As I've said previously, I am skeptical of the ability of independent recruiting scouts. If they were that good at determining the athletic capacity of a 17-year old, some coaching staff or another would have hired them long ago. Therefore, I have a different way of evaluating classes. Instead of trying to evaluate the recruits themselves, I go by the opinion of those who do that for a living: college coaches. By looking at who gave an offer to a recruit, I get a better idea of their quality than any star rankings.

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I have always been idealistic about college sports.  I would argue on the side that college sports were generally positive for everyone involved: the players received an education (as well as preparation for a professional league), while the school could improve its undergraduate experience, advertise itself to prospective students, and reconnect with alumni.  While a few bad apples certainly made headlines, I believed that some schools (certainly not all, not a majority, perhaps only a handful) were honorably succeeding at the highest level.  

The past few days have irrevocably shaken that belief.  When cynics would ask me to name a single major program that wasn't dirty or corrupt, Penn State had been my response every time.  PSU had always been the exemplar of how a football team and an athletic department could succeed without sinking to the level of other schools.  They graduated an impressive percentage of players; last year they were at 84%, 2nd among BCS state schools (behind Rutgers).  The Google auto-complete for "success with honor" is "PSU".  Their coach had personally donated millions of dollars to the school and helped raise hundreds of millions more for a new library.  And they did all of this while ranking 9th in wins over the last quarter century.  

We have since learned that this impression was as least partially a facade.  No matter how the public or the prosecutors apportion blame on the individuals involved (and I irrationally cling to the belief that Paterno did all that he could), no one can argue that as a program, Penn State failed in a way almost unimaginable.  A scandal of the level seen at Miami or OSU would have been extremely disheartening; these revelations shatter my previous perspective.

Perhaps I am being overly dramatic, but I don't think I will be able to follow college sports in the future with the same fervor.  I can no longer justify to myself or anyone else that any uncorrupted schools or individuals participate, or even that a theoretical uncorrupted school could even compete.  I'll probably continue to watch my own school (Northwestern) at least until something similar escapes from there.  A few other schools also appear to have clean programs (Stanford, Boston College) though all three of those schools have the advantage of immunity from open records requests, and also stretch the definition of "success": BC is horrible this year, Northwestern can most charitably be described as inconsistent, and Stanford went 1-11 not too long ago.  My desire to watch Tuesday night MAC games or to spend an entire Saturday watching random teams seems unlikely to return to its previous level.  

At the beginning of this season, Spencer Hall wrote an article entitled "God's Away on Business" about how even with the fraud and hypocrisy, the genuine passion of the players gave him a defense against cynicism.  My defense was that at least some schools avoided most of the fraud and hypocrisy.  I have lost that. 

[BH: Bumped.]

I have always been idealistic about college sports.  I would argue on the side that college sports were generally positive for everyone involved: the players received an education (as well as preparation for a professional league), while the school could improve its undergraduate experience, advertise itself to prospective students, and reconnect with alumni.  While a few bad apples certainly made headlines, I believed that some schools (certainly not all, not a majority, perhaps only a handful) were honorably succeeding at the highest level.  

The past few days have irrevocably shaken that belief.  When cynics would ask me to name a single major program that wasn't dirty or corrupt, Penn State had been my response every time.  PSU had always been the exemplar of how a football team and an athletic department could succeed without sinking to the level of other schools.  They graduated an impressive percentage of players; last year they were at 84%, 2nd among BCS state schools (behind Rutgers).  The Google auto-complete for "success with honor" is "PSU".  Their coach had personally donated millions of dollars to the school and helped raise hundreds of millions more for a new library.  And they did all of this while ranking 9th in wins over the last quarter century.  

We have since learned that this impression was as least partially a facade.  No matter how the public or the prosecutors apportion blame on the individuals involved (and I irrationally cling to the belief that Paterno did all that he could), no one can argue that as a program, Penn State failed in a way almost unimaginable.  A scandal of the level seen at Miami or OSU would have been extremely disheartening; these revelations shatter my previous perspective.

Perhaps I am being overly dramatic, but I don't think I will be able to follow college sports in the future with the same fervor.  I can no longer justify to myself or anyone else that any uncorrupted schools or individuals participate, or even that a theoretical uncorrupted school could even compete.  I'll probably continue to watch my own school (Northwestern) at least until something similar escapes from there.  A few other schools also appear to have clean programs (Stanford, Boston College) though all three of those schools have the advantage of immunity from open records requests, and also stretch the definition of "success": BC is horrible this year, Northwestern can most charitably be described as inconsistent, and Stanford went 1-11 not too long ago.  My desire to watch Tuesday night MAC games or to spend an entire Saturday watching random teams seems unlikely to return to its previous level.  

At the beginning of this season, Spencer Hall wrote an article entitled "God's Away on Business" about how even with the fraud and hypocrisy, the genuine passion of the players gave him a defense against cynicism.  My defense was that at least some schools avoided most of the fraud and hypocrisy.  I have lost that.  

Even though this week is Hat Week (Go 'Cats! Get the Hat back!), I thought I would share a pet project of mine.  I'm not a big fan of recruiting rankings.  I prefer wins and losses.  So to me, the best way to talk about recruiting is to look at recruiting records, i.e. given a recruit with offers from several schools, where do they go?

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So I was doing my usual random playing around with game records and I came with something interesting (to me at least).  The question I was considering was "How many B1G teams are currently going through the best run that anyone can remember?"  

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In a number of discussions I've seen on this site, a commentator will say "Why can't Northwestern win as often as School X?" for some school that has some of the attributes of Northwestern (mostly small and/or private and/or high academic standards).  These commentators have only a vague understanding of how well most of those other schools have performed on the field.  

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With the start of the season almost here, every writer, blog, and town drunk (not necessarily mutually exclusive categories) has come out with their predictions for how each team will finish by the end.  With these predictions come the equally inevitable accusations of "no respect" and the ever present "They never understand my team". 

However, only rarely are these predictions actually judged against the subsequent events.  That's where this article comes in.  I took the consensus predictions from last year and graded all the Big Ten teams relative to their expected finish.  (If you want a more thorough look at the rest of the B1G's 11 team years, take a look here.)

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The NU Club of Virginia is having a watch party of the BC game at Wild Wing Cafe in Charlottesville.

...That's really all there's to say, but the minimum word count is not cooperating.  Basically there's a few Wildcats I know in the UVA area, but I think there must be more out there that I haven't found.  Also, if you're halfway between Charlottesville and DC, I'm a much more positive person than nuco2002.  You'll have more fun here. 

There's lots of parking there and it's within easy walking distance of the UVA grounds.  It's on Main Street by the Amtrak Station (about halfway to the politically incorrect Lewis and Clark... and Sacajawea statue).  The UVA game is at night, so the traffic shouldn't be too bad. 

Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  Go 'Cats!  (FYI: Minimum word count=150)

[BH: Bumped for it's comprehensive look at a media falsehood.]

In nearly every article about the Big Ten adding a conference championship game, some idiot commentator will say that "The Big Ten will have more trouble making two BCS games every year because of the CCG".  This supposed event (a conference title game costing a BCS bid) doesn't happen in reality.  

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Last offseason, I examined the various coaches of the Big Ten and tried to determine how each coach had performed relative to what a fan could reasonably expect (tradifference, the difference between tradition and reality).  Simply put, I assumed that fans would be happy if their current coach won more often then an average of their school's past performance, weighted toward more recent seasons.  However, I forgot an important fact: college football fans are generally unreasonable.  For every reasonable fan, there's at least one of a more optimistic variety.  This type of fan remembers their school at its best and sees no reason why they can't win like that all the time.  

This time, I based the expectations for a coach on two values: the weighted average of past performance ("realistic expectations") and the record of the school in its best decade in the forty years preceding the current coach ("best ten").  I also only considered conference records to adjust for variance in scheduling in the non-conference, as some schools that formerly played muffins have drifted towards the cupcake range.  (If anyone has a better idea for "the opposite of a cupcake", I'd love to hear it.)

As a result, the average expected winning percentage for the current coaches is .609, while the average actual winning percentage in a Big Ten game is remarkably close to .500.  Every school cannot have a successful coach at the same time.  Some school's fans are always unhappy about their coach.  

I've also disregarded Penn State because Joe Paterno has been the coach there for its entire existence in a conference as well as almost 30 years before that.  

(I actually had this written before BamaHawkeye's article but hadn't posted it due to the recent hubbub.)

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[BH: This is too good of analysis not to bump up to the front page - even during Michigan Week.]

In case you haven't heard, various government-type organizations have been rumbling about potential antitrust violations in the BCS.  While such charges might make for high quality political theater, they have little chance of succeeding in the legal system*.

In general, anti-trust suits must have two parts to lead to substantial damages or forced action. First, the accused parties must have acted in a way that restricts trade or manipulates the market. Second, this restriction must have harmed customers (or theoretically other businesses, but unlikely in the current legal environment).  "Harmed" has to be in comparison to a market without the restriction, not to whatever dream scenario the lawyers concoct.  In other words, Fresno State can't argue that the BCS harms their school because it receives less money than under an NCAA-administered playoff, just as they can't argue that the BCS harms their school because it receives less money than under their "Every other school cuts a million dollar check to Fresno State" plan.  The comparison must be to a free market, not one that is restricted to favor the plaintiffs.  

It's unclear exactly who is the "customer" and who is the "business" in college football bowl arrangements, so I'll try a couple scenarios:

*Disclaimer: Don't take legal, medical, or relationship advice from the internet, and definitely not from a random article on a sports blog.

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Here are the intermediate results from the first weekend:

-KenPom did extraordinarily well, even beating chalk.  His rankings are currently in the 98th percentile at ESPN.  

-Amusingly enough, the most predictive poll was the Yahoo Fans, narrowly edging out AP, coaches, and ESPN polls.

-RPI is the worst computer ranking so far (though it does have a good upside).  It is only narrowly beating "Total Tourney Wins", a ranking unconnected to the current teams.

-The ranking with the highest possible score is Transitive Margin, which only lost two Elite Eight teams and still has its entire Final Four.

The original rankings and brackets.  I've created a ESPN group with most of the brackets here.

I was wondering about how well the various computer rankings would do if they had to fill out a bracket, so I found a bunch of them and did so.  The rankings I found were Sagarin (3 versions), KenPom, Massey (3 versions), transitive (2 versions), Bradley-Terry (2 versions) and RPI.  Then I thought I should add some human polls, so I added the AP poll, coaches poll, ESPN power rankings, SI power rankings, and the Yahoo Fan Ranking.  Then I remembered this article, so I added the preseason AP and Coaches polls.  Then I thought that there wasn't enough craziness for March Madness, so I added my own bracket, got my wife to fill out a bracket, and then filled out other brackets based on student body size, total tournament wins for the school, and basketball expenses for last year.  I also filled out brackets based on KenPom's offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency.  (I contemplated filling out a few others for KenPom's stats, but I decided a Belmont-Missouri national title game was too far).  

I'll put out a chart of the standings after each weekend.  

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Here's my thinking: the transitive rankings I've been posting all season have results reasonably close to the computer rankings used in the BCS formula.  Therefore, if we examine the effect of certain games on transitive rankings, we can surmise the contribution of those games on the official rankings.  

In particular, we can figured out why the Big Ten has been poorly ranked overall by the computers, especially after the top three teams.   

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Maybe this isn't as funny as I think it is right now, but on College Football Live they listed the 'diving' distances from TCU to the Big East schools.  Apparently Connecticut, the state containing the WWL's headquarters, is 1,723 miles straight down from Fort Worth, which by my estimates puts them somewhere between the third and fourth circles of hell (gluttony and greed).  

As the saying goes, "You can go to hell.  I will go to the Big East".  

The final week of Big Ten play sees a pretty big shift in the transitive rankings.  A somewhat surprising shakeup occurs at #1 and shocking wins by Indiana and Minnesota lead to a new bottom.  

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As every college football message board debater knows, winning football games is transitive. In other words, if Team A beats Team B and Team B beats Team C, the fans of Team A are perfectly within their rights to talk trash to fans of Team C. Obviously, Team A could have completely wiped the floor with Team C, they just didn't happen to play each other. If Team D happens to lose to Team C, they are also deserving of as much scorn as possible. Thus one way of ranking teams just counts how many teams' fans are permissible trash talk targets (minus those in the reverse situation).

Continue reading this post »

As every college football message board debater knows, winning football games is transitive. In other words, if Team A beats Team B and Team B beats Team C, the fans of Team A are perfectly within their rights to talk trash to fans of Team C. Obviously, Team A could have completely wiped the floor with Team C, they just didn't happen to play each other. If Team D happens to lose to Team C, they are also deserving of as much scorn as possible. Thus one way of ranking teams just counts how many teams' fans are permissible trash talk targets (minus those in the reverse situation).

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With the win over Ioa, Northwestern is guaranteed to have its 4th consecutive year without a losing season.  While that might not sound very impressive, 78 other programs have had a losing season more recently.  They are:

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As every college football message board debater knows, winning football games is transitive. In other words, if Team A beats Team B and Team B beats Team C, the fans of Team A are perfectly within their rights to talk trash to fans of Team C. Obviously, Team A could have completely wiped the floor with Team C, they just didn't happen to play each other. If Team D happens to lose to Team C, they are also deserving of as much scorn as possible. Thus one way of ranking teams just counts how many teams' fans are permissible trash talk targets (minus those in the reverse situation).

We've reached the unfortunate time of the year when we must deal with cycles.  For instance, Tulane beat Rutgers who beat Army who beat Tulane.  In these circumstances, the transitive win goes to the team with the shortest "path".  In this case, Tulane beat Rutgers directly (path length 1) so they get the transitive win over Rutgers, even though Rutgers beat Army who beat Tulane (path length 2).  

An unfortunate by-product is that teams can be ranked below teams they beat.  However, this will only occur if a cycle exists involving the two teams. 

Continue reading this post »

As every college football message board debater knows, winning football games is transitive. In other words, if Team A beats Team B and Team B beats Team C, the fans of Team A are perfectly within their rights to talk trash to fans of Team C. Obviously, Team A could have completely wiped the floor with Team C, they just didn't happen to play each other. If Team D happens to lose to Team C, they are also deserving of as much scorn as possible. Thus one way of ranking teams just counts how many teams' fans are permissible trash talk targets (minus those in the reverse situation).

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The BCS has to be the most hated institution in major sports, but I'm curious as to the specific reason.  I've listed as many different reasons as I remember hearing and I want to know the general consensus for the most egregious.  If you have an objection not listed, let me know in the comments and I'll add it.  

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As every college football message board debater knows, winning football games is transitive. In other words, if Team A beats Team B and Team B beats Team C, the fans of Team A are perfectly within their rights to talk trash to fans of Team C. Obviously, Team A could have completely wiped the floor with Team C, they just didn't happen to play each other. If Team D happens to lose to Team C, they are also deserving of as much scorn as possible. Thus one way of ranking teams just counts how many teams' fans are permissible trash talk targets (minus those in the reverse situation).

We've reached the unfortunate time of the year when we must deal with cycles.  For instance, Tulane beat Rutgers who beat Army who beat Tulane.  In these circumstances, the transitive win goes to the team with the shortest "path".  In this case, Tulane beat Rutgers directly (path length 1) so they get the transitive win over Rutgers, even though Rutgers beat Army who beat Tulane (path length 2).  

An unfortunate by-product is that teams can be ranked below teams they beat.  However, this will only occur if a cycle exists involving the two teams. 

Continue reading this post »

As every college football message board debater knows, winning football games is transitive. In other words, if Team A beats Team B and Team B beats Team C, the fans of Team A are perfectly within their rights to talk trash to fans of Team C. Obviously, Team A could have completely wiped the floor with Team C, they just didn't happen to play each other. If Team D happens to lose to Team C, they are also deserving of as much scorn as possible. Thus one way of ranking teams just counts how many teams' fans are permissible trash talk targets (minus those in the reverse situation).

Continue reading this post »

As every college football message board debater knows, winning football games is transitive. In other words, if Team A beats Team B and Team B beats Team C, the fans of Team A are perfectly within their rights to talk trash to fans of Team C. Obviously, Team A could have completely wiped the floor with Team C, they just didn't happen to play each other. If Team D happens to lose to Team C, they are also deserving of as much scorn as possible. Thus one way of ranking teams just counts how many teams' fans are permissible trash talk targets (minus those in the reverse situation).

We've reached the unfortunate time of the year when we must deal with cycles.  For instance, Rutgers beat Tulane who beat Army who beat Rutgers.  In these circumstances, the transitive win goes to the team with the shortest "path".  In this case, Rutgers beat Tulane directly (path length 1) so they get the transitive win over Tulane, even though Tulane beat Army who beat Rutgers (path length 2).  

An unfortunate by-product is that teams can be ranked below teams they beat.  However, this will only occur if a cycle exists involving the two teams. 

Continue reading this post »

As every college football message board debater knows, winning football games is transitive. In other words, if Team A beats Team B and Team B beats Team C, the fans of Team A are perfectly within their rights to talk trash to fans of Team C. Obviously, Team A could have completely wiped the floor with Team C, they just didn't happen to play each other. If Team D happens to lose to Team C, they are also deserving of as much scorn as possible. Thus one way of ranking teams just counts how many teams' fans are permissible trash talk targets (minus those in the reverse situation).

The MSU loss to Iowa wiped all the remaining Big Ten teams out of the "transitively unblemished" group.  Now it's all about shorter paths.  

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... will not be a regular article (at least by me).  However, I thought I would write one final recap of the losing streak.  

As you have probably heard, WKU ended their 26 game losing streak last week with a solid 54-21 victory over the Ragin' Cajuns of U-LA-La, after being within a score each of their last two games.  Their last win was over Murray State on Sept. 20 2008.  In that time they lost to a total of 18 different teams, including 3 losses each against North Texas and Florida International.  The closest they had come to victory in that period were 4 point losses to FAU and Arkansas State.  

Going further back, Western Kentucky had a 32 game losing streak against FBS opponents since their win over Middle (just two away from the record) Tennessee State on Sept. 20 2007 (exactly one year before their last win of any kind).  That year was WKU's first as an FBS team as they went 7-5 against a half FBS, half FCS schedule.  

Looking forward, no team is remotely close to the record.  The longest current losing streaks are New Mexico (8), Washington State (6, but 16 to FBS teams), and Duke (6, 10 to FBS).  None of these can threaten before the middle of 2012.