yay sports!
Hello sports fans. I took an extended break from my bill paying job and writing for a bit as I needed a hard reset. I’m a 52-year-old man that comes from the “just work through it” generation. As I’ve gotten older, I realize how important mental health truly is in our lives. If you are reading this, remember to take care of yourselves mentally. There is nothing so important in life that you need to neglect your mentals.
What a time to be a sports fan though. The World Series starts in a couple of days. Along with the ongoing seasons of the NFL and NCAAFB; we have the start of the NBA season. And in the very near future the beginning of NCAABB. Oh, and we can’t forget the NHL. This is my favorite time of the year because there is something sports related going on every day.
The last few weeks has been a bit chaotic hasn’t it? You had the Dodgers superteam get dismantled by the Milwaukee Brewers. Five of the top 7 teams in college football were beaten. Jalen Hurts is out for the season because of blood clots in his lungs! That’s a scary situation and it will be interesting to see what comes of the investigation into that. I’m not a doctor, but I feel like there was some negligence involved with the diagnosis and treatment.
I have a couple of projects that I am working on for this blog. The first one is my own college football playoff rankings. I have a formula that I’m working on that prioritizes, not just wins and losses, but how those wins and losses occurred. Did you beat a top 25 team? Did you barely squeak by a team that isn’t ranked (looking at you Michigan)? I give more points for the ranking of the opponent at the end of the season. For example, a couple of years ago when Georgia Tech beat 10th ranked FSU to start the season, that looked like a very impressive win for the resume. By the end of the season though, beating FSU was just another win. Georgia Techs win at that point was just a W.
The other one that I am working on is a metric for football but mainly the NFL. It doesn’t have a catchy name or acronym. It’s an empty yard’s metric. What it does is measure the yards that you gain and the points you get from those yards. Did you have a 65 yard drive that resulted in a TD, FG, or no points at all? Which teams are the best at putting points on the board? Especially in this day and age of analytics, I think that it could be a useful metric to see which teams capitalize on the yards that they gain.
Before I go, here’s my predictions for the week ahead in the NFL.
Chicago
Pittsburgh
San Francisco
Cleveland
Minnesota
Jets
Carolina
Baltimore
Houston
Upset special of the week, Arizona over Denver
Detroit
Las Vegas
Kansas City
Dallas
The Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays will beat Milwaukee in six games.
Enjoy the full slate of sports that are on the horizon and I will see you next time.