Some Blog Site

It may have been 9 below zero this morning, but spring training has started so I know winter’s demise is imminent.

I don’t really follow baseball, so I’m surprised that I know that spring training has started. And you may be surprised to know that I got a sneak peek at the new lineup for the 2011 baseball season.

That’s right, I have the exclusive scoop on who will be starting for Detroit. Without further ado, here is the starting lineup for the Detroit Tigers.

Click on the picture for a full-size version. It’s much easier to read.

And sorry about the verse – there are lions in the Bible but no tigers.

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 2010 NFL season is over, and here are the most accurate methods for predicting regular-season game results:

That’s right – it was a three-way tie for first place. For the ideas behind the methods, please visit the Some Fun Site page.
My methods were not as superior as they were last year, but they were still in first place (even if it was a tie).

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

Parking

First off, parking was a hassle. It was very easy to get lost. Just look at this poor guy:

And if not being able to find a parking spot wasn’t bad enough, people added insult to injury by throwing hockey pucks at the guy.

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Okay, okay, it is 2011 at this point, but the results are headlines as 2010 because they match with the 2010 predictions made in 2010 for the 2010 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 2010”.

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):

BYU over UTEP

Northern Illinois over Fresno State

Ohio over Troy

Louisville over Southern Miss

Boise St. over Utah

San Diego State over Navy

Hawaii over Tulsa

Toledo over Florida International

Air Force over Georgia Tech

N.C. State over West Virginia

Missouri over Iowa

Maryland over East Carolina

Baylor over Illinois

Oklahoma State over Arizona

SMU over Army

Kansas State over Syracuse

North Carolina over Tennessee

Nebraska over Washington

South Florida over Clemson

Notre Dame over Miami (F)

Georgia over UCF

South Carolina over Florida State

Northwestern over Texas Tech

Penn State over Florida

Michigan State over Alabama

Mississippi State over Michigan

Wisconsin over TCU

Oklahoma over Connecticut

Stanford over Virginia Tech

Arkansas over Ohio State

Miami (O) over Middle Tenn. State

LSU over Texas A&M

Pittsburgh over Kentucky

Nevada over Boston College

Oregon over Auburn

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 19-16 (better than last year!)
• CBS120 picks were 21-14
• HTW was 16-19 for the official Home Team Wins (HTW)
• HTW was 15-20 for the Geographical Home Team (GHT)
• Isaacson-Tarbell Postulate (ITP) was 21-14 if using HTW
• ITP was 23-12 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 bad year again for GHT. 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 TCU and Auburn.
2. The B1G TEN is going to have a championship game next year, so we’ll know who their best team will be. Not that they’ll be playing for the national title, but it is a step in the right direction.
3. On the other hand, the Big 12 had better hope for a clear winner of its conference.
4. You know what? – we should just skip the national championship game and give the title to the winner of the SEC.

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 2010 (and the first bit of 2011) season.

• ACC: 3-5
• Big 10: 3-5
• Big 12: 3-5
• Big East: 4-2
• Independent: 2-1
• MAC: 2-2
• MW: 4-1
• PAC10: 2-2
• SEC: 5-5
• Sun Belt: 2-1
• USA: 3-4
• WAC: 2-2

So the best conference was the Mt. West (they won 80% of their bowl games again) and the worst was the ACC or Big Ten or Big 12 because they won only 38% of their bowl games.

Or maybe the worst was the MAC or the WAC or the PAC. If your conference ended in “AC”, then you had a bad year because you didn’t qualify very many teams.

Perhaps you could say that the SEC was the best because they had ten teams go to bowls (again) and won the championship (again). Or you could say the SEC was just the most popular conference.

My vote is for the Mountain West, especially next year when Boise St. joins them. If a MWC team goes to a bowl game, they usually win.

I figured this is an opportune time to discuss Rich Rod. Or at least some things about him. Or at least just mention Rich Rodriguez because everyone else is doing that today.

For some reason, I got the idea to compare and contrast Rodriguez’ stint as the Michigan football coach with Obama’s stint as the President of the United States.

Quiz
For each item below, please mark whether it applies to Rodriguez (R) or Obama (O):

1. Appealed to the younger crowd
2. Was very polarizing – most people were either very for or very against him
3. Took over a program that was in decent, but not great, shape
4. Was brought in to shake things up a bit – change from the traditional ways of doing things
5. Neglected the duties of his prior job in order to transition to his new job
6. Brought in his own people as assistants
7. He had great plans and had great potential, but reality didn’t cooperate
8. In fact, the program got worse under his watch
9. Read fine from a teleprompter but said some controversial things in unscripted moments
10. Tried to make some shady deals and brought fraud to a previously clean program
11. The other power in the organization was replaced during his term and caused him to reconsider his ways
12. Believed you don’t need much of a defense
13. Didn’t care much for the kicking game either

Can you think of any other quiz questions about Rich Rodriguez or Barack Obama?

Based on the popularity existence of last year’s article predicting bowl games in haiku form, I present to you this year’s all-haiku bowl game predictions. Still America’s only all-haiku college football bowl game predictions.

These are listed in order of date (earliest first). Some picks are whom I think will win, and some picks are whom I want to win. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is which.
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The Big Ten announced the names of the new divisions today, and they also unveiled the new logo. I would have been very surprised if they had used the logo I designed for them, since I don’t even know that I did that.

Reaction to the new division names and the logo has been fairly consistent – no one likes them. Well, no one other than Commissioner Delaney.

I agree with all the fans out there. The Big Ten would have been better off keeping the temporary names of X and O. The new names, Legends and Leaders, are way too cheesy. They are meaningless and therefore worthless.

They are meaningless in that the teams were arbitrarily assigned to one side or the other. There’s no reason why one team is a Legend as opposed to a Leader. The names can have meaning, but they were not used that way.

For instance, Michigan State is a Legend although they are the third most recent addition to the Big Ten.

And Michigan uses the word “Leaders” to describe itself in its fight song, but it is not in the Leaders division.
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