Billy Paultz Reconsidered

I was listening to a Detroit-area sports-talk show while driving from airport to hotel today when the hosts went into a commercial with the tease, “Guess which sports broadcaster and rapper got in a fight?”
After the break they took humorous guesses from callers (Keith Jackson-Little Bow Wow… Vin Scully-Snoop Dogg….) for a while before revealing […]

[Read more →]

… and I bet I can convince you.
It was fourth and a bit less than two from the Pats 28-29 yard line. They led by six. The Colts had a time-out plus the two-minute warning left.
Statistically, the league-average conversion rate on fourth-and-two is about 60 percent. Obviously, the Pats’ rate is higher, somewhere around 70 […]

[Read more →]

This is assuming Penn State beats Michigan State Saturday (which I’m not confident they’re going to do), and also assuming the BCS standings stay pretty much as they are at the moment.
OK….
The BCS games are the national championship game (No. 1 and 2 in the BCS standings), the Rose (Big-10 and Pac-10 tie-ins), Orange (ACC), Sugar […]

[Read more →]

I would like to suggest two changes to the BCS formula:
1. The current formula is one-third Harris poll, one-third coaches’ poll, and one-third the average of six computer rankings. Change it to one-third an average of the two polls and two-thirds the computer average.
2. Allow the computers to include margin of victory in their formulas. Don’t require […]

[Read more →]

I’m writing this from the Beav, 25 minutes from kickoff, and the atmosphere is as bland as its been all year. Including the Blue-White game. Senior Day? A complete non-factor.
The Nits figure to be a little sluggish.
Indiana can score, and has an offensive scheme - the “pistol” - that could cause Penn State some problems. The […]

[Read more →]

The results of the voting for the annual Internet Baseball Awards are in. This is essentially a survey of Sabermetric nation. Yes, BPR is a voter.
Random observations:
The MVPs are so obvious - Joe Mauer got 1,153 of 1,290 possible first-place votes, Albert Pujols 1,045 of 1,105 - that the BBWAA can’t screw them up in the […]

[Read more →]

Here’s an interesting piece claiming that Cole Hamels was essentially the same pitcher in 2008 and 09, but lucky in the first year and unlucky in the second.
I know, that sounds ridiculous, but there is considerable research out there that suggests that while pitchers have some control of their strikeout, walk and home-run rates, they have […]

[Read more →]

There is now a local sports-talk radio show in Lancaster. I bring this up because I’ll be on it Monday night. It’s on 1490 WLPA, which has Fox sports programming most of the day. The show will be coming live from the 915 Cafe on Plum Street in Lancaster city from 6:30-8 p.m. You can […]

[Read more →]

It’s less than an hour until kickoff at the Beav. I wanted to wait until I got here to make a prediction, so I could get the lay of the land, a sense of the atmosphere, the look in the players’ eyes….
No, that’s crap. I just forgot.
I’m torn on this one. I’m pretty sure Ohio […]

[Read more →]