Tidbits

Watching a clip of an old football game, I wondered: where does moving the goal posts to the back of the end zone rank in the annals of no-duh moves in professional sports? It's hard to believe it took over 50 years for the league to realize that giant metal posts protruding from the field of play is not such a great idea.

In baseball news, the MVP and Cy Young award voters did a good job this year. All four winners (Joe Mauer, Albert Pujols, Zack Greinke, and Tim Lincecum) were worthy of their awards. Historically voters have been known to overvalue things that are not great indicators of an individual's worth to his team, like team victories, stolen bases, and RBIs for a batter, and wins for a pitcher. This year they got it right, especially with Greinke, who was clearly the best pitcher in baseball last season, despite having just 16 wins (the fewest of any starting pitcher to ever win the AL Cy Young award during a non-strike shortened year).

In other baseball news, in this week's The New Yorker, there is an article chronicling the Yankees World Series-winning season by Roger Angell titled "Daddies Win: can we love the Yankees now?". (I can't find a link on-line. It's in the Nov. 30, 2009 issue.) It's one of the more annoying pieces I have read in a while. It's seven pages of the author performing literary fellatio on the Yankees. (Although, in a periodical named after a person from New York, what does one expect?) The article highlights, glorifies even, everything people outside of the Big Apple hate about the Yankees. Here's an excerpt.

While the roses are going around, we should revisit those free-agent signings of C. C. Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, and A. J. Burnett last winter, whose combined contracts cost the Yankees an extra $432.5 million, and accounted for $52 million out of the team's salary total of $201 million for 2009. (The next nearest is the Mets $135 million, and the farthest is the Marlins $36 million.) Cries of unfairness and fresh tropes about the unlevel playing field, so ferocious in March, seemed fainter at the end this time, because each of those multimillionaires so clearly delivered at his job, and because the Yankees won. They will never be populist heroes, but this time it was O.K. to like them.

Huh? Doesn't the fact that their highly paid superstars produced make it less fair? Doesn't this just reinforce the reality that the Yankees have a huge economic advantage over almost every team in baseball? That, in essence, they are just outbidding the other clubs for championships? This seems like more of a reason to dislike them to me.

More from the article.

General Manager Brian Cashman, so often second-guessed by the Tampa front office and badgered at his work by the overbearing but now ancient and ailing George Steinbrenner, was the Michelangelo of this club...

The Michelangelo? Really? Yes, only the mind's eye of a true artist could have foreseen the beauty in adding Sabathia, Teixeira, and Burnett to a roster (not to mention readding A-Rod, for nearly $30 million a season, a year prior). No other GM in the league, nor any semi-coherent baseball fan in the country, could have imagined that bringing these pieces together would result in a good team. Cashman has the gift. Or he's a beneficiary of a broken system in which his team is one of about three or four that can afford to sign the best of the best free agents, and have money left over for quality second tier guys like Burnett. Sadly, this is what MLB has become. It's a league for the rich. There will always be a sprinkling of poorer teams with sharp management or good fortune that have a nice run with a nucleus of young talent, still under team control (late 90s - early 00s A's, '03 Marlins, '07 Rays, current Twins), and there will always be down years for the fatcats ('08 Yankees, '09 Mets), but for the most part it's going to be Yankees et al., year in and year out. That's just the way baseball is right now. That the "cries of unfairness and fresh tropes about the unlevel playing field" seem fainter now is probably because baseball fans are gradually resigning themselves to this fact.

Idiocy? You be the Judge

Clark Judge of cbssports.com offers a prime example of arriving at a probably correct conclusion with moronic reasoning. I'll use Ski's convention below: normal text is from the article, bolded text is mine. I've taken the liberty of excerpting; click the link above for the whole article.

Sorry, Colts/Saints fans ... Super Bowl highly unlikely
by Clark Judge

There are no better teams today than New Orleans and Indianapolis, so, naturally, the expectation is that they meet in the Super Bowl. Only I'm here to tell you they won't. One of them won't make it, and maybe neither gets that far.

Oh, yeah? Well, that's just like, your opinion, man.

That is not an opinion.

Ok, you got me. "Prediction" is probably more appropriate.

It's a history lesson

Um, no. There's no reasonable interpretation of the term "history lesson" for which the above qualifies.

and if you're skeptical, go back to this time last season when the best two teams were Tennessee and the New York Giants. The Titans were unbeaten. The Giants had lost once. Both were slam dunks to breeze through the playoffs, yet neither did. In fact, both bowed out after one game.

Yeah, that´s convincing. If there's one thing I've learned about sports in general and the NFL in particular, it's that things always unfold the exact same way from season to season.

An aberration? Hardly. Teams that are white-hot at midseason often lose that momentum as the season winds down, and for good reason: It's difficult, if not near-impossible, to maintain a peak level of performance -- as well as to avoid key injuries -- for four months. The season is simply too long.

Ugh, where to start? First, we've got a variation of the gambler's fallacy here. The fact that Indy and New Orleans have already been playing extremely well for two months is used as evidence that they're "due" to get cold. Second, they don't have to maintain a peak level of performance for another two months to get to Super Bowl. It's very likely that both teams will receive a first-round bye, even if they falter a little bit, so all they have to do is perform well enough (or get lucky enough) to win two games in January.

The 2007 New England team would seem to contradict that idea, only the way I see it they reinforced it. Yes, they won all 16 regular-season games, but look what happened down the stretch: They could have been beaten by Philadelphia. They should've lost to Baltimore. They should've lost to the New York Giants in the regular-season finale.

So, he's could'ved and should'ved his way into arguing that the Patriots started out white-hot, but actually lost that vital momentum going into the playoffs, while ignoring the Pats' three wins in weeks 14-16 by a combined total of 52 points. But let's accept that the virtually 13-3 Patriots stumbled their way into the playoffs. History shows us that teams that start 9-0 can't make the Super Bowl, right?

And they were taken to the wire in the AFC Championship Game by a San Diego team operating without Antonio Gates and LaDainian Tomlinson and with quarterback Philip Rivers playing on one leg.

Oh, another win in score only. Never mind that this time, San Diego never got closer than 9 points with 12 minutes or less left in the game. If Rivers had grown another leg, the Chargers would have won.

In short, they wound down as the stakes went up. So when they reached the Super Bowl they were beaten by a Giants team that, until a Dec. 23 defeat of Buffalo, wasn't sure it would qualify for the playoffs.

Since the Super Bowl was at least as close, and the Giants caught at least as many breaks as the Patriots did in any of their virtual losses, can't say the Patriots were the "should've been" champs?

My point is this: Don't get dazzled by what's going on nine games into the season. Yeah, it's terrific that Indianapolis and New Orleans haven't lost, and, no, I don't see anyone out there that is superior. But I also know there are seven weeks left in the regular season, and that's a long, long time to maintain breakneck speed.

Well, again, they don't have to "maintain breakneck speed" for the next seven weeks to reach the Super Bowl. They just have to be mediocre at worst over that stretch, then win two games in January.

Besides, I'm not sure you want to maintain anything going into the playoffs. You want clubs that improve weekly. You look for teams that catch fire in the second half, start building momentum, gain confidence and take their game to the next level for the playoffs.

Right, let's rule out the Colts and Saints, because it's impossible for them to "catch fire in the second half", given that they're already on fire. Never mind that their second halves may be just as convincing as any other teams' (hard to know given that the second half of the season has barely started).

San Diego GM A.J. Smith always says the key to any season is reaching the playoffs because anything is possible after that.

And yet, the Saints and Colts have both already all but clinched playoff spots, but it's not possible for both of them to make the Super Bowl?

And he's right. Tennessee struggled down the stretch last season, splitting their last six games. The Giants floundered, losing three of their last four. So when the second season started it really didn't matter that both clubs held home-field advantages; what mattered was that their play ... and, probably, their confidence ... had declined.

See my first remark.

That's why I urge you to start paying attention to teams that are beginning to build something -- someone, say, like Arizona or Cincinnati. They're good, they're dangerous and they're hot. So are Indianapolis and New Orleans. But how can they stay hot for five months?

Gambler's fallacy again. Also, let's look at Cincinatti. They're 7-1 since a fluky loss at Denver week one, including two wins over each Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Aren't they only slightly less "hot" than New Orleans and Indy. Should we really be higher on their chances just because they managed to drop a home game to Texas in that stretch?

I mean, everyone is supposed to peak for the playoffs, right? But when you win early and keep winning, how do you suddenly peak when you've been doing it for four long and exhausting months?

Well, you wouldn't be "peaking", you'd be maintaining then. Oh, yeah, I forgot, for some reason maintaining is bad. Yeah, sustained success for four months is usually an indicator of an inability to maintain that success.

Often, teams don't, and the 2008 Titans are proof. So are the 2005 Indianapolis Colts. They won their first 13, then couldn't beat Pittsburgh in the playoffs. The 2003 Kansas City Chiefs will take their place in line behind them. They won their first nine, then couldn't beat Indianapolis in the playoffs.

Three anecdotes are certainly enough to convince me. But, wait, what about about the '72 Dolphins, '85 Bears, '90 Giants, '91 Redskins and '06 Colts. They all started 9-0, and not only made the Super Bowl, but won it. Now, if I worked at CBS and had a few lackeys under me, I would actually have them calculate what percentage of 9-0 teams have gone on to play in the Super Bowl. But being a lone blogger, I'll content myself with fighting anecdote with anecdote. I have more, so I win.

(Interestingly, the '06 Colts finished the season 3-4, and lacked that vital momentum going into the playoffs. Some of those losses must have been virtual wins.)

"This is a game of confidence and momentum," said Carolina GM Marty Hurney, "whether it's teams or whether it's individual players. It's a game of confidence and momentum, and the teams that are hot at the end historically are the teams that do well in the playoffs."

Notice he didn't say the teams that are hot in September and October.

Yeah, why look at statistical evidence when you can quote a GM? And, of course, a team that is hot in September and October can't be hot at the end, because it's not possible to stay hot that long, and even if a team did, they would be maintaining and not peaking, or something.

By winning now, they can gain home-field advantage for the playoffs, and that is big. But it is not crucial. Only nine of the top 20 seeds in the past 10 years have made it to the Super Bowl, or 45 percent.

A little confusing, but I'm going to assume he meant to say "twenty top conference seeds". In that case, each top seed would need to win two games to advance to the Super Bowl. If the games were coin flips, we would expect about 25% of the top seeds to advance. I'm not sure "only" is the appropriate word here.

So there's a lesson there, and the lesson is this: While New Orleans and Indianapolis are good --- and I mean real good -- they may not be good enough to maintain their torrid paces. The last time the top two seeds entering the playoffs went to the Super Bowl it was 1993, and each had four losses. So there's a history of good teams going bad in the playoffs, and there's a history of top seeds going south. I like the Saints, and I like the Colts, and I like them a lot. But I like them now. One of them will not survive this grind, and it's not something I see in either club that tells me. It's something I see in the league's history.

Yes, it is likely that at least one of these teams fails to make the Super Bowl. The reason has nothing to do with "momentum" or "peaking", however. The reason is that to advance, each will have to beat two very good teams, and there's just not that much difference between very good and great teams in the NFL. If both the Colts and Saints have, say, a 60% chance to win each of their games (making them significant, but not overwhelming favorites), there is about a 13% chance of them meeting in the Super Bowl. But if someone offered me a million dollars if I could pick the Super Bowl participants today, I'd pick Saints-Colts in a heartbeat. It's not that likely, but it's more likely than any other possibility. The thing is, there are just a ton of possibilities. Even when the playoff field is set, there will be 36 possible matchups. Writing an article disparaging the chances of one of those possibilities is a fatuous waste of words.

Another from the Flem File

I was not planning to put up another post this week, but I saw this gem from David Fleming and could not resist. (Like before, the bold comments are mine.)

Bill Belichick Enters Another Elite Club
By David Fleming

Here's something none of us ever thought we'd see: Bill Belichick being compared to Barry Switzer.

Belichick’s career win/loss percentage: .626. Switzer’s career win/loss percentage: .633. So, they are pretty comparable there.

But that's exactly what's happening Monday after Belichick's rather odd, and uncharacteristically panicky, decision to go for it on fourth down deep in his own territory cost the Patriots a win in Indy Sunday night.

I’m not sure what was particularly panicky about it. A pointless quote might help clear things up.

Norm Chow, the offensive coordinator for UCLA, once told me: "Anybody can just say, 'Hey, let's go for it!' But real coaches get a feel for the game, their own team and the situation and they just know, instinctively, when it's the right time to take a risk."

There we go. Fleming is usually good for at least two pointless quotes per article, so I’m expecting another one. Also, I like that his authority is an assistant coach of a college team that is 5-11 in conference during his tenure.

Look, Bill Belichick is, maybe, the best coach ever in the NFL. In fact, currently, I'm not even sure there's a close second. But last night in Indy those all-important instincts that Chow was talking about? Yeah, they abandoned Belichick, big-time, instead revealing something none of us had ever seen before: his human side. Yes, on a better day Belichick probably would have sensed slight vibrations coming from Kevin Faulk’s twitching finger tips, indicating that Faulk would slightly bobble a pass thrown him, causing him to establish possession of the ball only after being driven behind the yard to gain by a defender, thus causing a turn over on downs. On a better day. Caught up in the moment, intimidated (yes, I said it) by Peyton Manning, Belichick got tunnel vision and decided, above all, he wanted to control his own destiny and keep the ball away from the Colts.

Now let me say the same thing Fleming just said, but make it sound like Belichick made the right call. “Focused on the decision at hand, fearing what might happen if the league-MVP Peyton Manning got the ball back, Belichick, always with the singular goal of winning the game in mind, decided his best move was to give his vaunted offense a chance to convert, and try to keep the ball away from the Colts.”

Bill made a boo-boo. Maybe, maybe not. A big one. Definitely not. And when you expect absolute perfection from everyone around you at all times, well, the moment you mess up you're gonna get crushed for it. And that's what's happening today. Rodney Harrison, in fact, immediately called it the worst coaching decision he had ever seen Belichick make. One thing that bothers me about football (and most other sports) is that former players are automatically assumed to be authorities on all aspects of the game. Being able to run fast and hit hard does not qualify somebody as an expert in the tactical nuances of a football game. It just doesn’t. Which tells me one thing: Rodney must have forgotten about Bill's tenure in Cleveland when he was the original version of Eric Mangini. (True story: I interviewed Belichick once under the stands at old Cleveland Municipal Stadium when most of his answers were drowned out by chants of "BILL MUST GO! BILL MUST GO!" Imagine that.)

What does this have to do with anything? Maybe Fleming is trying something new. He’s getting away from the irrelevant quote, and trying out the irrelevant anecdote. Is this going to become a trend?

"We push players beyond their limits and expectations every day," Jeff Fisher told me a few seasons ago. "Sometimes, as coaches we just have to remember to do that with our decisions too."

Nope.

As Fisher likes to say, it's not about minimizing risk -- it's about managing it.

What does this mean? It must just be more nonsense for good measure.

Here are a few other coaches who learned the hard way, that's a whole lot easier said than done:

You’ll have to read the rest of this scintillating article on your own. I’m done.

More on the Belichick Call (with a little TMQ tossed in)

In today's TMQ, he links to this article which makes the case that Belichick did the right thing in going for it. Although, in the article's analysis it's little more than a coin toss (a win probability of 80.5% by going for it versus a win probability of 79% by punting), and you could take issue with some of their assumputions, such as using probabilities with respect to average offenses, when both the Pats and Colts have above average offenses, but I think it's safe to say that it was a really close call, and it's tough to fault Belichick in either decision he makes.

TMQ takes Belichick's side to a fault. Here is my favorite blurb from his article.

Belichick correctly calculated that if he punted, the hot Indianapolis offense was likely to beat his tired defense...

Paragraphs earlier he cited an article estimating that Indianapolis' chances of winning after a Patriot punt is 21%, and now he implies that Indianapolis is likely to win in this scenario! WTF, TMQ?

Did MJD Make the Right Call?

Bill Belichick was not the only one making unconventional moves on Sunday. With a little over 1:30 left in the Jaguars/Jets game, Jags running back Maurice Jones-Drew took a knee on the Jets 1 yard line instead of scoring. His team was down 21-22 to the Jets at the time, and the Jets had no timeouts left. On PTI today, Tony Kornheiser said it was the wrong move. I believe he even called it "crazy". (His rationale was that the Jags were behind at the time, so they have to take the points.) So, did MJD make right move? My educated guess: an emphatic "absolutely".

By taking a knee, MJD put everything on one kick for the Jags: make it you win, miss it you lose. The kick was essentially an extra point (one yard shorter, in fact). The career conversion percentage of Jags kicker Josh Scobee on extra points: 98.3%. So, MJD almost guaranteed victory by taking a knee. If he scores a touchdown, the Jets have enough time to counter with a touchdown of their own. It is unlikely the Jets can pull it off -- there is only 1:30 left and they have no timeouts -- but I'm gonna go ahead and say it's not even close to 1.7% unlikely. It's probably closer to five, maybe even ten times this. That's the point here. There is Decision A and Decision B. Decision A wins more often than Decision B, so it's the right move. End of. I really don't see how anybody who watches a fair amount of football, let alone hosts a show in which it is featured, could think MJD made a crazy move.

Did Bill Belichick Make the Right Move?

In one of the most entertaining football games I have seen in a while, Bill Belichick made a very unconventional move. He elected to go for it from his own 28 with 2:08 left in the game and his Patriots leading the Colts 34-28. The attempt failed and the Colts went on to score a touchdown and win the game by a point. Belichick is probably the only coach in the league with the balls to go for it in that situation. The second-guessing is going to be relentless. So, was it the right move? My educated guess: an emphatic "probably not... but then again...".

Let's say a) going for it is a 55-45 proposition in favor of converting, b) converting means a win, c) a punt means Indy gets the ball on their own 30, d) not converting gives the Colts the ball on the Pats 30.* Under these conditions, going for it is the right move if the Colts scoring a touchdown, with two minutes left and one time out, from the Pats 30 is less than 2.2 times as likely as scoring a touchdown from their own 30 under similar circumstances. Is this the case? I don't think so, but who knows? In order to answer this with confidence I would need much more time and data than I have currently. My off-the-cuff expert estimation (watching just about every NFL game of the season qualifies me as an expert, in my mind) is that punting is the right move, but if Belichick felt his defense was particularly beaten down, or that his offense is exceptionally good at picking up two yards, then going for it might have been a good move.

This situation is precisely the time when a "Game Management Coach" could come in handy. NFL teams should hire people to crunch a bunch of data, so that they have good estimations of probabilities for a swath of scenarios. They should then pick the one who is the fastest on his or her feet and proclaim them the Game Management Coach. Their job is to follow the head coach around and tell him what to do. It is a great idea, but the chances of it happening anytime soon are probably pretty low. (By the way, this is the same basic idea put forth by Bill Simmons in this column's "Great Call of the Week". Although I disagree with his take on the "down by two scores in the final two minutes" conundrum. I also don't think Madden is the best NFL football game simulator, given that I once threw 8 TD passes to Terrell Owens in a game against a friend. Still, the larger point is a good one.)

*These seem reasonble because a) two yards is what is needed on a 2-point conversion and the success rate for them has been around 50% in recent years (this guy backs that up), but the Patriots have an above average offense, so I put it at 55%, b) the Pats can essentially run out the clock if they convert, c) a 42 yard net punt is reasonable, d) the 30 is a good round yard line.

TMQ's Asinine Take on the Compensation of College Athletes

Below is an excerpt from this week's TMQ column concerning the compensation of college basketball players.

Last winter, Richard Vedder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, what we call in Washington a "boutique" think tank (it's really small), argued in the Wall Street Journal that college sports stars "receive compensation that amounts to only a very small percentage of what they would have earned if they sold their services in a competitive market." Vedder noted that Kevin Durant got about $33,000 in "compensation," in the form of tuition and expenses, in his year at the University of Texas, then jumped to $3.5 million a year when he entered the NBA. Colleges are keeping the money that basketball stars generated, Vedder contends, and therefore college athletes should form unions and demand pay.

Many, including TMQ reader Nasr Abdul-Mujeeb of Detroit, also think Division I football and men's basketball players should be paid: "The NCAA is using a free-labor system that lines the pockets of coaches, ADs and NCAA administrators, but provides little benefit to players, many of whom don't get a college education anyway." (Under "one and done," a college basketball player can attend classes in the fall, and then pay much less attention to classes in the spring, continuing to perform for that college while maintaining eligibility based on fall credits.) Surely if one considers only star players such a [Kevin] Durant, the NCAA is indeed benefiting from a free-labor system. But is that the way we should look at matters?

During Durant's college season, 2006-07, there were 343 Division I men's basketball teams, each awarding 13 full scholarships, and 270 Division II basketball teams, each awarding 10 full scholarships, for a total of 7,159 men's basketball scholarships. (The numbers are now slightly different.) The following season, Durant's rookie year, there were 55 NBA players who had just left college, either early or as seniors. Since 55 from that college season advanced to the NBA, we can roughly judge that 55 of the 7,159 major-program basketball players that year were being exploited financially, while the other 7,104 were not. The other 7,104 players were coming out way ahead financially, as they were receiving free college educations -- if they had enough sense to go to class -- plus experiences that might help them in later life, especially in the business world. ("Wow, you played basketball at Boston College?")

Divide 7,159 by 55, and get 130. So each player from Durant's college season who might have been earning an NBA salary was supporting the college educations of another 130 players. This is the key thought missing from free-labor complaints about college basketball. Yes, the tiny fraction of players capable of advancing to the NBA do perform for far less than their market price, but they create economic value that lets large numbers of others go to college on scholarship. Assume the typical basketball scholarship is worth $33,000, which sounds a little low. (Full cost at the University of Texas for out-of-state students is currently $40,426) Those 7,159 scholarships are worth $236 million. So it's not pure exploitation -- $236 million is going to the players who make the college basketball system possible. It's up to those players to have the good sense to attend class and study -- what you accomplish in life is ultimately always up to you. But the scholarships created by the "free" play of NBA-capable collegians are the key consideration. In Durant's college year, he essentially donated 130 scholarships to other basketball players, worth $4.3 million. So actually his "compensation" was more than the $3.5 million he received the following season in the NBA. It's just that the compensation was not money in his pocket, it was the admirable act of financing other people's educations.

This is an embarrassingly weak defense of the status quo. The main reason lies in the sentences I put in bold. TMQ assumes that any college player who cannot play in the NBA is not being financially exploited, and will come out "way ahead." This assumption is completely unsupported, and in my estimation probably very untrue, especially for players in the power conferences (Pac-10, Big-10, ACC, Southeastern, Big East, Big 12). Even if a college hoopster does not play in the NBA, they are still providing a service for their university, and one off of which the university often makes a lot of money. They have worth to the university. (TMQ apparently disagrees, as he seems to think all scholarships are earned by future NBA players, and then "donated" to everybody else.*) I don't think it's at all appropriate to use what a college player will make in the NBA ($0 for almost all players, as TMQ points out) to establish their worth because they are not playing NBA basketball. Their worth should be determined by the college basketball market. But there is no real college basketball market, and that's exactly the point.

The basic argument for exploitation goes something like this. If a big name college basketball program had to pay their players, how much would they pay per year for a full squad? Is it safe to say $1.4 million? I think that's an underestimate, probably even a ridiculous underestimate, considering how much schools are willing to pay their coaches ($1.2 million per year for the power conference teams in the 2008 NCAA tournament) , not too mention how much competitive bidding for talent would drive up player compensation. Even using the modest estimate of $1.4 million per year, that's double what colleges pay their players now, assuming $40,000 (to be conservative I use this figure instead of TMQ's $33,000) per player per year. For better or worse, colleges are almost certainly paying their players a very small fraction of what they would be making under a free market. Players are getting a small slice of a big pie that they largely baked. To many, this is exploitation. If college players were paid market value, Kevin Durant probably would not have to "donate" scholarships to other players. They would be earning them outright, and then some.

*This is truly an asinine notion. Each year, there are hundreds of good college basketball players, who are key parts on good teams, who help draw fans and bring in money, that never crack the NBA. Why should their scholarships be considered donated?

Tim McCarver Quote

A quote from Tim McCarver: "[They say] lead off walks always score. And it's amazing how right they are."

I might have to start watching the World Series a little more closely. I think McCarver could be the source of some good material.