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.)

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.

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.

We Nailed It:
Big South Conference: Winthrop (7-0 overall)
Patriot League: American (7-0 overall)
Big Sky: Portland State (5-0 overall)
Pac 10: UCLA (7-1 overall)
ACC: North Carolina (7-2 overall)

We Sort Of Got It Right:
Atlantic Sun: Belmont (5-0 in projected games)
Sun Belt: Western Kentucky (5-2 in projected games)
Colonial: George Mason (6-2 in projected games)
Southern: Davidson (4-3 in projected games)
Conference USA: Memphis (4-3 in projected games)
Big 12: Kansas (5-2 in projected games)

Can’t Say We Didn’t Warn You (teams to “keep an eye on”):
Northeast: Mount St. Mary’s (3-1 in projected games; projected champion: Robert Morris)
West Coast: San Diego (3-2 in projected games; projected champion: Gonzaga)
Mid-Eastern: Coppin State (8-1 in projected games; projected champion: Morgan State)

We Blew It:
Horizon League: Cleveland State (4-2 in projected games; tournament champion: Butler)
Ohio Valley: Murray State (5-1 in projected games; tournament champion: Austin Peay)
Missouri Valley: Illinois State (3-3 in projected games; tournament champion: Drake)
America East: Albany (4-2 in projected games; tournament champion: Maryland-Baltimore County)
Metro Atlantic: Rider (4-3 in projected games; tournament champion: Siena)
Summit League: IUPUI (4-2 in projected games; tournament champion: Oral Roberts)
Western: New Mexico State (6-1 in projected games; tournament champion: Boise State)
Atlantic 10: Xavier (5-3 in projected games; tournament champion: Temple)
Big East: Louisville (4-3 in projected games; tournament champion: Pittsburgh)
Big West: Cal-Northridge (1-2 in projected games; tournament champion: Cal-Fullerton)
Mid-American: Western Michigan (2-5 in projected games; tournament champion: Kent State)
Mountain West: New Mexico (2-2 in projected games; tournament champion: UNLV — please refer to THIS GUY in the future for all Mountain West Conference analysis.)
SWAC: Alabama State (2-2 in projected games; tournament winner: Mississippi Valley State)
Southland: Sam Houston State (2-2 in projected games; tournament champion: UT Arlington)
SEC: Tennessee (4-3 in projected games; tournament champion: Georgia)
Big Ten: Michigan State (3-4 in projected games; tournament champion: Wisconsin)

So, we got 14 out of 30 right — or sort of right — and put up an overall “winning percentage” in games we projected ahead of time of .689. Perhaps our estimation of being worthy of the bubble was a bit inflated after all.

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.

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)

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.

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.

Terrell Owens:
Best wide receiver. Can dunk too.

Dwight Howard:
Should just dunk my free throws.

Gerald Green:
Dude, I blew out a candle!

Jason Kidd:
Free at last! Free at last!

Peter Forsberg:
My health is cause for concern.

Andy Pettitte:
All y’all want to believe me.

Ben Wallace:
Stealing money from new team. Witness!

LeBron James:
Someone get me out of here.

Kelvin Sampson:
Please accept the charges, Eric Gordon.

Roger Clemens:
Misremembered attending party. Now I’m screwed.

And what a doozy it shall be.

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:

Interestingly (to me, anyway), of the remaining six categories, the only one which managed to accurately forecast the Super Bowl XLI champion was sacks — excellent news for the Giants. Additionally encouraging for the G-Men is the fact that in 2004, the Seattle Seahawks and Pittsburgh Steelers were projected to land in the Super Bowl based on the team sacks metric. Given my standing as a Seahawks fan, I’ll refrain from going into further detail when I note that, while Seattle failed to win the game as its overall sacks lead predicted, some feel they didn’t get a fair shake in Jerome Bettis’s final game. I should also note that the team the Giants are projected to face (and defeat) in the Super Bowl should the metric pan out is our old friend New England.

Sour grapes notwithstanding, the old adage that defense wins championships rang true in the last two Super Bowls — more specifically with relation to pressuring the quarterback. The revelation is by no means groundbreaking, but remains worth noting in light of the events of February 3, 2008.

But enough about the New England Patriots spitting the bi… no, wait, one more thing:

Awesome.

Okay, now I’ll move on.

As I was saying earlier, it’d probably be the fashionable thing to do to try to return with a bang, talking about the big issue of the day in sports. Presently, that big issue is the anticipation of Roger Clemens appearing before Congress and committing perjury tomorrow morning. While that story is of interest, it hasn’t actually unfolded yet, so there isn’t a heck of a lot to report or say that hasn’t been reported or said already. The bottom line is that Clemens doesn’t have a lot of credibility — he even tried to make the numbers lie — and even he and his legal representation appear to have realized this, and have moved on to personally attacking Brian McNamee.

One must wonder, given the speculation that Andy Pettitte — whose claim that he used human growth hormone only while he was injured to accelerate his return has curiously been accepted as fact by the general public — backed up many of McNamee’s allegations with regards to Clemens’ PED use, if Pettitte’s name will be the next dragged through the mud by his disgraced buddy.

You can be sure that I’ll be back tomorrow with our analysis of that issue — I might even try to live blog it, assuming I manage to awaken in time for the proceedings. I’d like to be able to put to use that bulleted list I compiled during the 60 Minutes interview.

Anyway, that’s for tomorrow. But stay tuned, because coming up later this afternoon, it’s what all my loyal readers have been waiting for — begging for, in fact — during my hiatus. That’s right, Merrill Park Superstar’s march to the NCAA Tournament begins with some prognostication of outcome of the Northeast Conference!

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.