Galleryfurniture.com Seattle Home Game Bowl

Four small columns synthesized into one to make up for not writing anything last week:

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Finishing 113-143 against the spread and last in my picks league sucked. My friend Angelo, with whom I tied for the picks title last year, won the coveted Double Crown. Angelo again tied for the lead in our picks league AND crushed everyone in our fantasy football league. Congrats to him. Angelo and I have an ongoing debate about what I will begrudgingly call "sports game efficiency" (YOU KNOW LIKE THE EFFICIENT MARKET HYPOTHESIS!??!? LOOK HOW EDUCATED I AM!!!!!!!!)

Even though the EMH is stupid, I believe in sports game efficiency. The idea is that no team is lucky – the 2007 Giants, the 2002 Buckeyes and others won by outperforming their opponents and that no other outcome should be surprising after the "more talented" team has revealed its flaws. My belief is that real life is not like a Madden simulation in which the team with higher ratings should always win.

Let's take the Giants-Patriots Super Bowl as an example. Did the Giants get lucky? No. If Asante Samuel was a better corner, he would have caught the game-sealing interception. If Rodney Harrison was a better safety, he would have knocked the ball away from David Tyree. And for the record – Tyree's catch is so frequently mistaken for luck that it deserves its own defense.

The catch was not the result of a random sequence of numbers awarding him possession. A highly-trained athlete jumped, secured the football against a defender and maintained possession as he was thrown to the ground. The entire play was entirely in his control – which is pretty much the exact opposite of luck. Furthermore, the Giants were not the beneficiary of help from the referees since there was no holding on the play nor was Eli Manning held up long enough to warrant whistling the play dead. The play was all skill.

On the other hand, I might be doing what Nassim Taleb calls "affirming the consequent". Angelo's belief, which is more or less articulated in Taleb's book Fooled by Randomness, is that if you were to simulate Super Bowl 42 100,000 times the Patriots would win the vast majority of those games. Each of the 100,000 games would have a score, the median result would be a comfortable Patriots win, and the observed result in February 2008 was a lucky fluke which is several standard deviations away from this median result. It is a very convincing argument, and Taleb is a very smart guy (even though he's the most condescending writer of all time).

I disagree because I think the assumptions of the simulations, to continue the analogy, are wrong. The "model" would have the Patriots with an unstoppable offense, a playmaking defense and a coach who is never wrong. A more accurate model would have an offense which Steve Spagnuolo figured out and a coach who took too long to adapt. With this model, I believe the median result would more or less resemble Giants 17, Patriots 14. Admittedly, the assumptions of this truer model are only revealed after the fact. But that doesn't mean the Giants' win was luck – it just means we didn't have enough information before the game to know the Patriots were flawed. We should be able to recognize these flaws after the game and realize the game played out as it should have. Taleb's beliefs make sense in the context of financial markets and a lot of military history, but I do not believe they can be extrapolated to sports.

A few final points on luck. First, I agree that it is possible in certain instances to be lucky. The best example is a Chargers-Broncos game in which the Chargers would have certainly won if not for Ed Hochuli's error. Instances of human error in which the fundamental rules of the game are altered are the main cases where I would concede that the winning team got lucky. Second, injuries can be a source of luck depending on the circumstances. Kevin Garnett getting hurt in 2009 is not unlucky (he's still great, but now old and fragile), but Kendrick Perkins getting hurt in 2010 was unlucky (young, no major injury history).

As the great Rasheed Wallace once put it: "Ball don't lie."
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Complaining about ESPN is so played out that I can only do it ironically at this point. Plus, the easiest punching bag on the network is Around the Horn. Since I hate to be jumping on the hate-bandwagorn, I will say two nice things about the show before complaining:

1. I understand that the point of the show is to be provocative, which is the primary explanation for why people occasionally say outlandish things. They are under constant pressure to be original and entertaining, which is difficult.
   
2. I have nothing personally against anyone on the show, and I actually like Tim Cowlishaw and J.A. Adande.
   

My complaint is that two people on the show (I can't remember which two, I watched the episode five days ago) were vehemently defending Seattle's right to host a playoff game. It made me angry enough to turn off the TV since it is exactly the type of mind-blowing ignorance that led some people to think that C.C. Sabathia deserved a Cy Young more than Felix Hernandez.

I don't understand people who defend the sanctity of the division system. I think it's great for scheduling purposes, but that's about it. Four divisions (AFC East, AFC West, NFC East, NFC North) are awesome because any intra-division matchup is a great rivalry with tons of history. The other four divisions are more or less made up of teams who weren't cool enough to get bids to the good divisions.

From what I understand of the Champions League, the crappier country leagues send one team to the tournament and the more prestigious leagues send more. Automatic bids in that case makes sense – each country is at least partially represented and the end result is a richer tournament. Divisions aren't sovereign entities with unique histories and cultures. We would be better off if Tampa Bay or New York were allowed to take Seattle's place. Nine wins should be a pre-requisite for a division winner to make the playoffs, and division winners shouldn't be guaranteed a home game.

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My fantasy basketball team is second in overall points scored but fifth in the standings and under-.500. This isn't particularly uncommon. In our fantasy football league, the regular season points leader finished in ninth and missed the playoffs. I feel stupid saying this on the heels of my anti-luck rant, but how unlucky is that? Fantasy games fit my definition of luck since the scoring system is not reflective of actual football. For example, turnovers don't mean nearly as much in fantasy as they do in real football and key statistics like third-down conversions and time of possession don't even exist.

Anyway, I know that head-to-head matchups are fun and everything, but that necessarily means we don't crown the best fantasy football team champion. I think it should be based strictly on scoring. People who disagree with me are correct in saying that it makes the game less fun, but at least an overall points system is more accurate. Our current head-to-head system is essentially an extension of Seattle getting a home playoff game.

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Finally, my picks. Home teams in bold, wish me luck:

Saints (-10.5) over Seahawks

This is not just a pick for the Saints. It's a pick for The Enlightenment, or at least for indoor plumbing. I really hate the fact that the Seahawks are here.

Colts (-2.5) over Jets

I'll be rooting for the Jets, but I just feel like this Jets team can be beat through the air. It's not shameful to lose to Tom Brady, but it is shameful to lose to Tom Brady by 42 when you pride yourself on defense. It's also pretty weak to give up 38 points to Chicago when it's snowing (shouldn't cold, wintery weather be Jets conditions? I guess not.). I really believe the Colts will beat the Jets and Steelers and make the AFC Championship Game. I also finished 30 games under .500 in picks, so keep in mind that I suck.

Ravens (-3) over Chiefs

Haloti for days.

Eagles (-2.5) over Packers

Nobody's picking the Eagles – a team that eviscerated the entire Giants season in a span of 7.5 minutes and has had two weeks to study Green Bay. Andy Reid remains an underrated coach, at least from a Cowboys fan's perspective. I really like the Eagles' chances of winning the NFC since all of the Saints' running backs got hurt. Fingers crossed it doesn't happen.