Pacific Northwest-Coast Bias

One of my favorite games during the Super Bowl is the 100-square box game. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s an example:

The premise is simple: a square with 100 boxes is drawn, and random numbers from 0-9 are filled in across and down. Everyone pitches in a buck and you get a square. If the score at the end of each quarter ends in your numbers (last number in the score of each team), you win $25.

What is the probability of winning based on my numbers?

That’s an interesting question, and there are many ways to answer it. One could look at recent Super Bowl results to assign a probability. From Print Your Brackets.com…

• The number 0 appeared 99 times – 27.50%
• The number 7 appeared 75 times – 20.83%
• The number 3 appeared 56 times – 15.56%
• The number 4 appeared 38 times – 10.56%
• The number 6 appeared 30 times – 8.33%
• The number 1 appeared 20 times – 5.56%
• The number 9 appeared 15 times – 4.17%
• The number 2 appeared 9 times   – 2.50%
• The number 8 appeared 9 times   – 2.50%
• The number 5 appeared 9 times   – 2.50%
• Takeaways: double-zero is king, and any combo of 0, 7, and 3 is gold

However, this methodology does not take into account current factors. The Wall Street Journal ran scenario analysis on the New York Giants and New England Patriots and came up with the following matrix:

• Takeaways: In this scenario, double-zero is still king, but 0-7, 0-3, and 7-0 are close runners up

As you may know, I posted my strategy for picking College Football Bowl winners. I broke them down into several categories:

• Home Teams
• Playing Absent Coaches
• Playing Little Sisters of the Poor
• Better Records Last year
• Playing teams I watched Lay Eggs throughout the year
• Toss Ups

Turns out one strategy was superior to the others: Teams playing absent coaches

Teams playing others with their coach either getting fired or leaving for another opportunity were vastly superior bets vs. the spread this year. If you picked solely against absent coaches, you would have gone 6-of-7, and would have lost the 7th game by 0.5 points.

One other strategy played out the opposite of what I expected: Little Sisters of the Poor went 2-0 against big conferences.

The rest of the strategies were break-even at best. Betting on the home team yielded a 56% win %, and toss ups were indeed toss-ups (50%). Teams playing ones I considered “Egg Layers” went 2-1, but the small sample size was not convincing.

So next year, when you’re formulating your Bowl pool, pick against the teams that lost their coach, and steer clear of the rest.

Pacific Northwest-Coast Bias had a great year. But what articles did readers enjoy the most?

5.  Redmond is the most expensive Washington city to live in – Were you like me and thought Bellevue was the most expensive city in Washington?

4. US Debt-to-GDP Ratio- Deservedly, the US got downgraded from AAA debt in 2011. Not surprisingly, Switzerland and Germany are on the list of AAA, but I was quite surprised that the UK was still among the top-rated countries, along with Hong Kong and Norway. Interestingly, the US is one of the few countries with a Debt-to-GDP ratio below 100%. I was quite surprised by The Netherlands and Norway above 400%. It’s clear that the path to solvency is getting the US budget back on track. With the current leadership on both sides, my confidence of this happening is very low.

3. NBA Arena in Bellevue – I don’t know precisely where the NBA might build an arena in Bellevue, but I have a couple ideas.

2. NFL Concussions – My magnum opus of 2011 was inspired by a head injury that I suffered myself, and realized that others were undergoing the same injury with no idea of the long-term implications. Although I wasn’t playing football, I hit my head and blacked out, going into seizures and needing to be revived by medical staff. I was woozy for days. At that time, much less was known about the diagnosis and treatment of concussions, so my recovery consisted of lying on the couch. Like NFL players, the only thing I can do is hope I won’t suffer any long-term impacts.

1. Who has the toughest college football schedule in 2011 – The top post in 2011 wasn’t without controversy. The SEC had the weakest schedule among top conferences, yet the got both spots in the Championship. Do I think they deserved it? No Way. Oklahoma State or Stanford definitely deserved that spot over Alabama. But I’ll be watching the game, and rooting for a playoff in future years.

Who to pick this year in your college football pool? No fear – here’s your guide to who will win this year in the college football bowls.

Some people think they know who will win. I don’t. But, I have a system to select which teams are more likely to win than others, and following this system has done better for me than worse.

Guiding Principles:

1. Bet on the home team – the home team generally has a 2.5-3 point advantage. I believe Vegas underweights this advantage during bowl season
2. If the coach is gone, bet against the team
3. For Big Conference vs. Sisters of the Poor, bet against the sisters
4. If I watched the team simply implode over the year (i.e. I have no confidence in them), pick against them
5. Pick teams that had better records in 2010, as a signal of more-likely-to-win-teams
6. Flip a Coin (based on conference)

Home teams:

How can Alabama be favored in the national championship game? It doesn’t make any sense. LSU beat Alabama on the road already, and now they have a home game. While Saban made 2 tactical errors with Marquis Maze (throwing the football, and punt return) that he won’t repeat, Les Miles shouldn’t have any problems with a 5-point swing in his favor by being at home.

Teams playing against Absent Coaches:

Nevada is playing against Southern Miss, whose Larry Fedora is long gone. Missouri is playing North Carolina, who is on the other side of the Larry Fedora move, and Air Force is facing Tim Beckman-less Toledo. I don’t like picking against Ohio State. However, there is no way I can pick any of these teams.

Big Conference Picks:

Poor Little Sisters of the Poor (Western Michigan and Utah State). They never had a chance.

Pick against the implosion-prone teams:

This is un-scientific. But I watched Texas, Washington, and Virginia stink all year. They made no progress (albeit Virginia looked so horrible last year, maybe they actually did make progress). Either way, they deserve to lose this game.

Toss ups, but picking the team that had the better record last year:

‘nuf said. No clear winner in these games, but picking the winner purely on last years performance.

Toss ups, but picking pro-Big Ten and Pac-12, and anti SEC:

Don’t have a great rationale, but picking for the Big Ten and Pac-12, and against the SEC and ACC. We’ll see if these pan out.

In short: Yes. The NCAA sanctions the bowls, so if they approval a bowl game, that game is going to happen whether or not there are enough teams with a winning record to fill the slot.

This year, UCLA is going to the renown Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl with a 6-7 record. Since the team has 6 wins, they’re bowl eligible despite a losing record (and no head coach).

When was the last time a team with a losing record played in a bowl?

North Texas (5-6), 2001, R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl. North Texas won the conference, and thus the automatic entry.

Andrew Luck may be this year’s Heisman Trophy winner. This would be quite the feat for a West Coast athlete from a school other than USC.

In the last 40 years, there have only been 4 Heisman Trophy winners from players in the Pacific Time Zone (All from USC, Reggie Bush included in the totals). Mountain Time Zone fairs even worse with only 2 winners. Heisman voters don’t stay up late on Saturday night.

Interestingly, the last player from the West Coast that won the Heisman Trophy and didn’t come from USC was QB Jim Plunkett in 1970, from none other than Stanford.

But the real Heisman bias is not in region, but in position. If you’re not a QB or RB, you’re probably not winning. Only 3 non-QB/RBs have won the trophy in the past 40 years.

As I watched the Game of the Century last week and saw LSU beat Alabama, I asked myself, why was Alabama favored by 4.5 when conventional wisdom states that home field advantage is worth only 3 points, and Alabama was facing the #1 team in the country? They should not be favored by more than 3!

Could bookies be over-weighting the value of Alabama’s homefield advantage? Turns out they did, as LSU won the game by 3.

I double-checked Jeff Saragin‘s estimate of home field advantage, and it turns out it was lower than the expected 3 points, at 2.6. I wondered, is the value of home field advantage declining?

Yes, the value of home field advantage is on the decline.

Leveraging Jeff Saragin’s online models going back through the 1998 season, I charted the value of home field advantage in each season, and did a simple linear regression to determine the trend. Indeed, there’s a downward slope, and the R-squared is .47, not too shabby.

Why is this happening? Looking at the chart, it appears 2005 was the year things changed, with every year but 1 since then having home field advantage below 3 points.

Instant Replay was introduced in 2005!

Consistent with Sports Illustrated’s examination of what drives the value of home field advantage (officiating) (don’t have the link, here’s a similar piece published by Wired), the introduction of instant replay in 2005 drastically reduced the value of home field advantage. Here’s a chart with the averages pre and post-2005.

Up until 2005, home field advantage was worth almost 4 points. Once the impact of bad calls were reduced, which are more likely to be in the home team’s favor, home field advantage dropped precipitously to 2.6.

I don’t know if everyone’s expectations have been re-set on home field advantage, but don’t put as much stock in the home team. And, it Instant Replay technology improves, or the rules committee expands the uses or frequency of Instant Replay, expect the value of home field advantage to decline even further.

College Football season is upon us. It’s about time!

I wondered, who has the toughest schedule going into the season, and what conference has lined up the toughest opponents?

A tough out-of-conference schedule can mean boom or bust for college football teams. With only a 12 -game season, it’s tough to make up for an early loss, even against a top team. Indeed, the risk-reward balance is out-of-whack when the system rewards preservation of a perfect record over any 1-loss team despite their schedule.

Methodology: I looked at each of the 6 BCS automatic-qualifying (AQ) conferences and looked at their non-conference games. I calculated the % of games played against the top 6 conferences, plus Notre Dame and Boise State.

Conference Strength of Schedule

The ACC has lined up a pretty tough schedule. 44% of non-conference games are against other BCS AQ schools. In fact, 8 of the 12 teams play >=2 games against AQ teams, and only Virginia Tech lined up a schedule of cupcakes (0 AQs). My hypothesis is that this does not bode well for the ACC when it comes to top 25 rankings, and that we’ll see the conference under-represented come the end of the year.

The Pac 12, Big East, and Big 12 are in the middle – 40% – 33% of non-conference games against AQ schools. The Pac 12 and Big 12 only have 3 non-conference games, so it’s a tall ask to schedule more than 1 AQ game.

The Big 10 and SEC are at the bottom. Both have 4 non-conference games, and average only 1 AQ opponent each. Only Ohio State, Iowa, Georgia, LSU, and Vanderbilt scheduled 2 AQ games.

Team Strength of Schedule

A couple teams have laid out a difficult path for themselves to run the table this season. Six teams have scheduled more than half of their non-conference games against AQ teams:

USC has lined up a killer schedule. Good luck Lane Kiffin. While they’re not facing the toughest of the AQ schools (Minnesota, Syracuse, and Notre Dame), any time you go up against another BCS AQ team, you’re in for a challenge. They have nothing to lose though, being ineligible for a bowl game due to sanctions. Similarly, Miami may have picked the right year to load up their non-conference schedule, as it faces looming NCAA sanctions as well.

My hypothesis is that none of these teams will be contending for a BCS bowl when all things are said and done. Two of them will be ineligible anyway.

Who are the teams that lined up cupcakes?

Arizona, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Texas Tech, Virginia Tech. and Washington State are the only schools that scheduled an entirely non-AQ non-conference schedule. What a joke.

I remember starting pitchers getting 2-3 innings each in the All Star game. Not anymore. AL starter Jered Weaver got 1 inning in last night’s All Star game.

Not that it’s bad that more players get into the game now, but the starting pitcher, the best pitcher from each league, deserves more than a single inning in the game.

With rumors this week that at least one person is investigating sites to build an NBA arena in Bellevue (Bellevue SuperSonics, anyone?), I wondered what sites are under consideration.

How much space is needed?

First, I looked up the details of the most recently constructed NBA complex, Amway Center in Orlando, Florida. While the name is perhaps the worst name for an arena in the country (on par with Value City Arena for the Ohio State Buckeyes basketball team), the complex is state of the art. The compound sits on 9 acres and has garage parking.

It’s hard for me visualize how big 9 acres is, so I took to Bing Maps. Here’s a screen shot of the Amway Center site (1 inch = 1k feet).

I then isolated the arena with some additional land for parking, which I would use to size potential sites in Bellevue:

Option 1: Bellevue Downtown Park

Ok, this probably isn’t a real option, but if you truly wanted a downtown basketball arena in Bellevue, this site is perfect.

As you can see, the arena would fit perfectly in Bellevue Downtown Park. The site itself is 20 acres, which makes sense for the arena: ~9 acres for the arena and 11 acres for additional parking. Plus, with the Bellevue Square garage a block to the north, parking would be plentiful for 8pm games.

Now, the opposition to this site would be strong and powerful. Bellevue Downtown Park is a mini “Central Park” for Bellevue. It features a 1/2 mile running and walking trail, beautiful water features, and plenty of grass to play and relax on. With the influx of apartment and condo buildings in Bellevue, it has become one of the few open spaces in all of Bellevue. It would be a crying shame to bulldoze the site in favor of an NBA arena, but I’m just calling out the option.

Option 2: Car Dealership Row

Along 116th between Main and 8th, there’s a long stretch of defunct car dealerships. The real estate is prime yet undeveloped. There appears to be a massive opportunity to put something useful in this space, as well as cover up the cracking asphalt that now features weeds as high as corn stalks.

As you can see, the arena would not fit perfectly here. It overlaps the abandoned rail line (which could one day feature the East Link connection), and even butts up against the existing Best Buy and Home Depot.

But with a little creativity, the site could fit if the parking garages were placed to the north, south, and across the street from an arena built on the east side of 116th. The site definitely appears to be a possibility.

From a transportation perspective, the site is near perfect. It has easy highway access via 4th and 8th, would be near the future East Link train connection, and wouldn’t clog up downtown.

However, there would be plenty of opposition to this site as well. The Wilburton neighborhood would have plenty to say about this potential site. Basically, “NIMBY.” They have (so far) successfully fought off the NE 4th Street extension, which has been funded since 2009, but there are no signs of progress.

Option 3: Safeway Complex off 124th

Safeway has a huge distribution center and bottling facility on both sides of 124th. I heard on 710  ESPN that this was one of the sites the Chicago businessman who’s interested in bringing an NBA/NHL team to the area visited in Bellevue. Not sure exactly where he was looking, but there does look like ample room for a stadium.

It looks like not 1 but 3 arenas could fit on the site. Which means plenty of parking and the possibility of additional entertainment/eating/shopping along with the arena.

The close freeway access is another benefit, with 405 and 520 just a few blocks away. And, with light rail proposed in there area (proposal along 12th), it could be a sweet spot.

Another benefit is the fact that it’s largely an industrial area – very few houses are in the vicinity. There doesn’t appear to be a huge NIMBY problem with the Safeway site.

We may have a winner.