NFC East Preview

Ah, it's good to have the shield back.

We're a little over a week away from the NFL season beginning, and college football starts this week as well. With just a few days left, I'm going to start cranking out previews by division, like I did last year.

Last year I ended up starting with the defending Super Bowl champion's division, but I'm going in reverse this time. I want to end with the defending champs, so I'm starting out east. Here's how I think the NFC East will shake up.

Common opponents on schedule: NFC North, AFC West.

1. Washington Redskins
Last year: 10-6 (1st), lost in NFC Wild Card Round
I feel kind of dumb after picking these guys to finish last last year. I obviously didn't realize how dynamic RGIII was going to be. Ultimately how successful this Skins team will be rests on how well he's recovered from his torn ACL. If he's not able to go in Week 1 (though most signs seem to suggest he will be), I think Kirk Cousins can hold his own. Having Alfred Morris as a running back also helps. This team can score plenty of points. My concern is whether or not their secondary will be able to hold their own. DeAngelo Hall isn't facing Jay Cutler 16 times, after all.
2013 Prediction: 10-6

2. New York Giants
Last year: 9-7 (2nd), missed playoffs
I really have no place picking things when it comes to this team. Every time I thought I had the Giants pegged, they proved me wrong. Their road to winning Super Bowl XLVI went against everything I figured would happen. So, naturally, I went with them whenever conventional wisdom said they'd fail... and they ended up failing! Eli is still a good quarterback. and the Nicks/Cruz pairing is one of the best in the league. But their defense isn't quite what it was, since the depth on the defensive line is diminished and I'm not entirely sure about their back seven. They'll be decent, but I don't think they'll have extended playing time in January.
2013 Prediction: 8-8

3. Philadelphia Eagles
Last year: 4-12 (4th), missed playoffs
This past week, Michael Vick was named the starter again for this team under Chip Kelly. As long as he stays healthy, this team's offense will be tough to beat, with weapons like LeSean McCoy, Desean Jackson and Brent Celek. The issue is, Vick is rarely healthy and always seems to take a beating. So for a best-case scenario, let's say he plays 12 games and Nick Foles starts the other four. The jury is still out on him, ultimately. They've got decent rushers in the 3-4, but I'm not ultimately sold on this defense. Of course, that could be because Andy Reid was kind of dumb with those coordinators. We'll see how Kelly handles it in his first year.
2013 Prediction: 6-10

4. Dallas Cowboys
Last year: 8-8 (3rd), missed playoffs
My fiancee's grandfather lives down in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and at least to some extent follows the Cowboys. He's up to visit and we were talking a little about football the other night and he had... shall we say... some strong words about Jerry Jones. Needless to say, I don't think the local sentiment about him down there is very good. And I think it's with good reason; Jones seems to keep thinking the Cowboys are just one or two pieces away from being a Super Bowl contender. Unfortunately for him, I don't think the offensive line is that great, which doesn't help under any circumstances. As fun as it is to rag on Tony Romo for choking in big games (the Google image search is pretty funny), he still puts up good numbers, and he still has some great targets in Dez Bryant and Jason Witten. But switching over to a 4-3 defense (thus moving DeMarcus Ware to a defensive end spot) is probably not the best idea out there. This all will probably result in Jason Garrett getting canned because Jerry Jones doesn't want to take the blame for his own failures and will replace him with another yes-man resulting in more mediocrity. And crotch scratching.
2013 Prediction: 5-11

2013 NCAA Football Season: New Year, New Formulas, Same Old Playoff Griping

For much of this calendar year I haven't been able to do a lot of writing for COAS (NBA Tournament of Champions aside), and I feel bad about it sometimes, but unfortunately other things take priority. However, as we approach football season and one final year of a piece of crap system, I'm back at calculating how the FBS should really run its postseason.

Last year's run was a pretty fun one, and I kind of enjoyed really following a season for the first time to really try to get a better idea of who to put in a 16 team playoff. It may not have been perfect, but I'm sure people enjoyed it more than the 42-13 drubbing Notre Dame received at the hands of Alabama (you know, unless you're a Bama die hard or Notre Dame hater; I don't fall in either category). The handful of upsets in the tournament made for a little drama, while still not invalidating the regular season.

So with a full season under my belt, I wanted to take things up a notch in terms of formulas, just to give myself a little more information to work with when it comes time to decide at-large teams and seed the field. (Also, it allows me to judge poor scheduling habits that will hopefully start working their way out of the system next year when we actually do get a playoff.) Returning from last year is my Non-Conference Schedule Strength metric, which I use to try to measure how well a team schedules its out of conference slate. For each week, teams receive a score based on how well they schedule. The formula basically goes like this:

• -1 point for facing an FCS team (last year, I penalized UTSA with a -2 a couple times for holding onto old D-II matchups)
• 0 points for a bye week or conference game
• 1 point for hosting an FBS team not in a "BCS Conference" (As much as I harp on equality, almost every year your champion will come out of a power conference barring some crazy voodoo magic happening, hence the favoritism)
• 2 points for going on the road to face an FBS team not in a "BCS Conference"* OR hosting an FBS team in a "BCS Conference"
• 3 points for going on the road AND facing a team in a "BCS Conference"*

Note: The "BCS Conferences" are defined as the ACC, American Athletic, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC.

Obviously independents are going to have a much higher NCSS than everyone else, but this provides a pretty good indicator of how well they're scheduling overall. (This is also why I didn't include an independent average in my weekly rankings.) Inherently it also benefits the "non-BCS conferences" since they tend to go on the road to face more big time opponents, though really it's an indicator that for all the talk from BCS conferences about how "Oh, our schedules are the toughest, you guys don't play anybody!" is something of a lie since their non-conference schedules weren't really up to par.

I need to go beyond that though. Last year a lot of decisions on at-large teams were pretty subjective based on quality of losses, so I found a much more objective system that, while not perfect, should help alleviate some of those problems. The IHSA uses "Playoff Points" in the construction of its football playoffs, and it's an easy enough system to translate over that I'm going to use it here. Basically, at the end of the season, the total number of wins by teams you beat counts as your "Playoff Points". I'm not counting wins against FCS teams in this system, but everything else will. If a team plays in a mediocre conference, this score might get inflated a little bit, but beating a really good team will help balance this out.

Finally, I'm also going to condemn a major scheduling disparity by including what I call the "Road-Home Disparity Index". What I noticed really looking at schedules last year is that most, if not all, FBS teams play an unbalanced schedule in terms of home and road games, with a ton of games coming at home. This is great for you gate receipts and all, but for the sake of competition, this is not ideal. For its upcoming season, my alma mater North Central College has a 10 game slate (they're D-III) consisting of 5 home games and 5 road games. Granted, 4 of the 5 are in-conference, but the athletic administration did a good job of making sure that the non-conference schedule balances it out. Going back as far as 2008, 2011 is the only time North Central played an unbalanced schedule (and also faced an NAIA team at home... shame, though it hasn't happened since thankfully.)

For this formula, I'm going to tally up the number of home, road and neutral site games played during the regular season (conference championships don't count since those are merit-based). From there, I'm going to subtract the number of home games from the number of road games and halve the difference. I won't count neutral site games against either team that plays out of fairness to both. For example, taking Alabama's 2012 schedule would give 7 home games, 4 road games, and 1 neutral site game. Taking the 4 road games and subtracting their 7 home dates gives us -3, which results in a final RHDI of -1.5. I would guess most teams will be in the -1 to -1.5 range. I will probably look more favorably on teams closer to zero, though this, like the other formulas, will not be an end-all, be-all factor in awarding bids or seeds.

Hopefully this regular season will have just as many interesting storylines as last year's did, and hopefully we can see some great matchups set up for another fun playoff! It works at the lower levels; why can't it work at the highest level of college football? I'll start crunching numbers on a weekly basis beginning later this week, since Thursday marks the beginning of this season.

NBA Tournament of Champions: Quarterfinals

After a lengthy amount of time off, I figure it's about time to get back into the process of rounding out this tournament. Sixty four teams entered, and now only 8 remain. If you were to give me the 8 best teams of all time, I'm sure a lot of these squads would make it, but probably not all of them. But each of these teams has survived a virtual onslaught from other NBA champions (granted, some slates tougher than others) to get to this point, and to be the Champion of Champions, you have to get through three more titans. It's no small feat.

So for today, we move on to the quarterfinals. I'm doing all the series here, but not announcing best players or anything until we get to the end. At that point I'll name an All-Tournament Team or two (or maybe even three, we'll see). For now, it's just simulations. As in the first three rounds, these series are best of seven (2-2-1-1-1 format), with home court going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. You can click on the tag below for "Tournament of Champions" to see every other post about the tournament to date. For now, let's move on to the quarters.

Wait, It's the 21st Century?

I was glancing at Twitter on my way up from grabbing lunch when I saw a Sportscenter headline pop up that made me happy. It's been a long time coming.

I put together a list of things I wanted to improve in baseball last year, but looking back I've continued to realize that it was far from complete. I've addressed umpire incompetence a couple times on this forum, so I'm all for replay. The only caveat is, I want it to be done right. Hopefully the owners want it done right as well and make sure that this system can be implemented in a way to help the game.

In a way, I kind of wanted a challenge system as long as it was done well, so I was a little leery when I initially heard that each manager would be given three challenges a game. Then I learned the conditions and that you only get one in the first six innings of a game, and then two for the remainder of the game. Ultimately, I think this will work. It limits stoppages early and allows for greater weight to be placed towards the end of games. Every out of a game is technically worth the same, but later situations are under much more scrutiny. Such is the nature of sports.

AP Photo/ Mark Duncan

The limit also keeps us from overanalyzing every play. Despite Angel Hernandez's best efforts, I still believe that umpires make the correct call far more often than not. The issue I have with them more so lies in their lack of accountability (or so we seem to perceive,since umpires face consequences; we just don't know what they are) than the fact that they make mistakes. They're human. It happens. We just want it to happen less, and when it does happen, for them to drop the aura of self-righteousness. With the new plan, we can hopefully get rid of some of these mistakes and thus cut down on some of the appearances of umpires making spectacles of themselves.

Ultimately though, there's going to be one or two loud opposing arguments. One of them will be from the purists who claim that replay would "remove the human element from the game", an argument that really doesn't make any sense. Keeping a tradition around just for the sake of tradition may seem noble, but when so many stories about baseball revolve around controversial calls (when we're not talking steroids), you know it's not a good tradition. That said, I'm fine with umpires continuing to call balls and strikes. I don't mind the slight differences in strikes, as long as it's not ridiculous (giving a couple inches outside the standard zone is fine, but calling a strike on a pitch a foot outside is insane). It's rare that ball and strike calls by an umpire have a huge impact as compared to calls in the field.

The only complaints that might come louder would be from fans who don't want the game slowed down any more than it already is. While I get that, replays don't take as long to do as people think. When managers come out to argue, we end up seeing replays on TV anyway. Why not make it productive? In the other major sports, replay reviews more often than not don't take very long to do, so the time additions wouldn't be much of a factor. More time issues arise from batters stepping out of the box after every pitch or pitchers taking forever between pitches. Changes in rules there would probably more than make up for any time lost for reviews. How many games are going need more than one anyway? Probably not many.

Obviously, the specifics need to be carefully reviewed before a final decision is reached by the 30 clubs. But the specifics we have so far all look pretty good in theory. It's 2013. It's time for Major League Baseball to start acting like it.

NBA Tournament of Champions: Bob Cousy Bracket Finals

What a ride the NBA Tournament of Champions has been thus far. Sixty four teams entered, and right now only nine are left standing, but one more must fall before the end of the week. The Cooz couldn't get any of his teams to move onto this stage, but his franchise did get an incarnation this far in his bracket. However, they have an incredibly tough task ahead. Can they knock off arguably the best team ever assembled? There's only one way to find out.

As the prior 47 series have been, this is a best of seven (2-2-1-1-1 format), with home court going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. To see how we got here, you can click on the links for first and second round results. Let's round this out.

NBA Tournament of Champions: Magic Johnson Bracket Finals

Magic Johnson was able to get one of his championship teams through out of the bracket stage already, but in his namesake bracket, he got bumped a couple weeks ago. In his place in the finals of this bracket are a pair of juggernauts that have gone 8-1 through the first two rounds. And somewhere, maybe the leader of one of these juggernauts is shrugging at Magic again. Ultimately one question ensures with this matchup: will the dirty little secret of one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history be exposed for all to see? We're about to find out.

As a refresher, this series, like all the preceding ones, is a best of seven (2-2-1-1-1 format) with home court advantage going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. You can view the first and second round results at the links provided. Let's play ball.

NBA Tournament of Champions: George Mikan Bracket Finals

In some ways I feel bad for poor George Mikan. He was the dominant force in the NBA in the early 50's until the league changed things around, then was commissioner of the ABA and botched a chance to bring Kareem into his league's fold. Even so, there's still the drill named after him that all aspiring big men should practice often, so I guess it's not all bad. Unfortunately for him though, all his title teams were promptly wiped aside in the opening rounds of the Tournament of Champions. Heck, of his three title teams in this bracket, only one managed to avoid a sweep! Instead, we get a battle between a power of the late 80's and their Eastern Conference foil that would overtake them a couple years later and give birth to the last great NBA dynasty.

So to decide which of this archrivals gets to advance in the tournament, we stick to the best of seven series (2-2-1-1-1 format), with home court going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. You can see results from the first and second round at the provided links. Now, let's play some (simulated) basketball.