all season long, but I could still appreciate how historically good they had been over the past four seasons.  Furthermore, they were riding a 34 game winning streak that had the chance of growing to 46 games (one shy of the record) by the time the next contest with the Irish rolled around.  Notre Dame has already ended the longest ever winning streaks in both basketball and football, so that would have been another opportunity to add to our streak-busting reputation.  In the end, I wasn't exactly disappointed when Texas prevailed (mostly because of how awesome Vince Young was that night), but for history's sake I still wish the Trojans would have won.


#8: December 1, 2007 - Pittsburgh 13, West Virginia 9

If 1996 was the year that I first exhibited signs of being a maniacal college football fan, then 2007 was the year that my diagnosis was confirmed.  I had just graduated college, so instead of spending half of my Saturdays in Notre Dame Stadium, I could now spend them plopped in front of the TV taking everything in.  As fate would have it, this just happened to be the best season of college football I've ever seen.

The season started out tame, with LSU steamrolling everyone and relatively few upsets dotting the landscape*.  But once October rolled around, there was nothing but pure insanity for the next two months.  Stanford beat USC despite being 41(!) point underdogs.  Upstart programs like Cal and South Florida briefly resided in the seemingly cursed #2 spot before taking harsh tumbles.  LSU played every game close as though it was contractually obligated to do so, barely beating Auburn and Florida, and losing to Arkansas and Kentucky in overtime.  Illinois beat undefeated #1 Ohio State in Columbus largely because they only allowed the Buckeyes three offensive snaps in the fourth quarter.  Hawaii managed to go 12-0 in spite of the fact that they weren't particularly good.  Kansas and Missouri faced off as they always used to do; only this time, they were both ranked in the top three.  In the nation.  Yeah.

*There was this upset in the first week, so it wasn't all by the book.

After all of this, we arrived upon the final evening of the regular season.  Two teams without national titles to their names sat in the top two spots in the BCS standings: Missouri and West Virginia.  The Chase Daniel-led Tigers would lose to Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game that night, but this wasn't much of a shock as they weren't even favored.  What was a shock - nay, one of the biggest shocks ever in the sport - was that a 4-7 Pitt team coached by a likely lame duck Dave Wannstedt would beat one of the best teams in the nation (with everything to play for, mind you) on the road as a four touchdown underdog.  Pitt played the game smartly, stopping West Virginia at the 2 on their first drive, and then handing the ball to Lesean McCoy 38 times for 148 yards to control the clock.  They controlled the game so well than West Virginia only ran four plays in the third quarter.  They also got lucky in that Pat White missed part of the game and didn't play that well while he was healthy.

As a result of this game, power programs Ohio State and LSU faced off in the title game, with the Tigers demolishing the Buckeyes.  Without the Mountaineers loss college football would probably look very different now.  To wit:

- LSU wouldn't have played in the title game, and the SEC's "dynasty" is ended at one title.
- Rich Rodriguez would have been unlikely to leave for Michigan.  Les Miles probably goes to Ann Arbor instead.
- The winningest program in college football without a title would have gotten a really good chance to win one, since Ohio State wasn't particularly great that year.
- With a potential recent title in hand, the Big East would have strengthened their standing in football and perhaps not fallen apart as it did.

In the end, this game ends up on the list not only because it was an awesome representative of the craziest college football season ever.  It also makes it because of how much of a microcosm of the whole sport the game was.  Every single game has massive importance, because each of them has the chance to make or break a season, career, or even a whole program.  That, in a nutshell, is why it's still my favorite sport.


#9: September 3, 2011 - South Florida 23, Notre Dame 20

Like many of my compatriots probably feel, my history of Notre Dame fanhood is comprised of a great deal of pain.  The past decade of Irish football has seem some great highs, but those moments have been equaled and, quite frankly, surpassed by all of the lows.  The 3-9 2007 season was probably the lowest point, but no single game was quite as painful as this one.  In spite of outgaining the Bulls by a 2 to 1 ratio, the Irish would be unable to climb out of a 16-0 halftime deficit, which was largely created by some bad turnover luck.  To make matters worse, it took about 7 hours to complete this game because of two lengthy lightning/storm delays.  As my first game back on campus as a grad student at the beginning of a season with raised expectations, it was quite the disappointing result.

However, there was a silver lining to this whole experience.  As part of the recovery process from this loss I took to the internet, where many of the stathounds showed that ND lost this game largely because of bad turnover luck (this didn't provide a lot of comfort, but it kept my hopes up for the rest of the season).  I was already well-versed in the Sabermetric movement in baseball, but had lagged behind in my knowledge of advanced football stats, in part because they're a lot further behind.  Over the course of that season, I began to read Football Outsiders and Advanced NFL Stats a good deal more, and started to dig into an area that has really helped to increase my understanding of the game and what truly creates winning teams.  As a result, I think I think I'm an even better fan of college football now.


#10: October 13, 2012 - Notre Dame 20, Stanford 13 (OT)

Of all the games on the list, I think that this one best represents the full experience of college football fandom.  One, this was a tremendous game between two great teams that came down to the end.  Two, College Gameday was there, which helped raise the excitement level for the game.  Three, the ending was controversial, which led to weeks and weeks of debate (which all college football fans love implicitly).  And finally, the game was a great excuse to have a weekend in my old college town spending time with a bunch of friends. 

Despite the awesomeness of the game itself, college football at its core is about maintaining ones ties to the past.  This manifests itself in the game's continuous callbacks to previous years (ie. I've seen the Flutie play about a thousand times by now), but also in the tradition of tailgating.  It's nice to know that no matter what's happening with my life, and no matter how good ND actually is at football, there will always be a game or two every year that I can go back to and spend some time with my friends at the place where most of us met.