Nerds on Sports

The National Football League is a marvel in it’s operation. Profit sharing, a tradition of competent business leadership, a dedication to embracing new technology, and a heavily buttressed construct of free agency and union-ownership relations have created a magnificent machine. It is designed to make money, continually expand the fan base and put the best possible product on the field. I love it as both a sports geek and a business geek.

With any great and complicated system, from the NFL to Starcraft, there are exploits. Little wrinkles within the rules that allow for someone to cheat within the confines of the code. It’s like loading 4 Revised Edition Millstones into your Magic: The Gathering deck and grinding away your opponents’ card count until he (or she… in theory) loses by default. Nothing wrong with it, legally, but certainly a “slap your forehead for being a victim to it” move. These exploits are cruel and unfortunate when you are on the wrong end, but absolutely hilarious to watch. Particularly when they are done without apology.

In the NFL, my absolute favorite hack is something called The Poison Pill. It is a delightful little fold that can allow a franchise to pick up a restricted free agent by making his current team unable to match the contract. Allow me to explain how it works.

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Golf is the businessman’s game of choice, because you can relax, drink heavily, and have conversation while still playing and not get sweaty. At least that’s my guess, for I am no businessman. So I will let Tiger Woods and the businesspeoples of the world have their golf because I get my golf delivered in other forms…

First off there is miniature golf. It’s like regular golf if you decided to play regular golf in Holland* at a castle** that was probably previously owned by Dracula trying to defend himself from Mr. Belmont***. I like miniature golf because it doesn’t take nearly as long as regular golf and there’s no slicing into the woods off the tee. Also each hole is usually a surprise and you have to guess which of the 3 holes in the barn will place the ball closest to the cup on the lower level. Also, how many PGA courses have big orange dinosaurs?

For my next crazy golf event, I give you: Underwater Golf. Read more »

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I have a mission for you: revise the QB rating.

The QB rating (technically called the “passer rating,” as that’s all it’s meant to evaluate) is an arcane formula devised when the NFL and the AFL merged in order to standardize statistics. Rather than compare quarterbacks to each other – which provided no metric for season-to-season growth, statistician Don Smith devised a way to measure their progress objectively.

The problem is that (A) it’s not very objective and (B) it’s cryptic.

(A) The rating system is great, in theory. Take the four key areas of a passer’s performance: completion percentage, yards gained per pass, number of touchdowns and number of interceptions. Normalize them against some industry-standard benchmarks (50% pass completion, 55 interceptions per 1000 passes, etc). Total these numbers and voila.

The problem is, those benchmarks were set in 1971 and have not been revised since. The “yards per pass” metric, which figures an average of 7, punishes QBs whose coaches use the fire-and-forget “West Coast Offense.” Is a 5.5% interception percentage still average? Look at the numbers yourself and tell me: as of the end of the 2006 season, Dallas’s Tony Romo and the Saints’ Drew Brees led the league in passer rating (89.6, 88.3, respectively), while those jackasses Tom brady and Peyton Manning couldn’t even crack the top 5.

(Cold Hard Football Facts agrees with me, and has some pictures of Pamela Anderson to boot. No, for serious)

(B) In order to normalize against those aforementioned benchmarks, you have to go through some weird hoops. Nothing terribly complicated – just lots of division.

({[(Comp / Att) x 100 - 30]/20 + [(Yards / Att) - 3 x 0.25] + [(TD / Att) x20] + [2.375 - (INT / Att) x 25]} / 6) x 100

Remember your order of operations and show all work.

There has to be a better way – and this wouldn’t be “Harebrained Schemes Tuesday” if I didn’t come up with one.
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On June 7th, Major League Baseball will hold it’s 2007 First-Year Player Draft, also known as “the baseball draft.” In about three and a half weeks, down in Disney World, all thirty teams will sit down and draft players for fifty rounds, rapid-fire style (as they only get five minutes per pick).

Also on June 7th, for the first time ever, ESPN will cover the event on national television. As a man who loves both baseball and startlingly thorough sports coverage, one may think that I would be in favor of four hours of real time analysis. This is, unfortunately, not the case at all. I think that live media coverage of the MLB draft is going to be silly, boring, and something that ought to be skipped in favor of going outside and playing catch with some friends. Or, for you nerds, getting a LAN party together.

We as sports fans have grown up on the magnificent chaos of the NFL Draft, with well-coiffed analysts slogging through stacks of statistics to provide bold commentary as the events unfold. We’re not going to get this kind of compelling television with the MLB Draft. In fact, as we’ve been raised on the football draft, this new baseball coverage is going to be a big, smoking failure by comparison. And I have three reasons why.

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I came across another NBA rap (no I don’t search for these things, they just find me). This one is more this year then 10 years ago like the last one. This would be so much better if it was Christian Laettner doing the rapping about Dirk Nowitzki because then it really would be pasty pasty.

“Now that you’ve won the Super Bowl, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to Euro Disney”

Ok, I don’t think it would go down like that. Actually I don’t think anyone should ever say “I’m going to Euro Disney” and mean it. It’s Euro Disney (Well, renamed to Disneyland Resort Paris) for chrissake. A French journalist wrote:

…a horror made of cardboard, plastic and appalling colors, a construction of hardened chewing gum and idiotic folklore taken straight out of comic books written for obese Americans.

Disney may not have a good name in Europe, but the people, the obese Americans, at the National Football League do. (Have you seen an offensive line recently? They have average weights above 300 lbs.) Or so the NFL would have us believe they have a good name. They are in some preliminary investigations with Europe… I picture this as a noir style investigation (also it’s Tagliabue not Goodell doing the investigation in my mind because I think “P.I. P. Tagliabue” would look better on the frosted glass window to a Private Investigator’s office.): Read more »

Apologies from a lack of updates on my end recently. I’d talk about why, but this ain’t LJ for chrissake. It’s a blog! Completely different! Anyway.

Recently the Brewers had a promotion giving away a pair of tickets for a future home game. The price? Bending over and relaxing. Now, having a family member who has been treated for prostate cancer, I am well in favor of men getting screened for this regularly, and if this provides the necessary incentive for them to do so, so be it. But, c’mon, the jokes. The jokes!

“Now the Brewers know what it feels like for a Red Sox fan to try and get tickets.”
“Milwaukee is getting more than opponents to bend over these days.”
“Today was Be A Baseball Player Day at Miller Park. Fans were unaware that they had to play catcher.”

Etc., etc.

Of course, sharp-eyed co-blogger Willis noticed this posting on the MLB Jobs Board. Coincedence? Bad fan reaction (I mean, more than the grimacing and clenching of fists that can be expected)?

While we’re in that region of the male anatomy, Here is an oldie but goodie about certain ball players and their #1 method for dealing with skin problems. Remind me not to shake their hands.

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