Three Kinds of Lies: Statistics on BYU Football

I have been fascinated with the quarterback controversy that plagued BYU this season between the hyped phenom Jake Heaps and the grizzly "gamer" Riley Nelson.  While Nelson had much better traditional statistics than Heaps, Heaps played against a tougher schedule. The author of a the BYU sports blog LoyalCougars.com asked me if it were possible to statistically correct for the difficulty of the defenses Heaps and Nelson played to compare them on level ground.  Being a football fan and a math nerd, I dove right in.  The results are written up in a post over at LoyalCougars.com, so if you feel like delving into the statistical rabbit hole, go check it out.

A Good Argument Against Getting an Education

Les Miles (right) is the head football coach at Louisiana State University and the highest paid state employee in the state.  He makes approximately $3,751,000 a year.  He actually said the following at a press conference following his team's win again the University of West Virginia:

There would be a real want, that is, a competing that would happen, which it would, without the need to be compliant or reluctant to not give up that which is the ball, or the things like it, such as the field goals, or even the punt return and defense thereof, and that's keeping the game short and helping the general construction of success as it relates to our football team.

 If there ever was a good argument against education - specifically grammar and basic communication skills - Les Miles is it.

Plot Showing Why BYU Football Should Be Proud.

The plot below, taken from the Wall Street Journal, shows why BYU Football should be proud and excited to kick off the new year tomorrow.  BYU's football team, better than most schools (good job Stanford), represents the the school very well both on and off the field very well.

Go Cougars!

Living Life in a Demanding Profession

In my time at CU it has come up several times that graduate students often work very long hours.  An informal survey in my department showed that the average grad student puts in between 50 and 65 hours per week between classes, teaching, research, and other administrative responsibilities.  The numbers get worse for those of us that want a tenure-track position.  I have yet to hear anyone say that, on average, they worked less than 60 hours per week while they were trying to get tenure.  That's at least 1.5 full-time jobs for those that think a 40 hour work week actually means anything today.

I bring this up because one of the biggest challenges for those pursing a very time-intensive career path is who to balance career with the rest of life.  I am a firm believer that a life well-lived involves a lot more than a career, but how does one protect those other areas of life from being overrun by work-related stress?

If anybody knows about work-related stress, it's a football coach at a NCAA Division I-A university.  Legendary Kansas State coach Bill Snyder eats only one meal per day during football season to put more time into his job.  In his words,

"I never was a breakfast eater, and I learned that by working over the lunch hour, you could get a lot more done. That was so good, I did it during dinner."

 He eats his only meal of the day when he gets home at night - which is usually after midnight.  If that man has a work-life balance, I can't see where it would fit into his schedule.

This is what makes a new book by BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall so amazing.  Mendenhall has been the head coach at BYU for almost 6 seasons and has won over 70% of his games, including 4 consecutive top-25 finishes. Clearly he's good at his job, but the title of his book is "Football Comes 5th".  What comes in first through fourth?  Faith, family, knowledge, and friends... and then football. 

The book is specifically written for young people, however I'd love to give it a read anyway.  I'd love to know how he excels in a field with a total of 120 jobs where the competition thinks taking time out for dinner is a luxury, because that sounds a little too familiar to my field for comfort.

BYU Leaves the Mountian West, Goes Independent (Maybe)

It's been a wild summer for college sports.  As of right now, in 2011 the Pac 10 will have 12 members, the Big 12 will have 10 members, and the Big Ten will have 12 members.  Utah, BYU's long-time conference rival, got a golden ticket to join the Pac 10 (along with my own Colorado Buffalos), leaving BYU as pretty much the biggest football program left out of the top conferences in college football.  Most BYU fans bemoaned the situation but felt there was nothing to be done.  Or is there?  From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Brigham Young University will leave the Mountain West Conference, go independent in football and rejoin the Western Athletic Conference in all non-football sports beginning in the fall of 2011, The Salt Lake Tribune confirmed Wednesday morning.

According to a source in the WAC office, BYU will seek final approval for the moves from its owner, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, either today or Thursday. Pending approval, a press conference is planned for early next week. But because of media reports that broke late Tuesday night, that timetable may change.

BYU officials have apparently decided that the best business model for BYU to follow is that of another large, religious university with a prestigious football program - Notre Dame.  And really it makes sense to leave the Mountain West - where in terms of tradition, facilities, and fan base BYU was clearly the king of the midgets.  The Pac 10 allegedly picked Utah with is smaller national following over BYU because of BYU's religious affiliation and the only other major conference that made any sense for BYU, the Big 12, might only be around for until Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma feel like they can't suck any more money out of the other 7 schools.

So BYU joins Army, Navy, and Notre Dame as the only conference-less teams in top-level college football.  It may be a bit of reach but here's to hoping they score big.  You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.


Thanks to Dr. Saturday for the heads-up.

College Football Players Want Playoffs... Just Don't Take Away The Bowl Games.

ESPN just conducted a confidential survey of current football players to find out how they feel about having a playoff system.  I found the results quite interesting, especially because whether you were on a BCS team or not seemed to be irrelevant for what your opinion would be.  From the above mentioned article:

In College Football Confidential, we polled 135 players from across the country. The panel we convened consisted of 72 players from BCS schools (63 from non-BCS conferences). Thirteen of our voters played in a BCS game last year, and 24 finished the year in the Top 25.

What we found was that players want a playoff -- but don't dare take away their bowl games (and the accompanying gift bags). --- Emphasis added.

Here are the results from the survey:

I happen to agree with the players.  On one hand I would be interested in the outcome of a playoff system of some type.  But you better not take away my bowl games either!!!

Boise State Joins The Mountain West Conference!

From KSL:

BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- Boise State on Friday accepted an invitation to join the Mountain West Conference in 2011 as the two-time Fiesta Bowl winner seeks out a league that's a better launching pad into lucrative postseason bowl games.

The Mountain West is going to have a strong conference this football season.   Take that BCS!

It's funny, I just commented on Nick's post this needs to happen.

Taking a Month Off

Due to general craziness, I've been pretty bad about blog posts for the past month. But to make myself look less lazy, I've decided to post this video of a Florida State offensive lineman who really decided to take some time off. Enjoy:

More frequent posting will resume December 9th, assuming I pass the second part of my comprehensive exam and advanced to doctoral candidate status. Wish me luck (I'm going to need it).

Oregon Trail - NFL Style

For those of you that remember playing Oregon Trail and follow the NFL, this will have you laughing so hard it hurts the corners of your mouth. From Slate.com:

A Punch Heard Round The World. (Or will be.)

I like college football so what was I doing last night? Watching the Oregan vs. Boise State game of course.

The stage was set, Oregon's Legarrette Blount started the game by saying Boise State deserved an $%! whopping. He must have forgot what happened when Oklahoma talked a bunch of trash about Boise State only to watch themselves suffer humiliation.

Well, humiliation came to Oregon with Boise State winning... and just as I was about to turn off the TV I saw this: (Watch whole thing to see how bad it gets.)



I appears Legarrette Blount wasn't finished with how much humiliation he had already suffered. He decided he wanted to publicly humiliate himself and his team one last time.

One last time? Yes, his reward is he will never play football for Oregon, and probably the NFL, again.

Football + Art = Beauty

From the Deseret News comes a report of a couple from Huntsville, Utah that have taken their passion for college football, combined it with art, and made something very beautiful. Behold the wonder:

If you look closely, you'll see that this scene from the 2006 BYU vs. Utah football game isn't a painting or a photo - it's a mural made entirely from painted golf tees.

That's right painted golf tees. Don't worry, I didn't believe it either until I saw the close up.According to the Deseret News story, the mural is 232 rows by 451 collumns of tees and took something like 400 hours of work to complete. And it's shear beauty brings a tear to my eye.

Post-Season College Football Economics

College football has perhaps the most complicated post-season of any sport. There are 120 teams in Division 1-A, divided among 11 conferences with 4 independent teams. Because of the high risk of injury, teams can only play once a week and it's best to have about 3 games per month in order to maintain the health of the players. This leads to a 12 to 14 game season. That is already a nightmarish scenario for determining the best team. By comparison, in major league baseball each of the 32 teams play 164 games in order to set-up the post season. College football, with its meager 12-14 games and 120 teams cannot hope to definitively decided which teams are the best.

In addition to that, college football employs a totally unique post-season. Instead of some sort of tournament, for historical reasons college football uses 34 bowl games that match-up teams based on popularity, geography, conference affiliation, and revenue generation. Starting in 1998, the 6 largest and most popular conferences banded together with the organizers of 4 of the most popular bowl games and formed the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in an effort to provide quality match-ups and generate more revenue. It has worked beautifully, as shown by the following plot of where bowl revenue has ended up over the last 25 years with the three red lines indicating various stages in the evolution of the BCS, with its current form starting in 1998.
Of course this makes the "non-BCS" conferences unhappy, but really, what motive do the big guys have to share? BYU, Utah, TCU, Boise State, and East Carolina have all shown in recent years that they are among the top tier on the field, but yet their conferences get tiny slices of the revenue pie.

Is there any hope for change? It's already better than it used to be as Utah (twice), Boise State, and Hawaii have gove to BCS bowls in the past few years. But for further improvement "non-BCS" teams are going to have to continue to play and beat top-notch BCS conference teams in the regular season, which often means playing at the BCS team's home field since they have no motive whatsoever to come to a non-BCS team's home stadium. This year BYU is playing two major BCS opponents - Oklahoma and Florida State. Wins or close losses in those games will continue to raise the profile of non-BCS teams. Go Cougs!

BYU vs. CSU - As Witnessed by Me

One of the advantages of attending the University of Colorado is that BYU plays at least one football game within 100 miles of my residence every year. This year BYU plays at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado (~100 miles to the south of Boulder) on November 15th. Last year BYU played at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming (~70 miles to the northwest of Boulder). And last night, BYU played at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado (~40 miles north of Boulder). And I was there.

For those of you who missed the game, here's a quick recap:

1. CSU scored a touchdown
2. BYU scored a touchdown
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 2 more times
4. BYU scored a field goal
5. Repeat steps 1 and 2 3 more times
6. BYU wins 45-42
   

Basically, it was a high scoring thriller that showed that BYU's offense is very good and BYU's defense is very bad. The photographic summary of the game can be found below.That was BYU tight end Dennis Pitta catching the game winning touchdown with exactly 22 seconds left on the clock, courtesy of the Deseret Morning News. I was sitting less than 100 ft. away from Dennis Pitta when that play was made. I love Colorado.

College Football Controversy and Physics

Many of you probably saw BYU's 28-27 victory over the University of Washington on Saturday. For those of you who didn't, here's a clip of how that nail-bitter ended.



The controversy comes from the fact that the UW quarterback, Jake Locker, was assessed a 15 yard penalty for throwing the ball into the air after scoring. When you watch that clip and when I watched it happen on TV, I can't find any way to make what Locker did unsportsmanlike (and as a BYU fan, I'd love to find something). However, the NCAA rulebook states:

ARTICLE 1: There shall be no unsportsmanlike conduct of any act that interferes with orderly game administration on the part of players, substitutes, coaches, authorized attendants or any other persons subject to the rules, before the game, during the game or between periods.

a. Specifically prohibited acts and conduct include:

2. After a score or any other play, the player in possession immediately must return the ball to an official or leave it near the dead-ball spot. This prohibits:

a. Kicking, throwing, spinning or carrying (including off of the field) the ball any distance that requires an official to retrieve it.

b. Spiking the ball to the ground. …

c. Throwing the ball high into the air.

d. Any other unsportsmanlike act or actions that delay the game.

So what exactly constitutes "throwing the ball high into the air" and how high did Locker actually throw the ball? Here's where physics comes in handy.

If you check the YouTube video, you'll find that Locker throws the ball at time 1:02. The ball then hits Locker in the back on its way back down at time 1:05. Using the equations of motion for a free-falling object and neglecting air resistance, we find that Locker threw the ball approximately 35 ft. into the air. Regulation college uprights are 30 ft. tall, so Locker threw the ball to roughly the height of the top of the uprights. That seems like high into the air to me.

Of course the rule is silly. Refs should be able to exercise judgement as to when an action is unsportsmanlike and when its just a 19 year old that just scored on a last second play being a little excited. Locker was being sportsmanlike, but unfortunately the refs weren't allowed, by rule, to decide if he was or not.

BYU Wins On Last Second Block

BYU beat UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl last night by a score of 17-16 on a dramatic, last-second play. As is becoming the Cougars standard mode of operation in big games, the Cougars almost blew their chance for victory by allowing the Bruins to drive from their own 2 yard line all the way to the BYU 13. The Bruins lined up for a their attempt with 3 seconds left and somehow 280 pound defensive linemen Eathyn Manumaleuna was able to jump high enough to get his hand on the ball and block what would have been the game winning field goal. Below is ESPN's version of what happened.



Go Cougars!

59 Point Underdog?

For those college football fans out there, the college football season kicks off this weekend with a few exciting games and a whole lot of powerhouse vs. cupcake match ups. Most teams prefer to schedule their easiest game of the season first in order to give the team a chance to get some playing time in an actual game without having to worry about losing. For example, Southern Cal will open it's season against the University of Idaho and Florida, the defending national champions will face fearsome Western Kentucky. Odds-makers have a field day with these games because while the outcome is not in question, the margin of victory is. People have to bet on something, I guess.

There is, however something very odd in the betting margins this week. As of today (Tuesday), Hawaii was a 59.5 point favorite to beat the University of Northern Colorado. That's right 59.5 points! Assuming Northern Colorado doesn't score a single point, that's 8 touchdowns, a field goal, and a two point conversion, just for fun.

By the way, BYU is a 4 point underdog to Arizona for Saturday's game. Go Cougars!

BYU Beats Utah on Last Play!

This was definitely a game of momentum. BYU came out in the first quarter with a 14-0 lead over Utah. The offense seemed unstoppable and John Beck looked like a magician on the field. It looked like BYU just could not be stopped. Unfortunately for BYU, Utah was able to convert on fourth down with a fake punt. That was just enough to fire up the Utah offense to drive in a touchdown.

Once Utah got some momentum, it turned into a hard second quarter for BYU. In fact, John Beck did not complete a single pass in the second quarter. The half ended with BYU winning 14-10. In the second half Utah returned with their second quarter momentum pulling ten points ahead of BYU.

But the momentum was about to swing back to BYU. John Beck then repeated his first quarter performance with back to back touchdowns. This should have put BYU up by four points but Utah was able to block the second extra point. Utah then was able to march down the field and score putting them ahead by four with one minute left in the game. John Beck and the rest of the offense then marched the ball clear down the field and with three seconds left in the game Beck completed the game winning touchdown. What a game!!! BYU wins 33-31.

Well, I have to admit I was pretty happy. We beat Utah my freshman year and it is good to take it to them my senior year too. I really think this BYU team is better then it was my freshman year. My freshman year we went 11-1 and our only loss was for the last game of the season. Going into that game, at least in one poll we were #6 in the country. This year we will be lucky to get much better then #20 but I still think this team is better. My freshman year half the games were close. This year we crushed nearly everyone. In addition, John Beck is a much better quarterback than Brandon Doman was,(at least has better stats) and Curtis Brown is BYU's all-time greatest rusher and Luke Staley was not. Our defense has not given up very many points this year whereas my freshman year they gave up enough that again it was often close.

With all that said I would like to thank the BYU Football team. Here are my players of the year. John Beck: He is second only to TY Detmer for total passing yards. Curtis Brown: BYU's all-time leading rusher. John Harline: though a tight end, probably BYU's most effective receiver Fui Vakapuna- BYU's most aggressive offensive player and one mean rusher himself. Cameron Jensen- Main linebacker who was a very effective leader on defense. Ben Criddle: A walk-on who made big defensive plays game after game.

Congratulations BYU. Last week you became Mountain West Conference Champions and this week you gave the University of Utah yet another reason, as if they didn't have enough, to feel their inferiority.

Top Image: The game winning catch by John Harline. Middle Image: Beck being carried by his teammates after delivering the game winning pass. Bottom: John Beck and Cameron Jensen, the teams captains, holding up the Mountain West Conference Championship Trophy.