The story of American football (wiki) is the story of America herself - a tale of taking other people's land by force.
Showing posts with label football. Show all posts
Showing posts with label football. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Friday, November 9, 2018
Friday links
"The War to End All Wars" ended 100 years ago on the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month in 1918. Before it was Veterans Day it was Armistice Day, for the fallen of the First World War: here's some history.
The Little-Known Reason Pencils Are Yellow.
Advice on hair washing from the 12th and 17th centuries.
Football Physics: Newton, Einstein and The Forces Behind Those Big Hits.
NASA has plans to probe Uranus in search of gas.
ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include how telegraph operators were the first to know news of the Civil War (which arrived in code), political maps of the United States from 1850 and 1880, Nazi werewolves, making whiskey and wine in a lab, and Guy Fawkes Day.
Monday, September 24, 2018
The 2016 Election as a Football Play
If the election had been a football play rather than a presidential election, and Hillary Clinton had been handed her position in it by Make-A-Wish rather than the Democrat establishment, the 2016 election would have looked something like this:
h/t Moonbattery
Friday, February 2, 2018
Groundhog Day/Superbowl links
Groundhog Day, Candlemas and weather predictions. Related: Where Did Groundhog Day Come From?
Don't like what the groundhog has to say about how long winter will last? You're in luck: Punxsutawney Phil has been correct just 39% of the time since 1887.
Jonah Goldberg's classic Groundhog Day column.
8 years? 34 years? How long was Bill Murray stuck in Groundhog Day?
How to Write Groundhog Day by... the writer of Groundhog Day.
As Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell take off down the street once Groundhog Day has ended, Nat "King" Cole is singing Almost Like Being In Love - here's Mark Steyn with a history of that song.
Some Super Bowl reading:
Super Bowl stadiums made from meat.
Football during WWII, when almost all able-bodied men joined the military: The combined Steelers/Eagles team called the Steagles.
Were footballs ever actually made of pigskin?
ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include beer, wine and whiskey pairings for all those Girl Scout cookies you're buying, illustrated fitness tips from 1900, some February links (pagan Roman purification (februa = purify) and Mary's purification 40 days after the birth of Christ), and recreating ancient recipes.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Friday links
February 5th is World Nutella Day - just in time for your weekend baking, here's a canonical list of Nutella recipes.
What If: Since Death Valley is below sea level could we dig a hole to the ocean and fill it up with water?
Some Super Bowl reading:
Football during WWII, when almost all able-bodied men joined the military: The combined Steelers/Eagles team called the Steagles.The Lost Tribe of Gypsy Harlots: The Mythical Invasion of the Super Bowl Hookers.Were footballs ever actually made of pigskin?'Super Bowl Babies' Come Together to Sing About Being Conceived After Super Bowl Victories. (From 2016 - if they've done an update I haven't found it.)
ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and are all about Groundhog Day (the day and the movie) and/or February: why February is all about purification (februa = purify), what's up with February 2nd and weather predictions, how often the groundhog has been right (spoiler - 39% of the time since 1887), and doing the math on how long Bill Murray was stuck in Punxsutawney in the movie (8 years? 34 years?).
Monday, December 12, 2016
Monday links
New Guinness World Record-setting Rube Goldberg machine takes 412 steps to light a Christmas tree.
When Mother Teresa Met With New York's Mayor to Lobby for a Parking Permit.
Who Inspired Elvis Presley's Haircut?
When Mother Teresa Met With New York's Mayor to Lobby for a Parking Permit.
Who Inspired Elvis Presley's Haircut?
Before Seinfeld: The Origins of Festivus.
ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include (without limitation) lots of really bad nativity sets, the history of the chicken dance, Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day, and how McDonald's got started.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Thursday links
February 5th is World Nutella Day - here's a canonical list of Nutella recipes.
Some Super Bowl reading:
Football during WWII, when almost all able-bodied men joined the military: The combined Steelers/Eagles team called the Steagles.
Were footballs ever actually made of pigskin?
The Lost Tribe of Gypsy Harlots: The Mythical Invasion of the Super Bowl Hookers.
We're the Only Animals With Chins, and No One Knows Why.
ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include lots of groundhog stuff, outrunning a tyrannosaur, ridiculous (but true) tabloid headlines, ranking movie psychopaths, and experimental WWII aircraft.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Football during WWII, when almost all able-bodied men joined the military: The Strange Story of the Steagles
When the US first entered WWII, almost every able-bodied man volunteered for the military or was drafted. That included the rosters of all of the NFL teams. The resulting diminished rosters led, among other things, to a combined Steelers and Eagles team called the Steagles.
Read the whole thing at Priceonomics - excerpts below:
On December 8, 1941, the day after Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt delivered his famous “Infamy” speech to a radio audience of 100 million Americans. Thirty-three minutes later, Congress officially declared the United States’ entry into World War II.
The previous year, the U.S. Government had signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, which required all men between the ages of 21 and 36 to register for one year of military service, as selected by a national lottery. Following Pearl Harbor, this act was amended: eligible ages expanded from 18 to 64, and the required service became “the duration of the war, plus six months.”...
As teams' rosters diminished in size, a serious question arose: should professional sports continue during a time of conflict and war? Here's FDR's response to baseball commissioner Kenesaw Landis's when that question was raised: it's since become known as the “Green Light Letter”, and the NFL figured that it applied to them, too:
When the 1943 season began, some 600 players and coaches — more than half of the entire league — had joined the armed forces. As a result, the Cleveland Rams, which had lost not only most of its players, but its majority owner to the draft, suspended play for the season, leaving an uneven 9 teams in the NFL, many of which were shorthanded.
As a result, one of the strangest things in NFL history happened: two interstate rival teams -- the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers -- were merged. The result? A gaggle of World War Two draft rejects dubbed the “Steagles.”
Bill Hewitt was excused from military service for a “perforated eardrum” and served as the Steagles’ defensive end during the 1943 season... Other Steagles players faced more pressing medical problems: Tony Bova, the receiver, “was completely blind in one eye and partially blind in the other. Two of his teammate, Ed Michaels and Ray Graves, were entirely deaf in one ear. John Butler, who, as tailback, was required to run dozens of offensive lines per game, had arthritis in his knees. In a wide variety of respects, the Steagles team was riddled with ailments.
“There were guys with bad eyes, bad knees, bad backs, punctured eardrums -- things that could get you out of service, but not an NFL game,” retired player Joe Horrigan told ESPN. “A manpower shortage caused teams to hire players who were old, overweight, not otherwise qualified to be professional athletes.”
Here's a brief video:
And an un-embeddable longer video at NFL.com.
Read the whole thing at Priceonomics.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
'Super Bowl Babies' Come Together to Sing About Being Conceived After Super Bowl Victories
Super Bowl 50 will be played this coming Sunday, February 7th To celebrate, kids and adults from around the country who were conceived after Super Bowl games (aka "Super Bowl Babies"), came together to sing a Super Bowl-themed version of Seal's Kiss from a Rose,
NFL:
For Super Bowl 50 the NFL and Seal brought together some actual Super Bowl Babies to recreate one of the greatest love songs of all time to celebrate the greatest game of all time.
Friday, January 29, 2016
Friday links
It's W. C. Fields' birthday: quotes, bio and film clips.
Family Wraps an Entire Greenhouse around Their Home to Keep it Warm.
Argue amongst yourselves: The 10 Best Superhero Performances in Movies.
Interesting technology improvements in this year's Super Bowl cameras.
Five medieval toothpaste recipes, plus more medieval dental advice.
ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include the anniversary of the Soviet Army liberation of Auschwitz, forgotten World War II films, the world's longest war lasted 335 years (and ended in 1986), and proof that children are imbeciles (and babies are stupid).
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Tuesday links
It was a dark and stormy night - 2015 winners plus a selection of greats from the Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction writing contest.
Tournament: who 's the worst character on television? Vote here.
Football Physics: Newton, Einstein and The Forces Behind Those Big Hits.
ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include video of an elephant herd attacking a motorcycle, a group of neighbors created their own Internet service, never before seen Star Wars scenes, and why mid-century lawyers spent 12 years arguing about peanut butter.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Distraught Because Amazon Pulled Rob Gronkowski Erotic Novel "A Gronking To Remember"? It's Back!
Boston Globe:
Just when it looked like “A Gronking to Remember” might become a major bestseller — OK, maybe not a major bestseller — the erotic novella about Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski has suddenly been removed by Amazon.
Actually, it's back, with a new cover, and there's also a send entry in the series, entitled A Gronking to Remember 2: Chad Goes Deep in the Neutral Zone.
Here's Gronk reading it on Jimmy Kimmel:
"I haven't read a book since ninth grade," Gronk tells Kimmel. "A Mocking to Remember or whatever? A Mockingbird to Remember?" Kimmel eagerly tells the audience that Gronk attended the University of Arizona. "Number one party school in the nation!" Gronk exclaims.
via Esquire.
Friday, January 23, 2015
The New England Patriots Prevention of Fumbles is Nearly Impossible
Posting this here because the site keeps crashing.
Posted on January 22, 2015
Yesterday I investigated whether or not the New England Patriots outperform expectations in bad weather. I had several recommendations to look at home and road data, as opposed to just home data. Mulling whether or not to undertake that further (time consuming) analysis, I watched this video:
I immediately noticed something that cannot be overlooked: the issue with ball security and fumbles. Then I remembered this remarkable fact:
The 2014 Patriots were just the 3rd team in the last 25 years to never have lost a fumble at home! The biggest difference between the Patriots and the other 2 teams who did it was that New England ran between 150 and 200 MORE plays this year than those teams did in the years they had zero home fumbles, making the Patriots stand alone in this unique statistic.
Based on the desire to incorporate full season data (not just home games, as a team theoretically bring “doctored footballs” with them on the road) I performed the following analysis:
I looked at the last 5 years of data (since 2010) and examined TOTAL FUMBLES in all games (as well as fumbles/game) but more importantly, TOTAL OFFENSIVE PLAYS RUN. Thus, we can to determine average PLAYS per FUMBLE, a much more valuable statistic. The results are displayed in the chart below. Keep in mind, this is for all games since 2010, regardless of indoors, outdoors, weather, site, etc. EVERYTHING.
(click to enlarge)
One can CLEARLY SEE the Patriots, visually, are off the chart. There is no other team even close to being near to their rate of 187 offensive plays (passes+rushes+sacks) per fumble. The league average is 105 plays/fumble. Most teams are within 21 plays of that number.
I spoke with a data scientist who I know from work on the NFLproject.com website, and sent him the data. He said:
Based on the assumption that fumbles per play follow a normal distribution, you’d expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten over this period, once in 16,233.77 instances”.
Which in layman’s terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0000616 probability to win. Which in other words, it’s very unlikely that it’s a coincidence.
I actually went back and researched 5 year periods for the entire NFL over the last 25 years. The Patriots ratio of 187 plays to 1 fumble is the BEST of ANY team in the NFL for ANY 5 year span of time over the last 25 years. Not was it just the best, it wasn’t close:
2010-2014 Patriots: 187 plays/fumble
2009-2013 Patriots: 156 plays/fumble
2006-2010 Colts: 156 plays/fumble
2005-2009 Colts: 153 plays/fumble
2007-2011 Patriots: 149 plays/fumble
2008-2012 Patriots: 148 plays/fumble
2010-2014 Texans: 140 plays/fumble
2004-2008 Colts: 139 plays/fumble
2006-2010 Jets: 135 plays/fumble
1999-2003 Chiefs: 134 plays/fumble
There are a few key takeaways. First and foremost, the 187 plays/fumble dwarfs even the rest of the best seasons the last 25 years. Second, the Patriots have been at the top of the NFL since 2007.
Ironically, as my study yesterday showed, the Patriots performance in wet weather home games mysteriously turned ridiculous starting in 2007. In 2006, they went 0-2. From 2007 onward, they went 14-1.
The next obvious question becomes, where were the Patriots in this statistic pre-2007? Take a look:
(click to enlarge)
As you can see, the Patriots won their Super Bowls having a below average rate of fumbles lost given today’s average of 105 plays/game. But in 2007, something happened to propel them to a much better rate (you’ll remember, that just so happened to be the same year they went 16-0 in the regular season). But even looking at these numbers, its clear how insane the 187 number is: they are almost running 100 MORE plays without a single fumble as compared to the 2002-2006 period when they won 2 of their 3 Super Bowls.
To further illustrate how these numbers are astonishing, the below graphics lay out clearly how far off the Patriots are from the rest of the league. Its evident to the eye how far removed they are from the norm. Whether we look at a histogram laying it out, where the Patriots and their 187 plays/fumble is far from the “bell shaped curve”:
(click to enlarge)
or the same chart as above, this time displaying color bands as we move away from the 105 plays/fumble average. You can see the darker red band contains all teams but the bottom 3 and the top 3, and that the bottom 3 are very close to the darker red band. Meanwhile, the Patriots are really in a league of their own:
(click to enlarge)
Could the Patriots be so good that they just defy the numbers? As my friend theorized: Perhaps they’ve invented a revolutionary in-house way to protect the ball, or perhaps they’ve intentionally stocked their skill positions with players who don’t have a propensity to fumble. Or perhaps still, they call plays which intentionally result in a lower percentage of fumbles. Or maybe its just that they play with deflated footballs on offense. It could be any combination of the above.
But regardless of what, specifically, is causing these numbers, the fact remains: this is an extremely abnormal occurrence and is NOT simply random fluctuation.
_____________________________________
UPDATE: It was suggested that I look at ALL fumbles, not just fumbles lost. With that said, let’s look there:
First, it should be noted (as the tables above show) that teams playing indoors fumble the ball less frequently. Reasons are many, foremost the ball won’t be wet from precipitation, damp from late night condensation, and a variety of other reasons. Which is why, if you look at the very first chart I posted above, you’ll see the teams who fumble the MOST/play are generally colder weather teams who play outdoors (PHI, DEN, BUF, PIT, WAS, NYG, KC, NYJ). Whereas at the other end of the spectrum, aside from the Patriots in their own world, are HOU, ATL and NO, all dome teams.
The below graphic looks at ALL fumbles over 5 year periods the last 25 years. I planned to cut this off at JUST the top 10 teams, but all we would have seen were the Patriots and dome teams. Top 15 would have accomplished the same. So I had to expand to the top 25 team periods. As you can see, of the top 25 team-periods, 17 are dome teams, including 11 of the top 15. First, let’s look at the chart, then we’ll look at comparisons to average:
(click to enlarge)
As is apparent, the Patriots are the only outdoor NFL team the last 25 years to average 70 plays/fumble or better, and they did it from 2007-2014 (four, five year periods). Its simply uncanny, as the statistics above similarly showed.
Averages:
Over the last 25 years, indoor teams averaged 43 plays/fumble (in all games they played that season, regardless of site, understanding that half their games would be played indoor sans-weather).
Since 2000, they improved to 46 plays/fumble.
Over the last 25 years, outdoor teams averaged 41 plays/fumble.
Since 2000, they improved to 43 plays/fumble.
The Patriots averaged 73 plays/fumble the past 5 years, almost 70% better than the 43 plays/fumble that outdoor teams averaged since 2000.
Next, lets look only at the current 5 year period:
The league average plays per fumble from 2010 thru 2014 was 50 plays/fumble.
For indoor teams, the average was 55 plays/fumble.
For outdoor teams, excluding the Patriots, the average was 46 plays/fumble (9 fewer).
The Patriots averaged 73 plays/fumble, almost 60% MORE than outdoor teams, and almost 50% MORE than the league average the past 5 years.
(click to enlarge)
Since we now can clearly in the data, both near term and long term, that dome-based teams (who play at least 8 games out of the elements) have an advantage in the fumble department, we can exclude them from comparisons to the Patriots.
If we do, I can produce a chart identical to the one at the very top which looked ONLY at fumbles lost. This one looks at ALL fumbles, whether lost or recovered. I think the point still remains:
(click to enlarge)
If this chart looks nearly identical, it should. The Patriots are so “off the map” when it comes to either fumbles or only fumbles lost. As mentioned earlier: this is an extremely abnormal occurrence and is NOT simply random fluctuation.
_______________________________________________________________
Warren Sharp of sharpfootballanalysis.com is an industry pioneer at the forefront of incorporating advanced analytics and metrics into football handicapping after spending years constructing, testing, betting and perfecting computer models written to beat NFL and college football totals. A licensed Professional Engineer by trade, Warren now works as a quantitative analyst for multiple professional sports betting syndicates in Las Vegas and has parlayed a long-term winning record into selections for clients which move the Vegas line and beat the closing number with regularity.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Man With Tom Brady Helmet Tattooed On His Head Is Jailed On Felony Narcotics Charge
This sounds like a pretty lame charge - $15 worth of synthetic marijuana is the felony, plus misdemeanor trespassing, per The Smoking Gun. The helmet is the best part:
As noted in the “Scars, Marks, Tatoos or other distinguishing features” section of the report, Thompson has “Tattoo Head-Patriots Football Helmet.”
Thompson had a series of tattoos inked on his head to make it appear that he is wearing a New England Patriots football helmet. Along with team logos on each side of his head, Thompson got Brady’s number 12 and the word “Patriots” inked on the back of his head. He added the name of the helmet maker (“Riddell”) on his forehead, as well as an American flag and an NFL logo.
Thompson even included the small green dot indicating that a helmet is equipped with an electronic device allowing its wearer to receive plays from the sideline.
He also had a likeness of the Super Bowl trophy tattooed on the top of his head. Additionally, his noggin features inked replicas of the signatures of players Rob Gronkowski, Wes Welker, and Randy Moss. Somehow, Thompson forgot to add Aaron Hernandez’s John Hancock to his cranium.
Monday, August 11, 2014
Peyton and Eli Manning have a new rap commercial out, and it's pretty cool (with bonus Joe Namath commercials)
So it's for a fantasy football TV channel, apparently, but who cares about that?
I really like the part with Broadway Joe* (wiki) making stew with their mom, and the bit with the guy being showered with tiny footballs.
Watch full screen.
Here's last year's Football On Your Phone, subtitled Football in Your Pants”:
*Vaguely related, here's an old shaving cream commercial with Joe Namath and Farrah Fawcett (before she became famous):
And his famous pantyhose commercial:
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