Does he say that? I'm just reading the transcript: it says he paraphrases what the coaches say, but it's not obvious to me if that means publicly or if he has a significant private conversations with them on the topic.
I'm not trying to be combative; I'm interested to know if that's the case. It's just not obvious that we should conclude that it is from the transcript alone.
Edit: I listened to the rest of the video. I guess he says he talked to them, for whatever that's worth.
I dunno, it seems like a stretch to conclude "it sounds like the coaches see things similarly to how many of us on the blog do" from this clip. Does Klatt have a bunch of insider information on the coaches? It sounds like he's just watching the games and speculating the same way we are.
FWIW I think this is all just smoke, but want to share some perspective.
UF administration today is much different than in the mid 2000s. This is true for the university in general, and in the athletic department too (although perhaps less so). While football is still a priority (as it is at Michigan) their preferences have shifted discernably away from being a big SEC football school and towards being a highly ranked academic university.
I don't expect Mullen is going anywhere, but UF will put up with fewer schenanigans today than 2 decades ago.
7 coaches who are both young, palatable, and likely gettable, that have had their teams (across all of their stints) outperform SP+ the most, relative to their schools' historical performances:
1. Josh Heupel
2. PJ Fleck
3. Bryan Harsin
4. Tom Allen
5. Matt Campbell
6. Chris Klieman
7. Luke Fickell
Ordered by estimated effect on their team's SP+. I like Harsin the best, and Campbell second.
My take, which may or may not hold up, was that linebackers were helping the CBs on the inside a lot. Effectively, they were encouraging the Gophers to take the "Run" in the Run-Pass-Option, because that matchup was much more to Michigan's advantage. Will be interesting to see if this was a Minnesota-specific scheme, with their depleted OL and excellent receivers, or if it persists to more run-focused teams (before Saturday, I would have said "Wisconsin" here.)
Michigan State has been really consistent against a tough schedule, while we have struggled a bit in January versus a modest schedule.
I still think we have the better resume (and better team!), but it's not hard to see why the computers think MSU is stronger: yes MSU is 1-3 versus Kenpom Top 20 teams while we are 3-1, but MSU has 6(!) wins versus teams 21-40. We have zero (our next best wins are #43 Indiana - twice - #56 Northwestern, and #57 Minnesota). MSU's slaughter of all those tournament teams over the past couple months was remarkable, even if no single win was as impressive as our obliteration of UNC.
This will all be decided on the court in 4 weeks (and again in March)!
I agree 100%. In Columbus it would be a different story. PSU is not as good a team as OSU, but the difference is smaller than people think. To add to what you said: one reason people are skeptical of PSU is that App State took them to overtime. But you know what? App State is a legitimately good football team! S&P+ has them at #20 (10 spots ahead of TCU), and while that's probably too high, this is not FCS App State any more. They are an elite G5 team this year, along with UCF, Boise, and Memphis.
Ok, you're right. Coin flipping will fail half the time. And that's because the center of the distribution for coinflipped picks is the line, not the average outcome.
I maintain that beating the spread >50% does not mean you're more accurate than Vegas. My intuition for why was wrong, so let me take another stab. If you have an unbiased predictor, no matter how large its variance, you're going to be on the right side of any other imperfect predictor more than 50% of the time, as long as your errors aren't (too) correlated.
Consider a system that sets lines: X% of the time, the line will be below the outcome, and 100%-X% of the time, the line will be above the outcome (ignore pushes for the moment.) If X% is anything other than 50%, then flipping a coin will beat the spread more often than not. And no matter how good Vegas is (and they're pretty damn good) X% will never be exactly 50%. So flipping a coin will beat the spread on average (of course, you won't make any money because of commissions).
Beating the spread isn't a good measure of accuracy, unfortunately. If S&P+ were setting the lines, Vegas would beat the spread the majority of the time. This happens because no matter how accurate a predictive system is, it will never be able to put its spreads at the exact median of outcomes. So if you flip a coin every game, you will probably beat the spread.
The question you want to ask is: whose line is closer to the final margin on average? And it's Vegas; wisdom of the crowds is powerful!
It's not about resume bolstering: if we don't win the B1G, it's very unlikely that we go to the playoffs. The Wisconsin statistic is so large because they are the only West team that we are not overwhelmingly favored against. It's strongly in UM's interest for anyone other than Wisconsin to win the West. So goooooo Gophers!
Great article! Week 3 is going to be important for the Big Ten for sure.
But because this the internet I'm going to complain about all the things I disagree with...
First, anyone who roots for An Ohio State to beat Oklahoma is despicable. This applies to people from Ohio, people from the United States in general, people from Barbados, people from Neptune, and especially people from the University of Michigan. There is no excuse.
I've always thought it was okay to root for State in non-conference games, especially against Notre Dame. I know Wolverines are divided on this issue, but here's how I see it: State is your little brother. You want to crush him mercilessly in a game of one-on-one, make fun of him the whole time, and give him a noogie afterwards. But then you'll cheer for him to win his middle school basketball game. Especially when the middle school basketball game is versus Notre Dame.
Second, I really don't like the thought of Colorado as a guaranteed win. Or even as an easy win. This is crazy hubris... would we overlook Illinois (similar S&P+ projection)? Hell no, we'd be terrified. So let's be terrified, not cocky.
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Does he say that? I'm just reading the transcript: it says he paraphrases what the coaches say, but it's not obvious to me if that means publicly or if he has a significant private conversations with them on the topic.
I'm not trying to be combative; I'm interested to know if that's the case. It's just not obvious that we should conclude that it is from the transcript alone.
Edit: I listened to the rest of the video. I guess he says he talked to them, for whatever that's worth.
I dunno, it seems like a stretch to conclude "it sounds like the coaches see things similarly to how many of us on the blog do" from this clip. Does Klatt have a bunch of insider information on the coaches? It sounds like he's just watching the games and speculating the same way we are.
FWIW I think this is all just smoke, but want to share some perspective.
UF administration today is much different than in the mid 2000s. This is true for the university in general, and in the athletic department too (although perhaps less so). While football is still a priority (as it is at Michigan) their preferences have shifted discernably away from being a big SEC football school and towards being a highly ranked academic university.
I don't expect Mullen is going anywhere, but UF will put up with fewer schenanigans today than 2 decades ago.
7 coaches who are both young, palatable, and likely gettable, that have had their teams (across all of their stints) outperform SP+ the most, relative to their schools' historical performances:
1. Josh Heupel
2. PJ Fleck
3. Bryan Harsin
4. Tom Allen
5. Matt Campbell
6. Chris Klieman
7. Luke Fickell
Ordered by estimated effect on their team's SP+. I like Harsin the best, and Campbell second.
FWIW I'm in the give-Harbaugh-one-more-year camp.
My take, which may or may not hold up, was that linebackers were helping the CBs on the inside a lot. Effectively, they were encouraging the Gophers to take the "Run" in the Run-Pass-Option, because that matchup was much more to Michigan's advantage. Will be interesting to see if this was a Minnesota-specific scheme, with their depleted OL and excellent receivers, or if it persists to more run-focused teams (before Saturday, I would have said "Wisconsin" here.)
I would love to see Tiafoe upset him tonight though!
You're right, he hasn't improved our team, that's why we're still losing to Toledo and Rutgers and missing bowls.
Did you matriculate in 2015? Get some perspective.
Michigan State has been really consistent against a tough schedule, while we have struggled a bit in January versus a modest schedule.
I still think we have the better resume (and better team!), but it's not hard to see why the computers think MSU is stronger: yes MSU is 1-3 versus Kenpom Top 20 teams while we are 3-1, but MSU has 6(!) wins versus teams 21-40. We have zero (our next best wins are #43 Indiana - twice - #56 Northwestern, and #57 Minnesota). MSU's slaughter of all those tournament teams over the past couple months was remarkable, even if no single win was as impressive as our obliteration of UNC.
This will all be decided on the court in 4 weeks (and again in March)!
I agree 100%. In Columbus it would be a different story. PSU is not as good a team as OSU, but the difference is smaller than people think. To add to what you said: one reason people are skeptical of PSU is that App State took them to overtime. But you know what? App State is a legitimately good football team! S&P+ has them at #20 (10 spots ahead of TCU), and while that's probably too high, this is not FCS App State any more. They are an elite G5 team this year, along with UCF, Boise, and Memphis.
Ok, you're right. Coin flipping will fail half the time. And that's because the center of the distribution for coinflipped picks is the line, not the average outcome.
I maintain that beating the spread >50% does not mean you're more accurate than Vegas. My intuition for why was wrong, so let me take another stab. If you have an unbiased predictor, no matter how large its variance, you're going to be on the right side of any other imperfect predictor more than 50% of the time, as long as your errors aren't (too) correlated.
Consider a system that sets lines: X% of the time, the line will be below the outcome, and 100%-X% of the time, the line will be above the outcome (ignore pushes for the moment.) If X% is anything other than 50%, then flipping a coin will beat the spread more often than not. And no matter how good Vegas is (and they're pretty damn good) X% will never be exactly 50%. So flipping a coin will beat the spread on average (of course, you won't make any money because of commissions).
Beating the spread isn't a good measure of accuracy, unfortunately. If S&P+ were setting the lines, Vegas would beat the spread the majority of the time. This happens because no matter how accurate a predictive system is, it will never be able to put its spreads at the exact median of outcomes. So if you flip a coin every game, you will probably beat the spread.
The question you want to ask is: whose line is closer to the final margin on average? And it's Vegas; wisdom of the crowds is powerful!
Edit: FWIW I think the spread should be about -8.
At the end of the 4th paragraph, it should read "continued growth". I've seen a lot of these official scholarship letters with typos... I wonder why?
Wisconsin statistic seems right to me.
It's not about resume bolstering: if we don't win the B1G, it's very unlikely that we go to the playoffs. The Wisconsin statistic is so large because they are the only West team that we are not overwhelmingly favored against. It's strongly in UM's interest for anyone other than Wisconsin to win the West. So goooooo Gophers!
Great article! Week 3 is going to be important for the Big Ten for sure.
But because this the internet I'm going to complain about all the things I disagree with...
First, anyone who roots for An Ohio State to beat Oklahoma is despicable. This applies to people from Ohio, people from the United States in general, people from Barbados, people from Neptune, and especially people from the University of Michigan. There is no excuse.
I've always thought it was okay to root for State in non-conference games, especially against Notre Dame. I know Wolverines are divided on this issue, but here's how I see it: State is your little brother. You want to crush him mercilessly in a game of one-on-one, make fun of him the whole time, and give him a noogie afterwards. But then you'll cheer for him to win his middle school basketball game. Especially when the middle school basketball game is versus Notre Dame.
Second, I really don't like the thought of Colorado as a guaranteed win. Or even as an easy win. This is crazy hubris... would we overlook Illinois (similar S&P+ projection)? Hell no, we'd be terrified. So let's be terrified, not cocky.
Go Blue! Good article.