Tracer Bullet

If you're not a historical power (or if you've never really been a power), you can't schedule Miami (OH), McNeese St, and SDSt and whine that you're not getting respect in the polls. You've played no one and beat them all. Congrats. Now go play a team that doesn't absolutely suck.

In a game where yardage was basically even while the game was close. S&P calculates efficiency based on success per play, which was surprisingly even. that might be the most useless poll. probably worse than the coaches poll where some lackey fills it out with strict instructions to rank opponents and conference teams high. you can gain a lot of yards and do a lot of stupid things (drop balls, fumble, throw picks, penalties) that negate all the yards you've gained. and even if you don't have drops, fumbles, and picks, and gain 79 yards on a drive starting from your 20, it's that last yard that's the most important and often hardest to get. efficiency can tell you some things, but it's only one small part of how good a football team is. ranking teams on that alone leaves out too many vastly superior pieces of info. look no further than ND being ranked 22 on that list. the reason ND is 3-3 instead of 5-1 is they've made a lot of stupid mistakes (and lost their only good QB for 1/2 against UM, which lead to 2 picks on their side of the 50). i happen to think it's easier to correct stupid mistakes as inexperienced players gain experience and players learn a completely new offense. but in the meantime, ND is far from the 22nd best team in the country, even though they could, if they didn't have drops, picks, and fumbles, beat all but the 20 or so best teams (they could also lose to about 50 teams if they keep dropping, fumbling, and throwing picks).

that's b/c your db's are so good, you want an extra one on the field at all times.

then you become drew rosenhaus and you're still pathetic and probably depressed but insanely [expletive] rich.

meh. he thinks he got fucked by the industry (and it looks like he might have). it's not really honorable, but I don't think it's terrible either. my biggest disappointment was that there weren't more/better names in the story. oh, and the fact that so many guys confirmed his stories makes it better, imo.

you could write 4 sentences about improving the offense and defense that satisfy the ticket holders without identifying specifically maybe the dumbest stats you could identify. Not all Cubs ticket holders are this stupid about baseball and I would venture to guess that most either think what Ricketts wrote was stupid or didn't read it. I can't believe you wouldn't read this in combination with his not firing Hendry and be a little concerned. I'm saying that the purpose of this letter is not to outline the Cubs' offseason strategy. It's to make season ticket holders happy so they buy tickets next year after an awful season. Since most season ticket holders are fans, and most fans are morons who would value nonsense like RISP hitting and error totals, it's far from a stretch to think that Ricketts is telling people what they want to hear. He also talks up putting money into the farm system after spending in this year's draft was cut from last year, for a real example of him contradicting his words in the letter. That said, I'm not saying that Ricketts doesn't believe any of it. It does lend credence to the idea that he's more Bleacher Bum than Billy Beane in how he's letting the team be run. But to extrapolate "oh no the offseason is going to be about errors and RISP" from something like this is ridiculous. it's not extrapolating that the offseason is going to be about RISP and errors. It's extrapolating that this team isn't going to embrace advanced stats like many of us had hoped and that Hendry's days are not likely numbered. He doesn't have to mean every word literally for it to be bad news.

you could write 4 sentences about improving the offense and defense that satisfy the ticket holders without identifying specifically maybe the dumbest stats you could identify. Not all Cubs ticket holders are this stupid about baseball and I would venture to guess that most either think what Ricketts wrote was stupid or didn't read it. I can't believe you wouldn't read this in combination with his not firing Hendry and be a little concerned.

Not for the head coaches. The assistants do all the work. that's just not true.

Is it really more stability and less pressure at a major school? If you win at a very high level, the pressure and stability issues aren't there at either level. But if a coach at Penn State, Tennessee, USC, Florida, etc. struggles for a year, he'll be villified just as much as if he struggles with the Titans, Jets, Colts, etc. You can be villified if you struggle, but Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno have had more stability than any coach around. Look at Kirk Ferentz, and before him Hayden Fry. At many schools you can finish 8-4 most years with occasional 10+ win seasons and just as long as you limit the sub .500 seasons, you can stick around. There's only a handful of schools that are canning successful guys and even schools like Michigan did so after 12 years. You play fewer games, with a heavy emphasis on home games. There's recruiting trips, but for the head coach that is nothing. College assistants work like dogs, but nobody works more than NFL coaches. And you get a month to prepare for your big bowl game and then a long vacation. College coaching is a plum job. how are recruiting trips nothing for head coaches? i guess i don't know how far away PSU goes for recruiting, but it's a pretty big time commitment and a lot of selling.

I think a lot of schools had trouble getting their 12th game though, multiple Big 10 schools have wound up playing at MAC schools because everyone was scrambling at once to fill their schedules with only a couple dates to choose from. sure. and that's why you had UConn last year, USF next year, Wake the following year (which isn't part of the home and home series in 2011 and 2015), and maybe Temple in 2013. And it's why you'd expect to play either Tulsa or WMU this year. But when you move from 1 home game with no return to the opponent's place to 2 such home games, you end up scheduling both Tulsa and WMU. Hey, I don't want to play against Navy and 11 of the Top 25 every year. But I don't want to wake up one day and be like Michigan or Ohio State and play a bunch of close no-name or directional schools. I think Swarbrick has done a great job of scheduling, but this year was unavoidable.

Greg Little (and others) deemed permanently ineligible by NCAA. Schadenfreude in full effect.

In reality, I think some of the WMU allotment came back. But living up here an hour from K-zoo, there are several Western Michigan undergrads eager to have a reason to pay to go see the ND game day experience. I don't think they'll really outnumber ND fans. Swarbrick had trouble nailing down the last 2 opponents in this year's schedule, which turned out to be W Michigan and Tulsa, because White had this 7-4-1 thing implemented for this year before he got fired. I'm not wild about playing 2 buy games like WMU and Tulsa in the same season. Future schedules look to be moving back to 6-5-1 or 6-4-2, which tends to result in much better opponents (like Miami, Texas, and Oklahoma).

Is a depressing 2 paragraph run. That first paragraph is a gun shot to the nuts. I'm all for improving defense, but focusing on errors? Improving offense? Sure!! Move runners over and hitting with RISP. Did Hendry hack into Ricketts' email account? That one paragraph pretty much ruined the off-season for me.

There's a not-insignificant chance that there are more Broncos fans in the stadium this week than Irish fans. I'm so glad 7-4-1 will be just a 1-year disaster. Thanks again Dr. White!!

I want Rich Rod to get exactly 6 wins so he gets at least one more year. I want them several years into his offense before they switch back to old school big ten again.

haha, quoted the wrong post. meant to quote snood's post right above yours, sulley. Was talking about Martinez.

1 major college scholly offer? oops.

I'm having a tough time reconciling your posts, dew. You said the Yankees didn't waste money if the extra money raised their chances from 75% to 90%. Then you said that if the chances were already 100%, an extra $100 million would be wasted. Then you said that if you make the playoffs, you didn't waste money; if you didn't make the playoffs, you did waste money (even if the extra money raised your chances of making the playoffs). Seems there has to be something else going on. If it's not a waste to raise your chances from 75% to 90%, what's the cut off? Is it a waste to raise your chances from 10% to 50%? What if you raise your chances to 50% but ultimately miss the playoffs?

i can't speak for everyone, but i assumed you were the source of the bulk of the data

I enjoyed reading freakonomics (and the sequel) and gladwell's books. They're fun to read. They aren't gospel and, as with any book (including the gospel), you shouldn't stop thinking critically about the information or conclusions presented and maybe even be skeptical of them. But now I have a reference that tells me when a Chicago hooker is overcharging me for a BJ and for that I am eternally grateful.

http://japanesebaseball.com/leaders.gsp Looks like he hit .349 with an .894 OPS (7th in his league and 13th overall). Can't find a stats line, but you can piece together from the various leader boards that he had 88 RBI and fewer than 26 HRs.

you were saying? i should have known better than to go against a guy who went 6-7 or whatever on the week. Truffle's got more faith in your cyclones than you do.

it's never more fun than anything to be a cardinals or white sox fan. those are a miserable people.

pair a player like denard with iowa's defense and that team could win every game 70-0.

I loved the look on Lane's face as he's staring up at the clock thinking "I should really be calling timeout or something here." If you're going to use 2 timeouts to ice the kicker, why not just use all 3? dumbass