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Message: [QUOTE="nzm136, post: 3512332, member: 2531"] I’m sorry I hurt your sensitive feelings for pointing out your excessively stupid comments. I’ll buy you a sticker if I ever see you, because everyone is a winner, including you, no matter how obviously wrong you are. You are a special snowflake, and it’s on society to do your mother’s job. Feel better? Now that the feeling part of the post is out of the way, let’s start the football part. The problem with your first point is that getting shutout for a game (playing ND) vs playing and average team doesn’t wildly sway per drive stats because it’s balanced out by the other 11+ games in the season. And, stick with me here, 4 year spans have 48 games in them because 4*12=48. Again, that balancing mechanism is why portfolios are more stable. Positive outliers tend to be balanced out by negative outliers in large groups. Also, this is where reading is important. Those really good stat guys *try* to control for opponents. The problem is they aren’t very good at it because it’s really hard. That’s why so many upsets happen, it’s why Vegas has such a robust gambling scene, and it’s why there have historically been (and still are) a multitude of ranking systems. So, to touch on what I said earlier, it would be great to control for opponents. That part of what you said is absolutely true. The part that you’re struggling with is that it’s really hard to do that, and the improvement is marginal. Life isn’t a video game where Team A has an offensive rating of 87, whereas Team B has one of 93. The real world is much murkier. Fortunately though, as long as schedules are reasonably stable, the numbers are pretty comparable. Controlling for drives is really easy. All you do is divide the points by the number of drives. Both numbers are exact, objective, and available. (Number of drives might take a little digging, but I’m sure it exists somewhere.) And if you don’t think DM was good, then I think you’re an outlier. I don’t know what to tell you on that front. But I find it odd that you now seem to be arguing with yourself. Your prior post said “the only times we were good ... we had the best offensively minded coach in the last 20 years” and that the poor offensive numbers “had to do with ... some bad defensive-minded hires in SS and Robinson.” In fairness to you, those statements don’t explicitly state DM was good, but I have a hard time not interpreting you as implying it. Maybe I’m reading too far between the lines, which would be on me. If you don’t think he was good, then maybe we have different definitions of good. If you think the sample size is too small to make broad-brushed judgements as to what kind of coach will win are Syracuse, then I agree. [/QUOTE]

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