2011-2012 Bowl Preview, Part 1: I've Never Seen Any of These Teams

I returned to Mississippi for Christmas vacation last week, and I've unfortunately neglected to write a blog post since then. I had planned to do a bowl preview post at some point, and then, before I knew it, bowl season had started without me even realizing it. I scrambled to get my ESPN.com predictions in before the deadline, and I just made it, consigning me to another year of finishing in the 20th percentile of participants. I always make the mistake of picking who I think is the "better team," without taking into consideration how disgusted the players are at being shipped out to the Betty Crocker Au Gratin Potato Bowl, or whatever it is. This makes a huge difference; overwhelming talent is no match for overwhelming apathy.

Although the Gildan New Mexico Bowl has started already, I still wanted to hammer out a bowl preview for the pre-Christmas games, which include four match-ups between teams I haven't seen play and three that I assume will be blow-outs (at least based on my faulty assumption that talent matters in bowl games). So here we go, and always remember that getting every game wrong is just as impressive as getting every one right.

Gildan New Mexico Bowl
Temple Owls (8-4) vs. Wyoming Cowboys (8-4)

Any time I try to name all the schools in either of these teams' conferences, I forget these two. Without fail. I even had to look it up just now to make sure I had them right (Temple is MAC, Wyoming is MWC). What I'm trying to say is that I know nothing about this game. From a statistical standpoint, Temple has a clear edge, as they possess the #7 rushing offense (256.7 ypg) and #3 scoring defense (13.8 ppg) in the nation. Wyoming, on the other hand, is average (mediocre?) in just about every way possible. They scored exactly as many points as they allowed this season (324), and their points scored and points allowed rankings are almost exactly in the middle of the pack (60th and 66th, respectively). A boring team for a boring state, I guess.

My pick: Temple
Mascot Advantage: Clearly Wyoming. Owls are cool and all, but nobody's ever really felt threatened by one.

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl
Ohio Bobcats (9-4) vs. Utah State Aggies (7-5)

Ohio State and Utah! This should be a good game! Oh, it's Ohio and Utah State. I make fun, but the truth is that they had records better than (Ohio) or equally good as (Utah St.) their more well-known state counterparts. Ohio has impressive statistical rankings (top 40 in all major categories) and by all rights should have won the MAC championship, but Utah State, like Temple, is a top 10 rushing offense. However, their defense is awful, allowing over 28 points per game, and they can't throw the ball (95th in the nation). Plus, they lost to a 3-9 Colorado St. team this season. On one hand, Ohio is probably still upset about blowing a huge lead against Northern Illinois in the MAC championship game, but on the other hand, their reward for winning would have been a trip to the Godaddy.com Bowl. No huge loss, so their psyches should still be relatively intact.

My pick: Ohio
Mascot Advantage: Huge Ohio advantage. For one thing, nobody knows what an Aggie actually is. I'm informed that it's any attendee of an agricultural college, but it could just as easily be a reference to a marble. The Ohio Bobcat, however, has a history of physical assault. Just last season, he tried to murder Brutus Buckeye. He's not one to be trifled with.

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl
San Diego State Aztecs (8-4) vs. Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin' Cajuns (8-4)

Hmm... where to start here? Again, we have two relatively obscure teams, both of which have had pretty good seasons without anybody noticing. Neither team is particularly impressive statistically, although SDSU has a 1600-yard rusher in Ronnie Hillman, making him the only real standout on either squad. Louisiana-Lafayette is known to the public mostly for their nickname (which is great) and for being the alma mater of Jake Delhomme (not so great). SDSU's greatest football star was Marshall Faulk, so they win that battle handily. Sadly for each team and the few dozen people who will be watching this game, neither of those guys will be suiting up this week. Both teams look completely equal, but at least ULL has de facto home field advantage.

My pick: Louisiana-Lafayette
Mascot Advantage: Ragin' Cajuns in a landslide. People from Louisiana are terrifying. The Aztecs aren't with us anymore. It's no contest.

Beef O'Brady's Bowl St. Petersburg
Florida International Golden Panthers (8-4) vs. Marshall Thundering Herd (6-6)

Much like Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana-Monroe, I can never keep Florida International and Florida Atlantic separate. Most years, all four are terrible. This year ULL and FIU have separated themselves from the group, and good for them. They're all making the Sun Belt proud. They also both get to stay in their home states for their bowl games, which I suppose is better than getting shipped off to Detroit. Neither of these teams is in the top 65 of any major statistical category, with the lone exception of FIU's 16th ranked scoring defense. I think the takeaway point here is that Marshall, despite being very tastefully named, went 6-6 in the MAC, which is somewhat like going 2-10 in the SEC West. There's no way I'm putting my money on a team like that.

My pick: Florida International
Mascot Advantage: This is the only domain where Marshall elevates themselves above FIU. Although I think the Marshall Marshalls would be even more intimidating.

San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl
TCU Horned Frogs (10-2) vs. Louisiana Tech Bulldogs (8-4)

Ah, my favorite bowl name of them all. Who wouldn't want to play in a bowl whose name rolls off the tongue like this one does? Mountain West champ TCU takes on WAC champ Louisiana Tech, who must both be thinking there should be a greater reward for being conference champs. TCU's biggest win this season was, of course, their comeback victory over then-undefeated Boise St., while LA Tech's big win was against, um, Ole Miss. TCU did lose two games, but both were close, a 50-48 barn burner against Baylor (little did we know what RGIII would become back then) and a surprising OT loss against SMU. LA Tech's losses came clustered at the beginning of the season, where they dropped three games by a combined nine points against Southern Miss, Mississippi State, and Houston, followed by a bad 18 point loss to Hawaii. Since then, they have reeled off seven straight wins coming into this game. Still, TCU has a clear statistical advantage, not to mention a strong reputation from recent years as a small conference powerhouse.

My pick: TCU
Mascot Advantage. TCU wins again. Horned frogs shoot blood from their eyes. Enough said.

MAACO Bowl Las Vegas
Boise State Broncos (11-1) vs. Arizona State Sun Devils (6-6)

On paper, this is a clear mismatch, which is why it frightens me the most. Boise State has a better record, better stats, and a better reputation. But how dejected are they to have to play in this rather than a BCS bowl? The exact same situation occurred last year, though. An 11-1 Boise St. team came into the game only having lost to Nevada, and they dispatched Utah 26-3 in the MAACO Bowl. Boise comes into this game in the top 10 in three of the four major statistical categories. Arizona St. is only in the top 20 in one, averaging over 310 passing yards per game. It just won't be enough, though. Boise State is too good, and they'll become defending MAACO Bowl champs. And how many different teams can lay claim to that?

My pick: Boise State
Mascot Advantage: Arizona State wins here. That Sun Devil is adorable.

Sheraton Hawaii Bowl
Nevada Wolfpack (7-5) vs. Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles (11-2)

I feel like Southern Miss doesn't get the respect they deserve, at least outside of the state. They've had 17 straight winning seasons, including bowl appearances 14 out of the past 15 years. They are, in short, the best football team in Mississippi, however little that actually says the past few years. They had some short lived media attention a couple of weeks ago when they knocked off previously undefeated Houston, but it didn't amount to much. At least they get to hang out in Hawaii for a little while. They're ranked 31st or higher in all the major statistical categories (granted, so is Nevada, except for being 58th in points allowed, which is itself skewed because of the 69 points they allowed to Oregon). They're both very solid teams. Southern Miss is coming into the game on a high, though, while Nevada has dropped two of the past three games. Nevada isn't hopeless, but I expect Southern Miss to put the finishing touches on their first ever 12-win season.

My pick: Southern Miss
Mascot Advantage: They're eagles made out of solid gold. USM wins by a mile.

And thus concludes part 1 of my bowl preview. The next part will be ready at some point in the future. I can't believe there are still 28 more of these to write about.

Year-end Tennis Statistical Analysis

Over at Tennis Magazine, Peter Bodo has created a metric to see how closely the year-end ATP rankings match up with each player's statistical performance. I was amazed at how close the correlations were. Based on his system, the top 10 rankings were identical to their statistical performances, with Janko Tipsarevic and Mardy Fish being the only exceptions (and they were just transposed with one another).

I was glad to see somebody do this. In comparison to most other sports, cumulative tennis stats aren't mentioned very frequently. You often see the match-by-match stats (aces, double faults, first serve percentage, etc.), but they vanish into the ether afterwards. Bodo's results showed that not only did their rankings hold true, but so did the relative distance between each player. Djokovic was dominant, and Nadal had a substantial lead over Federer. After Andy Murray, there was a significant drop-off before #5 David Ferrer.

I guess this shouldn't be too surprising, but I suppose I didn't expect to see the correlations be so strong. I like to think of this as a validation of tennis's ranking system and its superiority over, say, the college football rankings. At least it's obvious that their performances over the course of the year completely justify their computer rankings.

Tim Tebow Can Throw! Kinda.

At first I wanted to do a post about Tebowmania, but that's been done to death this week. Instead, I decided to take a look at arguably the least important part of his mystique: his statistical output. Much to my surprise, he's really not as bad a passer as I thought, at least under certain circumstances. As most people know, he's won (that's code for Broncos have won, but we all know better) five straight games. This dates back to Halloween weekend, which is of course the devil's holiday. It's also the only game Tebow has lost this season in which he has started. At this point, I'm not totally convinced that it's a mere coincidence.

As I'm wont to do, I started digging through the wall of statistics that's available for quarterbacks. Two things immediately jumped out at me: his atrocious completion percentage (47.5%!) and his 4th quarter comebacks (4, the most of any QB in the league this season). But these things are well known. What else do his numbers reveal?

For his career, he is either average or above average in 6 of the 9 major advanced passing metrics. His predecessor, Kyle Orton, reaches that mark in only 2 (INT%+ and Sack%+). Tebow is also well below average in Sack%+, but unlike Orton, Tebow's predilection for getting sacked is more than offset by his ability to produce yards with his legs. Combining rushing yards gained and sack yards lost, Tebow is at +555 , while Orton is at a whopping -535, almost an 1100 yard differential. Yes, Orton's played much longer, but it still yields an average of +277.5/season for Tebow and -89.2/season for Orton.

Of course, being compared favorably to Kyle Orton isn't exactly the highest praise that can be heaped upon someone. Try this one on for size. Tebow compares favorably to Trent Dilfer in almost every category! That guy won a Super Bowl and looks extra dapper nowadays when he's talking to Chris Berman. I bet Tebow's a better talker than Trent Dilfer, too.

Tebow is obviously not solely responsible for the Broncos' success. They have been playing great defense, and he's being well supported by a resurgent Willis McGahee. But it's also unfair to take too much credit away from him. He's been extremely solid in Broncos' wins this season (QBR of 97.8) and very, very bad in losses (QBR of 65.9). Perhaps the strangest stat of them all is his home/road QB rating, which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect. He's posting a 64.6 rating at home and an extremely impressive 106.0 on the road this season. For the sake of comparison, that's over 14 points higher than Drew Brees's road QB rating. Tebow is also 5-1 on the road, compared to Brees's 3-3. Is Tim Tebow a better quarterback than Drew Brees? I'll let the reader decide.

It's obviously easy to get hyperbolic when discussing Tebow. He's such a polarizing figure, for reasons that only partially have anything to do with him. But with an admittedly small sample size, he's doing the only thing that it really matters for him to do: win games. The comparative strength of his advanced metrics will do little to sway public opinion if that stops, but it really is worth considering. I doubt Tebow will ever be the sort of guy who regularly throws for 300+ yards. Nevertheless, he'll be fine if he keeps following the dictum of that longtime Broncos nemesis: Just win, baby.

Department of Misleading Stats: Turner Edition

Just a quickie post here. I don't mean for this to turn into Hate On Norv Turner Night, but the MNF guys just ran a graphic showing that Norv Turner and Philip Rivers have the fifth most wins (45) of any coach/QB tandem in the NFL the past five years. Well, guys, who else is there?

Bill Belichick/Tom Brady: 50 wins

Mike Tomlin/Ben Roethlisberger: 49 wins

Sean Payton/Drew Brees: 48 wins

Tom Coughlin/Eli Manning: 46 wins

Norv Turner/Philip Rivers: 45 wins

Gary Kubiak/Matt Schaub: 40 32 wins

And that's it. There haven't been any other steady coach/QB combos in the NFL for the past five years. Here's another wrinkle. Over the last five years, Schaub has missed 10 games with injuries. His career record with the Texans is 32-32, so he could have been expected to win half of those games had he played, which would have put him at 45 wins, tied with Philip Rivers. So basically what that graphic really said is that Turner/Rivers is (best-case) the second-worst steady tandem over the last half-decade.

I think that Philip Rivers is a fairly decent quarterback, even though it looks like he's throwing a shot put when he passes. My whole point is that sometimes a little context is necessary when they show us statistics like that. There's often a lot more to the story than meets the eye.

[Major edit: I just realized that I had used the Texans' overall win total for the past five years, not just the games that Schaub had won. But my point still stands.]

Five Quick Stats #1: Norv Turner Is Not a Terrific Football Coach

On the Monday Night Football pregame show, Ron Jaworski just asserted that "Norv Turner is a terrific football coach." That doesn't pass the smell test, but let's look a little deeper.

Stat #1: Norv Turner is the longest-tenured coach in NFL history with a career losing record. He's 103-112-1 in 14 seasons. He's 4-4 in the playoffs.

Stat #2: In those 14 seasons, he's made the playoffs four times. In one of those playoff seasons (2008), his team finished 8-8.

Stat #3: This one indicates to me that even his talents as an offensive coordinator are overrated and that his success at Dallas was a result of having overwhelming talent at his disposal, rather than his genius as a coach. In his three years as Dallas's OC, they finished in the top ten in points and yards every season. In his four years as OC at San Diego, Miami, and San Francisco, his teams never finished in the top ten. Only three times in his tenure as a head coach have his teams finished in the top ten in yards.

Stat #4: In 2010, his Chargers pulled off the incredibly impressive feat of finishing first in the NFL in total offense and defense and still finishing 9-7 (and missing the playoffs).

Stat #5: Turner doesn't even produce good head coaches. Of the five eventual head coaches who worked for him as an assistant, only Mike Martz (53-32) had a winning record. The other four (Cam Cameron, Mike Nolan, Ray Rhodes, and Ron Rivera) had a combined record of 59-102-1.

Jaws is a smart guy, and I'm sure he knows most of these things. I understand the need to try to make a game pitting the 4-7 Chargers against the 4-7 Jaguars more appealing, but I hope they don't strain credulity quite so much next time.

LSU-Alabama: The "Correct" Decision

Whether we like to admit it or not, the "best" team or player does not always win the championship, no matter what the sport is. This is readily apparent in individual sports, but there is an orthodoxy in team competition that whoever wins the final game (or series) is, therefore, the best. When Y.E. Yang defeats Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga knocks off Roger Federer at Wimbledon, this is in no way suggests that the victors are the superior athletes.

This, of course, is not a completely fair argument. We have a much larger historical perspective to work with when we discuss Woods and Federer, so these aforementioned losses are more clearly aberrations. College athletics, on the other hand, are constantly in flux. So many variables are at play that the quality of one year's team does not (necessarily) have any correlation with the quality of that team in the years preceding or following. Earlier this season, LSU defeated Alabama 9-6 in overtime. This game is a snapshot, fixed in time. We can draw no conclusions from it. Whereas we know from career productivity that Federer is a greater player than Tsonga, despite the loss, there is no analogue for the football game. It proves nothing, and the result could have just as easily gone the other way. From this perspective, the argument that LSU has "proven" themselves to be a better team than Alabama is meaningless. They have proven themselves to be better than Alabama no more than Iowa State "proved" they were better than Oklahoma State.

This leads into the second, more compelling argument against Alabama's invitation to the championship game: Oklahoma State "deserves" the opportunity to play for the national championship. Undoubtedly they do. They were the only one-loss conference champion! But a conference championship proves nothing more than a head-to-head match-up. It is determined by factors every bit as arbitrary as those that go into the BCS system. If by some accident of history Alabama had been assigned to the Eastern division of the SEC, then they would have had their chance for a rematch in the SEC championship game, at which point, had they won, they could have "rightfully" claimed their place in the BCS final. Are we to argue that Georgia was more deserving of a chance at the SEC title than Alabama was, based on their geographic setting? Of course not, and yet no one cried foul about it.

This is not an argument against Oklahoma State's credibility as an opponent for LSU. It is not an argument against Stanford, or Oregon, or Boise State, or any of the other schools that were talked about as national championship hopefuls this season. It is an acknowledgment that the NCAA uses an arbitrary system to judge teams based on their performances (which prove nothing) in arbitrary classification systems known as conferences and divisions.

Arguments can be made for and against any of these teams. Alabama didn't win its own division and already lost to LSU. Oklahoma State lost to a mediocre Iowa State team, and they didn't even have to play a conference championship game. Stanford, like Alabama, didn't even win its division. Like Alabama, Oregon has already lost to LSU this season. Boise State didn't win its own (weak) conference. Wisconsin lost its two games on last-minute heave-hos to the end zone; had those fallen to the ground, they would be in the title game. Would that have made them any better as a team? Would it have made them more deserving?

Alabama is not more deserving of this game than anybody else. But neither are they less deserving. For better or worse, the BCS is the system that is in place, and according to the mysterious whims of voters and the machinations of the computer rankings, they have been deemed to be the "best" fit for the championship game.

The only genuine argument for Oklahoma State (or any of the others) is an aesthetic one, one that is based not on any appeal to a mythical objectivity. The statement "I would prefer to see LSU vs. Oklahoma State" is valid; to say "Oklahoma State is more deserving than Alabama" is not. The truth of the matter is that I could have written this same post had things turned out the other way and Oklahoma State had been in the #2 spot. The debate would have been just as strong, just in the other direction.

This supposed weakness of college football, I claim, is its hidden strength. It dares, out of stubbornness or genius (they might be the same), to be different. And in the end, I would have watched the game just as surely no matter who was in it, because really, the teams don't matter. Five years from now, we will remember who won the game, but just as importantly, we will remember the debate. And the question "what if?" will have just as much truth value as the game itself, which, after all, proves nothing.

The Marshall Sports Bureau: Introduction

After giving it much thought (about ten minutes, I'd guess), I decided to start a sports blog. Yes, it's true that most of the posts on my other blog, A Small Pop Hypothesis, already dealt with sports, but I wanted one that was sports-only. If I ever have thoughts about anything else, which seems unlikely at this point, I'll use that one. And yes, I'll probably still keep spamming Facebook with statuses related to sports. But sometimes I get the urge to do more long-form writing, and this seems like a perfect outlet for that, dear Imaginary Reader.

I've been a sports fan for a very long time now. I realized with some degree of horror recently that I can now remember sporting events that happened over twenty years ago, particularly the incredible 1991 World Series between the Braves and Twins. But at the same time, I watch/keep up with sports somewhat differently than most of my friends who are into it. I'm not the type to pay attention to college recruiting or the intricacies of players' contract negotiations. I prefer the games themselves, and in particular, I like numbers. Unusual and/or unprecedented stats, for whatever reason, are my favorite part of the viewing experience. There are two exceptions to this rule, though. My love of the Steelers and Roger Federer is all-encompassing, and I readily admit it jades my ability to view the NFL or men's tennis impartially.

With that caveat in mind, I'm otherwise a quite dispassionate spectator. I like interesting storylines--not in the human interest sense, but storylines related to the sport itself. I cheer for Tiger Woods not out of any particular interest in the man himself, but rather because I enjoy the chase against history, knowing that if he ever reaches 19 major titles (which looks unlikely these days), I will have seen something unprecedented happen.

Most sports stories are more mundane, but they still capture my curiosity. When I realized today that UCLA and Illinois will go into (and, by definition, finish) the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl with a combined losing record, that fascinated me; I couldn't think of any other historical precedent for it. In a nutshell, these will be things I write about most often. Still, I'll tackle the "big issues" every now and then--my first post with actual sports content in it will be why I think LSU-Alabama is the correct match-up for the BCS Championship--but my main concerns lie with the small, day-to-day stuff. Let's hope for greatness.