The objectively terrible overtime game between Penn State and Illinois made us all think about how we miss ties: I think the current swing is a more mundane generational shift: The last tie in college football was in 1995 before the new overtime rules took effect the next year. Ties became associated with the recently… Continue reading Ties for the win
Simulating outcomes
As expected the recursion at the core was fun and a little bit magical: For the faked outcomes we use the very scorigami-ish score of 55-4. Obviously since margins of victory matter in our final tiebreaker system we can either go crazy and simulate many different scores or just pick one for the enumeration. Here’s… Continue reading Simulating outcomes
Meaningful games in November
Mea culpa in not realizing last week that SDSU’s “home” game was actually played in Carson. That’s (partially) why the line didn’t reflect a true home field advantage for SDSU and indeed it moved more toward Fresno at game time and Fresno did win convincingly. Gambling advice is for entertainment only! Fresno and San Diego… Continue reading Meaningful games in November
command line params
For too long I’ve been letting the main executable limp along in “developer mode,” where you have to edit the file to change some params. I bit the bullet and read up on python3 argument parsing and of course it wasn’t that bad. Here’s the diff. I used the argparse module, billed in the official… Continue reading command line params
MCC Gameday is going to San Diego
I have probably spent about 17 minutes of my life total actually watching College Gameday and many hours reading commentary and reaction about where they have picked the next site to be. Not surprisingly, I find a semi-arbitrary third-party decision awarding some trivial crown based on week-to-week results and behind-the-scenes intrigue compelling. Before we get… Continue reading MCC Gameday is going to San Diego
1958 Cal vs. Pacific
It’s an inescapable fact of California (the state) football that the last time California (the school) went to a Rose Bowl was January 1, 1959. (There was some unpleasantness in 2004.) Since that 1958 season was something of a high water mark for Cal surely they must have won the Mythical California Cup that year… Continue reading 1958 Cal vs. Pacific
They play football in Texas too
Let’s test the portability of the “virtual conference” API. I added a canned dictionary of Texas teams to the python executable. Inside the API code I also added the final tiebreaker, total margin. As identified last week this was technically in the rules but never came up in the California runs so far. This code… Continue reading They play football in Texas too
Is this the year for SDSU?
Current 2021 results and standings: San José State 7 at USC 30 on Sep 04, 2021 Stanford 42 at USC 28 on Sep 11, 2021 Fresno State 40 at UCLA 37 on Sep 18, 2021 UCLA 35 at Stanford 24 on Sep 25, 2021 San Diego State at San José State on Oct 15, 2021… Continue reading Is this the year for SDSU?
Extra home games for some college teams
After looking through dozens of wikipedia season summaries one trend that jumps out is lots of early home games for teams like Michigan. 2016 is an extreme example: They didn’t play a road game until week 6. This year they just played their first road game in week 5. Why? And is it just Michigan?… Continue reading Extra home games for some college teams
Utah has a boot
Very excited to learn about the Beehive Boot, a physical trophy awarded for “instate football supremacy among Division I FBS universities from the state of Utah.” There are only three such teams so it’s nowhere near as exciting as our Mythical California Cup. But it does have a boot. (BYU has wrapped it up this… Continue reading Utah has a boot