The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

As I'm tired of the bias which comes along with being a sports analyst and "the eye-test," I decided to create a computerized ranking system, which takes bias out of the equation. It combines the three most integral parts of grading a team's quality, in my opinion, and in descending order of importance: record, strength of schedule, and level of domination. The formula is: win % x 100 x 1.75 + opponent win % x 100 x 1.50 + average margin of victory x 1.25. For example, if a team went 6-6, the win % is .500. Multiply that by 100 and you get 50.0. Multiply that by 1.75 and the product is 87.5. The same goes for opponent win %, except you'd multiply 50.0 by 1.5 and get 75.0. Lastly, if this team averages to win each game by 5.5, after multiplying that number by 1.25, you'd wind up with 6.875. Add 87.5, 50.0, and 6.875, and the final power number for this hypothetical team would be 169.375. I should note, for every FCS opponent a team played, their record formula ...

Just this morning I read the following headline, which prompted me to read a bit further: "Political science professor forecasts Trump as general election winner." No, given the fact Donald Trump is the current favorite to represent the Republican Party in the coming election, it's not completely asinine to predict he'll be our next president. However, Stony Brook University political science professor, Helmut Norpoth, decided to take the prediction a step further in order to make it asinine. According to Mr. Norpoth and his can't-miss formula, if Donald Trump winds up becoming the Republican nominee, he has at least a 97% chance of winning the general election, regardless of who the Democratic candidate is (likely Hillary Clinton). Norpoth elaborated by saying, "The bottom line is that the primary model, using also the cyclical movement, makes it almost certain that Donald Trump will be the next president if he's a nominee of the [Republican] party...

I've long been a fan of the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory , but the season 9 premiere last night has got me a little worried, as I'm starting to wonder if it's going the direction of Friends . Like The Big Bang Theory , I was quite a fan of Friends  through its first few seasons, but when the show became more of a drama regarding Ross & Rachel's relationship than a sitcom, that's when I started losing interest, and I'm starting to wonder if the same will be true of The Big Bang Theory . There's absolutely nothing wrong with including relationships in sitcoms. Oddly enough, some people seem to even obsess over these fictional romances. However, when a sitcom goes from laughs-first-drama-a-distant-second to drama-first-laughs-a-distant-second, that's usually a pretty good indicator the writers have run out of material and it may be time to close shop on the long-running program. One reason The Big Bang Theory has been such a fun and enjoyable s...

Is anyone else getting a little tired of ESPN obsessing about their made-up QBR statistic? While the passer rating is/was definitely flawed and most people had no idea how to calculate it, it's nowhere near as flawed as the QBR. The passer rating combined: Completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown percentage, and interception percentage, to form an imperfect yet somewhat effective formula to showcase how effective a quarterback was at passing the football. In other words, the final result of the formula was based on objective numbers. However, that's not fully the case with the QBR formula. According to the QBR statistic, each quarterback is graded on a scale of 0 to 100 to display how much they contribute to a win, with 50 being "average." The formula takes into account things such as: Overthrows, underthrows, yards after the catch, and clutch plays, among others. The underlying problem with many of these categories is a certain level of subjectivity. Thi...

The Charles Koch Foundation doesn't appear to be very good with numbers, which is kind of odd considering Charles Koch is estimated to be worth $34 billion. In a recent ad by Koch's conservative non-profit group, it asserts that if you make $34,000 or more, you're in the top 1% of earners (worldwide). In the United States, where Mr. Koch resides last I heard, one must earn approximately $352,000 annually in order to be among the top 1%. $34,000, $352,000 - those numbers are so similar, I may have to re-watch the film Twins to make certain Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are not identical. In actuality, $34,000 is just 9.7% of what it takes to make it into the top 1% of earners in this country. Making matters even worse for the Charles Koch Foundation and their odd math is the fact that the top 1% of earners in this country earn an average of $1.12 million. The $34,000 mentioned in the ad is just 3.0% of $1.12 million. How far off are the numbers presented in...