It goes without saying that we are big underdogs against Stanford.  If somebody said we had a 10% chance of winning, most of us would laugh and say that's too high.  I don't know if that's too high or not, but I've watched enough football to be able to think about the narrative of the game, and to try to picture a path to victory.  It looks like this.

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Although I understand the disappointment expressed here on BN regarding the mediocre start to the 2011-12 football season, I have to say that I do not share it. 

No, I’m not jumping up and down happy.  No, I’m not going to say that we should be happy with where we are.  What I am going to do is say that where we are is not quite as bad as we think.  

That is, while we’re in the mode of second-guessing our coach on every little matter from his choice of assistants to his play-calling, let’s use our imagination to think about how a few small changes to the beginning of the season might have us thinking a bit differently about where this team is at. 

A caveat: the thought experiment I run here DOES NOT mean we should be thinking of ourselves as sooo much better than we are, but it does mean I don’t think we are as bad as everyone seems to think.  Maybe this is on Rick, maybe the players.  Probably both.  For example, regardless of how much blame Rick gets for not getting the call to special teams to punt out of bounds, there is NO WAY the players should have given up that TD at the end of the first half.  Just ridiculous.  So, it’s not just on Rick but also on the players.

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I have been thinking about this one since listening to the first quarter of the game on Houston radio (the feed was cut after that).  The Houston announcers kept talking about how Houston plays so much better at home, how loud the crowd is, and how the 12th man really makes a difference for the Cougars. 

Here, I identify the main variables in home field advantage and do a rough analysis of how many points home field was worth to Houston yesterday.  Initially I was going to put some pessimistic thoughts about our defense in here too, but I ran out of time.  So, don't accuse me of being a starry-eyed optimist!  I just ran out of time.

More after the jump.

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The recent chatter on Ben’s performance has me wondering if there is a somewhat objective way to measure how well he has done this season.  So, just like another Ben (Benjamin Franklin) would suggest, an easy way to start this conversation is to compile two lists.  One list of what CBH has done right, and one of what he has done wrong.  If you missed it, I did a similar list in a comment thread during the Norm Chow to USC story where I argued it was highly unlikely that Chow would bail to SUC even though they had a bunch of money to throw at him.  Basically this method is a useful and simple way to judge pluses and minuses.

So, here is a pro and con list of how CBH has performed this season.  Rather than list every argument, I have put them in groups.  I have ranked them according to my own judgment, but feel free to discuss!  The purpose of this, as I see it, is to have an enlightening discussion about where our program is.

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Bumped up. If folks are sending in their notes, please make sure to note that in comment threads. Thanks. GO BRUINS. -N

If we make enough noise, ESPN will at least think a second time before running stories such as this.  It counts as a major breakdown in journalistic integrity and method. 

E-mail ESPN and demand an on-air apology from Shelley Smith. Follow the link.

Contact ESPN

Or, cut n'paste:  http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/contact

If you're too lazy to write your own email, then cut and paste the following (text shortened to fit within 500 characters per britishbruin's suggested edits in the comment thread, BN):

Dear ESPN:

I was disappointed you allowed Shelley Smith (with known USC ties) to report the Norm Chow-to-USC story without any balance, fact-checking or due diligence. Your organization abandoned journalistic integrity for the hype of a developing story, which makes me question whether ANY of the information you report is true.

I demand an immediate on-air retraction from Shelley Smith and all other persons responsible for disseminating this story widely across ESPN’s media platforms.

Sincerely,

Blue and gold.

Again, here is the link to contact BSPN.

UPDATE (N): You guys can also contact ESPN's ombudsman about this over here. Fire away folks. GO BRUINS.

OK, Nestor who usually dominates with analysis was unable to watch the game and so I thought I would add my first hand experience to his read of the box score. 

Overall, his read is just about right: Delaware State was just overpowered and undersized.  As a team our performance was not outstanding, but this was the first live view I've had of this years team in person I was left with a different (and marginally better) impression. 

Three observations about the team: there is a lot of learning on the job; consistency is this team's biggest problem; they're improving.

More after the jump.

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