SB Nation User Blog: anh_sc79

UCLA football... a gift that keeps on giving...

anh_sc79 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:11:47 -0000

Made me chuckle...

First, from Cassius Marsh, a highly recruited DL from West Lake Village:

What About The Bruins?

“I have a little interest in them but it’s hard for me. If it all goes well this season they really begin to get things together, I will reconsider but I’ve always wanted to play for a big time program. A winning program but UCLA is not it.” Marsh said

Of course Mushroom will just find a way to accuse the kid of something...

Next, Jon Wilner of all people:

Best stadium: The Rose Bowl
Since this category was about the facility and not the fans, I took this approach: If every stadium were filled to capacity, which would be the best place to watch a game? After much back and forth, I went with the Rose Bowl over Autzen and Husky. Nestled in the Arroyo, with the mountains in the background, it’s awesome.

Exactly. Because the presence of powder-blue puke ruins (no pun intended) the football experience :)

What's next for Ricky, "A Much Better LA" foundation?

anh_sc79 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:02:50 -0000

Bumped...HA! - P

Ricky can't do anything with his obsession with everything USC. Here is another chapter in never ending obsession:

UCLA just hosted its three-day football camp, but UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel is looking to change the format in the future to a model being used at many other schools.
From what I'm hearing, the idea is to have a Big-man camp one day, perhaps a Skills camp another day and so on. It would be similar to how USC handles its camps, and would give the staff a better chance to evaluate talent on campus.

What's next from Ricky's camp? "Win longer than forever" slogan or "A much better LA" foundation?

Another year, same result: SEC/Big-12 OOC scheduling cowards, Pac-10 AD's are idiots

anh_sc79 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:18:00 -0000

Re-Bumped. anh_79 rewrote this excellent post...P

We looked at OOC scheduling philosophy and how it impacts voters perception last year before the season kicked off. At the end of the regular season, our predictions pretty much came true. Not only that, we were able to explain why computers loved ACC, even though ACC didn't really stand out as a premier conference.

Well, now that 2009 OOC schedule is finalized, it's time to look at the OOC scheduling philosophy and how it impacts the average W/L record, bowl eligibility, voter perception. Our analysis produced the following expected average W/L record for a team in the conference, overall winning % (including conference games) for the conference and OOC winning %.

The following conclusions from last year, remain true in 2009 as well

- SEC/Big-12 teams schedule OOC games like cowards and inflate their records by pathetic OOC scheduling. Out of 4 conferences (B12, BT, ACC, SEC) that have 4 OOC games and out of 3 conferences that have 12 teams, SEC/Big-12 have with easiest OOC schedules which subsequently inflates their overall W/L record

- Because of the above, SEC/Big-12 teams manage to have more bowl eligibile teams than other conferences creating appearance of a strong league (which is partially justified (in case of SEC) and partially illusion (in case of Big Ten and Big-12))

- ACC teams do schedule relatively tough OOC games, but they suffer from numerous cases of double-Div-IAA scheduling

- While Big East does schedule relatively tough OOC games, the toughness of OOC games is diluted by the fact that they have to play 5 OOC games.

- Pac-10 AD's just don't get it. They try to do the right thing when everyone does the wrong thing. But if they were familiar with Prisoner's Dillemma concept, they'd know that doing the right thing when everyone cheats will hurt you a lot. Pac-10 teams hurt themselves on 2 ends: one one hand by scheduling 3 OOC games as opposed to 4, they guarantee 5 losses for Pac-10 teams and in addition, scheduling tough OOC opponents results in lower expected winning % in OOC games. As a result, an average Pac-10 team is expected to have 1 less win and 1 more loss than an average SEC/Big-12. That really hurts the conference when it comes to bowl eligibility and top-25 voting.

I hope voters consider this analysis before they rush to declare Big-12/SEC as kings and ACC/Pac-10 as peasants of CFB in 2009. Just because every SEC/Big-12 team starts 4-0 in OOC, doesn't mean that the league is strong.

More on methodology as well as individual conference analysis after the jump.

Ok, what's the methodology? Similar to last years, but I made few changes following some feedback to incorporate neutral site games, championship game in 12 team conferences as well as adjust weights for home/away games so that the result adds up to 100%.

Every game is assigned a probability of winning - from 100% for a home game against a cupcake to 35% for an away game against BCS conference team (including ND). Now a cupcake is defined as an FCS school or non-elite mid-major. There is little bit of subjectivity involved when I defined what is an elite mid-major. For argument's sake I picked 10 most respected non-BCS teams coming into this season. They are:

This list is bit subjective: I didn't include any Sun Belt teams, it could be argued that Air Force, Colorado State, Southern Miss or Rice belong there, but the end result is not strongly impacted if you amend the list. Anyway, I included teams that in my opinion are significantly better than a bottom tier BCS school (like Duke, Wazzu, Indiana, Miss State etc).

The expected likelihood of winning is as below:

I believe those numbers are reasonable and make sense. They could be twisted a bit, but I don't think changing numbers will alter the results and conclusions that much.

So here are the results by each conference:

SEC

As expected, the coward conference (I am sorry, I mean essseeeseee, the Gods gift to CFB) comes out on top of expected wins per team ranking, with only Georgia having a very difficult OOC schedule. SEC teams are expected to win nearly 84% of their OOC games and it's not because the league is strong (for example, LSU has only 35% chance of beating UW in Seattle in this calculation), but because of its scheduling philosophy. Most of the OOC schedules are laughable (hello Ole Miss). Personally, I really don't understand why pay $100 to see your team trounce Jackson State or Western Carolina, but that's just me.

Big-12

Usual offenders - Texas schools. Only Oklahoma is expected to win less than 75% of its OOC games in this analysis. Looks like Big-12 North teams continue to follow Bill Snyder's philosophy of scheduling cupcakes and getting to bowl games.

ACC

The bigest problem with ACC scheduling is abundance of FCS schools. What's with the State of North Carolina? NC State, Duke, and North Carolina are playing 2 FCS schools each!!! On the other hand, there are plenty of interesting OOC games. GA Tech (toughest schedule among ACC schools) plays 3 teams from the SEC.

Big East

Big East plays 5 OOC games and it's not easy to say how it impacts the W/L record. On one hand, the conference members could schedule 5 OOC games against cupcakes and just need 1 conference win to be bowl eligible. On the other hand, the conference suffers from not being taken seriously. Wise OOC scheduling could really improve Big East's reputation and as far as I can see, the conference members are trying to schedule decent OOC games. Some teams need to cut down on FCS schools (yes Rutgers, you).

Big Ten

The laughing stock among BCS conferences never learns. Big Ten keeps scheduling cupcakes (82% expected winning % in OOC schedules) and continues to get destroyed in the bowl season. At least the AD's know the rules of the game. Schedule as much cupcakes as possible, win 2 conference games and get bowl eligible. Doesn't matter if Big Ten goes 1-6 in the bowl games. They still send 7 teams bowling. Big Ten needs to add some meaningful OOC games (and win them!) to be taken seriously. Man up and play some SEC schools!

Pac-10

Oh yeah, the Pac-10, the real men of genius. The conference of masochist AD's, the conference previously led by the biggest tool in BCS world - Tom Hansen, the conference of self-proclaimed righteous heros, the conference of "we do things right, but no one notices" fans (INCLUDING MYSELF!!!). Hey AD's, lets keep scheduling 3 OOC games when no one else does. Never mind that 9th conference game guarantees 5 additional losses for the conference, thus diminishing any chances of having 6 or 7 bowl eligible teams or getting that second damn team to a BCS game. Never mind that since inception of 9th conference game, Pac-10 hasn't had 2 BCS teams, while Big Ten (while being a joke of a conference) regularly gets 2 teams in BCS almost every year. Lets keep scheduling tough OOC games and then wonder why we only have 5 teams in the post-season. If only Pac-10 AD's sat down and went through the numbers... Oh well, that's a wishful thinking

The clown show that is UCLA "football"

anh_sc79 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:37:00 -0000

Bumped with the title slightly edited...Paragon

Gotta love the Ruin football, don't we all....

First CFN has a laugh at the clowns:

Q: Which program perennially does the least with the most?

2. UCLA - The weather is just as nice as it is at USC, the coeds are just as hot (although I've heard plenty of arguments to the contrary from several Bruins), the academics are just as good, depending on the year and the study, the recruiting area is just as fertile, and the campus is in a better location. It's not like UCLA doesn't know how to win, it has a rich tradition in just about every spot, but for some reason it hasn't been able to take things to another level like Pete Carroll has been able to do down the road

....

Out of the Pac-10, Arizona State and UCLA have been perennial underachievers for a long time. Neither team has been able to play up to its level on a consistent basis. Present staffs excluded, it’s been a while since either the Sun Devils or Bruins had an ace on the sidelines.

Perennial underachievers. Hey, but at least they won the Sun Bowl!

Then you see this gem from Brian Dohn. So much for C-Force being a savior as many proclaimed in 2006.

Which conference had the best draft?

anh_sc79 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:26:32 -0000

Bumped...Paragon

Watching ESPN's draft coverage, I was wondering which conference had the best draft? It appeared like the Pac-10 was doing well, since USC, OSU and Oregon each had a pretty high number of draft picks this year. So this morning I took a look and saw that many Big East fans were claiming that they had the best draft as a conference based on # of players drafted per team. I thought it was a faulty analysis since it ignores where players went (is it better to have 3 in top-10 or 15 in round 7?).

So here is the "ultimate" conference breakdown - I will use 3 metrics and rank each conference based on the outcome. Then, I will add 3 rankings and see which conference comes up on top.

Ranking #1: Players drafted per team

This seems to be the most popular measure on the Internets. Lets forget its fallacies and analyze the draft results:

	Teams	Total	Per Team	Rank
BE	8	27	3.38	11.00
P10	10	32	3.20	10.00
SEC	12	37	3.08	9.00
ACC	12	33	2.75	8.00
B10	11	28	2.55	7.00
B12	12	28	2.33	6.00
MWC	9	16	1.78	5.00
WAC	9	10	1.11	4.00
CUS	12	10	0.83	3.00
MAC	13	10	0.77	2.00
SBL	9	2	0.22	1.00

Ok, no question here - Big East had the most players drafted per team. Pac-10 did well here.

Ranking #2: Draft Points per Team

Since there are 256 players drafted, I will assign a value of 256 to #1 pick and 1 to Mr. Irrelevant. Then add up all the points and divide by the number of teams in the conference.

	Teams	Total	Per Team	Rank
SEC	12	5181	431.8	11.0
P10	10	4262	426.2	10.0
B10	11	4252	386.5	9.0
BE	8	3002	375.3	8.0
ACC	12	4460	371.7	7.0
B12	12	4248	354.0	6.0
MWC	9	1417	157.4	5.0
WAC	9	1055	117.2	4.0
MAC	13	1361	104.7	3.0
CUS	12	1100	91.7	2.0
SBL	9	214	23.8	1.0

No surprise here - SEC did well because they owned the first round. Pac-10 comes second again

Ranking #3: Trade Value Points per Team

Similar to #2, but instead we use draft trade value points. My only problem with this trade value chart is that the point difference is very large in earlier part of the draft.

	Total	Per Team	Rank
SEC	13602.6	1133.6	11.0
B12	10519.8	876.7	10.0
ACC	10055.45	838.0	9.0
P10	8255.35	825.5	8.0
B10	7035.4	639.6	7.0
BE	4645.15	580.6	6.0
MAC	2564.5	197.3	5.0
WAC	969.9	107.8	4.0
MWC	925.9	102.9	3.0
CUS	602.85	50.2	2.0
SBL	311.3	34.6	1.0

Pac-10 is now #4 - SEC, Big-12 and ACC did well in round one, thus they round up the top three.

So what do we have now? Our Draft Conference Rankings are as follows:

SEC	31.00
P10	28.00
BE	25.00
ACC	24.00
B10	23.00
B12	22.00
MWC	13.00
WAC	12.00
MAC	10.00
CUS	7.00
SBL	3.00

So contrary to what I saw on many Pac-10 and Big East boards, those conferences didn't have the best draft. Instead this honor goes to SEC - so more power to those clowns :)

Interesting observation, Pac-10 had the lowest representation % of BCS conferences (# of different teams with players drafted / # of team in the conference). 3 Pac-10 teams didn't have a player drafted (Stanford, UW and fucla). Basically, USC, OSU and Oregon saved the day for the Pac.

Cry me a river, Ruin

anh_sc79 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:32:00 -0000

Cry me a river, Ruin

Call the whambulance, we have a whiny crying Ruin... Can't believe it, I thought fucla was all about class.. LOL

Revisiting OOC schedule analysis

anh_sc79 — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:05:30 -0000

Bumped...this is a great breakdown of the records! - Paragon

Back in August, I took a look at OOC scheduling and its impact on overall conference record and perception. I predicted that SEC will have a better overall record due to its scheduling OOC policies.

Now its time to revisit and see how the conferences have actually performed.

This was my prediction for overall conference record and average W/L record(slightly different from the original version due to omission of conference championship games and Cinci @ Hawaii matchup).

	W	L	AV.W	AV.L	W%
Big Ten	77.25	54.75	7.02	4.98	0.585
SEC	85.25	60.75	7.10	5.06	0.584
Big-12	84.75	61.25	7.06	5.10	0.580
Big East	55.25	41.75	6.91	5.22	0.570
ACC	80.75	65.25	6.73	5.44	0.553
Pac-10	64.25	56.75	6.43	5.68	0.531

Here is the actual outcome:

	W	L	AV.W	AV.L	W%	Delta
Big-12	87	59	7.25	4.92	0.596	1.54%
SEC	86	60	7.17	5.00	0.589	0.51%
ACC	86	60	7.17	5.00	0.589	3.60%
Big East	57	40	7.13	5.00	0.588	1.80%
Big Ten	76	56	6.91	5.09	0.576	-0.95%
Pac-10	59	62	5.90	6.20	0.488	-4.34%

The predicted W/L record is very close to actual (except for Pac-10 and ACC). The numbers show what "West Coast / Pac-10" homers have been crying about for a long time - Big-12/SEC pad their schedules with patsies and create an appearance of a tough league. How many SEC teams benefitted from weak OOC scheduling?

Another conclusion (something we knew about for a long time) - Pac-10 sucked this year. The winning percentage delta is -4.34%. The conference ended up with a losing record (only BCS conference to do so). No question about it - Pac-10 was weak this year. However, many media clowns fail to realize that Pac-10 starts with a disadvantage because of the 9th conference game. And even if it performs ok in the OOC games, it will still have a lower winning percentage than SEC or Big-12.

If we sort the conferences by over/unde-rachievement factor (delta), we'd get the following conference rankings:

	W	L	AV.W	AV.L	W%	Delta
ACC	86	60	7.17	5.00	0.589	3.60%
Big East	57	40	7.13	5.00	0.588	1.80%
Big-12	87	59	7.25	4.92	0.596	1.54%
SEC	86	60	7.17	5.00	0.589	0.51%
Big Ten	76	56	6.91	5.09	0.576	-0.95%
Pac-10	59	62	5.90	6.20	0.488	-4.34%

What? ACC is #1? What a joke, right? Nope... Actually a number of computers agree with me. If you take Sagarin's rankings, ACC does come out to be #1. In fact, my rankings are nearly identical to Sagarin's with exception of Big East. Why is ACC #1? They won a few away games vs BCS opponents (including 3-1 vs the SEC in the final weekend) and didn't lose many games that they were supposed to win easily. Pac-10 was hurt by its miserable showing against MWC.

The bottomline, media pundits should pay more attention to the scheduling factor when talking about conference strength. Don't assume SEC and Big-12 are the kings (although B12 was very good this year) just because 10 teams start 4-0. Unfortunately, media isn't very number or analysis savvy so I expect to continue to see more hype and less substance going forward. Especially on CBS.

Punting is Winning - Part 2

anh_sc79 — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:09:14 -0000

First we had this:

Now, Aaron Perez lives up to expectations. Bruin media guide cover star DELIVERS - according to Ted Miller (Pac-10 blogger on ESPN):

Offensive MVP: Punter Aaron Perez ranks second in the Pac-10 with a 43.8-yard average and 13 of his 40 punts have gone for 50-plus yards. He also has had 11 punts downed inside an opponent's 20-yard line. Perez has consistently helped the Bruins win the field position battle, particularly early in the year when the offense was anemic.

LoL!!! Seems like the Bruin players are following Rick's "Punting is winning" motto

Coach Pete Carroll = ALL CLASS

anh_sc79 — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:11:07 -0000

While some morons keep making stupid remarks about the Coach, here is another display of his thoughtfulness and class (in addition to everything he has been doing with Better LA, Ryan Davidson, Ricky Rosas etc etc):

From wearesc.com:

* Many have heard about the recent tragedy at Boron HS where a sophomore player was injured while making a tackle and was taken off life support less than a week later. Last Friday night, the Boron team was riding the bus on their way to the first game they would play since the tragedy when the cell phone rang for the head coach. It was a 213 phone number that he did not recognize, the coach figured it was yet another reporter who wanted to talk about young man. Instead, the caller indentified himself as Pete Carroll. The coach thought it was a joke until the recognized the voice on the other end. Carroll just wanted to let the coach know that his team was in Carroll's thoughts that night. Boron went out and won the game.

Thanks for being at USC, Coach Carroll

Ruins feeling bit desperate? Taking a page in Fresno Bee, inviting Fresno State to experience...

anh_sc79 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:29:41 -0000

Ruins feeling bit desperate? Taking a page in Fresno Bee, inviting Fresno State to experience ultimate Ruin beatdown... LOL