2017 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 4

The President can't stop the coalition. Our quest to pick NFL games against the spread continues into Week 4!

In a week dominated by the headlines of players kneeling or staying in the locker room, a lot of us found ourselves struggling. Adam nonetheless took three of our five disputed games to increase his lead, but we both had pretty bad weeks. Not as bad as my dad, but pretty bad. Meanwhile, Geoff went 3-3 on hero picks this week to move into a first place tie with Adam. You can view the breakdown of how we've picked in relation to each other here, which is important because on our ESPN standings page, Adam has two fewer correct picks than he should because picks listed on Confessions of a Sportscaster take priority over what gets input on ESPN.

As we move onto Week 4 with hopefully fewer hissy fits being thrown by people about players exercising their First Amendment rights in trying to bring attention to a major social issue, Adam and I disagree on just five games out of the 16 being played once again. Without further grandstanding on my part, let's get to the picks!

2017 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 5

We're onto Week 5 and the final week of September, which means conference play is beginning in earnest.

That makes my weekly posts regarding NCSS rankings so much easier, because there are only a few games every week that I need to mention, because only a few are non-conference and thus apply to what's going on.

If you need a refresher on how this metric works, you can view that in my season introduction post. Below is each conference ranked by average NCSS score, with a mention of which games affected the ranking.

2017 NCAA Playoff Points Rankings: Week 4

I'm running a couple hours behind this week, but this time it's because we had a game get pushed back to Sunday. But now we are all caught up and ready to take a look at what happened over the weekend in college football.

Last week we started to see a little separation in terms of Playoff Points, and that separation will only grow more profound as we continue to add data points to the spreadsheet, which you can view here, and I'll link to again after going through the conference rankings. If you need a refresher on how these scores work, you can view those in my season introductory post.

2017 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 3

The good news is I had a better Week 2 showing than I did in Week 1. The bad news is, other than Adam, so did everyone else.

Adam still had a strong performance last week though, as I blew a 3-1 lead in disputed picks and Adam finished taking four of the seven. Go ahead, make your memes. But don't the fact that I blew a 3-1 lead distract you from the fact that the Cleveland Indians blew a 3-1 lead in the 2016 World Series. So there.

This week as I try to continue my annual tradition of digging early holes before climbing out of them, Adam and I disagree on only five games out of 16. You can view the ESPN standings here, though entry error has Adam two wins under his actual total on there. I've also got them on a spreadsheet here, broken down based on how we picked in relation to each other.

When "For Christ and His Kingdom" Goes Wrong

Those of you who are regular readers of Confessions of a Sportscaster know this, but I want to open with full disclosure: I'm a North Central alum (and guy who yells "THREEEEEEEEE!" a couple hundred times every winter), and I have no love for Wheaton. But stories like these transcend rivalries. I respect Wheaton College as an institution, and the college will be treated with the utmost respect that it deserves in this post.

That last sentence is hard to follow through on when you consider that the accusations facing five football players at the school could be true.

Yesterday I saw a news story pop up on my Facebook feed that felony charges were being filed against five Wheaton football players for a hazing incident back in March of 2016. The Tribune article I linked to there includes some details from the accuser about what exactly happened. As I understand the timeline to be, police got involved pretty much immediately and began an investigation. The college did too, and considering that got a third party involved, the allegations have some degree of merit.

Photo collage by Lou Foglia (Chicago Tribune)

D3 Football picked up the story as well, and the college issued a full statement last night, but something about this whole situation stinks. I don't think Mike Swider engaged in a coverup, and any parallels to the whole Penn State fiasco don't fit because the bar is way too high. It's clearly a bad situation though, even though we're still at a stage of "innocent until proven guilty." But if after 18 months DuPage County thinks it has a strong case for felony charges, I would imagine there's got to be something there.

The response so far from Wheaton is a little troubling though, and maybe that's why I feel like the situation stinks. Of the five accused players, three of them just played in Wheaton's win over Carthage this past Saturday. At this point, even with my advocation for due process, I'd argue that there's enough here that these players should not see the field this weekend or for the foreseeable future. I'm also an advocate that the welfare of students should not take priority over wins and losses, and keeping these players on the field given their status does the opposite.

I'm hopeful that through all of this, justice is served, the alleged victim finds closure, and that Wheaton College does the right thing.

2017 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 4

It's hard to believe we're already this far into the season, but here we are in Week 4. Conference play has begun for some teams, but it's not there in earnest quite yet. That will start to come within the next week or two, but in the meantime we need to continue to stay on top of this.

There were a couple of game cancellations last week due to weather which forced some changes to NCSS scores. I'll try to stay on top of those with this week's rankings, as well as the updates to everything from Week 3. A primer on how this ranking works can be found in my season introductory post. Let's get to it!

2017 NCAA Playoff Points: Week 3

I was sick over the weekend, so I'm running a little behind where I normally am with these rankings. Fortunately, coming up with the Playoff Points rankings is fairly quick and easy and I'm not that far behind.

Last week's rankings were the first of the season, given that we're not that far into it. Playoff Points are hard to come by this early in the season, but as the sample sizes get larger, so do the average scores. You can view explanations for how all three sets of Playoff Points scores work in my season introduction post.

Let's get to it!

2017 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 2

Another season, another Week 1 of me spotting Adam a lead in our consortium.

In all seriousness though, he did well last week, taking five of our six disputed games to open the season short of the 15-0 he was shooting for, but with a two game cushion over the nearest competitor. You may notice, if you check the ESPN standings, that Adam and Geoff are tied. Usually a couple times a year though, Adam goofs when he makes his ESPN picks and they don't match what he sent me, which is what I go by. Last year he didn't make that mistake until like, Week 13. This year, he made it on opening night... and again on Sunday night.

Fortunately, I caught it both times. Precedent states that the picks that get made on here take priority over what happens on ESPN. This is why I keep track of the picks on a Google sheet. That shows a breakdown of how we pick in relation to each other, which is an easier task with four people than it is with five because there's one fewer category.

Anyway, in Week 2 Adam and I disagree on seven games out of the full 16. Let's see if I can get back into it!

2017 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 3

We're now onto the third week of college football. Teams are starting to separate themselves from the pack, but a lot of that can be a mirage depending on non-conference schedules. And that's where we come back to today.

Last week we had 23 more teams play their first FCS game of the year, giving us a total of 69 through two weeks of play.

Thankfully so far, no one has double-scheduled any, so I don't have any disqualifications. We may see some as a matter of necessity; several games were cancelled over the weekend due to Hurricane Irma, and the NCSS scores have been adjusted to reflect these changes; bear in mind that this may mess with the rankings and figures to some degree; I'll try to note the corrections where they happened with this week's rankings.

A primer on how this scoring system works can be found back in my season preview post. Let's look at the Week 3 numbers.

2017 NCAA Playoff Points Rankings: Week 2

On this somber Monday, given the natural disasters in Florida and the anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks, hopefully looking over some results from the college football weekend will provide a welcome distraction. To any of you reading from the areas devastated by Irma, know we are with you in spirit and pulling for you.

There may be weeks where I'll push this back a day, but most likely every Monday I will be here with a look into what happened over the weekend in college football. In particular, I'm interested in results: wins and losses. I will then take these wins and losses and crunch some numbers.

This weekly post will go through and measure conference averages of four different numbers: win total, First Degree Playoff Points (PP1), Second Degree Playoff Points (PP2), and Adjusted Playoff Points (aPP). You can view a primer on those in my season preview post. In a nutshell though, these metrics dig deeper beyond just wins and losses. Playoff Points take into account records of teams played so we can find the difference between the several 2-0 teams that we have at this juncture.

Below, I will go conference by conference with a look at the aforementioned averages and where they rank. For the purposes of this post (unlike the NCSS rankings), the independent teams are grouped together as their own conference.

2017 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em: Week 1

There are a lot of things I've enjoyed doing throughout my time with Confessions of a Sportscaster. I enjoy the annual Death to the BCS Playoffs and all of the work leading up to it. I've enjoyed watching the 1996 Chicago Bulls win two of three NBA Tournaments of Champions and the 2016 Chicago Cubs just win the MLB Tournament of Champions. But I think my favorite feature, and one that is now entering its sixth year in existence, is the Pigskin Pick 'Em series.

In my first full fall doing this back in 2012, this was something I wanted to do, and it's something I look forward to every fall, but it's not as much fun doing it alone. And so for the fourth straight year, my friend Adam Quinn will be joining me in this weekly feature. We'll make our picks based on any number of things ranging from actual football reasons to spite for Nick Foles (Adam) or bee uniforms (me) to, as will probably be the case two or three times this season, when Adam goes insane and picks based on either cheerleaders, reverse psychology, fantasy players he has, or letting one or both of his kids pick for him. I give him crap for this, but I may end up doing this with Matthew somewhere along the line too.

We're competing against the spreads set by ESPN and presumably Vegas, and we have a few other people joining us in this endeavor as well. My dad is back for another year of this, and Geoffrey Clark, a buddy from my North Central days and writer at Chicago Bulls Confidential returns after a one year hiatus. I will be tracking our picks in relation to each other here, and since the season doesn't start until this evening, you can join us or watch the standings unfold here.

If you were to open the Week 1 schedule on Pigskin Pick 'Em, you'll note that the Tampa-Miami game is still on there even though it's already postponed to Week 11. I've thus deleted our picks for that game. As we open the season, Adam and I disagree on six games out of the first 15. To my fellow competitors, good luck!

2017 AFC East Preview

It's taken eight days, but we're finally here. The final division, and the home of our defending champions, gets the final look in my series of division preview posts.

One final time as a shameless plug, I will be picking NFL games against the spread this season, featured in a weekly post with my friend Adam Quinn. It's an open group if you would like to prove yourself as smarter than either of us, which may not be that hard. You can join here.

And so one final time, here's the division preview.

The Tyrant Wins Yet Again

I wanted to wait on this one, and I was tempted to not even write anything about this topic. It's a crazy issue and a serious one, and I'm maybe not the most qualified person to speak on it. But when the lying tyrant Roger Goodell continues to get away with wielding his power for power's sake, I can't not say anything.

In case you've been living under a rock for a while, here's the basic rundown of what happened. Just over a year ago Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott was accused by an ex-girlfriend of domestic violence. Obviously, this is something that has to be taken very seriously, and it was; both the police and the NFL stepped in to investigate the claims. As it turns out, the police felt there wasn't enough evidence to go forward with a trial, and especially when the accuser failed to show up for the court date, the charges were dropped.

Photo from Getty Images (photographer uncredited)

Now the NFL is not the judicial system, and as we learned with their witch hunt of Tom Brady, they don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. They only need a "preponderance of evidence" to say, in essence, that it's "more probable than not" that Player X committed Offense Y. In the case of Elliott, they took over a year to investigate all of this, and felt that he did in fact commit the acts he was accused of. By virtue of the domestic violence policy put in place after the Ray Rice debacle, Elliott was suspended six games. He appealed, and yesterday the suspension was upheld, though Elliott will be allowed to play in this week's game against the Giants due to...legal technicalities? I don't even know.

Now, I've spent years attacking Goodell for being an incompetent, lying tyrant, but I'm going to play devil's advocate here. After the aforementioned Ray Rice debacle, the NFL put that domestic violence policy in place to at least give the impression that they give a crap about domestic violence. But last year, when the Josh Brown story broke, the league only suspended him for one game, though the Giants would release him a few days after he admitted to his pattern of abuse. Regardless, it showed that the league actually doesn't give a crap about domestic violence. The Elliott situation gave Goodell an out: he had a chance to try and show society that yes, the league takes these accusations very seriously and will stick to its guns when it comes to these situations. As far as PR stunts go, it's pretty effective.

Photo by USATSI (photographer uncredited)

Here's the problem though: we have to go back to the police investigation. Police obviously interviewed the accuser and went to fairly great lengths to verify her story. But they found serious inconsistencies between her account of what happened and other evidence (including some text messages that showed her trying to convince a friend to lie to extort money from Elliott). This is partially why Elliott's charges were let go. Now, while the NFL was doing its investigation, they also interviewed the accuser. The investigator who talked to her took her testimony and all the other evidence into account, and recommended that the league not suspend Elliott due to the same concerns police raised. Of course, Goddell in his infinite wisdom decided to ignore that and go ahead with the suspension because he's Roger Goodell and can do whatever the hell he wants. And unfortunately, that's why the arbitrator upheld the suspension. The CBA allows it. That's why Tom Brady's lawsuit was defeated in the Appeals Court. It's why I fear Elliott's lawsuit may not stand up either.

The precedent has been set, and it's a scary one. The NFL can do whatever it wants to its players, without evidence and without regards to the truth. Now, this is a more serious issue than the league not understanding the Ideal Gas Law. Domestic violence is a problem that does need to be dealt with, and offenders need to be punished harshly. But when the evidence to support the punishment is spotty, punishing them anyway reeks of evil totalitarianism. I'm not saying Roger Goodell is evil, because I don't think he is. But I would argue that he is incompetent and corrupted by absolute power, and without any safeguards to protect against his power, he will continue to bring unchecked poor decisions on the NFL, as he has done for years. And the owners are fine with this, because the league continues to bring in money and he serves as a perfect puppet. Goddell is an employee of the owners, and as long as he's around to bungle everything, no one will focus on their sins.

I said it last year when Brady's suspension was reinstated, and I'll say it again. The only recourse to save the NFL from itself is a players' strike. I will continue to advocate for it, even though I love football, because going without games for a while is worth it if the lying tyrant can no longer adversely impact the game in the false name of "the integrity of the shield."

2017 NFC East Preview

We've finally circled around geographically. We're in the east today, with just two divisions left to preview.

One NFC wild card remains up for grabs, which means an NFC East team will be going into January with one, at least the way I see the season going. Of course, the season rarely goes fully the way I see it going.

That doesn't stop me from prognosticating, which is something I'll be doing again every week with Adam Quinn as we pick games against the spread. You can join us in our quest here.

And with that, let's look at our penultimate division.

2017 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 2

One full week of college football is in the books. We had a few upsets to speak of, with four FCS teams getting paid to win, including Howard with the biggest Vegas upset in history. Those losses, along with every other result in college football, will be taken into account as we go along this season, but after one week it's too early to start looking at Playoff Points. That will come on Monday when we have two weeks of data to go through.

My focus on Tuesdays remains a look at non-conference slates across college football. These games mean something to some degree, mainly just my looking to see how tough teams are scheduling themselves outside of their conferences.

If my math is right, I counted 46 games against FCS competition in Week 1. It's a fair number, and as much as I decry these games, I understand why they're played. I just don't count them as positives when it comes to the Death to the BCS Playoffs, and I penalize teams in NCSS rankings. Playing multiple FCS teams though results in a one year postseason ban, and I haven't looked at schedules to see if this will end up happening yet.

The Houston-UTSA game was postponed last week for understandable reasons, so I've adjusted their respective NCSS scores from Week 1, and if and when they do reschedule their game, I'll make sure those changes get reflected. Not having looked at either team's schedule, I don't know if an FCS game is already on either slate, but if they add a second one to fill the schedule, they will be given an exception from the postseason ban.

Anyway, if you need a refresher on how these rankings work, you can view the summary back in my season preview post. This week's rankings and all to follow will include the conference's average NCSS score for the week, in total for the season, and where they ranked the week before. Let's get to it!

2017 AFC South Preview

Happy Labor Day! Come celebrate with another NFL division preview!

I took a break over the weekend, and in the interim I'll be back with a look at college football in the morning, but for now, we're continuing our trip around the country going division by division to preview the entire league. So far, one wild card in each conference has been claimed. We'll see if the second AFC one goes today or not.

With three days until the season starts, you're almost out of time to join in the fun of picking games against the spread. Adam Quinn and I will be doing this weekly, and you can compete against us here.

Without further ado, here are today's predictions.

2017 NFC South Preview

Happy Friday and Happy September! We're celebrating by moving on to the second half of our NFL prediction series for 2017.

I've worked my way down to the south now as I go division by division picking how I think the season will go. So far, only one wild card has been claimed, and that was yesterday in the AFC, so there are still plenty of spots up for grabs.

Speaking of spots up for grabs, there are plenty of those still in my annual Pigskin Pick 'Em contest. Adam Quinn will join me once again starting next week as we pick every game against the spread. You can join us here.

Let's take a look at the NFC South.