Back to Football: Week Four

Today is the first day since the first game of the season that I have actually turned on my TV and tuned into a game. It also turns out that I have the NFL Network so I can toggle back and forth between the BUF at HOU game and highlights from all current games as necessary. FOX isn't playing any games right now, which doesn't make any sense. Even if Houston is playing on one network, that doesn't mean that the Houston market doesn't care about the NFC games going on. Or maybe it does - I haven't done the research, but I do see a lot of Texans memorabilia around here.

I've also made significant updates to my 2014 Football chart over the last week. Along with analysis of whether the favorite, my picked, or my ideal team wins on a given week and the accuracy of these predictors through a season, I have identified potential earnings (or loss) for picking the favorite, the upset, my gut pick, or my ideal team on a given week and through an entire season. I did a little research about sports betting and made a simplistic, but relatively accurate calculation for winnings.

Each bet costs $6, and if the pick is wrong, I lose that. If I pick the Favorite and that team wins, I get the $6 back and another $5. If I pick an upset and the Favorite loses, I get the $6 back and another $10.

If the home team's number of wins this season is greater than or equal to the visiting team's wins, it is considered the favorite. 

 I picked these numbers based on information that said that if there is no favorite, to win $100 on a straight bet, you need to bet $110. Sports betting is more complicated than I thought it was, so I need to do more research. This calculation will work for now, and I'll refine it as a I learn more.

Now that the 2014 workbook is in order, I decided to update the 2012 workbook. This would give me two years as data-points. The information I'm looking for is if it is more profitable to simply pick the favorites or upsets consistently than to go with my gut picks.

As of Week 3, with my current calculation, I would have lost $18 by picking the Favorites. If I picked my Ideal teams, I would have made $42, my Gut picks would have got me $53, and picking Upsets would have earned $86 on the season. That's an ROI of -6%, 15%, 19%, and 30%, respectively, on the season. 

So there is that. Then, on the NFL Network, there was much excitement over some youth league running through the banner at the opening of the game, but all I could see were the girls looking bored in their cheerleader uniforms and all I could think about was the gender segregation. I wrote about it on Facebook and included my opinions about whether Cheerleading is a sport (spoiler, I don't think it is).

Post: When your little boys are playing a sport and your little girls are the cheerleaders, children learn that men act and women react to that. When they see men playing a sport and women as the cheerleaders, they see that men are supposed to act and women are supposed to react to that.

We can't change society in an instant, though we are, in many ways, moving in the right direction, but we need to pay attention to what our kids see, hear, and what we encourage them to do.

[My] Comment 1: I have a lot of respect for cheerleading - my high school cheer & stunt team brought home several high profile championships and were really fun to watch - but it should not be considered a sport in terms of Title IX. Yes, it can be competitive, but so is Debate, and things like Band competitions, and neither are considered sports. Cheerleading is much more like performance art than sport.

Of course, that also brings up questions about figure skating and gymnastics, which are also more like performance arts than sports. I do need to do more research about the definition of sport to have a fully crafted argument to back up my current opinion. Right now, I consider a sport to be something that involves direct competition rather than being ranked based on a rating of your performance and skill. 

[My] Comment 2: I know that intended, stated purpose of pairing cheerleading with football is to provide a way to get girls involved, but the result (which is often also the unstated intent) is regressive. In the first place, children should not be playing tackle football, and for two, we need to grow up and work on desegregating this game. 

I've gotten some likes for the Post and on Comment 1 from women without children so far. No dialog yet though. I'd really like to hear from parents, since they're the ones that I am really talking to in the Post. But now, right now, at 1:41pm Central time, I believe that I am late to go to a friend's house and watch football with other people. More later.

Back to Football: Week Three

Last week, I spent copious time working on my 2014 spreadsheet, which now connects everywhere. I just have to input my picks, then record the winners, and everything gets updated.

The 2014 Season Spreadsheet

Spending time with my spreadsheet instead of watching people babble about football means that my picks last week were pretty bad - 40%. I asked a few people this weekend about their thoughts and learned that Denver looks good for the Super Bowl, the AFC West is the strongest division, the Panthers may surprise everyone, and people have figured the Seahawks out.

I'm still gunning for a Houston-Cincinnati Super Bowl, with Houston winning. The Bengals could pull it out, however, but only if Esiason comes out of the announcers' booth and kicks a game-winning field goal. Allegedly, this would never happen, but as the Ancient Oracle of Football, I must point out that they are both undefeated this year. As it turns out, the Texans are in the AFC, so it really couldn't happen. Oh well. I successfully picked Atlanta for the Thursday game, but I'm sure everyone saw that coming. This week, the winners will win and the losers will lose, unless the losers play each other, in which case, who cares? They're losers.

I miss Alex Smith

Back to Football: PACKERS!

I was sitting at Tacos, seeing a few Packers posts on Facebook, so I asked, "Packers?" and a friend responded with, "Packers!!"

Indeed, Packers.



So I went home before the game began, but chatted with some guys outside a nearby addiction recovery center. A somewhat bitter 49ers fan explained that the Seahawks were "young killers" who were both "deadly" and "hungry".

I got home in time to see the opener and my absolute new favorite part of the game - the rosters. I listen for two things: players from OSU saying the all important definite article before their college name and strange things. Russell Wilson is from "a whole pack of badgers" and, I believe, Sam Shields, is from "The U".

First and 10 at the 2 minute warning of the first half, and I think the Seahawks will win. The young killers are just hungrier. Time to reprise my old spreadsheet.

Just checking in to say that I heard one of the commentators say "ameoba this".

Regular Season Schedules

Lo and behold I can blog about football in the depths of the non-football season. The regular season schedules came out this week, and that brings me 32 opportunities to make spreadsheets.

So far, I have determined that the Packers will go 13&3, the Bears will be 11&5, and the 49ers will go 15&1, again defeating the Packers in the season opener. It seems that my angry Packer fan profile pic will be useful all year. Really, the 49ers season is a cakewalk, due to their sh*tty division. I mean seriously, does anyone remember that Arizona has a football team?

I'm also playing around with creating Difficulty Ratings. The current calculation is the number of wins their opponents had last year divided by their number of losses. The Packers Difficulty Rating is 115%, the Bears are 102%, and the 49ers are at 106%. Please note that Difficulty Rating is pronounced Dif-ficle-tee Rating.

Similar ratings and numbers are being calculated for the division standings, but no one cares.

Super Bowl Sunday Edition

Today is the day, the last day of this season, the day we were all waiting for, and the match-up we were all hoping for last year. Instead, we had to watch a boring seen-it match up between two teams that are probably more dis-liked than liked. We also have a fun match up of a more-or-less overdog team and a "team of destiny". The season has been fun, and sad, and boring sometimes. My experiment with keeping statistics and making picks has been fruitful, and now an extra game seems excessive. I don't much care who wins this one, though I do think (and want) the 49ers to be Super Bowl champions. The Ravens are that "team of destiny", what with their one linebacker that everyone likes who announced his retirement at the beginning of the playoffs. The game should be good, and the day is nice. I will ignore the commercials, and probably mute the half-time performance. 25 minutes too kickoff.

--Time Passes--

The 49ers are really, really undisciplined in this game. Their first play was beautiful, until we found out that they had some kind of illegal formation (if formations can be illegal, only outlaws will have them...) and they had to punt the ball away. Since then, Baltimore got two touchdowns, and the Niners turned the ball over at least once. Baltimore is playing like a Super Bowl team, where as San Francisco forgot that they still had a game to play. Let's hope my mantra about halftime proves true, else I have to bring out my other mantra about this just being entertainment.

--Halftime Over--

Not being one to ever like whatever it is I am shown via marketing, I put the TV on mute for the commercials and for Super Bowl halftime. I did, however, see the Destiny's Child reunion, and unmuted the TV for a few seconds during Beyonce's performance. It looked quite good, but I had committed to watching cat videos during halftime, and I could not get caught up in the performance.

But now, football is back, and in history making fashion, big brother John's Special Teams returned a kickoff for 109 yards to start the second half. The 49ers need a miracle or some kind of shot in the arm, because they aren't going to win this game with worst-kicker-in-league Akers saving the day each time. There is less than a half hour of real-season football left until September, let's go San Francisco!

Oh, but before that, and in hilarious news, the power went out in New Orleans. Now, it is apparently time to lay out on the field and have a nap. All the people in suits are giving us long explanations about what is going to happen, or what has happened, or maybe what they had for lunch that day, I have no idea. Oh, James Brown is here to tell us what is happening while random fans call their friends and tell them to look at them on the TV. 

Wait, cut to the panel so the guy with the comically large mouth can explain how this affects the players, while white guy next to him either agrees or disagrees and makes different hand gestures. And I was wrong, it isn't nap time, it is yoga time - stretch on the field everyone! Come to think of it, I should stretch too. 

Referee checks time and takes out a notepad. "Call grandma tonight, ask about best exterminators," he writes. Back to the panel, the white guy, who needs a better stylist, is really mad about something. Now CBS is showing promos for their shows, and there is a new David Spade vehicle coming out soon. However, being told that they cannot air more commercials just because of a random, unforeseen event, CBS decided to humiliate the whole Bay Area while showing clips of the 4 thousand Ravens touchdowns that just occurred. After that, they trotted out random guys in suits, with microphones to talk about things. Nothing at all is happening, except the anger coming out of badly-dressed-non-Dan Marino-white-guy-on-panel's mouth. 

Ray Lewis's squats aren't doing much good, his knees are extending over his toes. I can squat better than that guy. Switch to some guys in the stand, "do you know what's happening?" "No, great shot of Colin Kaepernick spitting on the ground though."

--Time Passes--

After 34 minutes, the power came back on, but San Francisco is down by 22 points with not much time left to go in the game. I was about to give the game up to the Ravens at this point, but somehow, the Niners got their first touchdown and there is a little bit of life left in the game. Still, going to mute the sexist commercials and write other things.

--Time Passes--

The game got really exciting after the power outage, and now, just when San Francisco looked like it could come back and bring the Lombardi trophy to the city right after we got the World Series trophy, the Niner hopes rest on the most flimsy of scenarios. I think it's over, and it is over.

The Super Bowl belongs to Baltimore. That was pretty crazy, and disappointing.

Playoffs, Yeah: Conference Championships

The games started early today, for me. I also woke up late and ran an errand before turning on the TV. Nevertheless, it is only the second half of the first game, 49ers and Falcons. The Falcons are up by ten points, and nothing matters before the half. Now, I like Atlanta, but not nearly as much as I like the 49ers, and therefore, I hope they are crushed by our track-star QB in the second half.

--Time Passes--

A missed field goal by the missingest misser in the NFL seems to have shaken the confidence of the 49ers. True, I am reading more than watching, but every time I see a play, the 49ers are screwing up. They caught a lucky break with an automatic first down penalty against the Falcons, but I'm starting to get worried.

--Time Passes--

Dare I say it, maybe they got their confidence back after that lost fumble? They forced Atlanta to go three and out, then started at their 40-something yard line for a touchdown to take the lead. Less than 9 minutes left in the game, can they hold on to the lead, and even increase it? Yes, oh yes, PLEASE!

--Time Passes--

So San Francisco won (yay) and now the Ravens are playing the Patriots. The Ravens are leading in the second quarter, let's hope they can add to it.

--Time Passes--

Well, this is just insanity, after a season where my ideal picks were trailing at as low as 19% some weeks, and averaged 45%, it is looking like the Super Bowl is close to my ideal predictions. Close, but not completely on. I wish the Packers had been the NFC representatives, but whatev. The Ravens are up by 15 points over the Patriots with eleven minutes left to go in the fourth quarter. Sure, the Patriots could still win, but it is looking less and less likely. The Ravens really need to step up defense, and then waste tons of time on offense.

--Time Passes--

Oh SNAP, it is happening! Woohoo, here is to a very watchable Super Bowl :D

Playoffs, Yeah: Divisional, Day 2

So, the Packers lost yesterday, but in good news, the 49ers won. Today, it looks like the Falcons are going to win, with them at 20-0 at the half. But as I typed that, Seattle did get a touchdown, early in the second half, so things might be looking up for them.

--Time Passes--

It still isn't a blow out, even though Atlanta got another touchdown. That is because Seattle got another touchdown and just got an interception. But seriously, I can't watch any more commercials. Even the commercials that I liked are getting to me. I am starting to understand how the average American can be the way they are, with all these marketing bombardments hitting them all day. The KFC commercial is really annoying, because everyone in it needs to be about 50 pounds heavier to represent the average American couch crowd.

--Time Passes--

Things are getting very exciting in Hotlanta today, and the commentators asked if Seattle is indeed "the team of destiny" in this playoff season. My response is that yes, they are the team of destiny, and their destiny is to be defeated by the 49ers next week so they can go on to the Super Bowl.

--Time Passes--

But not too fast, Seattle, the battle of the Red will occur next week instead. And now, the Texans and the Patriots are facing off in New England. At first, it looked like the Texans were going to be an impenetrable wall against the Patriots, yet they failed to get a touchdown. now the Patriots are coming back aggressively  and are up by two touchdowns, and the Texans have yet to score more than a single field goal. I admit, I'm not really watching much of the game, especially now that I have put music on in the background to avoid the constant muting and withstanding banal commentary. But the Texans have gotten a touchdown, finally, at the end of the first half. Will they go for two? No, of course not, nobody ever does.

--Time Passes--

Well, while they were doing pretty well for a while, I predict that the Patriots will win, and that I will take a nap. Next week, one post, for the Conference Championships.