Missouri's 4-0 record doesn't get much respect due to the perceived quality of the competition they have faced so far. Are they being unfairly maligned? An interesting fifteen team section of the FO S&P+ rankings may give you some food for thought.

Oklahoma beats gets credit for beating Florida State, and Missouri gets little credit for beating SDSU and Illinois, which are virtually equivalent teams. Admittedly, OU pounded FSU and Mizzou didn't pound SDSU and Illinois, but the point still stands. Similarly, South Carolina and Mississippi State get kudos for beating Georgia, as does Boise for defeating Oregon State.

Something to chew on when you evaluate schedules and quality of wins: Vanderbilt and Tennessee might just be equivalent.

So, Dad, on Rock'em Nation again?

Obviously, the rock M did not make much of an impression on my daughter during her one trip to Columbia when she was in 1st grade. Nor does she show much interest in watching Mizzou football games with me.

I corrected her and explained, but she insists on calling it Rock'em Nation.

Now this alternative pronunciation is now stuck in my head, so I am thinking that this will be my new avatar:

There's a fantastic article in the New York Times by Michael Lewis of Moneyball fame on the value of basketball statistics through the lens of properly valuing Shane Battier.

First, let's look at the stats:

...the big challenge on any basketball court is to measure the right things. The five players on any basketball team are far more than the sum of their parts; the Rockets devote a lot of energy to untangling subtle interactions among the team’s elements. To get at this they need something that basketball hasn’t historically supplied: meaningful statistics. For most of its history basketball has measured not so much what is important as what is easy to measure — points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocked shots — and these measurements have warped perceptions of the game. (“Someone created the box score,” Morey says, “and he should be shot.”)

I also have a new appreciation for how Shane Battier, and not just for how he plays the game.  A serious student, here's how Battier took charge of his recruiting process:

Battier narrowed his choices to six schools — Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, Duke, Michigan and Michigan State — and told everyone else, politely, to leave him be. He then set out to minimize the degree to which the chosen schools could interfere with his studies; he had a 3.96 G.P.A. and was poised to claim Detroit Country Day School’s headmaster’s cup for best all-around student. He granted each head coach a weekly 15-minute window in which to phone him. These men happened to be among the most famous basketball coaches in the world and the most persistent recruiters, but Battier granted no exceptions. When the Kentucky coach Rick Pitino, who had just won a national championship, tried to call Battier outside his assigned time, Battier simply removed Kentucky from his list.

More grist for The Boy's mill, and a great read.

{edit: I think this deserves to kick off Front Page Friday, even though it was from Thursday - The Beef}

A lot more goes into it than you might think. It takes tricked out cameras, modems over audio lines in those cameras, back-end computing power, and human intervention.

There's some skill involved in making sure the line does not draw on top of the players. If it is not a bright sunny day on a nice green field, it takes two guys and a lot of equipment to draw the line correctly.

This video explains all.

So says this DesMoines Register writer. And yes, for you nitpickers, this was in The Boy's links, but without comment. This also justifies my weekly bashing of rptgwb for putting Ohio State ahead of Missouri in the BlogPoll.

For those too lazy to click, here's the relevant section:

THE BIG EIGHT

Ranking the best in the Big Ten and Big 12:

School (record) Up next
1. Texas Tech (10-0) Idle
2. Texas (9-1) at Kansas
3. Oklahoma (9-1) Idle
4. Oklahoma State (8-2) at Colorado
5. Missouri (8-2) at Iowa State
6. Penn State (9-1) vs. Indiana
7. Ohio State (8-2) at Illinois
8. Michigan State (9-2) Idle