michelin

UM is #1 in the nation in a combined BCS-like ranking for BB and FB together.  To compute such a rank, I took the mean* of the computer and human poll ranks (using Sagarin and the coach’s poll for both BB and FB).  

COMBINED UPI AND SAGARIN RANKINGS

	fb sagarin	bb sagarin	fb coachs	bb coachs	geo mean rank
Michigan	20	2	26	2	7
Florida	7	5	10	9	8
Notre Dame	5	14	3	16	8
Louisville	27	3	13	4	8
Kansas State	8	38	11	23	17
Oklahoma State	17	19	15	28	19
Cincinnati	36	18	22	20	23
Arizona State	28	70	33	36	39

 

*While there are many ways to analyze such results---and limited time has prevented me from looking any many of them-----I wanted measures that  are more stable and less sensitive to outliers.  So, I used the geometric rather than the arithmetic means.

Note also that, if we used the sagarin computer ratings only, we could rank more teams (ie those that do not receive votes in the coach’s poll).   In these computer-only polls,  UM is in a virtual tie with FLA for #1.  Ohio—even if we forget their NCAA probation and make them “eligible” for this ranking--still is only ranked at #8 overall.  They are even lower if we use only the most accurate Sagarin PREDICTOR rankings (not shown).  In fact, Ohio is actually behind UM not only in BB but also in FB according to the Sagarin PREDICTOR rankings!   To quiet skeptics and make the BB computer rankings more similar to the BB rankings, however, I have  used ELO as well as PREDICTOR rankings from Sagarin throughout.

 

COMPUTER ONLY RANKINGS

Florida	6
Michigan	6
Oregon	8
Notre Dame	8
Duke	9
Louisville	9
Alabama	9
Ohio State	14
Syracuse	16
Texas A&M	16
Kansas St	17
Oklahoma St	18
Arizona	20
Indiana	21
Baylor	22
Oklahoma	22
Stanford	23
Minnesota	23
Cincinnati	25
LSU	26
Missouri	27
Michigan St	27
Florida St	28
Mississippi	29
Wisconsin	30
Miami-Fl	32
Boise State	34
San DiegoSt	36
Pittsburgh	37
Texas	37
UCLA	37
Oregon St	40
North Dk St	41
NC State	41
Clemson	41
Utah State	42
Arizona St	44
Northwestern	45
Iowa State	48
North Car	50
Iowa	59
Tennessee	62
LA tech	63
Rutgers	65
Arkansas	68
Washington	70
California	71
Central Fl	72
Utah	72
Ohio	82
Purdue	92

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin.htm

http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/rankings

When I heard the cry of BCS injustice from QB Kirk Cousins. I was so concerned about his emotional distress  that I sought to understand why MSU deserved a BCS Bowl game. 

Maybe MSU was deserving because of all of its success in recent bowl games.

LOL

I checked it out.   In their last 5 Bowl games under Dantonio, they are 0-5; in their last 6 bowl games, they are  0-6; essentally, they are zero-for-the-decade, when you consider their absence from any bowl for the other 4 years.

Unable to understand why MSU deserved a BCS bowl, I asked: what explained  the MSU failures over the past decade? 

Certainly, the failures could not be their fault…

LOL

Their failures must just be all bad luck.  Remember 2010, when they lost out the Rose Bowl to Wisc—who they beat—and lost the other BCS bid to Ohio---which took MSUs possible spot in the Sugar Bowl with ineligible players, then vacated the game.  Then. recall from 2011, the last-minute, game-deciding running into the kicker penalty in the B1G title game vs Wisc.  Certainly, that penalty could not have been their fault.  MSU players were incapable even of personal fouls.  How could they possibly mount an assault on a helpless kicker?   Maybe an MSU player was blocked into the Wisc kicker by an unseen, evil spirit.

LOL

And what could explain MSU’s absence from the BCS over its entire 13 years, in which no less than 8 B1G teams have gone to a BCS bowl?

Again, I checked it out.  This seemingly interminable drought in MSU’s history corresponds with the departure of Nick Saban, who left MSU for LSU and now ALA.  Since Saban left, the latter two teams have won multiple national titles—even playing each other for the title now-- yet MSU has not even been able to get to any BCS game at all.

So, is MSU haunted by the ghost of Nick Saban—or since he is alive—is Saban himself the devil?  (note that his name is only one letter removed from  “Satan”).

Witness the well-known curse, caused by the departure of Babe Ruth from the Red Sox.  When Babe Ruth left the Red Sox for the Yankees just before 1920, the Sox had 5 World Series wins, the Yankees had none.  But after that, the Yankees won 26 titles and the Red Sox failed to win a single title for almost 90 years.  The Boston fans then ascribed their failure to a demon—the ghost of the Bambino.   So, was MSU now suffering from the curse of Satan---I mean, Saban?   MSU has not won a bowl game for 10 years, since they played in the seldom-attended and now-defunct Silicon Valley Classic.

LOL

But sadly, the Saban/Satan jinx could not alone explain the MSU’s sorry history.  Looking back much further, we find that MSU actually has not played in or won a Rose Bowl in nearly a quarter of a century. 

On the surface, that particular failure seems to be a clear-cut case of another curse:  the SI cover jinx.  Indeed, MichiganState has not appeared in a single Rose Bowl since their 1988 star, Tony Mandarich was featured on the cover of SI.   On that cover, he was called the "best offensive line prospect ever."   Mandarich weighed 304, ran the 40 in 4.65 sec, and bench pressed 225 pounds an unheard-of 39 times.   Before the NFL Draft, he was called the “Incredible Bulk.”   Yet, after being cut, he was called the “Incredible Bust."   Having been drafted ahead of Barry Sanders, Andre Rison, and Neon Deon Sanders, MSU’s Mandarich became regarded as one of the 5 biggest busts in NFL history.   And since then, MSU still has not appeared in a single Rose Bowl.

But were these failures a simple case of the SI jinx? 

No.  As I looked deeper into history, the story began to sound more like Faustian bargain: a deal made with a drug-peddling devil.  Mandarich eventually revealed his longstanding abuse of drugs and steroids since his MSU days—in fact, faking a drug test before that fateful, last MSU Rose Bowl back in  1988.   Moreover, he substantiated prior allegations that “steroid use was rampant among his teammates at Michigan State on that Rose Bowl team.”

Therefore, if we believe Mandarich, the last real, non-steroid-inspired Rose Bowl for MSU was over a half century ago--in fact, 54 years ago, in the days of Duffy Daugherty.  That dought would be equalled by only one other B1G team (Minn).

But certainly, we can't tell Kirk Cousins that the fault for this epic failure lies with MSU.  Should we then blame the failures on MSU players, who made a Faustian bargain and sold their souls to a drug-peddling Devil? Should we blame the SI jinx?  Should we blame the departed coach, whose name sounds a lot like Satan?

 I don’t know.  I am ordinarily not a superstitious man.  But we can tell Kirk Cousins that he is lucky he graduates.  Pity those who must remain in East Lansing.   What good can possibly come to them or to MSU, when the name of the current coach, Dantonio, sounds a lot like the author of Dante’s Inferno.  

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_%28Devil_May_Cry%29

http://listverse.com/2009/04/29/top-10-spooky-sports-curses/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Mandarich

According to economists, “a burglar burgles because he finds it a more attractive profession than any other. Without an effective deterrent, he will continue to do so and overwhelm the courts with costly investigations, prosecutions and punishments. So, it is too with the “criminal” schools—like OSU-- that repeatedly violate NCAA rules.  In the absence of effective deterrents, they continue to find it profitable to cheat.  Such cheating will cost the NCAA vast amounts of time, resources and money..

What can be done?  The obvious way to reduce burglary is by raising the costs of the burglar's profession or reducing its benefits.”*  So, ask yourself: how can NCAA schools protect themselves from those like OSU, who have allegedly stolen players, titles, bowl games, reputation, and the resulting money that comes to the AD?

Currently, the NCAA relies heavily on information from the press, does a cursory investigation often centered on these allegations, and may then ask the school to suggest penalties. It’s like a policeman asking a mugger to suggest what punishment he deserves.  But how has that worked in deterring the crimes of schools like OSU?  What did OSU do with their opportunity to self-punish when faced with a deluge of national attention to the increasingly incriminating evidence?   

The school agreed to give up their lying coach—with one national title—and replace him by another with two.   What a painful penalty!  Ouch!   Did the self imposed penalties or NCAA investigation slow their coaching search?

To be fair, OSU clobbered itself with other penalties too.  Like bank robbers who offer to give back the money after being caught red-handed, OSU also proposed to vacate one years’ victories and return  the ill-gotten bowl money.  Yet, even the bank robbers now seem more honest.  In fact, OSU alums in the national media as well as OSU-controlled Columbus newspapers conveniently ignored the vacated season when they misleadingly reported that OSU’s successive BCS bowls and victories over rivals.  So, OSU seemed to say: “we’ll pretend to ignore last year’s victories” (while encouraging alums and boosters to continue the misrepresentations).  

Likewise, look at what OSU did to deter future coaches from cheating.  First, nothing.  Then they let their coach—who admitted lying to the NCAA about ineligible players-- to set his own penalty.  A two game suspension….no, raise that to five...and let's call the NCAA's bluff.   In fact, the OSU president said he had no intention of firing the coach—he was too afraid of getting fired himself by Tressel.  Finally, faced with a PR disaster, OSU reported that they had forced Tressel to resign.  But that was not exactly true.  Tressel, we were told, himself resigned.  Then OSU proclaimed that they had cut ties with him.  ….but maybe “cut” wasn’t the right word.    After seeming to take the fall for the school, he suddenly was transformed from a resigned or fired employee into an esteemed retiree.   So, he got full retirement benefits, was honored in a local parade, with his exploits prominently displayed in the OSU AD exhibition of school honors.  In fact, Tressel was not even dissociated from the team.  He was allowed to give a pre-game pep talk prior to the UM game—as if he were still the coach

Yet, OSU boosters suggested that Tressel  would soon be drummed out of the coaching profession by the NCAA in Indianapolis.   Somebody else in Indianapolis must have been listening.  He made Tressel an analyst there for the Colts.  So, in reality, Tressel was getting paid by the pros, while OSU gave him—hush, hush---pension money---proportional to his past salary gains of $27 million.  Seriously.  Would the horrible prospect of getting a job in the pros, supplemented by plushy retirement benefits prevent future cheaters from engaging in activities that had already made them  rich, famous, and revered as a local God?  Would they do so knowing that the chance of even getting caught was small---as exemplified in the Clarret whitewash?

So, what can the NCAA member schools do?  First, they can take back control of the NCAA, then they can insist on more effective deterrents. 

 Economists suggest that the only thing one can do to deter crime, is to make penalties much larger.  In fact, the penalties should not merely be assessed so that the expected risks exceed the expected benefits of dishonest behavior.  The penalties should also consider the damage done to the victims---the schools that OSU deprived of Bowl bids, recruits, equipment sales, publicity, and the future benefits of an enhanced reputation. For instance, when OSU attended the Sugar Bowl by lying about players’ ineligibility, they cheated another team of attending as well as damaged the record and reputation of their bowl opponent, Arkansas.  Who knows how much they decreased the future value of players, like Mallet who dropped much further than expected in the pro draft.   Who knows how long OSU had continued to damage other schools by stealing recruits and winning games with ineligible players?  Who knows how many schools have suffered losses and prestige by playing a team of paid mercenaries?  The length and intensity of the NCAA investigation needs to mirror the number and severity of these questions.

Likewise, it’s hardly enough just to offer the vacation of a season of wins or one game’s bowl money or even to give up a couple of future scholarships.  The NCAA must prevent future bowl appearances so that other schools go.  They need to take away many years of future scholarships so players can go elsewhere.  They cannot be satisfied when a school, like OSU, can get rid of an offending coach, then easily attract another despite the “threat” of impending NCAA sanctions. 

The presumed impotence of the NCAA threat is a signal that deterrents to cheating have failed miserably.  Now, such empty threats only embolden the worst violators.  Until the NCAA penalizes offenders in proportion to the damage they cause, the NCAA will not prevent future violations.  Rather, they will find themselves inundated with more and more cases….like they are now.

*http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Hidden_Order/Hidden_Order_Chapter_20.html

 

Many of the posts here have suggested that a certain unnamed newspaper in a big city near Ann Arbor has a media bias.  If you want to learn more about the topic of media bias—how to investigate it and what to do about it---you might want to start by checking out the interesting summary and references on the topic of media bias in the link below.   In fact, it raises some interesting questions if anyone wants to investigate the investigators—ie the unnamed newspaper which makes money trying to expose the frail underbelly of defenseless adolescents and their schools.

First, to determine whether or not there is a hidden agenda of writers or editors, look at their personal and business contacts, sociodemographics, attitudes, past professional connections, payments to speak or write (eg Do they ever get gigs through the influence of people with an axe to grind or those who would directly benefit from harm to a particular school’s program?).  Also, look at quotes that reveal their beliefs, the frequencies of positive or negative word use or topic or headline choice for one school vs. another.  Look at the paper's selective use or exclusion of experts, spokespersons, sources (eg interviewing a police officer for a player in a unfavored school but the father of a student in a more favored competitor).

Second, to determine if the larger organization fosters a bias, ask: What are the business interests of the paper (eg advertisers)?  Could they be motivating a bias?  Are any of the advertisers actually boosters at competing schools?  Also, how about the paper’s ownership? (Hypothetically, for instance, if you were to look at two randomly chosen papers, like the Freep and the now defunct AnnArbor News, you would find they're owned by a mega-corporation called Newhouse News). 

Why is that relevant?   Maybe I'm naive but I can't really disprove the academic quote from the link below.  It says “reporters and especially editors share and/or acquire values with corporate elites in order to further their careers. Those that don’t are usually weeded out or marginalized.”  If so, one might conclude that one of the largest media groups in the country, with outlets all over the nation, like Newhouse, could have enough clout to--not necessarily even get you on TV, get you cited in national sources, or get you a news job in the future—but in fact, decide whether or not your paper folds (and I don’t mean putting a crease in your newspaper). 

What to do about media bias

First, publicly disclose affiliations “when a news organization is reporting a story with some relevancy to the news organization itself or to its ownership individuals or conglomerate.”  Do a paper’s sponsors have interests that conflict with sponsors of the school they attack?  “Often this disclosure is mandated by the laws or regulations pertaining to stocks and securities”

Also, publicly disclose which owners of media outlets have vested interests in other commercial enterprises or organizations…Note whether any of them are boosters  of athletic departments at competing schools....Do they have commercial ties to university officials or members of the Board of Directors at these schools?

If justified, demand the resignation or reassignment of biased reporters and or editors….possibly petitions or letters from prominent journalists, organizations etc…even referrals to the attorney general in the unlikely event that there are possible violations related to stocks or securities.

Finally (and probably the most effective measure), put pressure on the paper’s financial ties.  I know, it may seem overwhelming if you are up against a large publication or even a mega-corporation.  However the link notes: There is “a long history of advertisers pulling out support when media content becomes too controversial.”

Of course, I am not suggesting any of these actions…or even asserting that a media bias does exist at all, let alone in the state of Michigan…Horrors, no....But, I can’t help thinking about its hypothetical relevance to UM.

Doesn’t UM have the largest alumni base in the country?  If they were (hypothetically) the victim of biased coverage, how long would they keep being fed what any clearly hostile media sources are serving? 

In fact, doesn’t UM now even have a politically savvy, well-connected AD with commercial ties all over the world due to his past role as a CEO of a major corporation?

What would happen then if the new AD were to learn about the presence and sources of bias, if the advertiser’s associations with biased media started gaining publicity, even starting on widely read blogs like this?

 If I were an advertiser for such as source, making a lot of dough by indirectly paying hacks to trash a school,.....well,

I’d thank my lucky stars if the alums, AD, and other prominent people couldn’t get mad enough to stand up and fight back.... 

 

Privately, though, I’d be shaking in my hypothetical boots.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias

There is always a debate about the significance of recruiting rankings when teams don't have the same number of recruits.  Here's the question for this year.  

Is it fair to rank UM's class higher than OSU's, as a number of the recruiting services have done, with rivals not even putting OSU in the top 25?

Some argue that OSU’s class is only ranked lower because they had a smaller class size. But how does class size affect the impact of the recruiting success of the entire class.
 
We can get a very crude idea of the impact by asking a purely hypothetical, simplified question.  Suppose you have a class the size of UM’s and each recruit has an independent, 50-50 chance of succeeding.   Then the likelihood that more than half of the recruits succeed is itself, coincidentally, 50% (see link).  By contrast, the chance of success of the same number of recruits in the smaller class for OSU is only 2 %. 

But what if we raise the chance of success for OSU's recruits (with an average rank about 6% higher in scout or rivals, as I recall)? Let's be generous and say that each of OSU’s recruits has a 10% greater chance of succeeding than UM’s.  Then the chance that their class succeeds as a whole (more than half contribute) is still only  9%, less than a fifth of UM’s.  

This oversimplified analysis admittedly ignores possible dependencies, heterogeneities, different degrees of contribution, and the fact that recruiting more players today may lead to more spaces next year, or vice versa.  However, it’s uncertain how important the latter is. 

UM’s large class this year may also be due to the smaller size of prior years (after attrition) as compared with OSU’s.  So, prospectively, it is possible that we will be able to recruit as many as OSU in the coming few years—somebody might check this out.   So, possibly, this year, we just made up a lot of ground and evened the playing field in numbers, while also making this year's class a lot more likely to succeed than OSU's.

http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~west/applets/binomialdemo.html

 

To determine how realistic it would be for UM to get back in the top 25, I reanalyzed the changes in the Sagarin ratings from last year to this year.

The conclusion (see analysis below): The task of getting back into the top 25 in the national rankings is daunting, since to do so, we must change and improve our Sagarin ratings more than any other B10 team did from last year to this year. 

The good news: Only one B10 team improved last year more than UM did (Indiana).

Also, I would guess that we had as many key Freshmen playing in 2009 as in 2008.  That won’t be the case next year.  Thus, in 2011 and 2012, there should be a lot more upperclassmen added to the UM lineup, compared with other teams.  So, things are definitely looking up.  But the progress may not be as fast we’d like.

 

Summary of details (based on the Sagarin Predictor ratings--which unlike the ones used in the BCS that ignore point spreads--are the best predictors of actual game results).

 

UM gained about 3-3.5 points in the Sagarin ratings from last year.  

Just improving by 3-3.5 points again next year (from 2009-10) would move us clearly above Purdue into 6^th place alone in the B10 (assuming that, for each B10 team that improves next year, there is one that declines equally),

But improving by only 3.5 points next year would move us up no further, since there was a big gap this year between the 1-5 teams and the 6-11 ones in the B10.  In fact, to move into the top 4 in the B10 and the top 25 teams in the nation, we would need to improve by about 10-11 points—at least three times the improvement made from 2008-9.  

Is that doable?  I think so but it would be the biggest jump either way in the past 2 years for a B10 team.  To put it into perspective, note that from 2008-9

PSU lost 10 points

NW lost 8.5 points.

Iowa and Illinois lost 7 points (surprising since Iowa’s now in a BCS bowl). 

MSU lost 2.5 points

OSU, Minn and Purdue and were unchanged.

(OSU did not improve, despite Pryor going from being a Fresh to Soph probably because they lost Wells).

Wisc was only one of two teams to gain as much as UM did:  3.5 points.

Only one team, Indiana, gained more than us: 8 points.

So, to gain 10-11 points next year in the Sagarin ratins, we must gain more than any B10 team did this year.  We must change slightly more than any other team changed in either direction (PSU made the biggest change by losing 10 points).

 

2009 sagarin

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt09.htm

2008

ttp://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt08.htm