2016 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 4

The good news is that I had my best week of the season to date.

The bad news is that I'm still in last place.

We're onto another week of NFL picks against the spread. Whether it was random variance or Adam happened to be distracted by working in Detroit or wherever, I took three of our four disputed games from last week. It's got me back within one game of him while my dad remains in first place.

Things get a little complicated beginning this week as the bye weeks begin, so there will be fewer than 16 games for the next couple months. It'll make the math a little more complicated, but hopefully not too bad.

If you want to see a breakdown of everyone's picks based on consensus or lack thereof, you can view this breakdown spreadsheet. For this week, groupthink prevails again as Adam and I disagree on only three games out of the 15 being played. Let's get to the picks.

2016 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: Semifinals

Football season is in full swing, but the NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions has been chugging along as we near the end of this year's action.

I took the last 65 NBA champions as well as all nine ABA champions and put them in a tournament to find the best of all time. We're down to four now. One of these teams made it this far last year, two got as far as the quarterfinals, and the other made the Round of 16. Our defending champion is gone, as are both of their opponents in prior championship rounds. Our quest to crown a new champion continues today.

So the two series I'm simulating out today are, like the prior series, best of seven played in a 2-2-1-1-1 format. Home court advantage goes to the higher seeded team based on Group Play finish, and in the event of a tie, Group Play record is our tiebreaking factor. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's set up a championship matchup!

2016 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 5

I'm working on trying to get some charts going for my college football rankings this year. There's just not much to show yet; I figured out how to get the First Degree Playoff Points to work fairly easily, but Second Degree Points and Adjusted Playoff Points are a little trickier.

I could conceivably do a similar thing for the NCSS rankings too, but the negative scores would make things tricky. I'll keep thinking about it, but in the meantime, I need to continue analyzing the schedule.

If you need a refresher on how the NCSS rankings work, you can refer back to my season introduction post. Let's get an update. Below are the updated rankings for each conference. Since we're getting into the meat of the conference schedules, I will just mention the games that impact the NCSS scores one way or the other.

2016 NCAA Playoff Points: Week 4

We're about a month through the college football season now, which is kind of crazy. Most teams have played four games now, with a few having only played three due to byes some time in the first four weeks. With this though, we're starting to see a little separation again in the numbers.

Last week's numbers will probably be similar, at least in terms of rankings, but the point totals are only going to go up as more games get played.

If you want a look at how these scores are calculated, you can view my season preview post. Let's get a look at the data.

2016 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 3

We're two weeks into the NFL season, and... suffice it to say I'm not off to a rousing start.

There's some separation at the top now as my dad had a phenomenal week, Logan continues basically being a coin flip, and Grant, who led after Week 1 had a down follow up effort. Meanwhile on COAS itself, Adam took five of our seven disputed games this past week to take a three game lead on me.

And so I sit alone in the basement of the COAS standings, but this early, still within striking distance of the lead, so hopefully I can start to turn things around this week. In the meantime, if you want to see a breakdown of picks by everyone, I've compiled the first two weeks' worth here.

Adam is out of town for work this week, but was still able to get me his Week 3 picks in time. I can only hope that I can win a majority of the four disputed games thanks to Adam's being distracted by travel.

2016 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 4

We're onto Week 4 of the college football season already. Conference play is starting to pick up a little bit, but we're still a week or two away from the express posts about NCSS rankings.

In the meantime, non-conference games are still a bulk of the docket for this week, so I'm following up on the first three weeks of games with a continued look at how well teams are scheduling their non-conference games.

In the event you need a refresher on how the scoring works for this, you can refer back to my season introductory post. Let's take a look at the updated NCSS rankings.

2016 NCAA Playoff Points: Week 3

Here's where analyzing results in college football starts to get fun.

We have three weeks of data to work with now, and as teams start to play more of their schedules, we can know a little better just how good a team is. Last week's numbers were pretty basic, but that's how it always is when you only have two games off of which to base your analysis. Three isn't a lot better, but it will allow us to start to see a difference between teams form.

You can view that prior post or the season preview post to get an idea of how Playoff Points are calculated. Below you will see a ranking of each conference as well as the four independent teams grouped together to see how they're doing.