Friday Links

-Weird is the day that I actually agree with Mike Francesa. Today is a weird day. [PFT]

-The Sports Banter sits comfortably in the top-10. We need the Angels to get hot to climb up as high as third. [Vegas Watch]

-Friday Blast from the Past: Chad Hutchinson [Lost Lettermen]

-Last week, Baseball America's Connor Glassey posted an interesting stat: Ichiro has more career intentional walks (155) than ARod, Chase Utley and Derek Jeter combined (149). We are all now wiser.

-Statistical proof that the 3-4 defense is better than the 4-3? You decide. [Advanced Football Stats]

-A study on how travel affects NBA teams. [Sabermetric Research]



BC 9/24/2010

Wednesday Links

-Mailbags:

 -Brandt [NFP]

 -Deadspin

 

-Buster Olney blog. [ESPN Insider; password required]

 

-Lombardi. [NFL.com]

 

 

Note: The daily links will transition to a three-times-a-week format in the near future.

 

 

 

BC 9/22/2010

 

Friday's "Finally Here" Links

-Buster Olney blog. [ESPN Insider; password required]

 

-Forget Prisoners. We have a Linebackers' Dilemma. [Advanced Football Stats]

 

-ESPN's Tom Habestroh names the five worst players in the history of each NBA team. My favorite part: Trenton Hassell comes in at #1 for two different teams. [Insider; password required]

 

-Real-life Jaws. [Fox]

 

 

 

 

BC 9/17/2010

 

 

Wednesday's "Halfway to Another Football Weekend" Links

-Tampa doesn't deserve the Rays. What a pathetic turnout.[Biz of Baseball]

 

-Solid day out of Deadspin yesterday:

   -Mailbag

   -Eric Bledsoe transcript fun (I especially like that he took Algebra 3 before Algebra 2)

 

-Buster Olney blog. [ESPN Insider; password required] 

 

 

BC 9/15/2010

Tuesday Links

-Peter King's MMQB. [SI.com]

-Florida Gators football = Jail Blazers * Bengals.

-Andrew Brandt breaks down the contracts of Charles Woodson and Tom Brady and then details the threat of NFLPA decertification. [NFP]

-JI Hassell wonders if the Darrelle Revis deal sets a poor precedent. [Inside the Cap]

-Pat White takes advice from the Banter and gives up football (at least for the time being). [Pro Football Talk]

-Really, you can't wait two seconds until celebrating? [Wiz of Odds]

-Buzzkill Central: On the heels of the university's most defining athletic moment, Northern Iowa could abolish their D1 sports. [Des Moines Register]

-Further to our point that Felix Hernandez should win this year's Cy Young [SB Nation by way of Rob Neyer]



-Dave Pinto still scheming about a massive tie scenario. [Baseball Musings]

-Mike passed this along because he claimed to have "called this" while it happened and before Elias confirmed it.

-One of the boldest marketing strategies I have ever seen. [ESPN]





BC 9/14/10

Friday Links

-Buster Olney blog. [ESPN Insider; password required]

-It drives me crazy when teams winning a title in the US (MLB, NBA, NFL) call themelves "world champs." This would help and be extremely entertaining. [Fangraphs]

-Kendall Rogers sums up the Big East offseason. [Yahoo]

-Top 50 Dunks of All Time [Baketball Reference]
If you dont have time for all 50, check out these eight:
-45: Deron Washington jumps off a trampoline to throw this down
-44: Renaldo Balkman dunks at MSG with Isiah Thomas in attendance prompting Thomas to waste a first round pick on Balkman
-43: Darrelle Porter - very underrated dunk. Could have been top-10 worthy
-39: The last time Travis Leslie and DeMarcus Cousins will ever appear in the same sentence. A great dunk nonetheless
-23: Jason Maxiell kicks Otis George (at least) three times in the head
-20: Chris Porter with one of the five best putbacks of all time
-14: Vinsanity
-12: My vote for #1



Enjoy the weekend.

BC 9/10/2010

Thursday "Are You Ready For Some Football" Links

-According to Banter-favorite Andrew Brandt, teams that win in March rearely win in January. [NFP] 

 

-Matt Bowen takes us inside the  playbook in a micro-preview of tonight's Saints-Vikings matchup. [NFP]

 

-Lombardi. I find a little humorous that seven of the most eight intriguing people in the NFL are quarterbacks and the eighth is a head coach. [NFL.com]

 

-In a recent article, Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats critiques some of Football Outsiders' "theories":

• Standard team rankings based on total yardage are inherently flawed. -- Ok
• Running on third-and-short is more likely to convert than passing on third-and-short. -- Concur
• If their overall yards per carry are equal, a running back who consistently gains yardage on every play is more valuable than a boom-and-bust running back who is frequently stuffed at the line but occasionally breaks a long highlight-worthy run. -- Not always. If you're the underdog or significantly behind in the game, you want the boom/bust guy.
• A running back with 370 or more carries during the regular season will usually suffer either a major injury or a loss of effectiveness the following year, unless he is named Eric Dickerson. -- False. As one of my commenters put it, this notion "is a violent assault on good logic and reason."
• Teams with more offensive penalties generally lose more games, but there is no correlation between defensive penalties and losses. -- Probably false. It's possible they've fallen for the same trap I fell into years ago. The NFL calls penalty yards by an opponent "defensive penalties." But if true, it's interesting. The real question would be why don't defensive penalties matter?
• Field-goal percentage is almost entirely random from season to season, while kickoff distance is one of the most consistent statistics in football. -- True.
• Field position is fluid. -- Huh? I think this is just supposed to mean that defenses affect their offenses' field position and vice-versa.
• Injuries regress to the mean on the seasonal level, and teams that avoid injuries in a given season tend to win more games. -- Ok. Did we need a study for this?
• A team will score more when playing a bad defense, and will give up more points when playing a good offense. -- And all this time I thought it was the other way around!
• The future NFL success of quarterbacks chosen in the first two rounds of the draft can be projected with a high degree of accuracy by using just two statistics from college: games started and completion percentage. -- Intriguing, but I'd like to see how this system has performed since it was published. As I recall, it's been off the mark.
• Championship teams are generally defined by their ability to dominate inferior opponents, not their ability to win close games. -- Interesting.

-Two of Deadspin's nerdier recent posts:

   -Real-time Sales Analytics

   -Breaking down the "greatest kick ever" with physics

 

-When Harold Miner surfaces, we link. [Lost Lettermen]

 

-Well, that was easy:

 

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