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My first 5k of the running season was this past weekend. “Running season” in Michigan means “months normally without snow”. I know some people like to use treadmills to stay in shape when the weather conditions are uncooperative, but I am not one of those people.

Here are three of the thoughts I had during or after the race (I did have more than three total thoughts during that time – these are just the thoughts that might interest other people):

1. Include pavement on your training runs
   I do not usually run on pavement – my routes keep me on dirt roads. The problem was that the whole race (except for about 400 yards) was on pavement. I didn’t think anything of that until halfway through the race, when my shins started complaining. I should have gone on some pavement runs before the race, to condition my legs to the harder surface.
2. Good race organizers mark the miles on the course itself and on the map.
   I saw the race map ahead of time and guessed where the miles were. During the race, I was feeling fine as I passed the area where I had guessed the first mile to be. Of course, I saw the actual one-mile marker a little while later, which produced some disappointment in me. The same thing happened for the two-mile mark.

   And really good race organizers have the current race time at each mile. That helps those of us who do not run with watches.

3. Slow and steady wins the race
   unless fast and steady is also running.

There are too many people already analyzing the 2012 NFL draft, so I won’t go into too many details. I just have 3 observations.

1. The NFL did a great job marketing the draft this year.
   I don’t remember caring much about the draft in prior years. In fact, most of the time I couldn’t tell you which weekend the draft was. But this year I knew.

   Maybe it was the switch to prime time. Maybe it was the breaking up of the draft over 3 days. Whatever it was, it worked. I paid attention.

   Or maybe it was the fact that the Red Wings were out of the playoffs. My sports focus did not have a particular target, so it settled on the NFL draft.

2. The Lions’ 2nd-round choice reveals careful planning.
   A lot of people are either criticizing the Detroit Lions’ 2nd-round pick of Ryan Broyles or they are simply scratching their heads at it.

   I have an explanation. Whether it is the actual reason the Lions went with him has yet to be determined.

   The Lions know one of their draft picks will get injured, so they are getting the injury out of the way.

   Think about the Lions’ draft picks over the last couple years:
   – Mikel Leshoure – missed his entire rookie season last year
   – Matthew Stafford – missed several games due to injury in his first two seasons

   With that kind of record, the Lions should assume that their draft picks will be injured at some point. Better to get the injury out of the way by drafting players who are currently injured. Maybe they’ll be ready to play at the start of the season, or maybe they’ll have to miss a few games. Either way, the Lions are ahead of the game.

3. The grades are generous.
   I read a review of the draft, and that review gave each team a letter grade on its draft performance. Most teams got As and Bs. Some got Cs, and only 2 got Ds (Seattle and Jacksonville).

   At first I thought “Wait a minute – the draft isn’t a zero-sum game. There are only so many good picks, so not every team can be above the curve.” But then I thought that every team can be above the curve, because each team has different needs.

   In the end, I suppose I agree with Coach Schwartz: “Is your draft grade a tiebreaker for the playoffs next year? When it is, let me know, and I’ll worry about what our draft grade is.”

The only problem now is waiting for football season to start.

In the last week or two, we had the announcement of the 2012 NFL schedule. Now that we know who will play whom and when, we can start predicting wins and losses.

I keep my predictions over at Some Fun Site. View results of previous football seasons.

2011 Summary

Last year, I predicted that

• Kansas City Chiefs = 11-5
• Minnesota Vikings = 4-12
• New York Giants = 10-6

How they actually did was

• Kansas City Chiefs = 7-9
• Minnesota Vikings = 3-13
• New York Giants = 9-7

Two of those were close. Not too bad…

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Since Beta enjoyed last season’s hockey game so much, we scheduled another one for this year.

This year’s event was not as eventful as last year’s – no overtime, no shootout, no inconsiderate fans – but Beta and I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Traditions

It is our tradition that, during the first intermission, Beta gets a cup of hot chocolate.

I got some overpriced almonds. I think I’ll get something else next year.

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Okay, okay, it is 2012 at this point, but the results are headlines as 2011 because they match with the 2011 predictions made in 2011 for the 2011 season. Also, the results are not all-haiku, just the predictions were. A more accurate title would be “Results for the All-Haiku Predictions made in 2011”.

Before the bowl games commenced for this past college football season, I made some predictions. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the tally of those predictions. Note that the results are not in haiku form, in contrast to the predictions.

Results

Here is the list (correct predictions in green, incorrect in red):

Wyoming over Temple

Utah St. over Ohio

San Diego St. over Louisiana-Lafayette

Florida International over Marshall

TCU over Louisiana Tech

Boise St. over Arizona St.

Southern Miss. over Nevada

Missouri over North Carolina

Purdue over Western Michigan

NC State over Louisville

Air Force over Toledo

Texas over Cal

Notre Dame over Florida St.

Baylor over Washington

Tulsa over Brigham Young

Rutgers over Iowa St.

Miss. St. over Wake Forest

Oklahoma over Iowa

Northwestern over Texas A&M

Utah over Georgia Tech

Cincinnati over Vanderbilt

UCLA over Illinois

Virginia over Auburn

Houston over Penn St.

Michigan State over Georgia

Nebraska over South Carolina

Florida over Ohio St.

Oregon over Wisconsin

Stanford over Oklahoma St.

Michigan over Virginia Tech.

West Virginia over Clemson

Arkansas over Kansas St.

Pittsburgh over Southern Methodist

Northern Illinois over Arkansas St.

Louisiana St. over Alabama

And here are the results of the various forecasting methodologies (see the first year for description of the methodologies) (also, use the word methodologies if you want to sound important; methods would work just as well and is shorter) :

• Some Blog Site picks were 21-14 (better than last year!)
• CBS120 picks were 22-13
• HTW was 18-17 for the official Home Team Wins (HTW)
• HTW was 20-15 for the Geographical Home Team (GHT)
• Isaacson-Tarbell Postulate (ITP) was 21-14 if using HTW
• ITP was 22-13 if using GHT

I won’t analyze the results as much as I did last year, mainly because I had more time and more sleep last year. But it was a good year all predictors – every method was over 50%. And my predictions keep getting better. At this rate, I’ll be 100% correct by the year 2018.

Thoughts on the season’s results

1. That was a nice playoff round. Now let’s have the championship game between Alabama and OK State.
2. The B1G is going to have another championship game next year. We don’t know who will be in it, but we do know who won’t be in it…
3. You know what? – we should just skip the national championship game and give the title to the winner of the SEC again. I predicted as much last year, so let’s keep the streak going.

Conferences

Since the strength of the conference has something to do with the results, I thought I would tally each conference’s bowl game record for the 2011 (and the first bit of 2012) season.

• ACC: 2-6
• Big 10: 4-6
• Big 12: 6-2
• Big East: 3-2
• Independent: 1-1
• MAC: 4-1
• MW: 2-3
• PAC12: 2-5
• SEC: 6-3
• Sun Belt: 1-2
• USA: 4-1
• WAC: 0-3

So the best conference was the MAC or Conference USA (they won 80% of their bowl games) and the worst was the WAC because they didn’t win any of their bowl games.

The WAC sent the fewest teams to bowl games again this year (tied with Sun Belt). So maybe those two conferences were the worst.

Perhaps you could say that the B1G was the best because they had ten teams go to bowls. Or you could say the B1G was just the most popular conference.

Perhaps you could say that the SEC was the best because they won the championship (again). Or maybe the SEC is tied with the Big 12 for the best conference because they both won the most bowls (at 6).

I don’t know what happened to the MWC. They used to win their bowl games, and Boise St. was supposed to strengthen the conference. They ended below 0.500 in bowls this year though.

Since the conferences are going to change slightly for next football season, who knows which the strong bowl conferences will be? But if I must predict, I’m saying Conf. USA won’t win 80% of its bowl games again. I’ll also throw in the standard prediction that the SEC will win the BCS again.

Or, It Takes Suh to Make a Thing Go Right

Disclaimer: If you don’t follow the NFL, this post won’t make much sense. If you want it to make sense, please read this article about Ndamukong Suh first.

Now that the Lions’ season is over, the players can relax and pursue their hobbies during the off-season. And for Lions #90, that hobby is off-Broadway shows. Not just watching them, but participating as a cast member.

In fact, Some Blog Site was able to procure an advance copy of the promotional literature for Suh’s upcoming show. Here, exclusive to Some Blog Site, are the flyers.
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It is time once again to update Some Blog Site readers on the results of my Some Fun Site project to create a more accurate football prediction method.

The 2011 NFL season is over, and here are the most accurate methods for predicting regular-season game results:

• MPW: 66%
• ITP: 65%
• DPE: 64%

This year saw the addition of DP and DPE to the prediction methods. “DP” stands for Davis Postulate and contends that the team that will win is the team that has been winning. While they put up a good fight, they are still no match for the combination of MPW and MYW. (For the ideas behind the methods, please visit the Some Fun Site page.)