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With much ado made about a certain quarterback’s attainment of 200 career wins in the Super Bowl earlier this week, I thought I’d throw together a chart of career wins.

Quarterback career Wins by Year

This is based on the list of top 25 quarterbacks, ranked by most career wins.

I don’t know what one is supposed to learn from this, but here are some things I noticed.

• Both Brady and Manning would have been even farther ahead of everyone else if they didn’t each have one year out due to injury.
• Marino had the best start, but the second quarter of his career made up for that.
• Don’t know that anyone will catch Favre for longevity.
• Elway has the best finish, as far as slope of his chart line goes.
• As far as the slowest start goes, I’m not sure if that award goes to Steve Young or Len Dawson.

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Here is a rare photo of Reggie White covering Jerry Rice. He’s all over him, as the sportscasters would say.

The photo is rare because I made it up – pieced it together from other photos. I just wanted to make that pun.

Okay, okay, it is 2016 at this point, but the results are headlines as 2015 because they match with the 2015 predictions made in 2015 for the 2015 season. Also, the results are not all-haiku, just the predictions were. A more accurate title would be “Results for the All-Haiku Predictions made in 2015”.

Before the bowl games commenced for this past college football season, I made some predictions. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the tally of those predictions. Note that the results are not in haiku form, in contrast to the predictions.

Results

Here is the list (correct predictions in green, incorrect in red):

Arizona over New Mexico

Utah over BYU

App. St. over Ohio

SJSU over Georgia St.

Arkansas St. over La. Tech

WKU over USF

Utah St. over Akron

Temple over Toledo

NIU over BSU

BG over Georgia So.

WMU over MTSU

Cincinnati over SDSU

Connecticut over Marshall

Washington St. over Miami FL

Southern Miss over Washington

Duke over Indiana

VT over Tulsa

UCLA over Nebraska

Navy over Pitt

CMU over Minnesota

Air Force over Cal

UNC over Baylor

Nevada over Colorado St.

LSU over Texas Tech

Memphis over Auburn

Mississippi St. over NC St.

Texas AM over Louisville

Wisconsin over USC

Houston over FSU

Clemson over Oklahoma

Michigan St. over Alabama

Northwestern over Tennessee

Michigan over Florida

ND over Ohio St.

Iowa over Stanford

Ok. St. over Mississippi

Georgia over Penn St.

Arkansas over KSU

TCU over Oregon

WVU over Arizona St.

Clemson over Michigan State

And here are the results of the various forecasting methodologies (see the first year for description of the methodologies) (also, use the word methodologies if you want to sound important; methods would work just as well and is shorter) :

• Some Blog Site picks were 21-19 (similar to last year)
• CBS120 picks were 24-16
• HTW was 24-16 for the official Home Team Wins (HTW)
• HTW was 20-20 for the Geographical Home Team (GHT)
• Isaacson-Tarbell Postulate (ITP) was 24-20 if using HTW
• ITP was 20-20 if using GHT

I won’t analyze the results as much as I did last year, mainly because I had more time and more sleep last year. But it was a decent year for all predictors – every method was at or over 50%. I just need to figure how to better predict outcomes. Especially against the spread.

Because of the disparities between institutions and between conferences, it is tougher to predict bowl games than NFL games. But one thing seems to be pretty consistent: if you don’t want to do a lot of research, just pick the home team.

Thoughts on the season’s results

Last year, we could have used an 8-team playoff. This year, I’m happy with the 4 teams. If we’re going to stick with 4 teams, then the non-conference games during the season should be with a similar conference (e.g. Big 12 teams would play B1G or SEC teams). You don’t need 4 games against cupcakes. How about 2 cupcakes and 2 interconference games?

Conferences

Since the strength of the conference has something to do with the results, I thought I would tally each conference’s bowl game record for the 2015 (and the first bit of 2016) season.

• AAC: 2-6
• ACC: 4-6*
• Big 10: 5-5
• Big 12: 3-4
• Independent: 0-2
• MAC: 3-4
• MW: 4-4
• PAC12: 6-4
• SEC: 9-2*
• Sun Belt: 2-2
• USA: 3-2

* additional win/loss due to playoff + championship game

Normally, I take this spot to write different sentences each claiming a different conference as the best because of some different statistic. But this year, no conference could beat the SEC in any stat – they won the most bowl games, they won the championship, and they tied for most teams sent to bowls. So, I must admit that the SEC is the uncontested best conference in NCAA DIV I football.

Next year: playoffs again! A chance for someone other than the SEC to win!

It is time once again to update Some Blog Site readers on the results of my Some Fun Site project to create a more accurate football prediction method.

The 2015 NFL season is over, and here are the most accurate methods for predicting regular-season game results (wins-losses):

• MPWHFA: 63%
• ITPLS: 61%
• MPW: 61%
• YPP: 61%

ITPLS is listed first because it was one game better than MPW, and MPW was one game better than YPP.

No new prediction methods this year. Either no one could find a better method, or they did but they have moved to Vegas instead of commenting on this blog.

And if you think you have a formula that can predict the winner of an NFL game better than 63.7% of the time, let me know and I’ll add it to the list.

Based on the popularity existence of last year’s article predicting bowl games in haiku form, I present to you this year’s all-haiku bowl game predictions. Still America’s only all-haiku college football bowl game predictions.

These are listed in order of date (earliest first). Some picks are whom I think will win, and some picks are whom I want to win. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is which.
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I ran a few different races this year – a 5k, a 10k, and a couple half marathons. Here are various thoughts from those events.

1. After running a few races, you get to see similar signs. By “signs” I’m referring to the notes of encouragement written by spectators and held by them during the race for the runners to view. A number of the signs are meant to be humorous, but the same jokes gets old quickly. This year’s notable entries (i.e. they made me laugh or at least smile, as opposed to the familiar signs that elicit no reaction anymore) were
You’re running better than the government.
and
Run like you just fumbled a punt!

For those of you who are wondering about the last sign – the run was the day after the Michigan-Michigan State football game, a significant rivalry which Michigan lost this year in the last 10 seconds by fumbling a punt.

2. When the Detroit Marathon website and email suggest you get there early (before 6:00AM) to avoid traffic problems – take them seriously. I took the route I normally take for major sporting events, but I was late because traffic for the marathon is much, much worse than it is for a Lions or Tigers game.

The race started at 7:00, and I couldn’t get to a parking spot until 7:15. Then I had to walk about 5 blocks to the starting line. When I was about a block away, I could see people crossing the starting line and I heard the announcer over the loudspaker start counting down “30 seconds”. The material they had sent out before the race informed everyone that once the last group has started, they close the starting line and no one else is allowed to start.

So I heard the countdown “30 seconds … 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1” and I’m a block away so I figured there’s no way I’m going to make it. But the mass of people continued to go through the starting line. I got closer and saw a ton of people (actually many tons of people) still in line. And then I heard the announcer start counting again.

It turned out he counted down to the start of each wave. I was supposed to be wave C, but I ended up in wave M. And there were more waves after that. It took about a half hour just to get everyone through the starting line. I suppose it is an interesting logistics problem – how to most efficiently get 27,000 people through a gate that is about 3 lanes wide on the road.

3. Don’t be late for a major city marathon or half marathon if you care about your time. If you don’t start with your group of people with similar paces, you will be stuck in the group of people with slower paces. This is a problem in big city races because there are tens of thousand of people in the race and if you are stuck in a slow pack, you are stuck. The people are packed curb-to-curb and there is no picking your way through the people like there is in smaller races.

The slower group was a relatively happy, festive group. And I witnessed something I never would have seen if I were in the faster group – the in-race selfie. People were stopping and taking photos of themselves at various landmarks. The most popular one was the Ambassador Bridge to cross into Canada. At first I thought it was amusing. But then some people in front of me stopped for that and I had to dodge them. A word of advice: if you have to (or want to) stop during a race, move off the side of the course first, so you don’t block the people behind you. And in this race, there were literally thousands of people behind them.

4. My time was slower than expected for the Detroit race. Much of that was due to the fact that I was stuck in a slow pack for a while, but some of it is because I ran a longer route than necessary. When there were breaks in the pack, I ran faster, but I had to weave around clumps of people. On the Ambassador Bridge, in particular, I probably did as much running side to side to find a break in the wall of people as I did running forward. The extra distance adds up.

With college football underway, there are plenty o’ pundits weighing in on who is the best.

It’s a perennial conversation because of the way that the NCAA has avoided finding a champion for college football. Instead, we have many winners. Everyone gets a bowl game!

But I digress.

My topic today is how I disagree with those who say that the previous year’s champion should remain the top-ranked team the next year until they lose.

I have a couple of problems with that.

1. The teams are not the same from year to year. The coach might be, and many of the players are, but it is not the same team. It’s college, so you should expect around 25% turnover each year.

2. That statement of “you’re the best until you lose” applies only to king of the hill and boxing. Unless you have to defend your title against challengers, you can’t claim to still be the best. Or have others claim it for you.

Last year’s champion should not be assumed to be the best this year. If you’re putting together a ranking, evaluate each team based on this year’s accomplishments and statistics.

Or for those who want to have a reason for pre-season rankings: you could propose a king-of-the-hill format. No more predictable scheduling – team #1 plays team #2 and whoever wins gets to be team #1 the next week. The loser is out of the running.

Let’s assume 128 teams total, so 64 matchups each week.
1 vs 2, 3 vs 4, 5 vs 6, 7 vs 8, etc.
1v2 winner becomes #1, loser becomes #65
3v4 winner becomes #2, loser becomes #66
5v6 winner becomes #3, loser becomes #67
7v8 winner becomes #4, loser becomes #68
.
.
.
63v64 winner becomes #32, loser becomes #96
.
.
.
127v128 winner becomes #64, loser becomes #128

So the formula is
For n teams, your new ranking is
if you win: r = rp/2
if you lose: r = rp/2 + n/2
where r is your new ranking and rp is your previous ranking

That way, if you win all your games you can stay #1.
If you lose a game, it will take you log2(r)+1 games to get back to #1.

This method would not be good for relative rankings late in the season, or at the end of the season. But if you want a method for defending the title, you can’t be concerned with the losers.