Michigan Opens Up +10 at Wisconsin
November 12th, 2017 at 8:20 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 10:41 PM ^
<sigh>
I guess I'm the only one who sees my point.
November 13th, 2017 at 2:33 AM ^
Or just the only one who cares.
November 13th, 2017 at 2:48 AM ^
Keep it and youll be sorry.
Either way im going to vote you.
November 12th, 2017 at 6:04 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 6:30 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 7:21 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 10:42 PM ^
The use of the word "up" in this instance is just unnecessary. There is also no such thing as cooking up, but there is a thing called cooking.
November 12th, 2017 at 11:32 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 11:54 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 5:56 PM ^
That seems about right.
Btw, Wisconsin and Michigan both moved up in S&P+ this week. Wiscy is up from #6 to #3 and Michigan is up from #21 to #16.
November 12th, 2017 at 5:59 PM ^
I saw a chicken considering crossing a road.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:20 PM ^
and in his hesitation, I grabbed him and cooked him up.
November 13th, 2017 at 5:27 PM ^
Now we know why the rest of the chickens crossed the road.
Finally!
November 12th, 2017 at 5:58 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 6:06 PM ^
The fact that it's not should, perhaps, make you re-evaluate your position on thee way teams play in "big games." The idea that certain players or teams are "clutch" is a myth perpetuated by people who -- like most humans -- persist in seeing patterns in random noise.
MSU isn't "clutch" because O'Neill dropped a punt snap. UM isn't "non-clutch on the road" because officials sit on pass interference flags in Columbus.
The people who set the lines -- and the sharps, whose money drives the line in the first place -- are happy to take money from people who bet based upon clutchness.
(Injuries, on the other hand, are a valid concern -- but it's not like Wisconsin is a picture of health either).
November 12th, 2017 at 6:32 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 6:38 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 9:28 PM ^
Clutch may exist, but it's not predictive. Someone who has been "clutch" in the past is neither more nor less likely to be "clutch" in the future than someone who has not been "clutch." Clutch is only meaningful after the fact -- and is still often subject to confirmation bias -- which means that it's useful neither for determining point spreads nor for wagering against them.
It's similar to luck. Luck certainly exists, but I hope that nobody would attempt to build a football team by selecting the luckiest players they could find instead of the most skilled. Someone who has been lucky in the past may be unlucky in the future.
On the other hand, Las Vegas has quite a few very tall monuments dedicated to people who believe that they are lucky. :-)
November 13th, 2017 at 9:05 AM ^
"Someone who has been "clutch" in the past is neither more nor less likely to be "clutch" in the future than someone who has not been "clutch."
Good lord, if you seriously believe that Joe Montana was not more likely to be "clutch" than Scott Mitchell, then I have to question whether you've actually watched the game of football.
November 13th, 2017 at 11:55 AM ^
I absolutely believe that, because I'm not saying what you're implying.
In a "clutch" situation, I would much rather have Joe Montana than Scott Mitchell, not because Montana had some ineffable ability to elevate his play under pressure, but because he was better.
The idea I'm trying to debunk is that some players somehow perform better -- relative to their own standards -- during high-pressure situations / in big games / etc. I'm certainly not saying that all players are interchangeable.
Here's a better question. In a big game, would you rather have Dan Marino (0 Super Bowl titles) or Mark Rypien (Super Bowl MVP)? I'll take Marino every time, despite his reputation of "not being able to win the big game."
November 12th, 2017 at 9:28 PM ^
I can believe than an individual player is clutch - able to perform well under pressure - but to say it about an entire team is pushing it.
November 12th, 2017 at 7:04 PM ^
Well neither of us have a large enough sample size of harbaugh in big games at michigan to claim in either direction whether or not there are indeed any "patterns in random noise". I have a feeling you drastically over-simplified the discussion by reducing it to those couple plays as well ignoring the overall context about playcalling, etc. but alas, my general point is that I am surprised the line isn't a little more than the opening point of 10.
November 12th, 2017 at 8:10 PM ^
You're right -- there's not enough sample size to know whether or not Michigan under Harbaugh is clutch. But there is enough sample size to determine whether or not clutchness exists in general. In other words -- if you look at the entire corpus, are there any "clutch" teams / players? That is, teams or players who consistently perform better under whatever conditions you define as "clutch." And the overwhelming evidence is that it does not; it's a product of confirmation bias more than anything else. We tend to remember the successes or failures that fit the particular narrative.
Granted, much of the evidence comes from baseball, which has a much higher number of individual trials than football does. However, the principles are the same.
People aren't robots, and it is certainly possible that a player's emotional state affects his play. But I've yet to see a single study show that there's some way for a player to "psyche himself up" to play better -- and if he could, why wouldn't he do that all the time?
As for playcalling -- I don't even know how to respond to that. Are you really suggesting that Harbaugh's staff somehow calls worse plays against better opponents? Or, sequences them more poorly? How would you differentiate that effect from better teams simply being more equipped to stop Michigan than worse opponents?
Was Penn State a big game last year? Michigan won by 39, but everybody expected Penn State to be terrible. How about Colorado? Florida seemed like a big game at the time, but now Florida looks awful. Was that a big game or not?
Finally -- not your comment, but the one above it -- Iowa has a good record at home against Top 5 teams recently because streaks happen. Home field advantage is a real thing -- mostly due to the effect on officiating, but real nonetheless -- and Iowa normally has decent teams. Suppose they were only 25% likely to win each of those 5 games. The number of expected wins would be 1.25, and the probability of winning 4 or more would be about 1.5%. Suppose there are 40 teams in college football that have the same 25% likelihood to win a home game against top 5 opponents. It is more likely than not that one of those teams would go 4-1 or 5-0 over their last five.
Streaks exist, but they're not predictive. Given those assumptions, the likelihood that Iowa wins their next home game against a Top 5 opponent is.. 25%. Streak stats also tend to be cherry-picked. Why Top 5? If you go with Top 10, they're 4-3 over the same time period. If you stick with Top 5 but go back to the beginning of Ferentz's career in 1999, they're 6-5. The numbers are chosen to fit a narrative.
November 12th, 2017 at 6:03 PM ^
Vegas opens at +10? I'll call and raise you this:
November 12th, 2017 at 6:07 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 6:11 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 6:11 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 7:45 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 9:21 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 9:32 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 10:19 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 10:29 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 11:47 AM ^
If you are 100% sure you can bat it down and 100% sure you can intercept, the choice is easy. But what if you are only 50% sure that swatting the ball will cause an incompletion? He could have batted the ball and ended up tipping it right into the receiver's hands, leading to a long touchdown instead of our posession.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:54 PM ^
If he could catch it one handed, he could turn it over like a basketball and dribble it off the ground. Just my two cents though.
November 13th, 2017 at 1:03 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 10:11 PM ^
One difference is that scoring generally increases your chances of winning. While in this scenario an interception costs your team roughly 30 yards of field position vs an incompletion on 4th down. Losing 30 yards of field position generally reduces your chances of scoring, which in turn generally decreases your chances of winning.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:56 PM ^
November 13th, 2017 at 1:23 AM ^
So it didn't really matter if was at the 50 or the 20. If we didn't have to snap the ball on 4th down, we wouldn't have kicked a FG anyway. So the INT was fine.
November 13th, 2017 at 12:56 PM ^
Yep, in the end it didn't matter, but in that moment I'd have been breathing way easier if we are taking knees at the 20 instead of the 50. Having to punt on fourth down vs kicking a field goal was a big deal to me, especially after being scarred for life by 2015 MSU.
November 12th, 2017 at 6:09 PM ^
He still plays for us, right?
Right?
November 13th, 2017 at 10:37 AM ^
Seems like this year they always go for the PBU, and seem to pass up interception opportunities to do so.
November 12th, 2017 at 6:04 PM ^
Free money.
November 12th, 2017 at 6:06 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 6:14 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 6:19 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 6:07 PM ^
November 12th, 2017 at 6:08 PM ^
How can we trust this site when it says it's on at 8pm on ESPN2 when we know it's actually a noon game on FOX.
November 12th, 2017 at 6:14 PM ^