So, Notre Dame isn't sure what to do.  My understanding is they have the following desires:

• Stay independent
• Play a national schedule
• Have the ability to compete for a national title every year
• Maintain their games with their rivals

I've been thinking about possible solutions for them & I came up with one that I think will meet all their desires with only minor downsides:  they should move to Division II.

They wouldn't have to join a conference.  Teams all over the nation play FCS teams every year.  They could compete for the FCS title every year.  They could be the FCS game each year for their current rivals.

The only downsides: Fewer home games.  Since the FCS has playoffs, they would have to actually earn the title instead just being voted in when they don't deserve it.  The last, minor downside is that Notre Dame & its fans would have to face reality that they are no longer relevant to Division I football.

For those who are curious as to the match times for the two semifinals in the NCAA Women's Volleyball Championship: according to the TV schedule on ESPN's web site, the Minnesota-Texas match is at 7:00 pm & the Hawaii-Penn State match is at 9:00 pm on Thursday on ESPN2. 

Poll

I'm planning to ...

10%

record the match & watch it later

9 votes

68%

watch the match live without recording it

60 votes

14%

record the match and watch it live

13 votes

5%

let the team down and ignore the match

5 votes

87 votes | Poll has closed

Continue reading this post »

If you look in the new Sports Illustrated (11/9/09) at the Faces in the Crowd section, they list Alisha Glass.  I couldn't find a link on their website, I saw it in the actual magazine.  They mention the 88-match streak.

 

Interestingly enough, when I did a search for Alisha Glass on their web site, I came across an article from '06 about Alisha, Megan Hodge and Blair Brown being the number 1 recruiting class for '06.  This quote caught my eye:

This class definitely has a target on its back, though. Many people believe it should equal the success of the 1996 class, which produced three four-year starters, won one NCAA championship and finished second twice.

Do you think they've done that?  Let's see: 

one first and two seconds

vs.

two firsts & favored to win a third for the first threepeat ever, called the greatest team ever, most consecutive matches won, most consecutive sets/games won, four returning All-Americans this year.

Here's the whole article: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/dave_krider/06/27/krider.notebook/index.html

Imagine Even Royster had a bunch of 20+ yard runs that put us inside the 10, but someone else usually scored.  Maybe Clark or Suhey run it in, or Clark throws TD's.  Even though Royster wasn't actually scoring, if he had enough long runs that set up scores, he would deserve the OPYA.

Well, if your willing to think outside the box & not be so closed minded about it ... you'd realize, with all his interceptions and fumbles, how many scores Pryor is setting up.  Why should it be limited to someone who only generates offensive scores for his own team?  I haven't looked at the statistics, but it seems like Pryor is really doing his part to help the other teams get a lot of points.  Shouldn't that count?

 </sarcasm>

Poll

Pryor deserves ...

19%

to barely win the OPYA for all the points from turnovers

22 votes

16%

to barely be benched

18 votes

63%

to be ignored

71 votes

111 votes | Poll has closed

ESPN Classic is showing "Something for Joey" tonight (Sunday) at 8:00 Eastern time.  For those of you that haven't seen it and have ESPN Classic, now you can finally see it.  Of course, if you have seen it and want to watch it again, you could do that, as well. 

I wasn't whether to do this as a fanpost or fanshot, but decided that there really wasn't a link or specific image to post so I went with the fanpost.  I really hope that by now I have met the seventy-five word minimum.

via assets.sbnation.com

As a public service to Pitt fans, I think we should come up with the best lame excuse for this yellow-out picture.  I bet some of you can come up with better excuses than what is listed in this poll.  Add yours as comments & if enough people reply to your idea, I will add it to the poll.  (I'm assuming I can add items later.  If not, we're stuck with what I came up with.)

 

Poll

The explanation for this picture is:

20%

Pitt scientists are working on a top secret invisibility project for the military. This picture shows how successful they are.

13 votes

41%

If too many people gather in one place, it would be too inviting a target for terrorists. If more people were in this picture, the terrorists would win.

26 votes

38%

There are more people attending the game, but they all just happened to go to the bathroom at the same time.

24 votes

63 votes | Poll has closed

I changed the spreadsheet.  There isn't any new data, but I added a function to calculate the values.  This makes the formulas on the spreadsheet simpler, but adds more processing behind the scenes.  What does this mean to you?  If you just want to see the deltas for the teams that were listed before, you don't need to get the new copy.  There isn't any new data.  If you want to be able to add more teams or other stats, it is much easier to do now.  There are notes at the bottom of the spreadsheet describing how to add things.

 

Thanks for all the comments on the original fanpost (http://www.blackshoediaries.com/2008/12/17/695763/comparing-how-teams-did-ag).  I realize this doesn't give you an exact comparison of different teams.  I'm hoping it could be a starting point for getting others to consider how distorting some straight stats are without a reference point.  If somebody wanted to play with the function to use standard deviations, etc. that would be great, but I'm not planning to do that.  By adding the function and simplifying the data on the spreadsheet, I hoped to make that easier for someone else to do.

 

As an Excel spreadsheet: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/delta.xls

As a web page: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/Delta.htm

I wondered how to make more sense of some of the statistics we see when people try to compare teams that don't play each other.  I thought it would be interesting to see how a team did compared to what that team's opponents averaged.  What I mean is that if a team averages 150 rushing yards a game against teams that average giving up 100 rushing yards a game, that is more impressive than averaging 175 yards rushing a game against teams that average giving up 200 yards rushing a game.  So, anyway, I did a first cut at a spreadsheet that compares yards passing, yards rushing and points for both offense and defense for some of the top teams.  I found the results interesting.  USC's defense is more impressive than I thought it would be.  I plan to make some changes to how I calculate the values to make it easier to work with, but I posted what I have so far.  Please reply if you have any questions or comments.

As an Excel spreadsheet: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/delta.xls

As a web page: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/Delta.htm

As an Excel spreadsheet: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/BCS.xls

As a web page: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/BCS.htm

East Carolina, Buffalo & Rutgers all showed up for the first time in the human polls since I started doing this, so they got added to my spreadsheet. 

Remember that I caclulate the number of human voters in each poll based on the total points.  So if you are playing with the values for teams, the total points has to stay the same.  If you add 20 points to one team, you must subtract exactly 20 points from one or more other teams.

As an Excel spreadsheet: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/BCS.xls

As a web page: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/BCS.htm

Sorry this is so late.  I made some changes to my resume that is linked to by the spreadsheet & I wanted to get that up before posting this.  So, if you find yourself looking for a talented & experienced software engineer for an job in Massachusetts, be sure to check out my resume. Thanks.

As an Excel spreadsheet: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/BCS.xls

As a web page: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/BCS.htm

A couple of notes: 

Massey's web site says that Georgia is 7th & USC 8th, but the official BCS standings seem to indicate they are reversed.  It might be that the Massey website includes Sunday's game that had some affect.  I used the values from the Massey web site.

Since I calculate the number of voters based on the total points in the human polls, if you play around with the points for some team(s), you should make sure that the total number of points in that human poll is the same.  Meaning, that if you add 20 points to one team, you need to subtract a total of 20 points from one or more other teams.

As an Excel spreadsheet: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/BCS.xls

As a web page: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/BCS.htm

I've made some more behind the scenes changes to have it more automated.  It will now calculate the number of voters for the two human polls instead of me having to add up the number of first place votes listed.  (One of the polls had 113 voters this week instead of the usual 114.)  It will also search for the row containing James Madison instead of me having to keep track and pass that row number to the function.  (Any team ranked lower than JMU in a computer poll gets bumped up a place.)

As an Excel spreadsheet: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/BCS.xls

As a web page: http://home.comcast.net/~elihurozen/BCS.htm

For those who don't get the 21 reference, 21 people voted in my poll that they wanted me to keep posting this.  Here is the fanpost with the poll: http://www.blackshoediaries.com/2008/11/3/652778/bcs-rankings-errors

OK, one of those 21 is me, but I had to vote so I could see the results of the vote without having to click the "See results" button each time I viewed the poll.  I saw some other web site had a choice on a poll to not pick a selection, but still behave as if you did so you wouldn't need to hit "See results" each time you refreshed the page.  Kind of like abstaining, I guess.

This is a copy of the email I sent them:

Hi,

 It seems like you have a couple of errors in your rankings for this week (games through Nov. 2nd).  If you look at the Sagarin rankings for Georgia Tech and Northwestern and compare them to the values you have, you’ll see discrepancies.  Using this site (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt08.htm) as the source for the Sagarin rankings, Georgia Tech is 22 and Northwestern is 26.  Looking at the points you have assigned under the Sagarin column that you have here (http://msn.foxsports.com/id/8750486_37_1.pdf), you have Georgia Tech with 5 points and Northwestern with 1, but the values should be 4 and 0, respectively.

 Thanks,

Elihu

 P.S.  Do you know where I can get the full Anderson & Hester rankings?  The link I had been using (http://andersonsports.com/football/ACF_frnk.html), which is also the one referenced from your site, doesn’t seem to work anymore.  I think someone forgot to renew their internet registration fee.  In my BCS spreadsheet, I list more than the top 25 for the BCS & would like to have accurate values for the teams in places 19, 20, 22 and 23 in the Anderson & Hester.

Also, I was wondering if anyone found it useful for me to post the BCS spreadsheet online like I have done in the past.  It occurred to me that anyone that wanted to be able play with the various scenarios might have already created their own version.  Do you want me to keep postring it?

Poll

Should Elihu keep posting his BCS spreadsheet?

95%

Yes, I find it useful

22 votes

4%

No, I don't use it

1 votes

0%

No, I did my own & it is way better than his

0 votes

23 votes | Poll has closed

How come nobody is discussing it.  I want a chance to gloat about the fact that I'm tied for first in the Black Shoe Diaries group.  I know for a fact that if we looked at score compared to the amount of time invested making the picks, I would be way ahead given that I did absoulutely no research.  I don't follow basketball, but I've been in and followed enough wrestling touraments to understand that most of the time the higher seed wins.  I just picked the higher seed in each game except when 8 played 9.  I'll probably drop in the Final Four since I just guessed randomly.  I don't even know whom I should be routing for since I don't remember what I picked & I'm not willing to take the time to look it up.  It's not like I'm going to watch any of the games this weekend anyway.

I was just thinking.  Maybe the ND administration knew what it was doing extending Weis's contract.  

I mean think about it ... who would care about a ND team that is 6-6 or 4-8 every year?  Everyone will talk about them going 0-12, right?  Wouldn't you want to see them set records for ineptitude?  

A bunch of bad, but not terrible seasons & they fade to obscurity.  Maybe they figured the only way anyone would care about ND long term is if they are one of the worst teams ever.

Just a theory ... a little tongue in cheek, maybe, but who knows. :)

Anyone who picks number three in the poll below needs serious help.

Poll

What do you think?

6%

ND knew Charlie would suck

2 votes

69%

ND deluded itself into thinking Charlie wouldn't suck

23 votes

24%

ND will the rest of its games this year, every other team will lose at least 5 & ND will win the national title and the pickle will win the Heisman

8 votes

33 votes | Poll has closed

Bob Davie thinks our defense is overrated.  Check this link: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/notebook?page=gamedayKickoff073 .  On the right side, about a quarter of the way down, there is a section titled: "Question and Answer".  

It has to be a joke, right?

I'm going with the third item in the poll below. I guess you need to click on Entry Link to vote in the poll.

Poll

Is Penn State's Defense overrated?

30%

No & Bob Davie is the biggest idiot at ESPN

19 votes

11%

Yes

7 votes

8%

No

5 votes

50%

No & Bob Davie is an idiot

31 votes

62 votes | Poll has closed