Australia, and the AFL, are dealing with it big time this week, as Sydney legend and indigenous role model Adam Goodes was once again the target of a preposterous amount of booing from the West Coast Eagle "fans" Sunday when the Swans traveled to Perth and were defeated soundly by the Eagles. While Goodes was one of the few shining lights for the red and white in the game, he was roundly booed every time he touched the ball, and one of his closest friends on the team, young indigenous player Lewis Jetta, showed his disgust to the crowd after a goal he scored by doing a very similar war dance to the one Goodes performed as part of his goal-scoring celebration during the actual Indigenous round two months ago.
Links to a series of articles are here displaying the length and breadth of support for Goodes on the one hand - a two-time Brownlow medalist as AFL player of the year and the 2014 Australian of the Year, for heaven's sake! - and the disgust for the racist behavior of an admitted minority of fans at stadiums across Australia.
Saddest of all, though, is that as strong as Goodes has been for a long time about the bigoted treatment he's been on the end of, it's finally worn him down. This week, starting on Tuesday, he asked for and received a leave of absence from the club for the time being, obviously to try and recover from the unwarranted vilification he's received. For a man with 365 games under his belt in the AFL, arguably one of the five greatest Swans players ever and certainly the greatest in the last twenty years, the four time All-Australian was looking forward to retirement that he may find the need to pull the trigger on prematurely to spare his own team the harsh spotlight of bigotry.
And if that happens, it will be perhaps the darkest day in AFL history, even more so than the murder of Phil Walsh a few weeks ago, because this will be one that their own fans brought upon it themselves.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
On the heels of another upset in the CFL comes THIS little gem!
From the CFL stats gurus themselves: The season has been SO unpredictable that...
...eight of nine teams have either two or three wins.
...five weeks of games have had three overtimes: as many as the last four YEARS combined!
...the CFL Pick'Em contestants (all 13,ooo of them!) have a collective six correct picks out of the first 20 games! (Which should now be 6 of 21, as BC was upset by Winnipeg tonight!)
...55% of the first five weeks of games (11 of 20) have been within four points!
SO...we don't feel so bad here at Following Football being 10-10 so far this year! (OK, 10-11...we had BC winning tonight, too...)
By the way, here are last week's finals, if you didn't already look 'em up:
Ottawa upset Calgary 29-26; Toronto managed to beat BC in Vancouver 30-27; Edmonton wiped out Winnipeg 32-3; and Hamilton went to Saskatchewan and made them 0-5, winning 31-21 (it was close until the last few minutes, though, tied in the fourth).
And, for all the good it does!, here's FF's calls for this weekend's remaining games:
We like Edmonton over Saskatchewan by eight; Montreal over Calgary (without their leading rusher Jon Cornish) by four; and Toronto by two at Hamilton.
(Therefore, you should probably bet on the Riders, Stamps, and TiCats...)
...eight of nine teams have either two or three wins.
...five weeks of games have had three overtimes: as many as the last four YEARS combined!
...the CFL Pick'Em contestants (all 13,ooo of them!) have a collective six correct picks out of the first 20 games! (Which should now be 6 of 21, as BC was upset by Winnipeg tonight!)
...55% of the first five weeks of games (11 of 20) have been within four points!
SO...we don't feel so bad here at Following Football being 10-10 so far this year! (OK, 10-11...we had BC winning tonight, too...)
By the way, here are last week's finals, if you didn't already look 'em up:
Ottawa upset Calgary 29-26; Toronto managed to beat BC in Vancouver 30-27; Edmonton wiped out Winnipeg 32-3; and Hamilton went to Saskatchewan and made them 0-5, winning 31-21 (it was close until the last few minutes, though, tied in the fourth).
And, for all the good it does!, here's FF's calls for this weekend's remaining games:
We like Edmonton over Saskatchewan by eight; Montreal over Calgary (without their leading rusher Jon Cornish) by four; and Toronto by two at Hamilton.
(Therefore, you should probably bet on the Riders, Stamps, and TiCats...)
Friday, July 24, 2015
Ah, yes, Player Rankings! Always entertaining! Occasionally informative!
Rarely productive! Always worthwhile for their true purpose, which is to stir up discussion and debate.
This is Bill Barnwell's top 100 NFL players for 2015, and within it you'll find embedded the NFL players' own list, as well as Barnwell's assessment of said list (most of which I agree with).
(Strictly speaking, the above link is the layout for the exercise, as well as players #100-61... here is the link for the second part of the article, posted on Friday, including his list of players #60-1.)
I'll be honest here, it's hard to argue with the top six of his list, for the reasons he lists (and implies)....and at the risk of violating "SPOILER ALERT" agreements, the nicest thing to me about the first three - Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay), Andrew Luck (Indianapolis), JJ Watt (Houston) - is that they are three of the most genuine, nicest men you would ever meet in any line of work, let alone professional football.
DO YOU AGREE WITH EITHER HIM OR THE NFLPA? (What are the odds? Infinitesimal, I'd think!) Comment with the most egregious errors...
This is Bill Barnwell's top 100 NFL players for 2015, and within it you'll find embedded the NFL players' own list, as well as Barnwell's assessment of said list (most of which I agree with).
(Strictly speaking, the above link is the layout for the exercise, as well as players #100-61... here is the link for the second part of the article, posted on Friday, including his list of players #60-1.)
I'll be honest here, it's hard to argue with the top six of his list, for the reasons he lists (and implies)....and at the risk of violating "SPOILER ALERT" agreements, the nicest thing to me about the first three - Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay), Andrew Luck (Indianapolis), JJ Watt (Houston) - is that they are three of the most genuine, nicest men you would ever meet in any line of work, let alone professional football.
DO YOU AGREE WITH EITHER HIM OR THE NFLPA? (What are the odds? Infinitesimal, I'd think!) Comment with the most egregious errors...
Monday, July 20, 2015
Money. That's what makes the NFL go 'round.
Let's just post this, verbatim, from ESPN's news feed. Compare the amounts for 2015 and from five years ago...
NFL teams each received $226.4 million from the NFL as part of national revenue sharing from the 2014 fiscal year.
The amount was revealed on Monday when the Green Bay Packers reported their share of the pie. The total surpassed $7.2 billion and comes mostly from the league's television deals.
The national-revenue-sharing pot, split 32 ways, is up from slightly more than $6 billion last year, because the new TV deals with CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC/ESPN and NFL Network kicked in this past season. The national-revenue-sharing amount is up 120 percent, factoring for inflation, over the past 11 years.
In the 2010 fiscal year, the league split a little more than $3 billion among its 32 teams.
An increase of 120% over the last eleven years. Almost enough to cover concussion lawsuits...
NFL teams each received $226.4 million from the NFL as part of national revenue sharing from the 2014 fiscal year.
The amount was revealed on Monday when the Green Bay Packers reported their share of the pie. The total surpassed $7.2 billion and comes mostly from the league's television deals.
The national-revenue-sharing pot, split 32 ways, is up from slightly more than $6 billion last year, because the new TV deals with CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC/ESPN and NFL Network kicked in this past season. The national-revenue-sharing amount is up 120 percent, factoring for inflation, over the past 11 years.
In the 2010 fiscal year, the league split a little more than $3 billion among its 32 teams.
An increase of 120% over the last eleven years. Almost enough to cover concussion lawsuits...
Sorry for the delay...
...but I've been out of it for a few days now. Let's catch you up on events from the last weekend's games:
CFL: There was a moment when the western division was four teams at 2-1...and Saskatchewan balancing the records at 0-4! They've lost four games by a total of twelve points, with two of those in overtime! (So, in our rating system, we actually count those as "losing by zero", so they've lost four games by seven points!) The RoughRiders have played well, and will win several games soon. But Calgary's back where they're used to being - leading the division at 3-1 now after a win against Winnipeg on Saturday. On the East side, Toronto sits at 2-1, with Montreal and Ottawa both at 2-2, and Hamilton at 1-2 with two tough losses to good teams - basically, it looks like if the RedBlacks are for real, it'll be a four team race all season long!
Last week's scores: Montreal over Hamilton, 17-13; Edmonton for the second time over Ottawa, 23-12; BC over the Riders for the second time, 27-24; and Calgary by one over Winnipeg, 26-25.
Round 5 forecast: Two easy picks.... Calgary over Ottawa and Edmonton over Winnipeg...and two that are too close to call...Toronto/British Columbia and Hamilton/Saskatchewan.
AFL: Two emotional games on Sunday - St. Kilda and Richmond played "Maddie's Match" honoring Madelaine Riewoldt, sister of SK's Nick and cousin of Richmond's Jack, who died of bone marrow failure syndrome in February; and of course the Adelaide Showcase, the first following the death of Adelaide Crows head coach Phil Walsh, who was a long time assistant coach with the Port Power as well - so, an emotional week, an emotional game for both teams. Many writers and pundits argued that it may change the fundamental nature of the adversarial relationship between the two teams going forward.
The other big story was Hawthorn's utter annihilation of fellow favorite Sydney by 89 points, IN Sydney, immediately following their 72-point rout over Fremantle last week. If you haven't already pencilled the Hawks in as the current favorites for the flag...do it now.
Last week's scores: Kangas by 25 over Essendon, 93-68; Geelong holding on vs. Western, 72-64; GWS holding off Gary Ablett's incredible game to beat Gold Coast 94-79; West Coast finishing off Collingwood's rough month ofer four winning 87-56 (Collingwood played four great teams, and played well enough that despite losing all four, they RAISED their rating about a point!); Fremantle surviving Carlton 95-53; Melbourne got four points by outlasting Brisbane 60-36; Richmond 89-73 over the Saints; Port Adelaide scores the last four goals...but needed five: Adelaide won, 116-113. And of course, Hawthorn 146, Sydney 57, but Lance Franklin kicked three incredible back-to-back-to-back goals in the second, the center one being his 700th all time.
Round 17 forecast: Hawthorn is favored by 69.5 points over Carlton; Adelaide should handle Gold Coast; take Port Adelaide over Essendon; North Melbourne should be able to beat Briabane (should, that is); St. Kilda looks more reliable than Melbourne; and Sydney probably has no answer for Nic Natainui in the ruck at West Coast. Not sure on Geelong/ GWS, but tradition says the Cats find a way; can Western take advantage of a Collingwood losing streak? Maybe... And believe it or not, we're taking Richmond on form over Fremantle this week!
CFL: There was a moment when the western division was four teams at 2-1...and Saskatchewan balancing the records at 0-4! They've lost four games by a total of twelve points, with two of those in overtime! (So, in our rating system, we actually count those as "losing by zero", so they've lost four games by seven points!) The RoughRiders have played well, and will win several games soon. But Calgary's back where they're used to being - leading the division at 3-1 now after a win against Winnipeg on Saturday. On the East side, Toronto sits at 2-1, with Montreal and Ottawa both at 2-2, and Hamilton at 1-2 with two tough losses to good teams - basically, it looks like if the RedBlacks are for real, it'll be a four team race all season long!
Last week's scores: Montreal over Hamilton, 17-13; Edmonton for the second time over Ottawa, 23-12; BC over the Riders for the second time, 27-24; and Calgary by one over Winnipeg, 26-25.
Round 5 forecast: Two easy picks.... Calgary over Ottawa and Edmonton over Winnipeg...and two that are too close to call...Toronto/British Columbia and Hamilton/Saskatchewan.
AFL: Two emotional games on Sunday - St. Kilda and Richmond played "Maddie's Match" honoring Madelaine Riewoldt, sister of SK's Nick and cousin of Richmond's Jack, who died of bone marrow failure syndrome in February; and of course the Adelaide Showcase, the first following the death of Adelaide Crows head coach Phil Walsh, who was a long time assistant coach with the Port Power as well - so, an emotional week, an emotional game for both teams. Many writers and pundits argued that it may change the fundamental nature of the adversarial relationship between the two teams going forward.
The other big story was Hawthorn's utter annihilation of fellow favorite Sydney by 89 points, IN Sydney, immediately following their 72-point rout over Fremantle last week. If you haven't already pencilled the Hawks in as the current favorites for the flag...do it now.
Last week's scores: Kangas by 25 over Essendon, 93-68; Geelong holding on vs. Western, 72-64; GWS holding off Gary Ablett's incredible game to beat Gold Coast 94-79; West Coast finishing off Collingwood's rough month ofer four winning 87-56 (Collingwood played four great teams, and played well enough that despite losing all four, they RAISED their rating about a point!); Fremantle surviving Carlton 95-53; Melbourne got four points by outlasting Brisbane 60-36; Richmond 89-73 over the Saints; Port Adelaide scores the last four goals...but needed five: Adelaide won, 116-113. And of course, Hawthorn 146, Sydney 57, but Lance Franklin kicked three incredible back-to-back-to-back goals in the second, the center one being his 700th all time.
Round 17 forecast: Hawthorn is favored by 69.5 points over Carlton; Adelaide should handle Gold Coast; take Port Adelaide over Essendon; North Melbourne should be able to beat Briabane (should, that is); St. Kilda looks more reliable than Melbourne; and Sydney probably has no answer for Nic Natainui in the ruck at West Coast. Not sure on Geelong/ GWS, but tradition says the Cats find a way; can Western take advantage of a Collingwood losing streak? Maybe... And believe it or not, we're taking Richmond on form over Fremantle this week!
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Optimism is such a wonderful thing!
ESPN asked each of its bloggers assigned to each of the 32 teams in the NFL to predict their team's record, independently of the other 31 bloggers.
They did so.
The records, as they sit, seem pretty reasonable...until you add them up.
Somehow, there will be fifty more wins than losses this year.
That's right: the NFL as a whole will go 281-231, apparently playing FCS schools like the Power Five do to puff up their records! Won't that be interesting?
So, here's the record synopsis. If you want to be closer to reality, subtract one win (technically, 25/32 of a win, just under .8) from each team and add it to the loss column:
NFC East: Dallas 11-5; Philly 10-6; NYG 8-8; Washington 6-10.
NFC North: GB 11-5; Minnesota 9-7; Detroit 8-8; Chicago 7-9.
NFC South: Carolina 10-6; NO Saints 10-6; Atlanta 8-8; Tampa 8-8. (This is my favorite! I think you can subtract all 25 wins from these teams and be more accurate. Remember, the Panthers won the division at 7-9 last year!)
NFC West: Seattle 11-5; Arizona 9-7; St. Louis 8-8; SF 7-9. (On the other hand, this may be about right!)
AFC East:New England 11-5 (but then again,that may be inflated!); Miami 9-7; Buffalo 9-7; NY Jets 8-8. (Hard to picture THIS division all at .500 or above, either!)
AFC North: Cincinnati 10-6; Pittsburgh 9-7; Baltimore 9-7; Cleveland 4-12.
AFC South: Indy 13-3; Houston 10-6; Jax 7-9; Tennessee 5-11.
AFC West: Denver 13-3; KC 9-7; SD 8-8; Oakland 6-10. Bring Denver and Indy down a game or two, and those are all about right!)
They did so.
The records, as they sit, seem pretty reasonable...until you add them up.
Somehow, there will be fifty more wins than losses this year.
That's right: the NFL as a whole will go 281-231, apparently playing FCS schools like the Power Five do to puff up their records! Won't that be interesting?
So, here's the record synopsis. If you want to be closer to reality, subtract one win (technically, 25/32 of a win, just under .8) from each team and add it to the loss column:
NFC East: Dallas 11-5; Philly 10-6; NYG 8-8; Washington 6-10.
NFC North: GB 11-5; Minnesota 9-7; Detroit 8-8; Chicago 7-9.
NFC South: Carolina 10-6; NO Saints 10-6; Atlanta 8-8; Tampa 8-8. (This is my favorite! I think you can subtract all 25 wins from these teams and be more accurate. Remember, the Panthers won the division at 7-9 last year!)
NFC West: Seattle 11-5; Arizona 9-7; St. Louis 8-8; SF 7-9. (On the other hand, this may be about right!)
AFC East:New England 11-5 (but then again,that may be inflated!); Miami 9-7; Buffalo 9-7; NY Jets 8-8. (Hard to picture THIS division all at .500 or above, either!)
AFC North: Cincinnati 10-6; Pittsburgh 9-7; Baltimore 9-7; Cleveland 4-12.
AFC South: Indy 13-3; Houston 10-6; Jax 7-9; Tennessee 5-11.
AFC West: Denver 13-3; KC 9-7; SD 8-8; Oakland 6-10. Bring Denver and Indy down a game or two, and those are all about right!)
Sunday, July 12, 2015
AFL Round 15 and CFL Round 3 results
Three-quarters of the Canadian weekend is complete, with the Calgary/Toronto game still coming tomorrow night. (There were no games on Saturday or Sunday for some unknown reason - if anyone knows, we'd love to find out!) Edmonton wiped Ottawa out 46-17; Winnipeg somehow held on to upset Montreal 25-23, and the BC Lions came from way behind to defeat Saskatchewan 35-32 in overtime, sending the RoughRiders to a surprising 0-3 start to the season.
Meanwhile, down under, they had another wild and exciting weekend of footy, starting with a GREAT game Thursday night where Port Adelaide managed to hold off a fast charging Collingwood team 66-63. Unfortunately, the Friday night game was as bad as the previous game was good - even the umpiring. Nevertheless, Richmond outscored Carlton by five goals and now sits sixth on the ladder, tied in record to Collingwood.
Saturday's games were a wild and varied bunch...Essendon found a heart, a bit of courage and maybe even some occasional brains as they found a way to upend Melbourne 69-60 in a muddled affair. Gold Coast led Western the entire game, with newly-returned Gary Ablett at the point...until The Bulldogs simply ran over the Suns in the fourth, scoring TEN goals to pass them and win by 22 points. And while Following Football took Geelong in the coin flip game, it was North Melbourne who came out of the blocks firing to win easily, 120-79. Finally, the most emotional game of the round (following Phil Walsh's death) was Adelaide at the West Coast Eagles, won by West Coast. But it was the love and sympathetic vibe that overwhelmed the Crows, especially after the match.
Sunday, the action started with the GWS Giants proving that they still belong among the elite AFL teams with a dominant win over the hot St. Kilda team 84-49. Sydney managed the four points over Brisbane, but the Lions actually led late in the third before the Swans put them away, and in the game of the weekend, the Hawthorn Hawks, defending champions twice running, put on their best show of the season by annihilating the 12-1 Fremantle Dockers by 72 points! While still sitting fourth on the ladder, it's hard not to see the Hawks as the current flag favorite after that demolition. They get to prove it with games in the next few rounds against the two other teams in front of them, Sydney and West Coast, which would move them into second (most likely) with two victories there.
Our current projections, however, actually match the current standings pretty well - Freo's run home is easy enough (and that 12-1 start gave them enough cushion) for them to have the inside lane and a big lead for that #1 seed, which would let them play in Western Australia up until the final...but since the final's in Melbourne (at the MCG, which happens to be Hawthorn's home!), that's become a scary proposition all of a sudden! We have Sydney, West Coast, and Hawthorn as too close to call for the 2, 3, and 4 spots, but it probably isn't a big deal except if West Coast gets the 2nd slot and the #3 team has to travel there to play. #5-8 in some order are projected to be the four teams there right now: Richmond, Western, Collingwood, and GWS (believe it or not), with North Melbourne and Adelaide coming up JUST short. It may actually TAKE thirteen wins to make finals this year!
Meanwhile, down under, they had another wild and exciting weekend of footy, starting with a GREAT game Thursday night where Port Adelaide managed to hold off a fast charging Collingwood team 66-63. Unfortunately, the Friday night game was as bad as the previous game was good - even the umpiring. Nevertheless, Richmond outscored Carlton by five goals and now sits sixth on the ladder, tied in record to Collingwood.
Saturday's games were a wild and varied bunch...Essendon found a heart, a bit of courage and maybe even some occasional brains as they found a way to upend Melbourne 69-60 in a muddled affair. Gold Coast led Western the entire game, with newly-returned Gary Ablett at the point...until The Bulldogs simply ran over the Suns in the fourth, scoring TEN goals to pass them and win by 22 points. And while Following Football took Geelong in the coin flip game, it was North Melbourne who came out of the blocks firing to win easily, 120-79. Finally, the most emotional game of the round (following Phil Walsh's death) was Adelaide at the West Coast Eagles, won by West Coast. But it was the love and sympathetic vibe that overwhelmed the Crows, especially after the match.
Sunday, the action started with the GWS Giants proving that they still belong among the elite AFL teams with a dominant win over the hot St. Kilda team 84-49. Sydney managed the four points over Brisbane, but the Lions actually led late in the third before the Swans put them away, and in the game of the weekend, the Hawthorn Hawks, defending champions twice running, put on their best show of the season by annihilating the 12-1 Fremantle Dockers by 72 points! While still sitting fourth on the ladder, it's hard not to see the Hawks as the current flag favorite after that demolition. They get to prove it with games in the next few rounds against the two other teams in front of them, Sydney and West Coast, which would move them into second (most likely) with two victories there.
Our current projections, however, actually match the current standings pretty well - Freo's run home is easy enough (and that 12-1 start gave them enough cushion) for them to have the inside lane and a big lead for that #1 seed, which would let them play in Western Australia up until the final...but since the final's in Melbourne (at the MCG, which happens to be Hawthorn's home!), that's become a scary proposition all of a sudden! We have Sydney, West Coast, and Hawthorn as too close to call for the 2, 3, and 4 spots, but it probably isn't a big deal except if West Coast gets the 2nd slot and the #3 team has to travel there to play. #5-8 in some order are projected to be the four teams there right now: Richmond, Western, Collingwood, and GWS (believe it or not), with North Melbourne and Adelaide coming up JUST short. It may actually TAKE thirteen wins to make finals this year!
Friday, July 10, 2015
Mourning one of the greats today...
Kenny Stabler, "The Snake", died yesterday from complications from colon cancer. The other article linked here from ESPN includes what little has been made public (completely appropriate, in our opinion: those details are none of our business), but also does a good job encapsulating the affect Stabler and those 1970's Raiders had on football fans of that era, like us here at Following Football.
The Raiders of the '70s were the Bad Boys of football - actually, they shaped the franchise for the next forty years in that image - like the Detroit Pistons of the early '90s, the Miami Heat of a few years ago, the Miami Hurricanes of the 80s. We need those "bad guys", the counter culture going against the grain of the corporate NFL or NCAA or NBA or whomever. You want the image of 32 franchises, working independently, or you want a corporation that doles out 32 subdivisions of itself to artificially compete? You need to have someone who doesn't toe the line - whatever you think of the Belechick Patriots, we need them in the league. Or someone like them, since the Raiders aren't really relevant at the moment.
That's another key - they've got to be good. And the Stabler Raiders were good, alright. They went to several playoffs in a row during his tenure there, including a Super Bowl victory at the end of the 1976 season over the Vikings. His teammates were and are fiercely loyal to their old field general, as the two articles linked show.
On a side note, this little tidbit was tucked away at the end of an article:
Stabler's brain and spinal cord were donated to Boston University's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center to support research into degenerative brain disease among athletes, according to the family.
Boston U's Encephalopathy Center has the brains of several dozen football players (all deceased, duh!) and has developed a great wealth of data on the damage football players take playing the game - we never want to tell people what to do with their lives, but we want players to know up front what they're getting into.
The Raiders of the '70s were the Bad Boys of football - actually, they shaped the franchise for the next forty years in that image - like the Detroit Pistons of the early '90s, the Miami Heat of a few years ago, the Miami Hurricanes of the 80s. We need those "bad guys", the counter culture going against the grain of the corporate NFL or NCAA or NBA or whomever. You want the image of 32 franchises, working independently, or you want a corporation that doles out 32 subdivisions of itself to artificially compete? You need to have someone who doesn't toe the line - whatever you think of the Belechick Patriots, we need them in the league. Or someone like them, since the Raiders aren't really relevant at the moment.
That's another key - they've got to be good. And the Stabler Raiders were good, alright. They went to several playoffs in a row during his tenure there, including a Super Bowl victory at the end of the 1976 season over the Vikings. His teammates were and are fiercely loyal to their old field general, as the two articles linked show.
On a side note, this little tidbit was tucked away at the end of an article:
Stabler's brain and spinal cord were donated to Boston University's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center to support research into degenerative brain disease among athletes, according to the family.
Boston U's Encephalopathy Center has the brains of several dozen football players (all deceased, duh!) and has developed a great wealth of data on the damage football players take playing the game - we never want to tell people what to do with their lives, but we want players to know up front what they're getting into.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Alright, so we're experimenting here...
To be frank, we're not all that satisfied with our ELO rating system, for either Australian Rules Football or for the Canadian brand in the CFL so far this season. It's doing an adequate job of forecasting the outcome of games, but no better than what we can do on our own - and in the CFL, that's saying something!
Sidelight: Here's how unpredictable the CFL has been so far this year. For comparison, we'll start with the footy season...
In the tipping contest AFL.com.au is running, the range of scores from the contestants spans from a low right around 50% correct (flipping a coin) to a high of 77% (we are currently running very close to the top, around 75%). An average score is around 60%. Got all that?
For the CFL contest, there have been eight games played so far.
NOBODY has gotten all eight right.
Only TWO people (out of 11,000) have gotten SEVEN right.
We have successfully predicted only three out of the eight games so far, worse than fifty-fifty...yet we are in the top-half of the contest (the average score is about 2 1/2 right, out of eight).
We are still doing better than the professionals, however: BoDog, the official gambling outlet for the CFL, has posted the line for each game and been WRONG 75% choosing the winner.
Impressively, the CFL.ca writer in charge of predicting games for the league, Jamie Nye, is five for eight so far - WAY above average!
The problem has been the quarterbacks: So many have been knocked out of games that the favorites become the underdogs DURING the game! In four of the games already, starters have left the game for the favorites, leaving the underdogs to rise up and win. Two others were severely altered by substitute QB play, one in either direction (we can't WAIT to see Marshall's Rakeem Cato play again for Montreal!).
So, back to our experiment:
One of the difficulties with taking as your starting point the way a team ended the previous season is that they change so much over the off-season, and your rating can't keep up because you can't know how those changes will work. So we're re-calculating the seasons in various different ways, by hand, and placing more emphasis on the first of the season games and then tapering off to the normal rate of adjustment as the teams settle in. So far, though, while we've created versions that match the more conventional ratings and power rankings, we've not been able to make one which more accurately predicts the games themselves, which was the entire point of reworking the model.
So, we're still re-working the model. Until then, you'll continue to see the version we've been running. By the way, speaking of that...
CFL - entering Week 3
Hamilton (41.5) - 1-1
Toronto (35.1) - 2-0
Calgary (32.9) - 1-1
Edmonton (30.4) - 0-1
Montreal (29.8) - 1-1
BC Lions (27.4) - 0-1
Saskatchewan (27.0) 0-2
Ottawa (24.4) - 2-0
Winnipeg (21.5) - 1-1
AFL - entering Round 15
Hawthorn (82.8) - 9-4
West Coast (78.5) - 10-3
Sydney (70.0) - 10-3
Fremantle (67.1) - 12-1
Richmond (61.0) - 8-5
Collingwood (60.0) - 8-5
Geelong (57.7) - 6-6-1
Port Adelaide (56.1) - 5-8
Adelaide (52.8) - 7-5-1
North Melbourne (52.2) - 6-7
Western Bulldogs (44.8) - 8-5
GWS Giants (41.7) - 7-6
St. Kilda (36.4) - 5-8
Gold Coast (31.6) - 2-11
Melbourne (30.8) - 4-9
Essendon (30.1) - 4-9
Carlton (26.5) - 3-10
Brisbane (18.9) - 2-11
Sidelight: Here's how unpredictable the CFL has been so far this year. For comparison, we'll start with the footy season...
In the tipping contest AFL.com.au is running, the range of scores from the contestants spans from a low right around 50% correct (flipping a coin) to a high of 77% (we are currently running very close to the top, around 75%). An average score is around 60%. Got all that?
For the CFL contest, there have been eight games played so far.
NOBODY has gotten all eight right.
Only TWO people (out of 11,000) have gotten SEVEN right.
We have successfully predicted only three out of the eight games so far, worse than fifty-fifty...yet we are in the top-half of the contest (the average score is about 2 1/2 right, out of eight).
We are still doing better than the professionals, however: BoDog, the official gambling outlet for the CFL, has posted the line for each game and been WRONG 75% choosing the winner.
Impressively, the CFL.ca writer in charge of predicting games for the league, Jamie Nye, is five for eight so far - WAY above average!
The problem has been the quarterbacks: So many have been knocked out of games that the favorites become the underdogs DURING the game! In four of the games already, starters have left the game for the favorites, leaving the underdogs to rise up and win. Two others were severely altered by substitute QB play, one in either direction (we can't WAIT to see Marshall's Rakeem Cato play again for Montreal!).
So, back to our experiment:
One of the difficulties with taking as your starting point the way a team ended the previous season is that they change so much over the off-season, and your rating can't keep up because you can't know how those changes will work. So we're re-calculating the seasons in various different ways, by hand, and placing more emphasis on the first of the season games and then tapering off to the normal rate of adjustment as the teams settle in. So far, though, while we've created versions that match the more conventional ratings and power rankings, we've not been able to make one which more accurately predicts the games themselves, which was the entire point of reworking the model.
So, we're still re-working the model. Until then, you'll continue to see the version we've been running. By the way, speaking of that...
CFL - entering Week 3
Hamilton (41.5) - 1-1
Toronto (35.1) - 2-0
Calgary (32.9) - 1-1
Edmonton (30.4) - 0-1
Montreal (29.8) - 1-1
BC Lions (27.4) - 0-1
Saskatchewan (27.0) 0-2
Ottawa (24.4) - 2-0
Winnipeg (21.5) - 1-1
AFL - entering Round 15
Hawthorn (82.8) - 9-4
West Coast (78.5) - 10-3
Sydney (70.0) - 10-3
Fremantle (67.1) - 12-1
Richmond (61.0) - 8-5
Collingwood (60.0) - 8-5
Geelong (57.7) - 6-6-1
Port Adelaide (56.1) - 5-8
Adelaide (52.8) - 7-5-1
North Melbourne (52.2) - 6-7
Western Bulldogs (44.8) - 8-5
GWS Giants (41.7) - 7-6
St. Kilda (36.4) - 5-8
Gold Coast (31.6) - 2-11
Melbourne (30.8) - 4-9
Essendon (30.1) - 4-9
Carlton (26.5) - 3-10
Brisbane (18.9) - 2-11
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Here's how far Essendon has fallen...
If you were wondering just how fast and far the Essendon Bombers are falling, here's exhibit A:
Their opponent, the Melbourne Demons, is favored for the first time all season (it's round 15). Prior to this, they were the underdogs against every single team in the competition for every game, by a total of almost 400 points.
They're 5 1/2 point favorites Saturday.
Their opponent, the Melbourne Demons, is favored for the first time all season (it's round 15). Prior to this, they were the underdogs against every single team in the competition for every game, by a total of almost 400 points.
They're 5 1/2 point favorites Saturday.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Predictions for AFL's round 15!
This week's got a HOST of close games! Stay close to FF, and we'll guide you through!
Thursday night (3:20 am Th morning for the Mountain zone in the US):
Collingwood goes to Port Adelaide - the numbers argue in Port's favor, but don't believe them: Collingwood wins definitively. They are playing great footy right now, the equals of Hawthorn and Fremantle the last two weeks, while Port has realized they're not going to make any noise in 2015 and are riding out the string.
Friday night (3:40 a.m. Friday MDT):
Carlton at Richmond - the Blues have been getting better each week, but as I-man likes to say around here, "Better than bad isn't good." Plan on Richmond winning by plenty, although Carlton will fight hard and tackle well to keep it from being unreasonable.
Saturday's games:
Melbourne plays Essendon - this one's painfully easy, after watching the Bombers lose to St. Kilda by 110 points and watching the players and coaches not care about it. Bet the house on Melbourne. (Not your own house, silly!) I also don't see how coach James Hird can possibly survive nine more games this way.
Gold Coast travels to play the Western Bulldogs - B.A., we'd've said Doggies all the way. (B.A. means "Before Ablett".) With the Little Master's return last week, we suddenly saw the Gold Coast Suns we all thought were finals-bound back in March. Gold Coast in an upset.
Geelong at North Melbourne - The spread on this game is zero, and the ratings on this game are less than half a point, or essentially zero. Close game! We think having twenty days off (between a bye week and the cancellation last Sunday post-death of Adelaide's coach) is a GREAT thing for an older team like Geelong, so we're taking the Cats over the Kangaroos.
Adelaide travels to play West Coast, in the most emotional game of the weekend. Before becoming head man in Adelaide this season, the late Phil Walsh was second in command at West Coast, so both of these teams miss him terribly. When it comes down to nuts and bolts, though, the Eagles are simply better than the Adelaide Crows, probably by 30 or so.
Sunday's games:
St. Kilda at Greater Western Sydney - while the Saints looked great last week, they were playing "witches' hats", or traffic cones; no real competition. GWS figured some things out over their bye and came out strong against Richmond...and St. Kilda ain't Richmond. GWS by three goals.
Fremantle v Hawthorn in Tasmania, where the Hawks have only lost once at their "home away from home"...and as great as the Dockers have been in 2015, Hawthorn won't lose this one, either. Hawthorn by twenty.
Sydney Swans at Brisbane Lions - the one rout (on paper) of round fifteen. (Amazing. Usually, there are at least a few lopsided games!) Sydney's favored by 40, our ratings have it at 46, and the only thing keeping it from going out of hand might be cold weather, showers, or other possible inclimate conditions which might keep the game close for a while. But, like the Lions' valiant effort in Fremantle last Sunday, they'll fight hard and still come away without any premiership points. Sydney wins by about 25-35.
Thursday night (3:20 am Th morning for the Mountain zone in the US):
Collingwood goes to Port Adelaide - the numbers argue in Port's favor, but don't believe them: Collingwood wins definitively. They are playing great footy right now, the equals of Hawthorn and Fremantle the last two weeks, while Port has realized they're not going to make any noise in 2015 and are riding out the string.
Friday night (3:40 a.m. Friday MDT):
Carlton at Richmond - the Blues have been getting better each week, but as I-man likes to say around here, "Better than bad isn't good." Plan on Richmond winning by plenty, although Carlton will fight hard and tackle well to keep it from being unreasonable.
Saturday's games:
Melbourne plays Essendon - this one's painfully easy, after watching the Bombers lose to St. Kilda by 110 points and watching the players and coaches not care about it. Bet the house on Melbourne. (Not your own house, silly!) I also don't see how coach James Hird can possibly survive nine more games this way.
Gold Coast travels to play the Western Bulldogs - B.A., we'd've said Doggies all the way. (B.A. means "Before Ablett".) With the Little Master's return last week, we suddenly saw the Gold Coast Suns we all thought were finals-bound back in March. Gold Coast in an upset.
Geelong at North Melbourne - The spread on this game is zero, and the ratings on this game are less than half a point, or essentially zero. Close game! We think having twenty days off (between a bye week and the cancellation last Sunday post-death of Adelaide's coach) is a GREAT thing for an older team like Geelong, so we're taking the Cats over the Kangaroos.
Adelaide travels to play West Coast, in the most emotional game of the weekend. Before becoming head man in Adelaide this season, the late Phil Walsh was second in command at West Coast, so both of these teams miss him terribly. When it comes down to nuts and bolts, though, the Eagles are simply better than the Adelaide Crows, probably by 30 or so.
Sunday's games:
St. Kilda at Greater Western Sydney - while the Saints looked great last week, they were playing "witches' hats", or traffic cones; no real competition. GWS figured some things out over their bye and came out strong against Richmond...and St. Kilda ain't Richmond. GWS by three goals.
Fremantle v Hawthorn in Tasmania, where the Hawks have only lost once at their "home away from home"...and as great as the Dockers have been in 2015, Hawthorn won't lose this one, either. Hawthorn by twenty.
Sydney Swans at Brisbane Lions - the one rout (on paper) of round fifteen. (Amazing. Usually, there are at least a few lopsided games!) Sydney's favored by 40, our ratings have it at 46, and the only thing keeping it from going out of hand might be cold weather, showers, or other possible inclimate conditions which might keep the game close for a while. But, like the Lions' valiant effort in Fremantle last Sunday, they'll fight hard and still come away without any premiership points. Sydney wins by about 25-35.
College and pro football seasons are just around the corner!
And the Following Football ACNC team will be all over it! We are currently making all of our preparations so that come September, we can provide you with the best insight into not only the 32 teams of the National Football League, but all 128 NCAA Bowl Division (1-A) teams, AND coverage of the 125 NCAA "1-AA" Football Championship Series" teams as well!
Mind you, while our coverage of the Australian and Canadian leagues has been thorough, and our predictions cover every team for every game, there are just nine CFL teams and only eighteen AFL clubs to keep track of. Multiplying those 27 by ten or eleven will mean we may not predict every game for every team. We've promised to cover what we can handle, so YOU get the best coverage you can get!
Right now our plan is wall-to-wall in the NFL and the Power Five conferences, wall-to-wall for all the teams in the FBS Group Of Five and the FCS Playoff conferences that our loyal readers tell us they want to see covered (right now, there's a profusion of Mountain West and Big Sky teams, logical as we're based here in Idaho), and as much coverage as we can on the rest.
We are in the process of setting up our grids for schedules, spreads, trends, and standings, and despite our high record of success last year, we predict our predictions will be far superior to last year's results!
[Now, what does that mean for our other interests? Rugby? Futbol? Arena League? Well, we'll pass on our thoughts and stories as they come up, but they are NOT our focus. We're certainly not going to try to prognosticate in any of those areas when our knowledge of them is about as intimate as our knowledge of, say, Jessica Alba or Jennifer Lawrence.]
American Football season is almost upon us! Sit back and enjoy the games with your friends here at FOLLOWING FOOTBALL ACNC!
Mind you, while our coverage of the Australian and Canadian leagues has been thorough, and our predictions cover every team for every game, there are just nine CFL teams and only eighteen AFL clubs to keep track of. Multiplying those 27 by ten or eleven will mean we may not predict every game for every team. We've promised to cover what we can handle, so YOU get the best coverage you can get!
Right now our plan is wall-to-wall in the NFL and the Power Five conferences, wall-to-wall for all the teams in the FBS Group Of Five and the FCS Playoff conferences that our loyal readers tell us they want to see covered (right now, there's a profusion of Mountain West and Big Sky teams, logical as we're based here in Idaho), and as much coverage as we can on the rest.
We are in the process of setting up our grids for schedules, spreads, trends, and standings, and despite our high record of success last year, we predict our predictions will be far superior to last year's results!
[Now, what does that mean for our other interests? Rugby? Futbol? Arena League? Well, we'll pass on our thoughts and stories as they come up, but they are NOT our focus. We're certainly not going to try to prognosticate in any of those areas when our knowledge of them is about as intimate as our knowledge of, say, Jessica Alba or Jennifer Lawrence.]
American Football season is almost upon us! Sit back and enjoy the games with your friends here at FOLLOWING FOOTBALL ACNC!
Football "exchange program"?
Cam Newton of the NFL's Carolina Panthers is in Melbourne, Australia, this week as part of his sponsorship deal with Gatorade, apparently - one article called it part of a "football exchange program", which confuses me, TBH. For reasons unclear to us, he's latched on to Chris Newman of the AFL's Richmond Tigers, the stellar defenseman who recently passed the 250-game plateau.
"We've got the same initials...the same number on our back: uno; and, you know, the same swag," Newton said in this piece on afl.com.au's Footy Feed. (Go towards the five minute mark or so.) Newton is probably one of the minority of NFL players with the all-around athleticism to be able to play the Australian game well, and the video piece shows him in a Richmond jumper learning the fine points of footy kicking style.
In particular, it was interesting to watch the star NFL player evaluate the Australian version of the game:
"We've got the same initials...the same number on our back: uno; and, you know, the same swag," Newton said in this piece on afl.com.au's Footy Feed. (Go towards the five minute mark or so.) Newton is probably one of the minority of NFL players with the all-around athleticism to be able to play the Australian game well, and the video piece shows him in a Richmond jumper learning the fine points of footy kicking style.
In particular, it was interesting to watch the star NFL player evaluate the Australian version of the game:
Newton said he had never watched a game of AFL before attending the Collingwood-Hawthorn game at the MCG on Friday night and then the Tigers' clash with Greater Western Sydney on Saturday.
"It's an extremely physical game," Newton said.
"In our sport, they're constantly putting things on you to protect you. In this sport, they're taking things away.
"All they're wearing is a tank top and a pair of boxers (boxer shorts) and going out there and giving it all they have which makes them courageous."
Monday, July 6, 2015
Okay, now all the votes are in...
...from The Age, Sports Fan Australia, Following Football, and AFL.com.au, and here's your All-AFL 2015 team at mid-season:
Behind the 50:
Alex Rance (Rich) - the outstanding on-ball defender in the game today.
Sam Mitchell (Haw)
Michael Hurley (Ess)
Jarred McVeigh (Syd)
Tom McDonald (Mel)
Matt Boyd (Western)
Between the 50s:
Nat Fyfe (Fre) - Polled 6+ points voting EVERY round Freo's played (no one else has polled in more than 10 of their games)
Matt Priddis (WCE)
David Armitage (StK)
Todd Goldstein (NMK)
Dan Hannebury (Syd)
Dylan Shiel (GWS)
Forward of 50:
Lance Franklin (Syd) - it's rare that the highest paid player's also the best, but Buddy is...
Scott Pendelbury (Col)
Luke Parker (Syd)
Jamie Elliot (Col)
Josh Kennedy (WCE)
Eddie Betts (Ade)
Interchange:
Aaron Sandilands (Fre) - the premier ruckman in the game today.
Andrew Gaff (WCE)
Corey Enright (Geel)
Patrick Dangerfield (Ade)
And, on my personal wish list to watch play any day of the week:
Cyril Rioli (Haw) - Along with Betts, the most exciting player in the game!
Jeremy Cameron (GWS) - the top goal scorer of 2017 and beyond...
Adam Goodes (Syd) - enjoying a fantastic resurgence since May!
Nic Natainui (WCE) - the most athletic player in footy
Rob Murphy (WB) - always on the ball, literally
Marcus Bontempelli (WB) - 2019 Brownlow medalist
Chad Wingard (PA) - a down year for him and Port; still a phenomenal player
Jack Riewoldt (Rich) - Jack would have been player 23 on the All-Aussie list
Jesse Hogan (Melb) - rookie of the year, possibly
Gary Ablett, Jr. (GC) - it took just one game to remind us why he's the greatest player of his generation and the Brownlow favorite any year he's healthy (and some he's not, like 2014!).
(And, by the way, here are our top 22 point getters in voting for Player of the Year so far:)
NAME TEAM POINTS
Behind the 50:
Alex Rance (Rich) - the outstanding on-ball defender in the game today.
Sam Mitchell (Haw)
Michael Hurley (Ess)
Jarred McVeigh (Syd)
Tom McDonald (Mel)
Matt Boyd (Western)
Between the 50s:
Nat Fyfe (Fre) - Polled 6+ points voting EVERY round Freo's played (no one else has polled in more than 10 of their games)
Matt Priddis (WCE)
David Armitage (StK)
Todd Goldstein (NMK)
Dan Hannebury (Syd)
Dylan Shiel (GWS)
Forward of 50:
Lance Franklin (Syd) - it's rare that the highest paid player's also the best, but Buddy is...
Scott Pendelbury (Col)
Luke Parker (Syd)
Jamie Elliot (Col)
Josh Kennedy (WCE)
Eddie Betts (Ade)
Interchange:
Aaron Sandilands (Fre) - the premier ruckman in the game today.
Andrew Gaff (WCE)
Corey Enright (Geel)
Patrick Dangerfield (Ade)
And, on my personal wish list to watch play any day of the week:
Cyril Rioli (Haw) - Along with Betts, the most exciting player in the game!
Jeremy Cameron (GWS) - the top goal scorer of 2017 and beyond...
Adam Goodes (Syd) - enjoying a fantastic resurgence since May!
Nic Natainui (WCE) - the most athletic player in footy
Rob Murphy (WB) - always on the ball, literally
Marcus Bontempelli (WB) - 2019 Brownlow medalist
Chad Wingard (PA) - a down year for him and Port; still a phenomenal player
Jack Riewoldt (Rich) - Jack would have been player 23 on the All-Aussie list
Jesse Hogan (Melb) - rookie of the year, possibly
Gary Ablett, Jr. (GC) - it took just one game to remind us why he's the greatest player of his generation and the Brownlow favorite any year he's healthy (and some he's not, like 2014!).
(And, by the way, here are our top 22 point getters in voting for Player of the Year so far:)
NAME TEAM POINTS
| Fyfe, Nat | F | 221 |
| Hannebury, Dan | SY | 124 |
| Armitage, David | SK | 112 |
| Pendlebury, Scott | CO | 106 |
| Cotchin, Trent | R | 101 |
| Shiel, Dylan | GW | 100 |
| Mitchell, Sam | H | 92 |
| Priddis, Matt | WC | 91 |
| Goldstein, Todd | NM | 88 |
| Steven, Jack | SK | 83 |
| Gray, Robbie | PA | 81 |
| Murphy, Marc | CA | 80 |
| Beams, Dayne | B | 80 |
| Franklin, Lance | SY | 79 |
| Kennedy, Josh | SY | 75 |
| Martin, Dustin | R | 74 |
| Dangerfield, Patrick | A | 73 |
| Gaff, Andrew | WC | 73 |
| Hurley, Michael | E | 70 |
| Parker, Luke | SY | 70 |
| Murphy, Robert | WB | 69 |
| Neale, Lachie | F | 68 |
Here is the Canadian Football season in a nutshell so far:
Our selections in the AFL have been spot on all year; we've gotten 84 out of 116 correct this season, (75%) and sit in the top third of 1% in every grouping we're part of in the official AFL "tipping" contest (that's what they call predicting down under). So we know how to pick games.
In the CFL, we're 3 out of 8 so far. (Which is better than the odds makers at BoDog, the official CFL gambling site, who have only gotten two games right so far.) Despite what actually passes as worse than "flip a coin" prognostication, we're in the top half of the pool already, and moving up. Go figure.
Last weekend, in Round 2, the Eastern Division somehow went 4-0 against the "vastly superior" West, with Hamilton annihilating 1-0 Winnipeg 52-26 - and that was the LEAST of the four results! - "quarterbackless Montreal crushing defending champion Calgary 29-11 behind first-time starter Raheem Cato (of Marshall U fame); Ottawa matched its 2014 win total sixteen games early by upending the British Columbia Lions 27-16; and in the game of the young season so far, two incredibly proficient teams went toe-to-toe, slugging it out as long as theoretically possible - more on that in a moment - before Toronto upset Saskatchewan in the Mosaic in Regina 42-40 in double overtime. Two great writers to follow on Canadian football are Don Landry and Pat Steinberg on cfl.ca; here are their wrap-ups.
Backup QB Trevor Harris drove the Argonauts down for the tying score late in the fourth, and the teams traded touchdowns (and missed mandatory 2-pt conversions) in the first overtime together. In the CFL, OTs are run in the same basic Kansas City format the NCAA uses, except each possession starts from the 35 (the extra ten yards account for the goal posts being ten yards closer, on the goal line itself). They only allow two overtimes at most in a regular season game, and 2-pt conversions are required on all TDs. The Roughriders made their second TD to come within two of Toronto in the second OT, and then on the by-definition last play of the game, the Argos stopped Saskatchewan from converting to win the game by two.
So right now, Toronto and Ottawa are 2-0 in the East (Toronto has a 17 point higher rating at the moment), with Hamilton and Montreal a game back at 1-1. Calgary still leads the West, tied with Winnipeg at 1-1; BC and Edmonton each sit at 0-1, and the Roughriders have looked good two straight weeks and are 0-2 to show for it.
Next week, we see these likelihoods:
Edmonton over Ottawa 19-13 at home...Winnipeg at home over Montreal 28-23...Saskatchewan over BC 30-24 in Vancouver...Calgary edging Toronto 24-23 at home. The Hamilton Ti-Cats have the week off.
In the CFL, we're 3 out of 8 so far. (Which is better than the odds makers at BoDog, the official CFL gambling site, who have only gotten two games right so far.) Despite what actually passes as worse than "flip a coin" prognostication, we're in the top half of the pool already, and moving up. Go figure.
Last weekend, in Round 2, the Eastern Division somehow went 4-0 against the "vastly superior" West, with Hamilton annihilating 1-0 Winnipeg 52-26 - and that was the LEAST of the four results! - "quarterbackless Montreal crushing defending champion Calgary 29-11 behind first-time starter Raheem Cato (of Marshall U fame); Ottawa matched its 2014 win total sixteen games early by upending the British Columbia Lions 27-16; and in the game of the young season so far, two incredibly proficient teams went toe-to-toe, slugging it out as long as theoretically possible - more on that in a moment - before Toronto upset Saskatchewan in the Mosaic in Regina 42-40 in double overtime. Two great writers to follow on Canadian football are Don Landry and Pat Steinberg on cfl.ca; here are their wrap-ups.
Backup QB Trevor Harris drove the Argonauts down for the tying score late in the fourth, and the teams traded touchdowns (and missed mandatory 2-pt conversions) in the first overtime together. In the CFL, OTs are run in the same basic Kansas City format the NCAA uses, except each possession starts from the 35 (the extra ten yards account for the goal posts being ten yards closer, on the goal line itself). They only allow two overtimes at most in a regular season game, and 2-pt conversions are required on all TDs. The Roughriders made their second TD to come within two of Toronto in the second OT, and then on the by-definition last play of the game, the Argos stopped Saskatchewan from converting to win the game by two.
So right now, Toronto and Ottawa are 2-0 in the East (Toronto has a 17 point higher rating at the moment), with Hamilton and Montreal a game back at 1-1. Calgary still leads the West, tied with Winnipeg at 1-1; BC and Edmonton each sit at 0-1, and the Roughriders have looked good two straight weeks and are 0-2 to show for it.
Next week, we see these likelihoods:
Edmonton over Ottawa 19-13 at home...Winnipeg at home over Montreal 28-23...Saskatchewan over BC 30-24 in Vancouver...Calgary edging Toronto 24-23 at home. The Hamilton Ti-Cats have the week off.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
If all soccer games were 5-2,...
...they would be easier to watch. But the Women's World Cup championship match was 2-0 before we sat down, 4-0 after Carli Lloyd scored from midfield, sixteen minutes in (not a fluke: Carli saw the Japanese keeper sneaking out of the goal box and simply launched it over her), and the (North) American celebration was on by halftime in Vancouver's BC Place.
No penalty kicks. No ridiculous referee decisions to determine the outcome. No ridiculously faked injuries. (No Sepp Blatter, either.)
No penalty kicks. No ridiculous referee decisions to determine the outcome. No ridiculously faked injuries. (No Sepp Blatter, either.)
AFL Round 14 in review
The biggest rout of the year took place on Sunday afternoon (which was Saturday night here in the US), when St Kilda upset free-falling Essendon by the astronomical score of 162-52, a 110-point victory!
Throughout the game, the Saints played against a defense that resembled cones in a practice drill (or "witches' hats", if you prefer the down under term). To score 25 goals in a game is hard to do in a game of footy, but the lack of energy in the Bomber personnel was, to be kind, disheartening.
The commemoration of murdered Adelaide head coach Phil Walsh, begun Friday night at the Collingwood/Hawthorn game, continued at every game throughout the weekend - a stirring tribute to a fellow "lifer" from the footy community. The idea that teams can go tooth-and-nail for two hours and then come together and live out the Adelaide 2015 campaign motto, #weflyasone, was superb. We posted Rohan Connelly's plea to continue the camaraderie beyond this weekend, and we join him in those pleas.
As for the actual games that were played this weekend...
Sydney over Port Adelaide by 10; Hawthorn by 10 over Collingwood; Richmond struggled past a toughened GWS with a nine-point win, and Western had the same difficulty with Carlton before they managed an eleven-point victory. Gold Coast welcomed both David Swallow and dual-Brownlow winner Gary Ablett Jr. back Saturday, and apparently that was all they needed, as they annihilated the North Melbourne Kangaroos 125-70 (and it wasn't that close). We talked about St Kilda's 110-point whipping of Essendon, but the West Coast Eagles beat up on Melbourne as well, winning 114-60. Brisbane held up against league-leader Fremantle for three quarters, tied throughout in wet, messy conditions that made it a tackler's paradise (more tackles were made in this game than every game ever except one (a game (there was a Richmond/Port game in 2010 with an unimaginable 258 tackles, or one every 25 seconds or so. Ridiculous.) Unfortunately, there are four quarters, and Freo scored seven goals to one in the last to win, 84-48.
The Adelaide / Geelong game was cancelled, but the stadium was opened for fans to come onto the field and pay their respects, kick the football around parts of the field, and share their grief with other mourners. Adelaide is presumed to be back to work next week, with a game at West Coast on Saturday evening.
Throughout the game, the Saints played against a defense that resembled cones in a practice drill (or "witches' hats", if you prefer the down under term). To score 25 goals in a game is hard to do in a game of footy, but the lack of energy in the Bomber personnel was, to be kind, disheartening.
The commemoration of murdered Adelaide head coach Phil Walsh, begun Friday night at the Collingwood/Hawthorn game, continued at every game throughout the weekend - a stirring tribute to a fellow "lifer" from the footy community. The idea that teams can go tooth-and-nail for two hours and then come together and live out the Adelaide 2015 campaign motto, #weflyasone, was superb. We posted Rohan Connelly's plea to continue the camaraderie beyond this weekend, and we join him in those pleas.
As for the actual games that were played this weekend...
Sydney over Port Adelaide by 10; Hawthorn by 10 over Collingwood; Richmond struggled past a toughened GWS with a nine-point win, and Western had the same difficulty with Carlton before they managed an eleven-point victory. Gold Coast welcomed both David Swallow and dual-Brownlow winner Gary Ablett Jr. back Saturday, and apparently that was all they needed, as they annihilated the North Melbourne Kangaroos 125-70 (and it wasn't that close). We talked about St Kilda's 110-point whipping of Essendon, but the West Coast Eagles beat up on Melbourne as well, winning 114-60. Brisbane held up against league-leader Fremantle for three quarters, tied throughout in wet, messy conditions that made it a tackler's paradise (more tackles were made in this game than every game ever except one (a game (there was a Richmond/Port game in 2010 with an unimaginable 258 tackles, or one every 25 seconds or so. Ridiculous.) Unfortunately, there are four quarters, and Freo scored seven goals to one in the last to win, 84-48.
The Adelaide / Geelong game was cancelled, but the stadium was opened for fans to come onto the field and pay their respects, kick the football around parts of the field, and share their grief with other mourners. Adelaide is presumed to be back to work next week, with a game at West Coast on Saturday evening.
WHAT COLLEGE OR NFL TEAMS DO OUR READERS ROOT FOR?
As we approach the American football season, with training camps right around the corner, we at Following Football want to focus on those teams that our readers want most to know about! (After all, there are 287 NFL and NCAA Division 1 teams out there - we can't "focus" on all of them!)
So, let Following Football know - what's your favorite football team? We'll make sure to cover them with some extra emphasis this season!
[And in the meantime, come check out our coverage of the Aussie Rules footy season, now halfway through the home-and-away schedule with the Grand Final at the beginning of October, and the Canadian Football League, which is just finishing round two in pursuit of the Grey Cup at the end of November.]
So, let Following Football know - what's your favorite football team? We'll make sure to cover them with some extra emphasis this season!
[And in the meantime, come check out our coverage of the Aussie Rules footy season, now halfway through the home-and-away schedule with the Grand Final at the beginning of October, and the Canadian Football League, which is just finishing round two in pursuit of the Grey Cup at the end of November.]
Sometimes a pivotal moment in time is clear enough to allow us a choice of paths
Rohan Connelly of The Age has a remarkable point in the wake of the death of and mourning for Adelaide coach Phil Walsh Friday and this weekend.
Can we change our day-to-day culture in this moment in time?
Can we stop thinking that sport is more important than life? (And this means not just footy but American football, soccer, whichever sport dominates your thinking.)
Can we allow our players to smile occasionally after a loss? Can we allow them to skip the angst we've always demanded from our defeated players?
Can we remember that not only are our players not superhuman, not personal role models?
Can we remember instead that they are young men (and women!), some barely out of their teens (and the college kids may not even be that old), and don't have the life experience yet to have the same well-thought out positions on the major social issues of the day - especially when a reporter stabs them with a surprise question and the answer will run on a loop on ESPN SportsCenter?
Can we all just relax and enjoy the game for what it is: a game?!
Can we change our day-to-day culture in this moment in time?
Can we stop thinking that sport is more important than life? (And this means not just footy but American football, soccer, whichever sport dominates your thinking.)
Can we allow our players to smile occasionally after a loss? Can we allow them to skip the angst we've always demanded from our defeated players?
Can we remember that not only are our players not superhuman, not personal role models?
Can we remember instead that they are young men (and women!), some barely out of their teens (and the college kids may not even be that old), and don't have the life experience yet to have the same well-thought out positions on the major social issues of the day - especially when a reporter stabs them with a surprise question and the answer will run on a loop on ESPN SportsCenter?
Can we all just relax and enjoy the game for what it is: a game?!
Saturday, July 4, 2015
New post on the NCAA page!
We'll post a quick note whenever we add to our side pages - in this case, it's a summary of our top/bottom predictions for the NCAA division 1 conferences in 2015.
And - what about the four "Football Championship" schools who don't DO championships?
Regardless of the name, four of the twelve "FCS" schools do NOT participate in the championship playoffs - the Ivy League and Patriot League (both filled with top academic schools with - ahem - better things to do), and the MEAC and SWAC, the two "historically black colleges", or HBCs, which this season have decided to hold their own private championship, the "Celebration Bowl", which will (we suppose) unofficially crown the top HBC of the season.
So, let's look a little closer!
The Ivy League:
Of course, Harvard is the traditional power in the Ivy League, and comes into 2015 as the favorite again, with Yale and Dartmouth the only two teams with realistic aspirations to dethrone the two-time titlists. Brown, Princeton, and Penn will fill the center slots, while the Columbia/Cornell matchup (hysterical last year) once again will decide which team goes 1-9 and which goes 0-10. (We'll take Columbia to lose again.)
The Patriot League:
Fordham has the same kind of stranglehold on the Patriot that Harvard does in the Ivy; their chasers include Bucknell and Lafayette, with Holy Cross and Colgate right behind, and Lehigh hanging on to their tails. Georgetown is the bottom of the ladder, but not as poor as Columbia or Cornell.
So, our top four in the "Football Intramural Subdivision" will be Harvard, Fordham, Dartmouth and Yale for starters; and our "Bottom Three" would be Columbia, Cornell, and Georgetown. For what it's worth.
Meanwhile, in the Historically Black College conferences,
The MEAC:
...is a three-way fight between defending champ North Carolina A&T, South Carolina St, and Bethune-Cookman, and a one-loss, three-way tie is almost expected. Right behind them are North Carolina Central and Morgan St, vying for 4th and 5th. Then there's a gap to Hampton, Norfolk St, Howard, and Florida A&M, four schools with famous bands that almost make up for their teams! Pulling up the rear will be Delaware St and legendary Savannah St, seen most recently playing a running-clock game at Florida St because the rout was THAT BAD.
The SWAC:
In two divisions, there's a separation between the best team (Alcorn St) in the East, and the two most famous teams (Southern and Grambling St) in the West. Alcorn is only threatened by Alabama St, with three others trailing far behind: Alabama A&T, Jackson St, and Mississippi Valley St. In the West, Southern and Grambling are closely followed by Prairie View A&M, with a gap back to Texas-Southern and Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
So, our top four in the "HBC Subdivision" will be Alcorn St, North Carolina A&T, South Carolina St, and Bethune-Cookman to start the season; while our "Bottom Three" start as Savannah St, Delaware St, and Mississippi Valley St.
So, let's look a little closer!
The Ivy League:
Of course, Harvard is the traditional power in the Ivy League, and comes into 2015 as the favorite again, with Yale and Dartmouth the only two teams with realistic aspirations to dethrone the two-time titlists. Brown, Princeton, and Penn will fill the center slots, while the Columbia/Cornell matchup (hysterical last year) once again will decide which team goes 1-9 and which goes 0-10. (We'll take Columbia to lose again.)
The Patriot League:
Fordham has the same kind of stranglehold on the Patriot that Harvard does in the Ivy; their chasers include Bucknell and Lafayette, with Holy Cross and Colgate right behind, and Lehigh hanging on to their tails. Georgetown is the bottom of the ladder, but not as poor as Columbia or Cornell.
So, our top four in the "Football Intramural Subdivision" will be Harvard, Fordham, Dartmouth and Yale for starters; and our "Bottom Three" would be Columbia, Cornell, and Georgetown. For what it's worth.
Meanwhile, in the Historically Black College conferences,
The MEAC:
...is a three-way fight between defending champ North Carolina A&T, South Carolina St, and Bethune-Cookman, and a one-loss, three-way tie is almost expected. Right behind them are North Carolina Central and Morgan St, vying for 4th and 5th. Then there's a gap to Hampton, Norfolk St, Howard, and Florida A&M, four schools with famous bands that almost make up for their teams! Pulling up the rear will be Delaware St and legendary Savannah St, seen most recently playing a running-clock game at Florida St because the rout was THAT BAD.
The SWAC:
In two divisions, there's a separation between the best team (Alcorn St) in the East, and the two most famous teams (Southern and Grambling St) in the West. Alcorn is only threatened by Alabama St, with three others trailing far behind: Alabama A&T, Jackson St, and Mississippi Valley St. In the West, Southern and Grambling are closely followed by Prairie View A&M, with a gap back to Texas-Southern and Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
So, our top four in the "HBC Subdivision" will be Alcorn St, North Carolina A&T, South Carolina St, and Bethune-Cookman to start the season; while our "Bottom Three" start as Savannah St, Delaware St, and Mississippi Valley St.
To finish our FCS conversation from yesterday...
Yesterday, we laid out the 24 teams we believe most likely to make the FCS playoffs - North Dakota St, Illinois St, Youngstown St, South Dakota St, Northern Iowa and Indiana St from the MVC; Eastern Washington, Montana, Idaho St, and Montana St from the Big Sky; New Hampshire, Villanova, James Madison and Richmond from the Colonial; Sam Houston St, SE Louisiana, and Stephen F Austin from the Southland Conference; Jacksonville St, Eastern Illinois, and Eastern Kentucky from the Ohio Valley Conference; Coastal Carolina and Liberty from the Big South; St. Francis (PA) OR Bryant from the Northeast Conference; and Jacksonville from the Pioneer League.
Ah, the Pioneer League! Our FCS island of castaways. Sun Belt Light. When the two teams who've won titles in your league are as distant from each other as Jacksonville (FL) and San Diego (CA), there's something not-so-natural about your league. Its denizens come from across the country, teams that couldn't latch on to the stronger leagues in their own necks of the woods.
Using the Sagarin Rating system to conceptualize the relative strengths of the teams, let's give you a sense of the realities of the Pioneer League:
Median Sagarin Rating for each FCS conference:
Missouri Valley: 63 (meaning the middle team in the conference is at 63)
Big Sky: 46
Colonial: 50
Ohio Valley: 49
Southland: 52
Big South: 52
Northeast: 49
By comparison, Jacksonville is at 43, and leads the Pioneer by ten points.
Here are the current Sagarin ratings for the other teams in the Pioneer - notice the range of locations as well...
*Drake (IL), San Diego (CA), and Dayton (OH) - 33
*Marist (NY) - 25
*Campbell (NC) - 22
*Butler (IN) - 19
*Valparisio (IN) and Morehead St (KY) - 18
*Stetson (FL) - 17
*Davidson (NC) - 6.
The only schools whose teams are anywhere near these ratings in the FCS are legends to Bottom Eight readers of Following Football: Nicholls St (17), Houston Baptist (13), Robert Morris (19), Delaware St (19), and good ol' Savannah St (12), who plays two or three big time FBS schools like Florida St and Oklahoma, usually losing by 70-80 points.
Here at Following Football, we are just as interested with the bottom of the list as the top. As we are handicapped by not getting TV coverage of these fine schools' teams, we will start the season's FCS Bottom Five from these Sagarin ratings from the end of 2014:
Davidson, Robert Morris, Houston Baptist, Stetson, and Nicholls St.
However, we'll keep track of all of these schools, and keep you informed on both ends of the spectrum in 2015!
Ah, the Pioneer League! Our FCS island of castaways. Sun Belt Light. When the two teams who've won titles in your league are as distant from each other as Jacksonville (FL) and San Diego (CA), there's something not-so-natural about your league. Its denizens come from across the country, teams that couldn't latch on to the stronger leagues in their own necks of the woods.
Using the Sagarin Rating system to conceptualize the relative strengths of the teams, let's give you a sense of the realities of the Pioneer League:
Median Sagarin Rating for each FCS conference:
Missouri Valley: 63 (meaning the middle team in the conference is at 63)
Big Sky: 46
Colonial: 50
Ohio Valley: 49
Southland: 52
Big South: 52
Northeast: 49
By comparison, Jacksonville is at 43, and leads the Pioneer by ten points.
Here are the current Sagarin ratings for the other teams in the Pioneer - notice the range of locations as well...
*Drake (IL), San Diego (CA), and Dayton (OH) - 33
*Marist (NY) - 25
*Campbell (NC) - 22
*Butler (IN) - 19
*Valparisio (IN) and Morehead St (KY) - 18
*Stetson (FL) - 17
*Davidson (NC) - 6.
The only schools whose teams are anywhere near these ratings in the FCS are legends to Bottom Eight readers of Following Football: Nicholls St (17), Houston Baptist (13), Robert Morris (19), Delaware St (19), and good ol' Savannah St (12), who plays two or three big time FBS schools like Florida St and Oklahoma, usually losing by 70-80 points.
Here at Following Football, we are just as interested with the bottom of the list as the top. As we are handicapped by not getting TV coverage of these fine schools' teams, we will start the season's FCS Bottom Five from these Sagarin ratings from the end of 2014:
Davidson, Robert Morris, Houston Baptist, Stetson, and Nicholls St.
However, we'll keep track of all of these schools, and keep you informed on both ends of the spectrum in 2015!
Bo knows soccer...which is why he never played it...
Tried to watch the Germany/England third place game in the Women's World Cup. Gave up and switched over to the ESPN 30-for-30 on the legendary Bo Jackson, the greatest athlete of the last hundred years. (We can discuss Jim Thorpe another day.) The Wikipedia article hits most of the high points of the ESPN piece by Michael Bonaglio, which reminds us how incredible Bo was.
Jeremy Schaap of ESPN says something in the piece which is both revealing and sad:
"Bo came along at exactly the right time...(besides the birth of cable sports, which let us see his highlights every night,) If someone with his size, speed, and strength came along today, we'd always suspect he was on steroids or growth hormones or something. Not with Bo, not then."
Will we ever have that sheer wonder over an athlete again? Or will we simply wonder what drugs he's on? (Is that why we can be thrilled with American Pharoah? We know the horse isn't on drugs?) That's tragic.
Oh. I did eventually go back for the end of the futbol game. An hour later, it was still 0-0. (Excuse me: "nil-nil".) Then England got a penalty shot, which in the women's game is virtually unstoppable, which makes perfect sense in a game where there's virtually never any other score. So, England won, 1-0, on a single penalty shot, negating the rest of the match. Remind me again why I should watch soccer?
Jeremy Schaap of ESPN says something in the piece which is both revealing and sad:
"Bo came along at exactly the right time...(besides the birth of cable sports, which let us see his highlights every night,) If someone with his size, speed, and strength came along today, we'd always suspect he was on steroids or growth hormones or something. Not with Bo, not then."
Will we ever have that sheer wonder over an athlete again? Or will we simply wonder what drugs he's on? (Is that why we can be thrilled with American Pharoah? We know the horse isn't on drugs?) That's tragic.
Oh. I did eventually go back for the end of the futbol game. An hour later, it was still 0-0. (Excuse me: "nil-nil".) Then England got a penalty shot, which in the women's game is virtually unstoppable, which makes perfect sense in a game where there's virtually never any other score. So, England won, 1-0, on a single penalty shot, negating the rest of the match. Remind me again why I should watch soccer?
Friday, July 3, 2015
Some FCS predictions to stir the pot...
Yesterday, we posted our predictions for the FBS conferences, and today it's time for the FCS conferences - the "Football Championship Series", which means that they have a playoff system to select their champion, unlike the FBS, who...um, now has a playoff to select their champion.
Well, at least it's still true that the FBS teams have bowl games to look forward to, unlike the FCS teams, who...well, actually, the MEAC and the SWAC have pulled out of the playoff system to have their champions meet in the, uh, Celebration Bowl. Hmmmm.
So much for differences. So, from now on, we really need to stop calling them "FBS" and "FCS", and call them what they used to be: 1-A and 1-AA. Here we go!
Missouri Valley Conference:
The strongest conference in the FCS, unquestioned. Both finalists came from the MVC last year, with North Dakota St beating Illinois St in a thrilling final. This year, expect those teams 1-2 in the conference again, with followers Northern Iowa, South Dakota St, Youngstown St, and Indiana St all making plans for the playoffs as well. Below them, only South Dakota is sure not to make the playoffs, with slots 7-8-9 filled by Southern Illinois, Western Illinois, and Missouri St.
Big Sky Conference:
The top four teams this year will probably match last year's, including repeating champion Eastern Washington on their fire-red field (so hard to look at!), with fellow playoff teams Montana, Montana St, and newcomer Idaho St. After them, Cal Poly and Northern Arizona will be fighting it out for 5th; Sacramento St should land around 7th; Weber St and Southern Utah should be able to win enough to move up towards 8th; and the bottom four teams should be Portland St, North Dakota, UC Davis, and Northern Colorado.
Southland Conference:
Third in strength, the Southland houses the biggest threat to North Dakota St's possible five-peat (you read that right: five), Sam Houston St. Behind them, Stephen F Austin University and Southeast Louisiana are the only real threats to their title aspirations in the conference, and should both make the playoffs as well. Central Arkansas should be a solid 4th, unable to defeat the three teams above them but better than the other seven. The middle of the pack will be McNeese St, Northwestern St, Abilene Christian, and Lamar; while the three bottom of the pack teams continue to be Incarnate Word, Nicholls St, and Houston Baptist.
Colonial Athletic Association:
New Hampshire and Villanova should be fighting it out for the conference title, but are probably not a threat to steal the national title from NDSU. James Madison and then Richmond will probably each put together seasons worthy of playoff selection, but fall behind UNH and the Wildcats. William and Mary is the class of the rest, followed closely by a large pack including Albany, Stony Brook, Maine, Delaware, and Towson. Elon and Rhode Island will bring up the rear.
Seventeen of the twenty-four playoff spots should go to those four conferences, still the powers of the FCS. Below them, four other conferences will look to scrape up the scraps:
Big South Conference:
As opposed to the Southland, the Big South was ruled by Coastal Carolina until they were upended by Liberty at the end of the season; this year, Coastal should return the favor and finish their undefeated league season, with Liberty's one loss to them and both heading into the post-season. They'll be followed in order by Charleston Southern, Presbyterian, Monmouth, Gardner-Webb, and first-year football team Kennesaw State!
The Southern Conference:
As opposed to the Southland OR the Big South, the Southern will be dominated by Chattanooga this year, with Samford and Wofford their sidekicks, waiting outside when the playoffs start and only their champion is invited. Behind them will be the trio of Western Carolina, The Citadel and Furman; Mercer in 7th, VMI in 8th, and first-year football team East Tennessee State in 9th! (And yes, the first game for each first year team is against each other! How perfect is that?)
Ohio Valley Conference:
Three teams should make the playoffs here, if the breaks go their direction: champion Jacksonville St, a possible top ten team, and hopefully both Eastern Illinois and Eastern Kentucky have the strength to beat everyone except J-State and possibly each other on their schedule and make the playoffs as wild cards.
Pioneer Football League:
What the Sun Belt is to FBS football, the Pioneer League is to the FCS. We guarantee that someone will win. Officially. However, the highest rated teams in the Pioneer would be the lowest rated in any of those top four conferences, and the only thing from Following Football simply renaming PFL as "the Bottom Eight" or however many we're keeping track of this year would be Savannah St, Houston Baptist, Davidson... actually, even the two new schools might be better. In the "add insult to irony" category, the league champs the first two years (San Diego in '13; Jacksonville in '14) were each ineligible to attend the playoffs last year due to indiscrepancies in financing (it's expensive to be not quite as bad as the other teams!). This year, we're hoping to see the winner (probably Jacksonville) actually get the chance to attend the FCS playoffs and get their whuppin' fair and square.
Tomorrow, we'll take a closer look at the bottom of the Pioneer as well as the other bottom feeder teams; we'll also examine the four leagues which don't take part in the Football Championship Subdivision Championships because...er...ah...well. We'll take a look anyway. (And we'll recap the 24 teams we expect to see in the December playoffs competing for the DIVISION 1-AA TITLE!...which the NCAA will insist on calling the FCS championship. Because - hypocrisy. But then, it IS the NCAA!)
Well, at least it's still true that the FBS teams have bowl games to look forward to, unlike the FCS teams, who...well, actually, the MEAC and the SWAC have pulled out of the playoff system to have their champions meet in the, uh, Celebration Bowl. Hmmmm.
So much for differences. So, from now on, we really need to stop calling them "FBS" and "FCS", and call them what they used to be: 1-A and 1-AA. Here we go!
Missouri Valley Conference:
The strongest conference in the FCS, unquestioned. Both finalists came from the MVC last year, with North Dakota St beating Illinois St in a thrilling final. This year, expect those teams 1-2 in the conference again, with followers Northern Iowa, South Dakota St, Youngstown St, and Indiana St all making plans for the playoffs as well. Below them, only South Dakota is sure not to make the playoffs, with slots 7-8-9 filled by Southern Illinois, Western Illinois, and Missouri St.
Big Sky Conference:
The top four teams this year will probably match last year's, including repeating champion Eastern Washington on their fire-red field (so hard to look at!), with fellow playoff teams Montana, Montana St, and newcomer Idaho St. After them, Cal Poly and Northern Arizona will be fighting it out for 5th; Sacramento St should land around 7th; Weber St and Southern Utah should be able to win enough to move up towards 8th; and the bottom four teams should be Portland St, North Dakota, UC Davis, and Northern Colorado.
Southland Conference:
Third in strength, the Southland houses the biggest threat to North Dakota St's possible five-peat (you read that right: five), Sam Houston St. Behind them, Stephen F Austin University and Southeast Louisiana are the only real threats to their title aspirations in the conference, and should both make the playoffs as well. Central Arkansas should be a solid 4th, unable to defeat the three teams above them but better than the other seven. The middle of the pack will be McNeese St, Northwestern St, Abilene Christian, and Lamar; while the three bottom of the pack teams continue to be Incarnate Word, Nicholls St, and Houston Baptist.
Colonial Athletic Association:
New Hampshire and Villanova should be fighting it out for the conference title, but are probably not a threat to steal the national title from NDSU. James Madison and then Richmond will probably each put together seasons worthy of playoff selection, but fall behind UNH and the Wildcats. William and Mary is the class of the rest, followed closely by a large pack including Albany, Stony Brook, Maine, Delaware, and Towson. Elon and Rhode Island will bring up the rear.
Seventeen of the twenty-four playoff spots should go to those four conferences, still the powers of the FCS. Below them, four other conferences will look to scrape up the scraps:
Big South Conference:
As opposed to the Southland, the Big South was ruled by Coastal Carolina until they were upended by Liberty at the end of the season; this year, Coastal should return the favor and finish their undefeated league season, with Liberty's one loss to them and both heading into the post-season. They'll be followed in order by Charleston Southern, Presbyterian, Monmouth, Gardner-Webb, and first-year football team Kennesaw State!
The Southern Conference:
As opposed to the Southland OR the Big South, the Southern will be dominated by Chattanooga this year, with Samford and Wofford their sidekicks, waiting outside when the playoffs start and only their champion is invited. Behind them will be the trio of Western Carolina, The Citadel and Furman; Mercer in 7th, VMI in 8th, and first-year football team East Tennessee State in 9th! (And yes, the first game for each first year team is against each other! How perfect is that?)
Ohio Valley Conference:
Three teams should make the playoffs here, if the breaks go their direction: champion Jacksonville St, a possible top ten team, and hopefully both Eastern Illinois and Eastern Kentucky have the strength to beat everyone except J-State and possibly each other on their schedule and make the playoffs as wild cards.
Pioneer Football League:
What the Sun Belt is to FBS football, the Pioneer League is to the FCS. We guarantee that someone will win. Officially. However, the highest rated teams in the Pioneer would be the lowest rated in any of those top four conferences, and the only thing from Following Football simply renaming PFL as "the Bottom Eight" or however many we're keeping track of this year would be Savannah St, Houston Baptist, Davidson... actually, even the two new schools might be better. In the "add insult to irony" category, the league champs the first two years (San Diego in '13; Jacksonville in '14) were each ineligible to attend the playoffs last year due to indiscrepancies in financing (it's expensive to be not quite as bad as the other teams!). This year, we're hoping to see the winner (probably Jacksonville) actually get the chance to attend the FCS playoffs and get their whuppin' fair and square.
Tomorrow, we'll take a closer look at the bottom of the Pioneer as well as the other bottom feeder teams; we'll also examine the four leagues which don't take part in the Football Championship Subdivision Championships because...er...ah...well. We'll take a look anyway. (And we'll recap the 24 teams we expect to see in the December playoffs competing for the DIVISION 1-AA TITLE!...which the NCAA will insist on calling the FCS championship. Because - hypocrisy. But then, it IS the NCAA!)
The stabbing death of Coach Phil Walsh
At 2 a.m. Friday, Adelaide Crows coach Phil Walsh, 55, was stabbed to death by his 26-year old son, Cy Jacob Walsh, in a domestic dispute that also injured Mrs. Walsh with non-threatening injuries.
The entire footy world has united in grief over the loss of AFL lifer Walsh, who also spent time coaching in Port Adelaide and West Coast, as well as playing in Brisbane, Collingwood, and Richmond.
His Crows team were scheduled to play Geelong this weekend at home in the Adelaide Oval; the game was cancelled but the remainder of the weekend's slate of games will go on as scheduled. Friday night, in a classic matchup between heavyweights Hawthorn and Collingwood (which the premiers won 101-91 in a tight competitive game), the two teams came together after the game in an unscheduled moment of prayer which saw the two teams interspersed between each other - Hawthorn, Collingwood, Hawthorn, Collingwood,... - in a beautiful moment of salute.
Of course, tributes from players and the entire AFL community have poured out on Twitter and Instagram, but the best words came from detective commissioner Des Bray, investigating the murder:
"For any family, regardless of who it is, is one of the worst things that you could imagine that could happen to you," he said.
"The only thing that is different with this is that he has a high profile. The pain and suffering of the family is no different."
The entire footy world has united in grief over the loss of AFL lifer Walsh, who also spent time coaching in Port Adelaide and West Coast, as well as playing in Brisbane, Collingwood, and Richmond.
His Crows team were scheduled to play Geelong this weekend at home in the Adelaide Oval; the game was cancelled but the remainder of the weekend's slate of games will go on as scheduled. Friday night, in a classic matchup between heavyweights Hawthorn and Collingwood (which the premiers won 101-91 in a tight competitive game), the two teams came together after the game in an unscheduled moment of prayer which saw the two teams interspersed between each other - Hawthorn, Collingwood, Hawthorn, Collingwood,... - in a beautiful moment of salute.
Of course, tributes from players and the entire AFL community have poured out on Twitter and Instagram, but the best words came from detective commissioner Des Bray, investigating the murder:
"For any family, regardless of who it is, is one of the worst things that you could imagine that could happen to you," he said.
"The only thing that is different with this is that he has a high profile. The pain and suffering of the family is no different."
Thursday, July 2, 2015
It's the US and Japan again for the Women's World Cup title
Just repeating the news, as I can't say I follow futbol like I follow football...
The United States defeated Germany 2-0 on Tuesday, and last night the Japanese were able to get past England thanks to an English player kicking the ball into her own goal (accidentally, of course) just before the end of regulation time.
How heartbreaking must THAT be? In most sports, you can't even SCORE for the other team. Baseball, cricket, golf, and so forth - it's impossible. In American, Canadian, and Australian football (the sports of choice 'round these here parts), it's possible to score one or two point scores for the other team, and most of the time it's done intentionally, as a strategy to either get the ball back or prevent a larger score by the opponent. In basketball, it's entirely a bad thing, but it's one basket out of 40 or 50, and very rarely has any part in deciding the game.
But in soccer, where only a couple of goals are scored in the entire match in most cases, an own-goal can and usually does decide the entire game when it occurs. It seems unnecessarily cruel, but then much of soccer is cruelty - the tension that builds in a scoreless game, the thought that a World Cup championship can and often does come down to penalty kicks, and the outside pressure that major club and national teams feel from their fans, who often place an inappropriate amount of importance on the outcome of a fickle game.
Every time something like this happens, I think back to the 1994 Men's World Cup, when a player from Colombia cost his team the chance to advance with an own goal and found himself dead within a month or two of returning home We'd all like to think England's more civilized than that - because as Americans we come from that stock originally - but I sure don't want to see their tabloid sports sections today...
The United States defeated Germany 2-0 on Tuesday, and last night the Japanese were able to get past England thanks to an English player kicking the ball into her own goal (accidentally, of course) just before the end of regulation time.
How heartbreaking must THAT be? In most sports, you can't even SCORE for the other team. Baseball, cricket, golf, and so forth - it's impossible. In American, Canadian, and Australian football (the sports of choice 'round these here parts), it's possible to score one or two point scores for the other team, and most of the time it's done intentionally, as a strategy to either get the ball back or prevent a larger score by the opponent. In basketball, it's entirely a bad thing, but it's one basket out of 40 or 50, and very rarely has any part in deciding the game.
But in soccer, where only a couple of goals are scored in the entire match in most cases, an own-goal can and usually does decide the entire game when it occurs. It seems unnecessarily cruel, but then much of soccer is cruelty - the tension that builds in a scoreless game, the thought that a World Cup championship can and often does come down to penalty kicks, and the outside pressure that major club and national teams feel from their fans, who often place an inappropriate amount of importance on the outcome of a fickle game.
Every time something like this happens, I think back to the 1994 Men's World Cup, when a player from Colombia cost his team the chance to advance with an own goal and found himself dead within a month or two of returning home We'd all like to think England's more civilized than that - because as Americans we come from that stock originally - but I sure don't want to see their tabloid sports sections today...
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