The Pac-10 Versus the SEC - A Comprehensive Comparison

Recruiting
The Pac-10 has been the number 2 conference in recruiting for the past few years. And while the SEC is number 1, the average rating of recruits of Pac-10 teams is just as good. For the 08 class, the Pac-10 has the highest average rating. They also had the most players in the top 100. The overall ranking is skewed by the fact that the Pac-10 has less teams than the SEC, Big 12, and Big 10. No doubt the SEC dominated the 06 and 07 classes, but 08 starts a downward trend for the SEC. The pac-10 is about equal to the SEC in terms of recruiting, as of now. And all this time, the Pac-10 has been superior to the Big Ten and Big 12.

Pac-10 Versus SEC Games
I've been saying all along, the best way to determine the superiority of one conference to another is simply play games between each other. With the UCLA win over Tennessee, the Pac-10 is now 10-6 against the SEC, since 2000. For those that have been saying that the Pac-10 is all about USC, if you take out USC and LSU, the two powerhouse teams, the Pac-10 is 6-2 against the SEC. The numbers speak for themselves.

Non-Conference Scheduling and Bowl Eligibility
SEC fans are quick to point out that 10 out of 12 teams were bowl eligible last year, and 9 the year before that. Only 6 pac-10 teams were Bowl eligible last year, and 8 the year before. If you look at the teams from the SEC that barely were eligible, South Carolina and Alabama, you can see that they only got in because of their easy OoC scheduling. I can go into details listing out their opponents but I'll save myself the time. Had SC lost 1 non-conference game, or Bama lost 2, they would not have been bowl eligible. Vanderbilt, the team that almost made it, also won all of its easy non conference games. You really only have to win 3 out of 9 games in the SEC to be bowl eligible. It has completely lost its meaning. The Pac-10 teams on the other hand, all had tough opponents. Of the teams that barely were eligible, UCLA and Cal, LA beat BYU and Utah, and Cal, I'm sure you know about Cal. Of the teams that were barely ineligible, Wazzu and Arizona, Wazzu played Wisconsin, and Zona also played BYU. Other teams like Washington, who were 2 wins away played Boise, Ohio State, Syracuse. At least the Orange are a BCS team. If you don't play tough out of conference games, theres no way to gauge how good the conference is. The tough OoC games that the SEC have played, they've gotten embarrassed by the Pac-10. If you want to be completely unbiased, look at the strength of schedules of the conferences. The SEC had an average strength of schedule of 20. The pac-10 had an average strength of schedule of 10.7.

Bowl Victories
I tried googling for bowl victories but all I found was BCS bowl records and 07-08 bowl records. In both, the Pac-10 and SEC have the same amount of losses, but the SEC had slightly more wins. However, these numbers are not substantive enough to make for a valid basis of judgment. SEC fans like to point out national championships, but the fact is the sample space is too small to work with. BCS bowl records would be better, but still not adequate. The best would be bowl records since 2002, but as I said, I couldn't find those stats and I dont want to compile them myself.

Coaches
The SEC has some great coaches, but all I can say on this one is that the Pac-10 is catching up. The Neuheisel-Chow combo is as good of an offensive coaching staff as your going to get in the league. Pete Carroll, the best coach in the league. Dennis Erickson is completely legitimate, that is a team to watch out for, he went 10-3 in his first year. Jim Harbaugh is starting to turn stanford around. Mike Riley has oregon state turned around, they've had the second best record in the pac-10 over the span of the last 2 years. Tedford has been insanely close to a BCS bid a few times. Mike Bellotti has a couple of conference titles as well as a BCS bowl victory. The SEC is much better in terms of coaching, but the Pac-10 has made some significant changes in the past few years. Eventually they will be close. If Saban and Spurrier didn't come in, I'd say the Pac-10 coaches would be about even if not better than the SEC's.

Players
This is too much to go into, but it parallels the stuff I said about recruiting.

Overall
The SEC is not some sort of champions league, its not far and away the best conference. It is the best, but not by much. You cant just look at the positives of the SEC and ignore the positives of the other conferences, which is the what nearly all SEC fans are guilty of. My personal critique is, that the SEC championship game throws the rankings completely off, and that's how so many SEC teams get ranked so high. Its essentially a semi-final game where the winner goes to the championship. This way SEC teams get far more leeway in losses and the quality of those losses. It is the thing that pushes SEC teams over the top. They have the most title wins, but they also have the most opportunities. The purpose of this post was to bring respect to the Pac-10.

Redskins Defense

Defensive Line: On the defensive line they have Andre Carter, Phillip Daniels, Cornelius Griffin, and Kedric Golston. Each one of these players is solid and has experience, except Golston. But at 6'4, 320 pounds, he should take up a lot of space.

Linebackers: Here, they have Marcus Washington, London Fletcher, and Rocky McIntosh. Washington is a great linebacker, he can stuff the run as well as anybody. McIntosh is their second round pick from last year, he should be good. Their new acquasition, London Fletcher is a complete beast. He consistantly puts up monster numbers. He should be special.

Defensive Backs: This is probably the biggest strength of the defense. With Sean Taylor, LaRon Landry, Carlos Rogers, and Shawn Springs. Springs is a proven quality corner, Taylor can run with anyone in coverage, and is a missle running down field to tackle someone. Landry is the newest addition, he's one of the best safties ever coming out of college, he should be special. And then theres Rogers, a top pick a few years ago, he's now getting a chance to show what he can do, and so far its looked great.

This defense is better than the defense from 05 that took them to the playoffs and past round one. Last year most of the starters were injured and playing hurt. It was a disaster everywhere on defense. This year so far they've played extremely well together.

This year with Jason Campbell, they should be at least average on offense. They went 10-6 in the 05 season, look for the same, if not better, in my opinion. Right now, they are being highly underrated.

My Fantasy Baseball Team

Unlike last year, I did research before I drafted. Last year I relief purely on my baseball knowledge and not fantasy baseball knowledge. I went more with big names than with the better fantasy player. This year my researched helped alot. I drafted every single player with something positive that I can look forward to. I acted as if my 21st pick was just as important as my 1st. In reality, its not, but I was researching and comparing stats like it was. This was a traditional head to head, 5x5, 10 man league. I made a few changes after I drafted, I dropped Jacque Jones for Danial Cabrera almost immediately after the draft, and I dropped Chipper Jones for Weathers.

I've never been so confident in a fantasy team before, in any sport. Once Howard and Atkins get it going (Looks like today), my offense will be completely dominating. The one thing I lack is steals. Byrnes had 4 steals this past week, but I don't expect that to continue, I'm projecting 30 steals tops. Upton is also running this year, I'm expecting around 30 steals from him as well. Delmon Young could also give me a solid number of steals, around 20.

My pitching is strong as well. Sheets could be great, he looks to be completely healthy. Just about all my pitchers have high potentials. 5 of them have 200k potential. My closers aren't great but they're sufficient. Jenks and Isringhausen will be consistant, hopefully so will Weathers. Dempster has been very good so far. But if he blows more than one save, his time will be extremely short.

I'm trying to pick up Kenny Lofton, but I can't figure out who to cut.

C: Jorge Posada
1B: Ryan Howard
2B: Josh Barfield
3B: Garrett Atkins
SS: Miguel Tejada
OF: Vladimir Guerrero
OF: Delmon Young
OF: Eric Byrnes
Util: Todd Helton
BN: B.J. Upton

SP: Ben Sheets
SP: John Smoltz
RP: Bobby Jenks
RP: Jason Isringhausen
P: Ryan Dempster
P: David Weathers
P: C.C. Sabathia
BN: Bronson Arroyo
BN: Justin Verlander
BN: Aaron Harang
BN: Daniel Cabrera

Don't Let Lofton's Low Avg Fool You

Before this season, he was a career .300 hitter. Now he hits at the top of a powerful Rangers lineup. Behind him is Hairston, Young, Teixeira, Sosa. Right now his average is very low, .133, but don't let that fool you, he is a very good hitter in fact.

He has a contact rate of 93% with only 1 strikeout. He's putting the bat on the ball, its just not landing in the right spot, and thats unlucky. Because of that, he's not getting on base, which means his runs are down. He's gotten 2 hits and 1 walk, so he's reached base 3 times. He also has 2 steals. Clearly he wants to run and clearly he can. Such a high contact rate tells us his average will definitely go up, and for such a high rate, an average of .300 or well beyond is reasonable. Once he starts getting on base more, we'll see plenty of runs and steals. Its all a matter of time.

High Strikeout Pitchers

Thanks to Doug's MLB Stats, I can rank players and compile stats in any way imaginable. The first thing that I wanted to know was who the best strikeout pitchers are in the league. Pure strikeouts can't tell you much because the innings pitched are all different. I compiled Strikeouts per Innings pitched, here are the ranks that I got:




















From that list, Kazmir and Hamels are availible in the mid-rounds. Cabrera is availible way in the late rounds, if he doesn't go undrafted. We all know they are high strikeout guys, but just how high, might be overlooked. (Note: This only applies to pitchers with over 100 innings pitched, this is to exclude the relievers)

Next, I did K per Walk. Sheets was by far the best with a ratio of 10.54. The next closest was Schilling with a ratio of 6.53. Then Johan with a ratio of 5.2. This can be a good indicator of control that the pitcher has. It can tell you whether that player's ERA and Whip are inflated or deflated by other factors. Clearly Schilling is overlooked in this aspect. Sheets still has an injury risk. Another Note, Wickman was the only pitcher better than Sheets with a ratio of 12.5, but thats only with his tenure with the Braves. With the Braves he was a complete beast. Infact, he also has the best Save per Blown save ratio.

This stat sheet is very fun to play around with. If anyone has any numbers/ranks they want to compile, just leave a comment and I'll have it done by the next day. I can do hitters and pitchers.

GTA 4 - First Look

The long awaited first trailer came out for Grand Theft Auto 4. Its availible on the GTA 4 site, on YouTube, GameTrailers, and theres even a torrent. Its a short trailer, about a minute. Theres not much action, but we do get to know the basics of the game. It revolves around an immigrant who was involved in Human Trafficking apparently (This could get Ugly for Rockstar). It takes place in Liberty City once again. A lot of people don't like this, but personally I don't mind. Liberty City is a great city for a setting. They can always refurbish parts, add more things, change things, etc., I think by now we should learn to trust Rockstar. Thats enough of me rambling about the Trailer, you can check it out for yourself.

This first glimpse however gave me enough material to create me first mock cover. I used various screens from the trailer on the cover, the traditional GTA font, and the "IV" font that was on the GTA website. I applied very simple photoshop filters to make the pictures look more cartoonish. I didn't spend more than an hour on this. I do plan on making it better, with better screens, and better vectors, and eventually I'll make a back cover. But for now, this is what I have.

GTA 4 Cover - Version 1.0

(Click to Enlarge)

Final Four: Georgetown

Up to now I have 93 points, and all my 4 final four teams are still in. I have OSU beating UCLA in the finals. That Georgetown game was a classic. I was praying the whole way that Gtown would come back. It was a complete effort by everyone. It was amazing how they came through in the clutch. Whenever it seemed like UNC was dominating, they would score key shots to keep it close. The worst they were down by was 11, but for most of the game they were down by 5-7 points. Finally at the end they went on a spree and were unstopped.

Georgetown was the better team in my opinion, by far. Hibbert was the key, on defense he would block shots and keep them in check, and on offense he would be a solid scorer. He was in foul trouble the whole game, and the way John Thompson managed him was excellent. He left him in when everyone else questioned him, and it payed off bigtime. What else amazed me was the passing of Georgetown. They made crisp passes inside. This is the best passing team I've ever seen in college. Hansborough had a very good first half, but was completely invisible in the second half. Georgetown deserved that win. Hibbert vs. Oden will be the game of the year in my opinion. I missed the other three games though, that sucks.

'300' A Short Non-Spoiler Review

I only watch a few movies every year at the theaters, only special movies that I know will be worth the money. 300 was one of these movies. The movie is adapted from the comic written by Frank Miller based on an old battle between 300 Spartan warriors and the Persian army of thousands. As expected the visuals were breathtaking. Someone described the movie as "a mix of Gladiator and Lord of the Rings" which I believe to be very true. The battle scenes are similar to those of Lord of the Rings. At times the LotR fight scenes seemed to be dry and repetitive, this is not the case in 300. The entire movie was very entertaining and left the viewer wanting more.

Children watch fantasy movies like Harry Potter, Narnia, Bridge to Terebithia, movies that ignite their imagination and absorb them completely in the movie. 300 is a movie like that for adults. It would seem that the plot is weak looking at the type of film that it is, but that is not the case. Its a simple story, but a very good one.

In the end, we have to look at this movie for what it is, a story told on film, which the movie does perfectly. This is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. If you liked Gladiator and Lord of the Rings, you will love this movie. Everything about this movie is high quality.

Overall: 9/10

(I'm not trying to project what the rating would be overall, that is just my personal rating)

Suggestions for Digg.com

I'll cut to the chase with the suggestions. Digg this if you like it.

1. Make comments appear in real-time - When you Digg an article, you can see the Digg number increment in real-time. Do the same for new comments. Why? Because of stories have a large number of comments, and refreshing the page every time to post a new comment or check for newly posted comments by others takes some time. Refreshing it over and over can get annoying for these more largely commented articles.

2. Comment Pagination - This branches off the same idea as the previous suggestion, refreshing pages with many comments takes a while, so why not have pages of comments? The number of comments displayed can be set in the user profile, like 10, 20, 50, etc.


That is all.

My 2006 Miami Dolphins Madden Video

I've officially begun working on my new video, 2006 Miami Dolphins Season Review NFL Films Style with Madden. Here is the 2005 version. There are several mistakes in the old video. The video skips, the Audio is scratchy, the entire video has margins, the text is hard to read and goes by fast, some of the video is slow, some is fast, etc. Honestly, I rushed the old video, I was so excited with what I had, I couldn't wait to put it out. I'm taking my time with this to make it perfect.

Ever since I made the 2005 Video, I've been thinking of ideas. Now I have officially begun. I'm going to choreograph it all first with a script, then follow the script. If you have any ideas, please leave comments. If you ever wanna chat or anything, just leave you're AIM sn in the comments.

O and last thing, if you would have to put a title to the Dolphins' 06 season, what would that title be? Thanks.

Superbowl Prediction

Just like last year, I'm here to predict the superbowl.

In my opinion it comes down to this: Which matchup do you prefer, Colts Offense vs Bears Defense or Bears Offense vs Colts Defense? This brings up a issue that most forget about, how well the Colts defense is playing. Their defensive philosophy is to not allow the big play, which is all Grossman is, a big play. So they can shut down Grossman, but the Bears running game is still here. Thus I come to the conclusion that the Bears running game must win this game all by itsself. Which is unlikely considering how the Colts D has been playing against the run this post-season. Next, looking at how Manning played the second half of the pats game, I give the advantage to the Colts offense. Manning looked unstoppable.

I can see Thomas Jones and Benson combining for two touchdowns, and Hester getting another 1-2 touchdowns. The colts special teams defense looked very weak against the patriots. But I think Colts will still come out on top, simply because of Manning and Viniteri.

Final Score: 27-20 Colts

Fantasy Basketball Forumla

Many people have attempted a fanatasy basketball forumla, but most have failed. A successfull formula can lead you to fantasy victory. I have seen it first hand, a guy who knew nothing about basketball used a formula sheet with rankings, drafted, traded and picked up free agents accordingly, and won the league in a blowout. As it is every fantasy players dream to have an accurate ranking sheet, I am attempting one of my own.

So I sat down thinking, how can I develope a ranking system based on each statistic. I would have to weight each category, develope a point system for each category, then accumulate those points for an overall ranking system.

When you think of a good fantasy team, you think, Balance. You must account for the forgotten stats, turnovers, steals, fg%, ft%, and even 3pts. Each of the categories is worth one point, so blowing someone out in points is essentially the same as blowing him out in turnovers.

I wanted to make my player rating out of 100, for obvious reasons. Since there are 9 categories, each category must account for 100/9 points, or 11 1/9 or 11.111... So a perfect player would get a rating of 100.

Now, how to assign 0 to 11.11 points for each category? Well, what would make someone deserve a 11.11, if they are the best in the league. So, I take leader of that statistic, and use his number as a standard of measuring. At this moment in time, Redd leads the league in scoring with 356 points. Thus he would get the full 11.11 points.

But how to measure this, and how to assign lower points? So I use 11.11 as a multiplier, and I divide the Players pts by the maximum pts, and multiply that number by 11.11. So for Redd, 356/356 * 100/9 would give 11.11, the maximum points availible at that category. Now alittle lower on the list, Paul Pierce has 307 points. So 307(his pits)/356(pts leader) * 100/7, and this equals the points Pierce would get from the points category.

I did that for every category, except turnovers, in which the least number is the best. What I did to save myself the work is, I used the same formula with maximum turnovers being the standard, and I subtracted that number from the players overall rating.

I made a spreadsheet to calculate all of this, and use http://www.dougstats.com/ for the latest NBA statistics.

Here are the rankings that my ranking sheet generated as of today. And just for comparison, I listed Yahoo's Current Ranks:

My Formula Yahoo Rank

1. james,lebron		1. james,lebron
2. arenas,gilbert		2. arenas,gilbert
3. lewis,rashard		3. lewis,rashard
4. allen,ray		4. allen,ray
5. marion,shawn		5. marion,shawn
6. okafor,emeka		6. okafur,emeka
7. garnett,kevin		7. billups,chauncey
8. billups,chauncey		8. garnett,kevin
9. davis,baron		9. davis,baron
10.nowitzki,dirk		10.redd,michael
11.redd,michael		11.nowitzki,dirk
12.artest,ron		12.pierce,paul
13.pierce,paul		13.artest,ron
14.barbosa,leandro		14.barbosa,leandro
15.kidd,jason		15.wallace,rasheed
16.carter,vince		16.kidd,jason
17.martin,kevin		17.carter,vince
18.mcgrady,tracy		18.williams,deron
19.boozer,carlos		19.mcgrady,tracy
20.stojakovic,peja		20.martin,kevin
21.ginobili,manu		21.miller,mike
22.jamison,antawn		22.boozer,calos
23.terry,jason		23.ginobli,manu
24.o'neal,jermaine		24.stojakovic,peja
25.ridnour,luke		25.wade,dwayne

My overall rating generated is accurate to the hundred-millionths decimal place. Now I know that is not perfect, its FAR from it. I need ways to improve the formula, and I would love your suggestions.

The flaws I see are, it doesn't take into account the margin of the lead. If Okafur dominates blocks, and leads by a large margin, then how would I take that into account? I'm not even sure what standard deviation does, haha. I might be able to use Calculus. Too bad I never too Statistics in school.

Matt Bryant Kick Video

This was an amazing kick, 62 yards as time expired. It was win or lose, as they were down by 1. And he nailed it. Amazing.

Edited on 10/26/06

So the NFL saw the video that I posted and they made YouTube take it down for copyright infringment. I was very pissed off, the video was extremely popular. It got over 10,000 views in 2 days, and almost 30 comments, favorited many times, and 8 honors.

Because of that, I made a new video. But this time, its Madden style...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svYnQmKVbKU

Fantasy Baseball Recap

Back in April I posted my baseball team. My draft was very bad, I got ARod in round one, who failed to live up to expectations. Randy Johnson in round two, we all know how that went. Well I said with proper managing I could win it all. Well I managed in the beginning and at the end. Like most people, I completely forgot about my team in July and August. In late June I figured I'd make the playoffs, so why waste my time with this team until then. I ended up 2nd place in the regular season with a total of 56 moves, and ended the playoffs in 3rd place.

In the 2nd round of the playoffs, I ended up tied with my opponent and he got the victory because he had a lower ERA. This is complete bullshit. Its basically saying that ERA is the most important stat and more important than others. Techincally speaking, the point value of ERA becomes 1.1, the 0.1 addition coming from the fact that era is a tiebreaker. If thats how it is in the playoffs, why not give it that point value in the regular season? Because its not the most important. Infact its one of the worst stats to judge by. Pitchers can have bad games very easily. If a reliever gives up 2 runs and loses the game, his Era will be through the roof. Does that 1 game accurately measure the quality of the player? Hell no. Era is one of the most inconsistant stats because of that. The tiebreaker should be regular season record. That way the most deserving team goes on.

Next, heres my 3rd place team:
C: I. Rodriguez
1B: A. Dunn
2B: T. Iguchi
3B: A. Rodriguez
SS: J. Lugo
OF: M. Holliday
OF: Del. Young
OF: B. Bonds
Util: H. Matsui

SP: R. Hill
SP: C. James
RP: Jo. Nelson
RP: S. Torress
P: J. Suppan
P: M. Timlin
P: Jo Johnson
BN: C. Hamels
BN: B. Myers
BN: Ra. Johnson
BN: Roy Halladay

That might look like crap, but it got me the win. After 1 week I realized I had Strikeouts locked up and needed Saves, so I picked up some hot closers. The guys I had to end the season whom I dropped later were: Billingsley, Beak, Hillenbrand, Liriano, Juan Rivera, Todd Jones, Brad Penny, Carmona, Griffey, and Mathews Jr.

Well my lesson has been learned. Get at most two baseball teams, because no matter how excited you are in the beginning, it will wear down on you by July and you will get bored of baseball fast.

Screw Oklahoma

Oklahoma has the right to complain about the officials the call is one of the worst calls ever, but they're taking it too far. Its near the end of the week and they're still complaining. Its the coach's job to get his team to forget the previous game and focus on the game ahead, and it seems as if he's failing to do that.

Oklahoma had plenty of chances to win the game. Their defense had 2 chances to stop the Oregon. But they just stopped playing with 3 minutes to go. After the kickoff, they gave up a 3 play touchdown drive. Still they had a chance to win it at the end with a field goal, which they had blocked. From the way they played at the end they didn't deserve to win.

Now they're talking about not playing Washington next year. If stoops has the power to boycott Pac-10 games, then college football is on a slipery slope. Whats next, coaches picking whoever they want to play, No interconfrence play...

I say force him to play, if he doesn't, they forfeit the game, and it would count as a loss. He gets to show his disliking of the Pac-10 as well as get his point across, but has to take the hit for it. OU signed the contract to play those games, they have to live up to it.

Nothing is going to change, no records are going to be cleaned, the game counts as a loss for them. If anything they should use the loss as motivation and whup Washington next year as a revenge game. Because of Oklahomas constant complaining and threats to not play Pac-10 teams, I'm officially putting Oklahoma on my wall of shame.