The S**** B***
Current line: 11 1/2
Donnie: New England
Mascot: New York
What’s in a name?
Please note: I haven’t checked e-mail in about three weeks, partly because I can’t be on my usual e-mail checking machine. I’ll try to get to it this weekend. Now that’s out of the way…
Rocky Rook was curious about this site’s tagline, the Shawn Bradley of Weblogs. I’m going to try to make this as un-boring as possible, because it’s not that good of a story come to think of it.
For reference, I have inserted a picture of Shawn Bradley below. (He’s the dunkee, not the dunker.)
The first incarnation of this site was back in late 2006. The name “Liquid Egg Product” came from the cartons of…substance…that McDonald’s uses for some of their egg-containing breakfasts. (I’m forever grateful to the McD’s employee who thought it was a good idea to set the carton close enough to the counter that the customers could read it.) Since blogs are “supposed” to have a tagline, and I was pretty sure the blog would be filled with all sorts of foolishness, the tagline became “The Ronald McDonald of Weblogs”.
My web host accidentally destroyed my database in May 2007, so down went that site. I switched to WordPress, and decided to change the tagline. Why?
Mainly because of Dan LeBatard, who hosts a sports talk radio show that is often unbelievably dumb and inane (which I admit, will occasionally listen to and enjoy). One of his promos has him as McDan McLeBatard hosting “the Ronald McDonald of radio shows” or something like that.
There’s no way I was going to have the same tagline as him.
Shawn Bradley fit very well because he’s:
- white
- skinny
- awkward
- mediocre
- not very tough
- easily mockable
- only plays basketball effectively if everyone else is shorter
All of which describe either me as a person or this website (usually both).
I want to hear about how some of you came up with your names (in some cases, what the deuce do they mean?). Where does gorckat come from? Wahrheit sounds German for something-or-the-other. And we never got an explanation about the now defunct ookweb… whatever the deuce it was. And so forth.
“I don’t even know how many overtimes it was.”
Last night, the Baylor men’s basketball team defeated Texas A&M 116-110 in a quintuple overtime slugfest. Although 5 Baylor players fouled out, the team actually hit its free throws to get the win.
The game lasted so long that even one of the referees got confused. In the break before the start of the fourth overtime, a referee approached a member of the media and asked if triple overtime was about to begin. When told it was four, he shook his head and walked off.
While BU women’s basketball has been good for some time (winning a national title a few years ago), the men’s squad hasn’t been ranked in the top 25 since 1969.
Breaking down the Super Bowl
So how do you break down in the game in two weeks?
I think the Giants have a better shot than anyone else of beating the Patriots.
Er…anything else?
The winner of the game is the one who’s going to put the most points on the board.
Great, thanks.
You shouldn’t have used the term S**** B*** in the title. The NFL’s going to sue you.
Gamblers
Too lazy to do the table. Sorry.
Green Bay (-7) vs New York
Donnie GB
Mascot GB
NE (-14) vs San Diego
Donnie NE
Mascot San Diego
4-0 baby.
Donnie |
The Mascot |
Wahrheit | |
| Seattle (+8) vs Green Bay |
Green Bay | Green Bay | Green Bay |
| Jacksonville (+11.5) vs New England |
Jacksonville | New England | New England |
| San Diego (+9) vs Indianapolis |
San Diego | Indianapolis | Indianapolis |
| New York (+7.5) vs Dallas |
New York | Dallas | New York |
| Record so far | 6-2 | 2-6 | 6-2 |
I think that we can ascertain that humans are better at picking games than eggs at this point.
Our experts, plus Wahrheit, give you our NFL picks
If you choose the right expert’s picks to bet on, you’ll win money this weekend! (Maybe.)
Donnie |
The Mascot |
Wahrheit | |
| Seattle (+8) vs Green Bay |
Green Bay | Green Bay | Green Bay |
| Jacksonville (+11.5) vs New England |
Jacksonville | New England | New England |
| San Diego (+9) vs Indianapolis |
San Diego | Indianapolis | Indianapolis |
| New York (+7.5) vs Dallas |
New York | Dallas | New York |
| Record so far | 2-2 | 1-3 | 4-0 |
College football playoffs
In college football (American), a ton of people start calling every year for a playoff system to replace the BCS. (Quick primer: usually, a champion of a sports league is determined by a playoff between teams who did the best during the season. Instead, the BCS determines the top two teams by a combination of human and computer polls, essentially creating a 1 game playoff.)
What people don’t think about is that a playoff system is not very likely to crown the best team in the country as champion.
Let’s take an 8-team playoff, for example, and have University of A to be “objectively” the best team in the country. And let’s assume the UA team is so good, it will defeat other elite ( top 8 ) teams 75% of the time. UA will have to win three games in a row, which it has a 42% chance of doing. This speaks highly of UA, but their chances of being recognized as champions are still worse than a coin flip.
The 75% number is higher than can be expected. 60% may be closer to realistic, giving the best team a 21% chance of winning the crown.
If that’s the system people want, then by all means they can clamor for it. As long as they recognize it’s unlikely that the best team in the country will be known as the champions. (College basketball is even worse for determining the #1 team, but everyone likes gambling on March Madness so no one brings it up).
My biggest beefs with the BCS system are:
1. Human pollsters, who cannot have knowledge of every single game played, cannot possibly hope to compare all teams adequately, and have ingrained biases, are given greater weight than the computers.
2. The computer polls are forced not to considered margin of victory in their calculations. This can throw them out of whack, as this story on Jeff Sagarin’s rankings indicates (at one point, North Dakota State was ranked in the top 20). I guess for some reason, the BCS thought that maybe these programmers wouldn’t have developed algorithms that made sure a 52-point victory didn’t mean more than a 35-point victory.
In other words, the BCS has to give computers less weight, because their own rules make computers less accurate in predicting the top two teams.
If it were up to me, I’d eliminate computer poll restrictions, and completely ignore the humans. The only check would be at the end of the year, a council would get together that could veto the computers’ selection if 75% agreed, at which point the human polls would be used to determine the game.
This is mostly off-the-cuff, so blast away with holes in this thinking.
Listen to Wahrheit next time
Donnie |
The Mascot |
|
| Washington (+4) vs Seattle |
Seattle | Washington |
| Jacksonville (-1) vs Pittsburgh |
Jacksonville | Pittsburgh |
| New York (+3) vs Tampa Bay |
Tampa Bay | Tampa Bay |
| Tennessee (+9) vs San Diego |
Tennessee | San Diego |
| Record | 2-2 | 1-3 |
I am so glad I don’t bet on sports.
Speak for yourself.
Wahrheit went 4-0.
I still can’t believe you told people we could win them money last week. Now everyone can see you can’t make good judgments. You’re the kind of guy that would choose Velma over Daphne. We can’t trust someone like that.
Whuh? You mean from Scooby Doo?
Yar, if someone asked you which one you’d rather date, and for normal people (ie, not you) Velma’s just too, well, ugly.
Look, this blog is weird enough without getting into conversations about which cartoon characters are cuter.
I like that Esurance chick.
OK, fine! You’re a cartoon, it makes sense for you! It doesn’t for me!
*Sigh* I guess you’re going to want my picks for next week?
By tomorrow night, if you can.
As long as you don’t lord it over me if I go 0-4 next week.
Sure thing.
You really wouldn’t choose Velma, would you?
Er…yeah…probably I would.
Seriously? *Blanches* OK, that makes things easy…my picks for next week are the opposite of yours.
Win money with Liquid Egg Product’s NFL playoff picks!
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The problem is we couldn’t agree on a lot of the picks. So, uh, just go with the guy you think knows more about football.
Donnie |
The Mascot |
|
| Washington (+4) vs Seattle |
Seattle | Washington |
| Jacksonville (-1) vs Pittsburgh |
Jacksonville | Pittsburgh |
| New York (+3) vs Tampa Bay |
Tampa Bay | Tampa Bay |
| Tennessee (+9) vs San Diego |
Tennessee | San Diego |
| Super Bowl Winner |
Jacksonville | New England |
