Archive for General
April 28, 2008 at 4:14 pm
· Filed under General, MLB, NCAA, NFL ·Tagged chilling visions of things to come, flashbacks, four and a half months notice, wacky formulas
Given the success of the wacky formula I came up with to predict the outcomes of college basketball games, I’ve decided to try my hand at creating a similar formula to predict the outcomes of NFL games. Readers, new and old, maybe have a couple questions about this.
The new group might ask, “Hey, stupid, why don’t you try to create a formula to get a better grip on picking baseball winners. Or are you satisfied with that 192-190 record?” To which I respond, there are quite enough formulas out there that try their hand at predicting baseball. The world doesn’t need yet another one, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin since the game is far more complex, in my estimation, than football or hoops.
The old group, meanwhile, might derisively remark, “Too bad you made that bet and lost to a computer, huh, dipshit? That’s what you get for mouthing off to Arrow Smith! Now your precious little formula can only be applied to professional football!” And to that group I say, touche.
Of course, there’s the whole matter of whether this heavily statistically-reliant formula should, in fact, be considered “my” picks. Essentially, I’m letting the numbers do the talking. But that’s a debate to be contested on another day.
Once I figure out exactly what stats and what-have-you that I’m going to plug into the formula, I’ll get started. It’s obviously a work in progress, but then again, I should have plenty of time to tinker with it before the season starts in September. (One thing’s for sure: sacks will be looked at. [Wow, that came out wrong. {That may have, too.}])
I’ll keep you posted.
(Oh, by the way, that ground ball pitchers vs. speedy hitters study was a bust. I’ll post the Excel link at some point, but I can officially say that there is little if any correlation present besides an increased window of opportunity to steal bases.)
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March 20, 2008 at 4:07 pm
· Filed under General, NCAA ·Tagged Carter Blackburn
I have little to add to my headline. I just felt the need to post this immediately. Seriously, I went from hearing Gus Johnson calling a blowout to this goof calling a close game between Kentucky and Marquette (which it appears nobody has bothered to attend), and boy do I wish I could go back to the blowout.
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Blackburn was involved in the creation of this video.
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March 18, 2008 at 3:24 pm
· Filed under General, NCAA ·Tagged March Madness, NCAA Basketball, projections, things to never be spoken of again
I intend to join the whole bracket madness fray a little later with regard to my picks, and sleepers, and so on. But I figured before I did that, it’d make sense to take a look at how the formula I used to pick the conference tournaments fared.
Read the rest of this entry »
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March 3, 2008 at 3:47 pm
· Filed under General, NCAA ·Tagged Barack Obama, blatantly out-of-context quotes, cheating, cheating scandals, Dan Wetzel, Harvard, Ivy League, the finer points of sportswriting
In an effort to demonstrate my range as a sportswriter, I now present to you a choice excerpt from Yahoo! Sports’ Dan Wetzel’s piece responding to Sunday’s New York Times report that the Harvard basketball program team may be cheating (you’re doing it wrong), then feign indignation at his remarks, which you’ll note I have blatantly taken out of context:
The good news for Harvard is if there is an investigation it doesn’t need to go the traditional route and hire an NCAA-connected law firm. It can just lean on its six current Supreme Court justices for advice. Not to mention Barack Obama.
Accusing the potential next “leader of the free world” of being an advocate of this type of chicanery? Sounds like someone voted for Hillary in the primaries.
Shame on you, Dan Wetzel, for bringing politics into the normally autonomous world of professional sports.
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February 26, 2008 at 9:10 pm
· Filed under General, MLB, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL ·Tagged bastard kids, breast implants, Chris Simon, Darren McFadden, Jose Canseco, Kevin Faulk, marijuana, NHL trade deadline, Roger Clemens, Yao Ming, YouTube
I’m taking another break from the tedious data entry that comes with trying one’s hand at bracketology, and figured I’d at least throw up another post in an effort to generate or maintain at least some traffic while I focus the majority of my efforts on trying to project the entire 65-team field before falling flat on my face when I attempt to project a winner of the entire thing when the bracket is released on Selection Sunday (I nail it every ten years, exactly — witness UCLA in ‘95 and North Carolina in ‘05. Why I’m admitting this, I don’t know. Please come back and visit before 2015).
Since I want to get back to crunching numbers (God, what a geek) quickly, brevity shall be the key. Here, then, is a list of links to some of the top stories in the day in sports:
- Running back Kevin Faulk, of the 18-1 AFC Champion New England Patriots, was cited for misdemeanor marijuana possession on Friday night. (ProJo Pats Blog)
- Run DMC has made a lot of babies. (Miami Herald)
- “So you’ve got something to look at while you’re talking to them!” (New York Daily News)
- Yao Ming is done for the year. (AP)
- Chris Simon was traded on NHL Trade Deadline Day. (Newsday)
- As were many others. (TSN)
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February 25, 2008 at 8:41 pm
· Filed under General, NCAA ·Tagged Amateur Bracketology, NCAA Tournament
Sorry for not updating this thing more the last couple of days, but I’ve decided to make the leap from amateur single-game prognostication to amateur bracketology, and am in the process of putting together a bunch of spreadsheets and such in order to throw everything together.
Obviously, if a huge story breaks I’ll be posting, but it might be a little bare here early in the week while I get everything prepared to project the field of 65.
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February 22, 2008 at 4:23 pm
· Filed under General, MLB, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL ·Tagged Andy Pettitte, Ben Wallace, Dwight Howard, Gerald Green, Jason Kidd, Kelvin Sampson, LeBron James, Peter Forsberg, Roger Clemens, Six Word Memoirs, Terrell Owens
I’m sure someone’s done this shtick already, but what the hell? Inspired by the success of Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser’s Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure (available at Amazon.com! [thumbs up]), we’ll give an athlete’s edition a whirl, focusing on some of the more prominent happenings in the past week in sports. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 16, 2008 at 8:34 pm
· Filed under General, NCAA ·Tagged NCAA Basketball, NJIT Highlanders
And what a doozy it shall be.
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February 12, 2008 at 2:39 pm
· Filed under General, MLB, NCAA, NFL ·Tagged David Tyree, Hewlett-Packard, March Madness, NCAA Basketball, New York Giants, Northeast Conference, Roger Clemens, sacks, Super Bowl, YouTube
Thanks to the good people in charge of repairs at Hewlett-Packard, I have my laptop back way ahead of schedule. And, as such, I can get back to blogging after a lapse of roughly two weeks (maybe it was three).
It might seem fashionable to return with a bang, perhaps making a big deal over the fact that the New York Giants shocked the world (and crushed the arbitrary statistical amalgam’s credibility) by upsetting the then-undefeated New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. Since I’m a week late to this party (metaphorically, that is — I had officially hopped the bandwagon at about the moment Brandon Jacobs fired a fastball at the play clock in Dallas), I won’t go crazy about the Super Bowl. I will note, however, a trend that I had noted in the linked article that did, in fact, pan out:
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February 6, 2008 at 9:25 pm
· Filed under General ·Tagged laptop repair, site update
If you frequent this blog, you’ve probably noticed the dearth of content over the past couple of weeks (as opposed to the usual fair amount of content that merely exhibits a dearth of insight and creativity).
Well, the bad news is that’s likely to continue for another week or two, as my laptop is finally being repaired after the monitor blew out during the summer. I’ve been putting it off and putting it off, but the warranty on it is about to go, so it’s been shipped off to Hewlett Packard and so I’m pretty much out of commission for that time.
The good news is that it’s being repaired during a time when there’s not a hell of a lot to cover in the world of sports — that game on Sunday, the Rocket’s ball of lies, the Johan Santana and Shaquille O’Neal trades notwithstanding (oops). Plus, the timing means I’ll probably have the ‘puter back at one hundred percent in time for March Madness and spring training games. And since I won’t have to lug a giant monitor around along with it (that does kind of defeat the purpose of the laptop), I may just take this show on the road in March.
In any event, I’ll be making an effort to throw out some updates while the computer is in the shop, but no promises. Stay tuned, though, and at the very least be sure to check back in early March.
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