T1B

Just now, the local radio guys had the "best conference this season, top-to-bottom" discussion. I think the one dude nailed it with "the Power 5 are all a lot closer than we ever give them credit for in these discussions we have every year. The PAC12 bottom-feeders would crush the B1G or SEC bottom feeders, and the middle B1G and SEC teams would crush the PAC12 middle of the road teams... all evens out."

This kind of stuff makes great food for thought between January and September for deep thinkers who don't have a good book to read.

9-3 post season record for the ACC. Below .500 for the SEC.

Props to the ACC.

That works as well. Plenty of ways to skin this cat.

The eyeball test also works. For example, the ACC had wins over three of the top four teams in the B1G including the conf champ.

Bowl games are the results of specific individual match ups and varying motivational levels, and not accurate assessments of overall conference strength.

Not necessarily related to the topic at hand, but what do these teams all have in common?

Virginia Tech
Pittsburgh
Ole Miss

Unrealized potential?

Papa Willie wrote:If you break it down by conference size, Pac 12 plays less OOC games than the other conferences.

Uhh that's because they play 9 conference games.

The Big Ten also plays 9 conference games, you idiot. So of course they're going to play fewer OOC games, Power 5 or otherwise. Are you really this bad at basic reasoning?

The guy who won the contest picking against the spread doesn't know what "ATS" means... awesome.

Papa Willie wrote:How many times have some of you cried about SEC OOC games? Please don't make me go back and do this. Looks to me (quick glance) that Auburn's playing 8 conference games this year. Mizzou is playing 7. 'Bama is playing 9. I'm just pointing it out, because so much has been made of it in the past.

What are you babbling about? Every SEC team plays 8 conference regular season games.

Nobody is crying about anything. Just pointing out that it doesn't make a lot of sense to brag about playing a higher volume of non-conference P5 teams when your league plays 14 more non-conference games.

MgoBlue-LightSpecial wrote:
What are you babbling about? Every SEC team plays 8 conference regular season games.

I think a certain rotund one might have had a nice buzz on when he looked at the schedules.

Then again, I have to get mighty plastered to forget how to count to 8, but it could happen, I suppose. But I think I might question myself if I came to the conclusion that "The SEC just told every member, 'go ahead and schedule however many OOCs you want, and we'll fill in the conference schedule later. Dang, I hope you guys don't come up with too many odd numbers.' "

In his defense, Mercer appears on SEC schedules so often, I can see how he'd confuse them for a member.

schmick wrote:
That Ped State was a 7.5 point under dog proves that either the odds makers or the football pollsters dont know what they are talking about

Ped State was ranked higher than USC
Ped State was Big 10 Conf Champ
USC finished 4th in the Pac 12

And that statement proves that Schmick doesn't know what the point spread is about.

Yup, Schmick is a dumbass. But maybe we can help(good luck with that, right?).


Let's look at our own Pickem game. There were 20 entries (a couple of repeats,but that doesn't matter). Of those 20, 11 took USC at - 7.5. Pretty close, although maybe if it was -8.5, it could have been 10/10.

OK, Schmick, read slowly... Vegas doesn't make their money by trying to "fool" bettors. The opening line is where they think they can get an equal amount of money on each team, which guarantees them a 2.5% profit. If there's uneven money, they're at financial risk if the win goes to the team with more money on it. When it gets out of balance, they move the line, and keep doing so until the money evens out.

The "moving line" strategey didn't work for Bama vs UDub, since the evening before, they said there was 6 times the amount of money on Washington than Bama. Fortunately for them, it worked in their favor. If Washington scored a garbage-time TD, they would have incurred huge losses.

The thing that's really hard to grasp (at least for Schmick, I guess) is that there's a degree of uncertainty in the results.
Two teams could play each other on different days and end up with a different score. Shocking, I know, but what happens on the field has a certain randomness to it and a definite bearing on the final score.

^^^^^^^^^^
This.

Show me a one score game and I will show you one play that could have changed the outcome.

schmick just wants someone to "love him" on this constant "4th place in the Pac" thing he's pounding badly. Trojans played in the Rose Bowl.

and they beat both UW and Colorado. hooray. i'll do it. no, it wasn't a GREAT Trojan team. hooray. a not-great Sooner team won the Sugar Bowl. cry on it.

then, he wants to bitch on Helton some.....and some little league scores in la cabra mesa. and the catholic private school league that is cheating. and somehow it all adds up that some top flight so cal prospects WANT to leave the state to leave the insanity masters that are running it.

weird, huh?

Stanford has 12 commits for 2017. Eight are from outside CA.

Mikey wrote:Stanford has 12 commits for 2017. Eight are from outside CA.

There might be something to the "get out of California" thing. For instance, Antioch is pretty shitty, from the little I know about it (I do have friends who have lived there, and hated it). Might just make a kid want to leave California.

Other side of the coin, Palo Alto, and the South Bay area in general is pretty nice. Find a kid from Fallon, Nevada, or Boise or some shit, and they might well see it as edenic.

But I'll tell you what -- Taggart was shocked that the previous staff(s) let so much as one decent in-state recruit leave (which Stanford has benefited from in recent years), and said that ends now. Not that Orgon cranks out that many big-stars guys (save it, Schmick), but the ones we have are getting first priority. I think Taggart sees the big picture better than his predecessors.

I assume schmick is outraged about Marlon Tuipulotu committing to USC.