Mephistopheles

the gm meetings we this week. its no surprise they are close

you could have done that a half hour ago

hey this is wierd. good for this kid. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/stewart_mandel/11/06/rolle/index.html?eref=T1

you know you wished you beat me to the punch.

yeah thats the idea. someone had to do it. now that we got it out of the way we should be alright. but the yankees are out of the mix now

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8765068

I disagree. In a person neutral setting I'd take Demp over Wood. Contracts ignored. Carlos Zambrano and Rich Harden are liable to miss a combined 20 starts or so. I wish i was exaggerating, but I am not. Jason Marquis, while crap, is useful as a safety blanket if Zambrano or Harden go down. If we acquire Peavy and deal away Marshall, which is inevitable in such a trade, then we no longer have the safety blanket. If we acquire Peavy and sign Dempster and retain Marquis, we do have one, a pretty damn good one too.

I don't know about you guys, but I would go to war with a rotation of Jake Peavy, Carlos Zambrano, Rich Harden, Ted Lilly and Ryan Dempster. In fact, I can't think of more than two or three teams that would have a #2 significantly better than our #5.

Well happier than they would be if they had to play us in a four game series with Lilly, Zambrano, Harden and Peavy lined up.

and rich harden's projection....wow. that k/9 works out to 12.88, which would be the third highest in history. so much for regression to the mean.

I'll take the over on the optimistic home run output from Derrek Lee.

I'd just like to go on record as saying there's no pitcher in baseball I'd take over Jake Peavy. Maybe Roy Halladay. No to Tim Lincecum, no to Rich Harden, no to CC Sabathia, no to Roy Oswalt, no to Josh Beckett, no to Johan Santana, no to Cole Hamels, no to Carlos Zambrano. Well yes to Kerry Wood

I still don't think the UF-FSU game is going to be a cakewalk this year. I really think Florida will walk over them. That being said, I think FSU is solidly one of the top 20 or so teams in the country. They're probably #2 in the ACC, behind UNC. The difference between FSU and OSU is pretty much non-existent in this little place I like to call reality.

Cutcliffe would have been a candidate. He's maneuvered Duke to being an extremely underappreciated team in an extremely underappreciated conference.

"I'm at Duke, staying at Duke," Cutcliffe said Tuesday. "This is going to be my last gig right here," the 63-year-old Spurrier said Monday night.

Florida's fumbles: The 35 yard line right on first down after a 29 yard pass. First down deep in Ole Miss territory on the 34 yard line. On first down deep in Ole Miss territory on the 18 yard line. That ended up basically being a 13 or 17 point swing at the least.

Here's the real reason Sagarin's predictor does not care much about Florida's loss to Ole Miss. You can disagree if you want. There are some things to consider. When evaluating predicative power of the game, there are numerous factors that are more important than the actual outcome. Mainly, how well your offense performs relative to their defense and how well your defense performs relative to their offense. Florida outgained them 443 yards to 325 yards in a slow-paced game. Those 443 yards are the second most that Ole Miss has given up this year. Wake gained 10 more yards, but with 15% more plays. No one has been able to move the football as effectively against the Rebels as Florida has. On the flip side, Ole Miss' offensive output was actually the worst performance by them the entire season. Translation: Florida significantly outplayed Ole Miss by these indicators. Why was the score close? One reason: Turnovers. Florida put the ball on the ground five times, losing three fumbles. HOWEVER, fumbles are random events. There is very little skill level when it comes to putting the ball on the ground OR recovering them. In other words, this is extremely bad luck. If you think it's a consistent skill, well Florida debunks that. They're the #1 team in the nation in turnover margin, and have fumbled all of 10 times all season long (half in that game) and have lost 4 of them this season (three-fourths in that game). This is purely random and the REAL reason that Florida lost that game. Despite the fumbles it took a flukish missed PAT for Florida to lose the game. This in it of itself is a random event, considering Florida's kickers are 44 of 45 this year on PATs....thats actually better than OU's kickers. It just has happened that event happened then. Translation: random fluke. Basically, all of this says, despite the outcome, on the football field during that game Florida showed that they were a significantly better football team than Ole Miss, though they may have been "outplayed" in that they lost the game. Sagarin looks at games like this, with some dependency on W/Ls as well. Again, this isn't any different than looking at runs and runs allowed in baseball for predicative power instead of actually who won or loss the games.

i ranked them top 25. and if you want to consider it as a blow by blow, floridas currently 3-1 vs top 30 teams in it, oklahomas 1-1. floridas 1-0 vs top 10, oklahoma is 0-1. florida has games left vs #39, #19, #24, #27, and #4. oklahoma would have games left vs #5, #8,and #12. the schedule played up until today is #10 in the nation for Florida, #38 for Oklahoma. Simply averaging games isn't the best way, of course. Let's make the assumption that Florida and Oklahoma are equal teams. The probability of losing 1 or 0 games through each teams schedules thus far: 75.67% Florida's 70.91% Oklahoma's Granted Oklahoma has played one more game (which was against Chattanooga, which Florida "makes up" against The Citadel later this month). Throughout the season, average teams talent by sagarin 75.11 Oklahoma 74.65 Florida If you flatout rank the teams 1-20. Florida has W's over 2, 6, 8, 9, 10. Oklahoma has W's over 3, 4, 5, 7. A number of Floridas top teams have already gone through their gauntlet (which deflates their values as they get knocked off). In other words, Okie State, Missouri, and Texas Tech (3, 4, and 5) are going to end up with at least a combined 4 more losses between them. Whether you like it or not, it'll probably hurt OU more than anything. Again, UF has played most of their gauntlet and has beaten them handedly. OU has not. Either way my point isn't that UF would have a better resume than OU. My point is that if OU and UF run the table and are sitting #3 and #4 in any permutation, Florida knocks off #1 Alabama and Oklahoma knocks off #13 Missouri, who would move up to #2? The team who beat #1 Alabama. That being said, if Oklahoma runs the table, they're probably not in the title game if Texas Tech beats Oklahoma State.

South Carolina is a top 30 team. Wake is a top 40 team. They played Alabama tough. So they've played two games against top 10 teams, the games are -3 against them overall, but they were in both games. They lost to two other top 40 or so teams. Arkansas's not nearly as bad as they were earlier in the season. Really they've been in every game against good competition, so they are pretty much what they are a team in the 30-40 range. Just because they lost two close games to them does not mean they're worse of course. They got outplayed by Florida, but they actually slightly outplayed Alabama despite the loss. They played South Carolina and Wake equally. They really did outplay Vanderbilt, but they turned the ball over SIX times. They gained twice as many yards as the Dores. Again, we should look at W's and L's, but really how well they played against these teams are more important. Which, on the flip side, is why Florida's loss to Ole Miss isn't all that bad. They outplayed them and a couple of flukish events caused them to lose.

Okay? Guys just because a bad team beats a good team it doesn't mean that that team isn't good. Bad teams will beat good teams. Games outcomes are probabilistic events.

if you match up wins (assuming UF wins out) Florida beats Alabama, which is a comparable team to Texas and superior to Texas Christian. Florida trashes Georgia, which is a comparable team to Texas Tech. Florida trashes Louisiana State, which is a comparable team to Oklahoma State. Florida trashes Miami, South Carolina and Florida State, which are comparable to Kansas and Missouri and probably TCU too. Win for win Florida outdoes Oklahoma and Florida has whooped up on the teams. Oklahoma hasn't played them, but considering how poor their defense is, they won't be able to stop Mizzou, Texas Tech or Okie State enough to make it an eye popping game. Just because you guys keep saying the Ole Miss is a bad football team, it does not make it true.

because florida is trashing good teams? no ones playing better than florida. even OU fans know this. OU is pretty one dimensional. Defense is scary. Their offense is comparable to floridas. Floridas better on special teams.

http://www.tommywilliams.org/secCoaches08.jpg good old power rankings are coming out..... Sports Illustrated (Mandel) 1. Alabama 2. Penn State 3. Texas Tech 4. Florida 5. Texas 6. Oklahoma Fox Sports 1. Florida 2. Alabama 3. Texas Tech 4. Penn State 5. Texas 6. Oklahoma These are meaningless obviously. -------------------------------------------------- Bob Stoops wants a playoff now, obviously. His team has nearly no shot at the title game. Even if they win out will they jump Texas and Florida/Alabama?

Considering he really didn't change it, no. I'm not expecting a total collapse, I'm just not expecting anything close to a repeat. It would be stupid to think he can sustain this level of production. While it's possible, it's simply not likely. He's much more likely to revert to being a 4.20-4.30 RA starting pitcher - which was my opinion on him two years ago, and last year - if you recall (also where I was slammed for supporting him to be in the rotation, but that's a different discussion). I see them as being similar pitchers. Guys who can give innings and post an RA in the low 4.00s. Really as starting pitchers they're interchangeable. Given the cost of keeping Dempster, not signing him would seem like a no brainer if we didn't have Rich Harden.

What's more amazing is how blind and stupid people are.