Wednesday, December 23, 2009

New Web Site

After Geocities shut down, I decided it was time to opt for "real" hosting. Free hosting is "free", but severely handicapped. After some research, I decided on Host Monster. The new website is at jeremyhubble.com. Currently there is not much there. However, I hope to get the site up to good condition fairly soon.

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Who should play in the BCS championship?

There are five undefeated teams, one one-loss team, and six two loss teams. Florida, the lone one-loss team, has only one 'impressive' victory - over 3 loss LSU, but was blown out by Alabama in the SEC championship game. With this many undefeated teams, it would also be difficult to justify calling a two-loss team a 'champion', so limiting the choice to the undefeated teams seems the logical choice.

One simple way of determining the best teams is to look at who they beat. In this7 way, I've grouped the opponents in to "great teams" (10+ wins), good teams (8+ wins) and winning teams (any teams with a winning record.) I rank the teams by the number of wins in each, giving 5 points for first, 4 for second and so forth. Then the teams with the best counts are the most deserving of the championship. If there is a tie, close games (wins by less than a touchdown) and IAA games are excluded.

By this criteria, Alabama comes out clearly on top. They have a victory over the lone one-loss team. They also have the most victories over winning teams. Somewhat surprisingly, Boise State comes in second. They have a respectable number of victories over winning teams, with no close calls. They also own the victory over the current top-ranked two-loss team (Oregon).

While simplistic (by for example, not including opponents strength of schedule) , this analysis does show Alabama as clearly deserving a spot in the championship game. The second spot, however, could fairly easily belong to any of the other undefeated teams, with Boise State actually appearing the most deserving.


10+ win teams:
1. Alabama: 1
1. Boise: 1
1. TCU: 1
0. Texas: 0
0. Cincinnati: 0

8+ win teams:
1. Texas: 5 (4)
2. Cincinnati 5 (3)
3. Alabama: 4
4. Boise: 3
5. TCU: 3 (2)

Winning teams:
1. Alabama: 10(7)
2. Cincinnati 7(4)
3. Boise: 6(5)
4. Texas: 6(4)
5. TCU: 6(3)

Alabama: 13
Boise: 10
Cincinnati: 8
TCU: 7
Texas: 7


Texas
9-3
9-4*
8-4
8-4
8-4
7-5*
6-6
6-6
6-6
5-7
4-8
4-8
3-9

Boise
10-2
8-4
8-4
7-5
7-5
6-6
6-5x
5-7
4-8
4-8
3-10
2-10
1-11

TCU
10-2
9-3
8-5*
7-5
7-5*
7-4x
6-6
5-7
4-8
3-9
3-9
1-11

Cincinnati
9-3*
9-3*
8-4
8-4
8-4
7-5
7-5*
4-8
4-8
3-9
2-9x
1-11

Alabama
12-1
9-3
9-3
8-4
7-5
7-5*
7-5*
7-5
7-5
6-5x
5-7
3-9
2-10

* - close game (win by less than one touchdown)
x - IAA team

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

The PAC-10 gets no respect

The Pac-10 gets no respect. The Pac-10 has three teams in the current top 25 BCS standings. The Pac-10 has the top two loss and only four loss team in the standings. Interestingly, all the teams other than Oregon have a computer ranking lower than their 'human ranking'. In other words, they are simply not respected:


Top 2 loss team: Oregon #7 - computer ranking: #7
Top 4 loss team: Stanford #24 - computer ranking: #22
Third, 5th and 6th 3 loss teams: #16 Oregon State - computer ranking: #15
#18 USC - computer ranking: #12
#19 California - computer ranking #17


Why would the human rankings be so much lower? Well, the computer rankings can only take in to account wins and losses, not margin of victory or any other factors. So, logic would seem to say that these teams have eaked out sloppy victories, while getting blown out in the losses. However, it appears the opposite is true.

We can look at Stanford. With Stanford, the only game that was not 'winable' within the final minutes was the Oregon State game - and that was only a 10 point loss. The closest win was the 7 point win over Notre Dame. All the other wins were well out of the opponents reach in the final minutes. (The Notre Dame game, however, is actually a good sign, in that it shows Stanford has finally been able to win the close game.) Against teams that were ranked at the time they played Stanford, the Cardinal is 3-0, with an average margin of victory of 21 points.

Sat, Sep 5 at Washington State W 39-13 -- +26
Sat, Sep 12 at Wake Forest L 17-24 -- -7
Sat, Sep 19 San Jose State W 42-17 -- +25
Sat, Sep 26 (24) Washington W 34-14 -- +20
Sat, Oct 3 UCLA W 24-16 -- +8
Sat, Oct 10 at Oregon State L 28-38 -- -10
Sat, Oct 17 at Arizona L 38-43 -- -5
Sat, Oct 24 Arizona State W 33-14 -- +19
Sat, Nov 7 (7) Oregon W 51-42 -- +9
Sat, Nov 14 at (11) USC W 55-21 -- +34
Sat, Nov 21 California L 28-34 -- -6
Sat, Nov 28 Notre Dame W 45-38 +7


For the rest of the Pac-10 teams, they have also played significant numbers of teams that were ranked at the time they played. USC has played five teams, Oregon 4, and the others 3.


Oregon State vs rated: 1-2: -10,-6, +17; avg: 0
USC vs rated: 3-2: +3,+27,+7,-27,-34; avg: -5
Oregon vs rated: 2-2: -11,+7,+39,+27; avg: +15
Cal vs. rated: 2-1: -27,+8,+6; avg: -4


It's interesting to compare that to the 4 undefeated teams. Three of the four have only played one other ranked team. The two Texas schools have played two ranked teams. Alabama is the only school that has played a ranked team total similar to a 'average' ranked pac-10 team.


Florida: 1-0, +10
Alabama: 4-0: +10,+19,+14,+9; avg: +13
Texas: 2-0: +3,+27; avg: +15
TCU: 2-0: +31, +27; avg: +29
Cincinnati: 1-0: +17
Boise State: 1-0: +11


Interestingly, for the 3-loss teams ranked higher than pac-10 teams, the number of ranked teams looks similar to pac-10 schedules.

Virginia Tech vs rated 2-2 : -10, +1, +24, -5, avg: +2.5
LSU vs. rated: 1-2: +7,-10,-9, avg: -4


It seems to say that the key to go undefeated is to play a cupcake schedule like Florida.
The pac-10 also has an extra "punishment" in that they play an extra conference game. Thus there are guaranteed to be an extra five loses floating around the conference. The teams are also required to play these teams with the extra loses. This would seem to hurt the computer rankings. Other conferences can pad their schedule, thus improving their records. Florida has the likes of FIU, Troy and Charleston Southern (all home games) to help. The only possible challenges are there conference games and their Florida State rivalry game. Stanford flew a few thousand miles away to play Wake Forest. They also had a home game against Notre Dame. The only 'easy' game was a regular crosstown game against San Jose State. SJSU was also USC's lone 'easy game'. The other nonconference games were the Notre Dame rivalry game and Ohio State.
Oregon's 'easy' game was against Purdue - a Big-10 team that beat Ohio State. The other nonconference games were against Boise State and Utah, two teams that went undefeated during the previous regular season. So much for a cupcake.
Cal and Oregon State are the only teams with bona-fide IAA cupcakes in Eastern Washington and Portland State. Cal's other games were against Minnesota and Maryland, while Oregon State had UNLV and Cincy. (Cincinnati is obviously a power team this season. Minnesota is bowl bound, UNLV and Maryland are weaker, but UNLV did get 5 wins and Maryland did manage to beat an ACC division champ.)
So if anything, the human voters should give extra consideration for cross-country flights, 'style-point wins' and a more brutal scheduling. But, instead they seem to penalize Pac-10 teams for being on the west coast. The same could go down to conferences. Only 1 of 3 western conferences are 'BCS', while 5 of 8 eastern conferences are in the 'BCS club.'

Balloon Dance

We've recently been in a "99 luftballons" fix. The kids are constantly begging for "balloon dance." The song song lends itself to some great craziness. The ethereal intro and outro provide a nice calm "floating away". The funky instrumental sections let you "get down" in "little craziness", while the high energy vocal portions induce utter craziness. Altogether, it makes for a nice way to get out energy with the kids. And for some reason, we've lucked out without any energy.

The German version is still my favorite, but I've also begun to appreciate Nena's English version. The Goldfinger and 7 Seconds versions do well on the "energy" side of things but lack the power of contrast as the original. Nena's new version with French is interesting. I can actually understand some of the lyrics. 99 in French can be quite wordy. The contrast of the harshness of the German language with the 'gentleness' of the singer's vocals only adds to the original's strength, though the German accent of the English version has some nice nuances.