Sample Size and College Football

If you didn't watch Boise State's simultaneously epic and tragic loss to the University of Nevada last night, you've probably heard about it already.  Chances are, you've also already hear the arguments: this proves that Boise didn't belong in the National Title conversation in the first place, or this proves that even the WAC teams still have to compete every week, and Boise's dominance meant it was extremely worthy of its ranking.

The truth of the matter is, the vast majority of people have chosen a side in the AQ versus non-AQ argument already, and are not at all interested in trying to think objectively.  That a game like Boise's loss to Nevada can affirm either position just goes to show that most people - and probably most people on both sides the argument - don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about.  The challenge, however, is not remaining objective, but rather finding appropriate evidence to determine whether a team like a Boise State or a TCU deserves national recognition and, in the event of an undefeated season, a possible chance to play for the National Championship.

The issue here is sample size.  I've been accused, before, of being too baseball-centric in my thinking about football, but I think that just tries to brush off the bigger issue.  The reality is, football - and college football in particular - is a sport of small sample sizes.  A full season is only a dozen games, there's no balanced schedule, and even the very best teams might lose thanks to a bad bounce on a fumble, a mistaken penalty call, or a missed chip-shot field goal.  What's more, a football team is not a single entity, playing in a vacuum.  It might very well be that Nevada is better than Boise State, but Boise is better than Hawaii, and Hawaii is better than Nevada.

What I mean is this: Nevada might be "better" because their roster is perfectly adapted to defeat Boise State's, and so on.  Match-ups are everything in football, and gameplans the rest.  It is almost certainly true that Alabama and Auburn have better players than Oregon, and Oregon has better players than TCU or Boise.  I don't doubt that for a minute.  What I do doubt, however, is that just as Oregon would struggle in the SEC, Alabama and Auburn would struggle in the PAC-10.  The reason?  The match-ups are different, the styles are different, the gameplanning is different.

I don't know any of that for certain, but it's a suspicion I have from the aggregate of small samples I've seen.  I would add, however, that I do put some stock in computer rankings.  Yes, the very same rankings that the media loves to disparage for their nonsensical orderings of teams and conferences (Sagarin, into this week, and if you let him keep scoring margin as part of the equation, which the BCS doesn't, ranks Oregon 1, Stanford 2, Auburn 5, among other things).  Of course the media doing the disparaging here has their own ranking system which is entirely subjective, and heavily weighted to the most recent result.

Given football's small sample sizes, you've probably heard that you have to consider a team's "entire body of work."  You have to consider strength of schedule, and prestige of opponents, and other intangible factors.  The thing is, most of that is not only tangible, it's quantifiable, and the computers do a much better job of actually considering a team's whole body of work than even the most well-informed voter does.  The computer can seamlessly consider games played, opponents played, strength of schedule to two or three or four tiers, and overall conference strength.  The different computers weight all of those things differently, of course, but that the BCS uses a variety of rankings and drops the best and worst is a mark in its favor.

There is heavy resistance to computer rankings because they often don't pass the alleged smell-test, just like fielding statistics that say that Derek Jeter isn't a great fielder.  Oh wait.

In all seriousness, though, the computers here are constrained by sample size in a way that advanced baseball statistics generally are not, but the analogy is a strong one.  We have our old statistics - Won-Loss record, conference and conference standing, opponent lists - and we have new, more advanced statistics that take into account score differential and opponent's opponents, and so on.  The problem is, when the more advanced, harder-to-calculate statistics show that Auburn is #5, or when they show that a one-loss Stanford is better than an undefeated Boise State and TCU, we scoff at them because they don't align with our subjective, entrenched, traditional approaches.

Of course, as I've said before, the biggest problem here isn't even sample size or public perceptions or the media or the stickiness of tradition.  No, the biggest problem is cognitive dissonance: the notion in our head that one team must be better than another.  The idea that we can quantify football team quality at all.  Is Boise State a 93 or a 94 out of 100?  Does their kicker's misses yesterday drop them all the way to 83?  Is it maybe true that they would crush Oregon, but be crushed by Auburn (or vice versa)?  Is it maybe true that, even for a full season, they could compete in the SEC (because a full season is still a small sample)?  Is it maybe true, on the other hand, that they would go 3-9 playing Alabama's schedule?

It's impossible to say, and, what's more, it's irrelevant.  Most of those questions are predicated on the notion that there's a simple answer to the question "Which team is better?"  There's not.  There never is.  And, even if there was, the samples we're working with in football are too small to answer the question.  All we have, then, is the drama of single games, of missed field goals and overtime wins.  The point of college football is not to crown the best team in the nation, but to crown a Champion.

Guilty Pleasures, Sports Edition

One of the fascinating things about sports is how uppity they can make people.  It's always, "LeBron James this, Cameron Newton that, F--- those guys!"  I'm guilty of it, too (as in, f--- the Giants).  Nevertheless, I always loved the Onion's classic t-shirt that said, "The sports team from my metropolitan area is superior to the sports team from your metropolitan area."  That just about sums it up, really, as far as fans are concerned.  Add in a dash of George Bernard Shaw's classic line about patriotism,* and you've got it covered.

* "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."

With that in mind, I want to talk about three little things that secretly please me in modern sports.  These three things, I think, you will probably hate.  Odds are, if you listen to any sports radio, watch any ESPN, or talk to anyone at the local bar about sports, you're going to be shocked at what I'm about to say.  So here it goes.

1) I'm glad Derek Jeter won the Gold Glove.

Seriously, I am.  I love it.  A healthy part of that love is irony, of course, but I still think it's awesome.  I mean, I'm an advanced statistics nut, and I know in my heart that either Alexei Ramirez or Cliff Pennington actually deserve the award.  But I don't really care.  Going into an off-season where the single biggest mythological figure in modern baseball - the guy fifty years from now everyone will talk about in the way they talk about Joe DiMaggio now - has to sign a new contract with the single biggest mythological team in all of sports, there's something fitting about redeeming a sub-par season with a Gold Glove.

Really, the Gold Glove has been a meaningless award for a long time.  Rafael Palmeiro won one in a year where he played DH some 120 games.  Who cares who wins the Gold Glove?  Derek didn't win it for fielding, he won it for being Derek Jeter, and I respect that.  No, I love that.

2) I'm rooting for the Miami Heat this year.

That's right, the Miami Heat, starring the most hated trio in basketball: LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade.  You know what, though?  I've watched a couple Heat games so far this year - more than I've watched Nuggets games - and just love watching these guys.  Oh, they'll have (already have had) their problems, but it's so much fun to see so much talent on the floor all at once.  The NBA is such a silly league already, so I'm not particularly worried about the Heat "ruining" the game.  On the contrary, I find this experiment - putting three superstars together and seeing what happens - fascinating and engaging.  I want to see it work.  I want to see the Heat win 70 games, and romp all over the Lakers in the NBA Finals.  I don't think that will happen, but wouldn't it be cool if it did?

Now most people will say no to that.  They want the Heat to lose, and lose hard.  They want LeBron to pay for his treachery and his admittedly absurd TV special.  But why?  Why do we have to hate athletes who make bad PR decisions?  Does it really matter?  Are they really role models for our kids (if so, are we really that bad as parents)?  I don't think so.  I, for one, don't watch sports for moral lessons.  Rather, I watch so I can see LeBron throw a perfect pass to Dwayne Wade for an oop from mid-court.  I watch to see a team rise up and win (and win big) even though everyone is booing them.  What better drama is there than that?  And how disappointed would even the most fervent Heat hater be if they failed to make the Finals?  Just like the Yankees World Series win in 2009, sometimes the bad guys have to succeed, because otherwise it's just bland old Lakers versus Celtics every year.

3) I like the BCS.

This is the worst one of all, but it's true.  If Auburn and Oregon meet in the Championship Game this year, I'll watch, and I won't shed a tear for Boise State or Texas Christian.  Don't get me wrong, I think those teams would be deserving foes, and could easily be the best teams in the country.  But the BCS isn't about figuring out who's best, it's about crowning a champion.  The exact same is true of a playoff.  If playoffs were looking for the best team, they'd be run very differently.  Rather, they're looking for a winner, the luckiest team, the team that does the right thing at the right time.

What I like about the BCS is how much more interesting it has made the last few weeks, and how interesting it will make the next few.  In a playoff system, no one would care whether Boise or TCU was 3 or 4.  Sure, there would be intrigue at the cut-off point, but isn't intrigue better at the top anyway?  In a playoff system, too, we often see inferior teams knock off better ones.  Isn't it a truism that the NFC and AFC Championship Games are usually better than the Super Bowl.  Isn't the World Cup Third Place game usually better than the Final?  So why make Oregon play Pittsburgh or Auburn play Virginia Tech?  Why not just cut to the chase?  Why not put everything on the table to start it out?

Moreover, I love the current Bowl system because it makes for fascinating matchups that last a whole month.  Hawaii vs. SMU, for example, would be so cool.  And, with a playoff, so irrelevant.  For all I care, we could get rid of the Championship Game and just do the old-fashioned matchups and end up with shared titles.  To me the point of college football is not who's Champion, but the process of getting there.  To me, the presence of 120 or so teams means that finding a single Champion is an exercise in futility anyway.  To me, the point is what happens on one play, in one game, and as a fan I don't ultimately care if that matchup is Oregon vs. Auburn, TCU vs. Alabama, or Boise vs. LSU.

I know I'm in an extremely small minority, and I readily acknowledge and agree with all of the complaints people have about the BCS.  They're a bunch of money-grubbing bastards, it's true.  But you still watch.  I still watch.  The whole country still watches, and, what's more, you love to complain about it, to speculate, to criticize.

Ultimately, I think all three of these guilty pleasures come down to the same thing.  We love to hate Derek Jeter (except Yankees fans, who love to love him), we love to hate the Heat, and we love to hate the BCS.  It seems to me, though, that the trip from "love to hate" to "love" is a short one.  It's just a matter of perspective, a matter of culture and counter-culture, a matter of seeing the bigger picture.  And hey, once you take a step back, take a deep breath, and think about it a little, you might find that your guilty pleasures are the same as mine.