College Football: Bearcats Still on Top Going into Week 11

The old phrase, “What is popular isn’t always right, and what is right isn’t always popular,” might just be the mantra here at The Game on Paper. While the talking heads on ESPN are worrying about whether Florida or Alabama will get to play Texas in the National Championship game, the

On paper, and on the field, some teams just keep winning. Cincinnati is one of them.

TGOPoll has nothing but faith in the Cincinnati Bearcats. Brian Kelly & Co. got past a UConn team that has dealt with a number of emotional losses on and off the field. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t pretty. But it was a win. Congratulations to the Bearcats, and Huskie Nation, you are in my prayers.

So, as we close in on the end of the Big East season, the Bearcats really have to step-it-up against their competition. Given how fickle the polls could be the could wind up in the Top-2 or the Top-22. #10 Iowa only dropped two spots for losing to Northwestern, while #21 Oregon dropped 10 spots after losing to Stanford. I guess the lesson is one loss hurts, two losses maim, and three losses kill — unless you are Northern Illinois (whose coach is named Kill).

The only other notable WTF in the poll this week is that TCU only moved up one spot despite winning while OK State and Northern Illinois both shot up six. Talk about a team that the math just has no love for. At least for TCU, the BCS is much more favorable, and they don’t have to worry about their TGOPoll ranking — yet.

On paper, the TGOPoll confirms what every Big 10 fan thinks: "The Big 10 is better than the PAC-10 even if USC does win the Rose Bowl every year."

From a Conference perspective, the only notable change is another flip-flop of the Big XII and the Big 10. The TGOPoll still continues to favor the Big East despite the SEC having two Top-5 teams averaging a higher ranking than the leaders of the Big East. Nonetheless, the Big East continues to have a strangle-hold on the TGOPoll Top-25 with 5/8 teams ranked in the Top-25.

The more curious situation is the poor showing from the Mountain West. They too have the advantage of being a “smaller” conference in terms of the number of teams competing. Further, #19 TCU, #30 Utah, and #38 BYU are all top teams, so what’s the problem? Well, to put it in perspective, the respectable showing from the faith-based schools is not being replicated by their secular counter-parts. The combined TGOPoll ratings of Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, UNLV, Utah State, San Diego State, and Wyoming don’t even add up to the same total of points as #38 BYU. I guess we can point to Strength of Schedule for why the TGOPoll is so down on TCU.

Finally, for those of you who actually care, this weeks “Others Receiving Votes” is rounded out with: #26 Clemson, #27 Notre Dame, #28 California, #29 UNC, #30 Utah, #31 South Carolina, #32 Oregon State, and #33 Troy. As a word of advice, keep an eye on the site, because in the next few weeks, these spots may actually matter . . .

Another Day at the Office: Yankees Win World Series

On paper, we've known this since last February

As you may recall, last week, The Game on Paper did something that sabermetricians everywhere should have done years ago.  By cross-referencing the combined output of several baseball forecasting models, we simulated a Fantasy game of the Yankees v. the Phillies and found that the Yankees won 7/10 categories, thereby making them our pick to win the World Series.  Now, this was a pretty crude way to pick the winner of the World Series, and there are far more elegant ways to predict the winners of major sports contests.  Nonetheless, the comparison of forecasted stats did well enough.

So, as we all start to stoke the fires of our “hot stoves” in preparation for next summer, you can bet that we will be closely monitoring the forecast for next year’s baseball season.  In the mean time, we must all hail Dictator Steinbrenner as the pin-striped curtain of the Evil Empire descends upon baseball yet again.

The Men Who Would Be Coach

On paper, these candidates sound like they could be running for city council in South Boston

Based on the stats in the previous article, and based on websites like this one, I think it is fair to say that Mr. Weiss is on the hot seat. Not only are the stats against him, but the fans are too. Any time that a coach appears to be losing his grip, fans begin to speculate on the next man who would be king. Based on the small group of Domers I associate with, the popular choices are Urban Meyer, head coach at the University of Florida, and Brian Kelly, head coach at the University of Cincinnati.

At first glance, these guys both pass the “name test.” The name “Brian Kelly” is about as Irish as Paddy’s pig so he is a clear fit for the program based on name alone. At the same time, what name could be more pointedly Catholic than Urban Meyer? So based on that alone, they seem like decent enough fits with the program.

Yet, given the performance that both coaches are showing this year (#1 and #2 in the TGOPoll), it is no wonder that Domer Nation is hoping for one of these two men to take over if Weiss gets canned. The question is, who do you want more? Meyer? Or Kelly?

Since it is “Coach Appreciation Week” here at The Game on Paper, let’s break out our old standard of coaching evaluation. Up the Y-Axis we’ll plot the number of Rivals.com “stars” per player that each coach recruits as a proxy for recruiting. Along the X-Axis, we’ll plot each coach’s winning percentage. The ideal coach would be one who recruits well and has a high winning percentage. Further, because we know that Notre Dame has a short-fuse for coaches in their first three years, we’ll only take a look at Meyer and Kelly’s first three years at their respective schools to see if there is any likely improvement over the Weiss regime.

On paper, most people would take either one over Weiss

Taking a look a this graph, there are a couple of interesting things to notice. Let’s start with Kelly’s stats. Of the three, Kelly is apparently the weakest recruiter. In his first three seasons, he went 8-5, 10-3, 11-3. Over that time, his average recruit was bringing in 2.69 stars. Additionally, during that time frame, Kelly did not land a single recruit rated higher than three stars by Rivals.com. Said another way, Kelly has yet to land a 4-star or 5-star recruit despite two seasons with wins in the double digits. At the same time, his winning percentage is better than Weiss’, and is only a few games away from Meyer’s. The lesson here is that the man is incredible at developing talent, and he clearly has a system that is successful at molding his kind of players into a winning team. Less Talent + More Wins = One Hell of a Coach If You Need to Build a Program.

Having taken a look at Kelly, let’s turn our attention to Meyer. Everywhere he has gone, the man has crapped gold and pissed excellence. Super Bowl ring or not, Meyer’s average recruits are still indexing a 104 v. Weiss’, and a whopping 164 v. Kelly’s. It’s clear the man can recruit, but unlike Weiss, he hasn’t squandered the talent he has drawn to Gainesville. In his first three years, Meyer went 12-1, 9-4, 12-1 and won two National Championships. The man brings in talent, the man develops talent, and the man can develop talent. The only question is, can the Irish lure him away from Gainesville? According to the fountainhead of all modern knowledge, Wikipedia, the answer is “maybe.”

So, if I were the AD at Notre Dame and just showed Weiss the business side of my shillelagh, who would I hire. In my mind, the answer is Meyer. Now, hiring Meyer would require that I was able to drive a bigger dump truck of money up to his house than Florida, which would be a big “IF,” but given the deep pockets of the Irish boosters, I bet I’d find dollars before I found lint if it were for Urban Meyer.

The question is why Meyer and not Kelly? For all Kelly’s ability as a coach, and he is an incredible coach, he is the wrong guy for what Notre Dame needs. Sure, Kelly would be walking into a program with talent indexing a 158 over his previous team, but they wouldn’t be his guys. Could he win with them eventually? Sure. But. But. Converting a team rich with talent over to a new system that they are not useful has been a dismal experiment in other college towns in the Midwest. Additionally, the fact that Kelly has yet to land a 4 or 5 star recruit at Cincinnati raises questions over the sustainability of his system at a school that has an up-or-out policy for its coaches. A final knock on Kelly is the ability to win big games (e.g. Ohio State, Louisville, Virginia Tech). Considering that the Notre Dame football schedule is basically nothing but storied rivalry games, this might be reason to pause.

So, now that I have fired Charlie Weiss, it looks like I have two calls to make. The first one is to Urban Meyer. The second one is the to the City of Gainesville Public Works Department to see if I can rent the biggest dump truck they’ve got.

Would I Fire Charlie Weiss?

On paper, Charlie looks 20 pounds and 1 job lighter

As we continue “Coach Appreciation Week” here at The Game on Paper, we will be taking an in-depth look at the seedy world of Notre Dame coaching.  Because of their national fan-base and program steeped in prestige and tradition, the Fighting Irish are almost always under scrutiny.  Actually, I should re-phrase that.  The Coach and Quarterback of the Fighting Irish are almost always under scrutiny.  Therefore, it seems appropriate that for “Coach Appreciation Week” we pile-on with the rest of them and take a look at Charlie Weiss.

Charlie took over the helm of Notre Dame football amidst great controversy in 2005.  Notre Dame elected to release Tyrone Willingham after only three years of service despite his being named the National Coach of the Year by a number of organizations in 2002.  This fast of a switch was unheard of at Notre Dame, and would at best be considered “highly impatient” of an Athletic Director under any circumstances.  You could stop there and have enough material to question the decision, but many went further and threw the race card in on top of it.

Based on the Willingham decision, Notre Dame has now set a precedent that it is willing to place a referendum on its Head Coach every three years — at least, that’s how I interpret it.  So, to see if ol’ Charlie was a good decision for the program, we’ll break-up his tenure into three year increments and compare his performance against Willingham’s.  Using the same measures on which we compared Ron Zook and Kirk Ferentz, we will take a look to see whether Charlie is pulling his . . .erherm . . . weight.

On paper, Weiss definitely pulled in more stars in his first three years.

Based on the trend of Notre Dame recruiting that was occurring under Willingham, you have to give Charlie credit.  After a steady decline in the average quality of recruits between 2002-2004, Weiss immediately reversed the trend and by 2007 had exceeded even Willingham’s best class.  When you combine this with Weiss’ record in the first two years (9-3 ; 10-3), everything was looking rosy in South Bend.  Well, everything looked rosy until 2007 when Notre Dame went a miserable 3-9.  So we agree that Charlie was a better recruiter since his players on averaged a 109 index v. Willingham’s, but when we look at sheer wins and losses, Weiss was 22-15 in his first three years and Willingham was 21-16.

On paper, Weiss' record looks better than it really was.

So this makes me wonder why Notre Dame didn’t just can Charlie after three years like they did Willingham.  I suppose there were plenty of mitigating circumstances that could explain-away or forgive-away the 2007 season, but really, on paper, Weiss didn’t look that much better.  This is especially true considering that Weiss was recruiting personnel that was supposedly 9% better than Willingham’s average player, but for what that talent was worth, Weiss was only delivering a 105 index in the winning-percentage column.

Well, in 2007 the Notre Dame Athletic Director wasn’t asking, “what have you done for me lately,” but in 2009, maybe he should be.  If we compare Weiss’ performance over the last three years, we see an interesting shift.

On paper, things are not getting better for Our Lady.

Weiss is still bringing in the ringers like a mad man.  His average recruit is 3.75 “stars” according to Rivals.com.  This is a 107 index over his previous 3 years and a 115 index over Willingham’s.  At this point, Notre Dame is so oozing with talent that even the waterboy could walk on at WKU and fight for a starting spot.  The funny thing is . . . Charlie isn’t winning.  In fact, if we include the games up through 10/31/2009, Charlie’s W/L record is below 50%.  He’s well behind where he was in his first three years, and he is well behind Willingham’s three years.

So would I fire Charlie Weiss if I were Notre Dame?  Yes, based on previous precedent with Willingham, I don’t see how they keep him.

In closing, being Head Coach at a program like Notre Dame comes with a lot of scrutiny.  Weiss has had to handle much more in his professional and personal life than just convincing high school kids to wear a Golden Helmet for him, and make sure those kids visit “Touchdown Jesus” more often than their opponents.  Nonetheless, if you are a coach looking to keep the dogs off of your heels at Notre Dame, you need two things:  1.  Bring in the big names.  2.  Win.  It’s a pretty simple formula.  Right now, Charlie is on the wrong side of that equation.

A Tale of Two Cities: Iowa City, IA & Urbana, IL

On paper, it looks like Kirk has things figured out

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. The Iowa Hawkeyes are off to their best start in school history. The Illinois Fighting Illini are fighting to avoid their third 2-loss season in the last five years. Just two years ago in 2007, if you asked which of these two programs was likely to be the 9-0 leader of the Big Ten and ranked 4th in the BCS, the answer would clearly have been the Illini. Despite a disappointing showing at the Rose Bowl, Zook and the Illini finished the season with 9 wins. Illinois was stocking the pantry with top recruits, and all the rest of the Big Ten could do was sit and watch.

On the other side of the Mississippi, Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeyes were suffering from an apparent implosion. Despite winning a share of the Big Ten Title in 2004-2005, Drew Tate and the Hawkeyes managed to go 13-12 over the next two seasons. The advent of the Zooker in C-U spelled further disaster as the Hawkeye recruiting classes sputtered after the shine of Holloway’s miraculous “catch” wore off.

Yet today, the Hawkeyes are off to their best start in school history, and the Illini are fighting to prevent a repeat of Ron Turner’s final years with the program. So based on the past five years, what has happened?

Since taking over the Illini, there is no question that Zook has given a boost to recruiting. In his five years he has amassed 120 players worth a combined 338 “stars” from Rivals.com. In that same amount of time, Ferentz has put together 110 players worth 305 “stars.” Therefore, the average freshman signing with the Illini beats out the average Hawkeye 2.82 “stars” to 2.77 “stars.” On paper, the recruiting prowess of these two programs doesn’t seem that much different. Based on this, you might question the accuracy of Zook’s reputation as a recruiter. However, when you consider that Zook’s staff has out-recruited Ferentz’s staff 23-17 for 4 and 5 “star” recruits, you definitely have to give the man style points.

Nontheless, this doesn’t seem to be translating to the field. If we graph out the performance of the two teams by putting total Rivals.com “stars” since 2004 on the Y-axis and total wins since 2005 on the X-Axis, the picture becomes pretty clear.

On paper, it looks like the Illini have lost the forest for the trees.

The Illini enjoy a roughly 110 index v. the Hawkeyes in recruiting. Still, for all that recruiting, the Hawkeyes enjoy a 185 index v. the Illini in total wins.

There has been a lot of speculation as to why this could be. Perhaps Rivals.com’s ranking system is a poor correlate to on-field performance. Perhaps Zook’s players have been overrated. Perhaps the Hawkeyes know something that the rest of us don’t. Perhaps Ferentz develops talent more successfully. Perhaps the Illini have some major “cancers” in the locker room. Whatever the case may be, on paper, it looks like the Hawks have turned the tables on 2007.

College Football: University of Cincinnati Remains #1 in TGOPoll

As we head in to week 10 of the college football season, Cincinnati enjoys its second straight week at the top of our TGOPoll. Based on our statistical model that takes into account Strength of Schedule (SOS), Dominance Index (DI), Wins/Loss Record, and VATI (Versus Average Team Index), the Bearcats remain the king of the hill.

As the only unbeaten team in what is pound-for-pound the nation’s best conference, this is not surprising. The TGOPoll has Brian Kelly and crew ranked safely ahead of Notre Dame’s other

On paper, it is your performance, not your conference that matters

perspective head coach, Urban Meyer, and the Florida Gators.

Other notable moves were Texas’ leap-frog over Alabama, and Central Michigan and USC’s swan-dives toward the bottom of the Top 25. The TGOPoll was much kinder to the Chippewas than the Trojans.

Several teams benefited from this Top 10 turmoil. Boise State, the Pennsylvania Schools, and the Heart-Attack Hawks all moved up as CMU fell to #10.

New entrants included the Ohio State Buckeyes, whose pummeling of #100 New Mexico State was enough to improve their DI and VATI to catapult them into the Top 25.

Poor TCU remains the worst unbeaten team in the country according to the TGOPoll, suffering from the weakest Strength of Schedule of the unbeatens. Like Iowa, TCU’s W/L record is the best thing it has going for it. If either team sustains an “L” on their schedule, you can bet that they are going the way of USC.

Another notable change in this weeks’ poll comes from the impact of some big games in the Big Ten this weekend. Penn State, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Illinois all laid the spikes to their opponents. At

On paper, the Big Ten is trying its best at "Movin' on up to the East Side."

Historic Kinnick Stadium, the Hoosiers seized defeat from the jaws of victory in a 42-24 loss to Iowa. The improbable bobble by the “Epic Tyler” Sash has to be the most entertaining and TRULY game changing performance in the Big Ten thus far. Pontiac, you have our vote. The combined efforts of the Big Ten teams helped to improve the collective conference ranking from 4th to 3rd, surpassing the Big XII and chasing the SEC and Big East. In fact, of the Top 5 conferences, the Big Ten was the only one to improve its position compared to last week. The conference will see some notable showdowns this next week that will have both Big 10 Conference and TGOPoll implications.

So, as we start to head into the final month of the NCAA regular season, there is still plenty of drama left. And in an organic poll that responds not only to whether teams when or lose, but how they lose, and who they lose to, there is always a lot of drama. We’ll see you next week to review the rock climbers, the cliff divers, and maybe even some of those pitiable teams who are always ice-skating uphill.

The MLB(CS)

On paper, this seems like it should be a lot more common

If you don’t live in either New York or Philadelphia, you might have forgotten that the “Boys of Summer” play well into the Fall.  Right now, the World Series is 2-1 in favor of the Yankees.  What astounds me about America’s favorite pass-time (yes, I do mean baseball) compared to America’s favorite passion (yes, I do mean college football) is the lack of importance behind pre-season rankings and performance predictions for the year.  It is almost mind-boggling to think that college football, which is one of the more unpredictable and data-poor sports we play here in America could be decided by computer simulation, when baseball, one of the most statistically-driven, sabremetrically studied, and data-rich of all sports has managed to steer clear  that same kind of hub-bub.

A large part of this is that the World Series championship is decided on the field through a very clear, tournament selection effort.  Still, at the same time, there are a preponderance of fairly good forecasting models even at the PLAYER level.  For those of you who play fantasy baseball, getting a good familiarity with the CHONE, Marcel the Monkey, Guru, and PECOTA forecasting models is an easy way to organize your draft.  In case you are interested, you can learn about these models here.

Now, If all of these statistical models can predict player performance from Home Runs to WHIP, couldn’t this data be used to simulate performance over a season?  If so, what would it tell us?  Next season, The Game on Paper will explore the potential of these models to be used on an aggregate level to predict the eventual World Series Champions.

In the mean time, let’s use some of these fantastic projections to play out a head-to head Fantasy Baseball series between the Yankees and Phillies and see who the models give more love to.  Based on an average of several player forecasting models, I took the average 2009 stats-projection of the Yankees and the average 2009 stats-projection of the Phillies and put them together.  In our simulated head-to-head game, the Yankees have the advantage in 7/10 key statistical categories.  Now, this was at the start of the regular season and doesn’t account for injuries, trades, or any of the other drama that happens off the field during the regular season.

On paper, the Yankees have it.

Nonetheless, the Yankees are ahead 2-1 in the series, and with Sabathia on the mound tonight against Blanton, the Yankees may very well look just as good as a real team as they did as a Fantasy team seven months ago.

This Guy Might Be On To Something . . .

On paper, this could be more important than the actual game itself

Like millions of Americans, every March my wife and I participate in some kind of NCAA baskteball pool. Whether it is based on school colors, team mascot, team name, or just sheer bias, my wife always has some kind of “irregular” method of picking the winning team. Strangely enough, she’s usually right.

This is a common phenomena witnessed by men all across the country. No matter how much research, stat crunching, or expertise you have in your sport, there is inevitably someone in your pool who made their picks based on “something shiny” and placed in the top three. Well, maybe that’s not so surprising after all . . .

Recently, the Wall Street Journal ran an article tracking the winning percentages of teams based on their mascot. As it turns out, there are some interesting trends. According to the article, “Inanimate Objects” have the highest winning percentage of all the various mascot groups. Based on that, Ohio State Buckeyes fans should be cautiously optimistic in the Big Game against Michigan this year. Although OSU dropped one game already to a fellow inanimate object team, the Purdue Boilermakers (whose mascot is a train engine), things may not be as vulnerable for Sweatervest and crew as they might appear. First of all, this happened yesterday, and secondly, Ohio State has the mascot edge with their inanimate Buckeye mascot.

So, as you contemplate your bowl picks, your picks against the spread, your surprising upsets, and your bracket in March, make sure you know who is on your teams’ side-lines. Ignore the quarterback, the coach, or the injuries. Forget the assistants, the coordinators, or the donors. Take a good hard look at the mascot, and play the odds.