CFB Chaos

Gonna keep writing about CFB because it’s more fun than lame competition theory.

Going into Week 11 of College Football, everyone was expecting a pretty calm weak without too many casualties or change in rankings due to the only top 25 matchups being #4 Washington vs #20 USC and #24 LSU vs #25 Arkansas. This expectation was proved horribly wrong in the most exciting manner though. 5 of the top 10 teams lost with 4 of those losses being to unranked opponents. #2 Clemson lost to Pitt, #3 Michigan lost to Iowa, #4 Washington lost to #20 USC, #8 Texas A&M lost to Ole Miss, and #9 Auburn lost to Georgia. #1 Alabama, #5 Ohio State, #6 Louisville, and #7 Wisconsin all crushed their relatively weak opponents not too surprisingly, but #10 Penn State went relatively close with the not-too-great .500 team, Indiana (personally I think Penn State is overrated atm). This created great confusion to the CFP committee as how they should approach this chaos. Obviously Alabama should be #1, but past that what goes where? Due to the rest of teams ahead of Ohio State losing, they should be #2, but then if that logic followed, Louisville should jump up to #3, which they did not! Michigan and Clemson stayed ahead at #3 and #4 respectively (funny SIDE NOTE: After the CFP ranking reveal on Tuesday, Louisville players complained on social media about only being ranked #5, only to lose to unranked Houston two days later lmaooo). Washington stayed in top 6, which is understandable considering they had the most solid loss of Week 11, if they just had a stronger schedule going into it they’d be great. USC I just found out actually is tied for most top 10 defeats which is incredible considering their ranking.

BIGGEST OUTCOME OF THE WEEK:

With Michigan’s loss, if Penn State wins out (which they should, p cupake games) Ohio State WILL NOT go to the B1G Championship game, even if they beat Michigan in week 13. This could leave the CFP committee with likely #2 tOSU (or #1 if somehow Bama loses) AND the B1G champion to choose from for the top 4. The committee values conference championships a shit-ton so this might be the way to get two B1G teams in the playoff which would be brazy.

Thursday update: Further chaos with L’ville’s loss and I really have no clue as to what’s to come for the rest of the season.

My playoff predictions:

0. Bama

2. Clemson

3. UW

4. tOSU

Update of CFB

Week 9 has passed and that means the official College Football Playoff rankings have been released. Very exciting. For the preseason and the first 8 weeks, the only official rankings have been AP and Coaches’ poll and while those polls are quite significant, but with the introduction of the College Football Playoff ranking those polls have no value and are put in the backseat and now the true rankings us the CFP. The opening CFP ranking this season had quite a bit of controversies that I will cover as I go over the whole rankings.

1. Alabama: No surprises here. In the AP and Coaches Poll, Alabama has consistently had over 95% of the #1 votes. Unbelievably strong team led by Dark Lord Nick Saban. Probably going to win their fifth championship in the last eight years.
2. Clemson: Both AP and Coaches’ Poll had Michigan at #2 and Clemson at #3 so this was quite a surprise to many but not too concerning. Known for close games but always somehow coming out with the win
3. Michigan: See above, and Michigan has unbelievably high points forced per game and low points allowed but that is due to relatively weak schedule and the relentless of their coach, Harbaugh.
4. Texas A&M: Big controversy here, in the other polls they’re ranked at #7, due to their 19 point loss to Alabama. Many people think #4 is a huge overestimation of the team and blames it on “SEC Bias”, pollers inflating SEC teams’ ranks due to name-recognition.
5. Washington. Most people think this team should be ranked top 4 due to their undefeated record and solid performance in almost all of their games.
6. Ohio State. Ohio State was ranked top 2 for the whole season until their recent loss to at the time unranked Penn State. Most people think this loss should have dropped Ohio State to lower but due to the Big Ten’s recent domination, “Big Ten Bias” has been a term thrown around by many.
7. Louisville. Louisville and Clemson are rivalling this season for domination of the ACC, Louisville has been dominating their schedule besides the loss to Clemson which in most people’s minds means Clemson should be above Louisville but I don’t know how strong that is. Louisville absolutely dominated both Florida St. and NC St. who both went very close with Clemson. I suppose the rest of the season should even everything out. Hopefully.
8. Wisconsin. Definitely the best 2-loss team in the country, to at the time #2 and #3 Michigan and Ohio State. They don’t control their own destiny at this point in the time but they have a chance of winning their relatively easy half of the Big Ten so that could help their case later.
9. Auburn. Seen as a bad team early in the season, even being the reason for the firing of LSU's coach, Les Miles. Now after some crazy blowouts of solid SEC teams they are very respected (*cough* SEC Bias *cough*).
10. Nebraska. Overrated in my opinion, seen as shaky throughout the whole season, went surprisingly close with Wisconsin though so that helps their case.
11. Going to stop here, because rankings get much more shaky after this point and are much less significant. Two weeks later this will be much more hype due to closeness to the CFP. Thanks for reading, hope you understand a bit and are excited for more.

College Football

I’ve been in college football spirit lately so I’m going to break away from as the theory-based writing and focus on more real things in this post.

Week 7 of NCAA football has just passed and while many are sad because they have to wait a whole week until the next saturday to watch some football, I am happy because it’s a whole week to interpret the data and most specifically the rankings. The main reason I prefer college football over the NFL is the weekly rankings. On Sunday, following all the games, the multiple rankings systems get updated. The two main rankings systems are AP Poll (made up of 65 sportswriters and broadcasters) and the Coaches Poll (made up of 62 NCAA football coaches). Polls would single-handedly decide the NCAA football champions for over a century, whatever team was ranked #1 at the end of the season would be declared the national champion. In 1998, this tradition ended and it was decided that the #1 and #2 ranked teams would play in a designated bowl game, with the champion becoming the undisputed national champion. While the polls still played a big role in deciding the eventual national champion, it was less of an influence because two teams got a chance to decide it for themselves, and it theoretically should increase the margin of error that the polls will inevitably make. This is the only system I’ve known of my whole life so I was astounded that people would be fine with a poll choosing a “champion” with no championship but apparently it’s pretty normal to my dad. This system changed yet again in 2014 when the College Football Playoff format was formed. The top four teams in terms of the official CFP rankings, a committee of about a dozen people to decide what teams are best, play in a two round playoff format to decide the national championship. You may see a pattern here and it does raise the question of the how far the expansion will go. Many think it will expand to eight for even sixteen. I think there is an argument for eight teams, the theory behind that is any team that has a reasonable chance at winning it all should be in running. If you look at the #16 team they honestly don’t have a high chance of beating the number 1 team, but I think it’s quite unfair to leave the #5 team out of the running because difference between the top 5 teams can be very small.

These systems would all be perfect if polls are perfect. But sadly they are not due to subjectivity and inability to factor in all data. Theoretically you are able to solve this using computer rankings, which are often used, but it’s nearly impossible to make an algorithm that correctly balances all factors. College football in essence is based on a team’s win-loss record. If they go undefeated (doesn’t happen all the time, 3 of the last 5 years though), they should qualify for the national championship. So basing off of W-L record seems like the most correct method but it is not, due to differences in strength of schedule, meaning the average level of your opponents across the season. An example of strength of schedule having a large impact is Ole Miss, who has a win percentage of 50% right now (3-3), yet somehow in the top 25 (#23 on AP) and above an 80% win percentage team Navy (4-1). Also Louisville who is at #7 (AP) while having a loss, yet is above at least 5 undefeated teams. Personally I really like benefiting teams that have a hard schedule because it gives an incentive for teams not just to schedule a season full of pushover teams. Ole Miss might be a bit of a stretch though, they’re a perfect example of people spamming “quality loss” as a reason to be good, yet Ole Miss doesn’t even have a quality win yet. Luckily as the season goes on the rankings will get more accurate as data collects and gets further from pre-season bias. I’m trying to make my own computer ranking algorithm (once I can figure out how to effectively import all the data) and it’ll be super interesting to see how the rankings compare when stressing certain factors versus others.

I didn't really paint a picture of what's going on right now in college football but all you need to know is that Alabama is super super overpowered, while the B1G has the highest consistency as a conference at the very top.

This post strayed from what I was really planning on talking about and kind of lacked a clear focus, may make another college football post later in the season if more thoughts occur. Thanks for reading if you did.

Solved Games and Luck

You may hear, or not, someone talking about a form of competition, primarily games, being “solved”. Examples are Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect 4, and Checkers. What does being “solved” mean. There are different kinds of solved games. Some like Tic-Tac-Toe, are easy to show an algorithm, or what response to every single move, a player should make to perform perfect play which will always force a win or draw (draw in the case of Tic-Tac-Toe). For easily solvable games like Tic-Tac-Toe, it makes game play very boring as anyone out of elementary school can pretty easily see the perfect drawing strategy. Connect 4, is also mathematically solved as a win for whoever goes first, but I’m not sure if many people know the whole algorithm in their head. However even without knowing the exact algorithm, many people will win every single time they go first, just with a general strategy and reacting on the whim to how their opponent plays. So even with people not knowing the algorithm, the game may still be unenjoyable due to inherently low skill cap of the game. Not many people know this but the game checkers is actually solved, it took something like 15+ years with 200 computers, so there’s no way no one out there actually knows perfect play and therefore the fact that it’s solved is not relevant to many.

What about games with luck? A game with luck can not be “solved” in a sense that a certain player can force a win or draw with perfect play. This is because even with perfect play, luck is outside of anyone’s control and cannot ensure anything. However, there is still the concept of “optimal play”. Games like Solitaire or King’s Corner are examples of easily found optimal play but luck involved. So solitaire has pretty easily discoverable best strategy, yet there is no way to guarantee a win due to randomness of starting position (there’s actually only one game that is un-winnable of the millions in Windows version of Solitaire now that I fact-checked it, not sure how it applies to real life solitaire though. Hope you still got the point though). This concept of losing despite perfect play may frustrate many and put people off from certain games. People will even insult a game for “having too much luck”. I believe this is a big indicator of what certain people want in a game: competition or fun. If someone is hyper-competitive (me), then they want to minimize the amount of luck so skill accordingly is increased. On the flip-side, many people just play games to have fun, and luck is a big factor of that. This is the reason gambling is such a profitable business (maybe I’ll touch on that and how it dances on the border of “competition” in another post). You see examples of this in video games where “party games” are very luck-oriented but when people turn the games competitive, such as Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo GameCube, they try to eliminate all types of luck throughout the game to maximize skill and competition.

The question of whether a game is solved or ever can be may seem trivial to you but many people are excited by this question for the games they love. A prime example is chess. As of right now computers, even on phones, can consistently beat the world’s greatest chess players. While we can make computers that are unbelievably talented at chess, humans are nowhere near close to mathematically solving the game and it’s a debate as to whether it will ever happen or not. I’ve heard that many chess grand masters believe the game will never be solved, but I think it’s just because they have so much pride in their own intellect they think no computer could fully handle it (/s). No one knows whether the solution would mean white (first player) wins every time, draw every time (most probable), or even black wins every time (that’d be crazy).

We only hear of "games" being solved, usually card or board games, but what about video games or sports* (*what is a sport anyway?)? The concept of "perfect play" and solutions being brought out of the theoretical algorithm-based mathematical world and into the physical world brings up way too many questions that I really don't want to answer. However that doesn't stop anyone from trying to achieve that perfect play and optimization.

Who knows though, maybe there will be a team of fast reacting and all physically capable robots that the Super Bowl winner will have to play against at the end of the season every year. Probably not but that'd be entertaining.

Continuation of Categorizations of Sport/Non-Sports.

Disclaimer: Whenever I'm talking about these varying categories of what makes something a sport or not, mainly in my last post, I'm not saying that it's fact or even that I believe it, just different approaches to the topic. Because after all it means absolutely zero.

In my last blog post (hope you read it) I discussed different categorizations of sports and what could potentially make something a sport. Maybe you may have noticed  I left out competitions with elements of subjectivity in them or at least high amounts of subjectivity involved. This is a big part in newly categorizing competition. The Olympic games just happened and you may notice that a interestingly high amount of the games are scored by judges, which makes it subjective based. These sports are Gymnastics, Diving, Synchronized Swimming, Trampoline, and many more. These are easy to say that they are subjective because there's no clear objective way to score points or rules. You can't mathematically judge or officiate the game, it must be a human with human behaviors. It's important because in all these events different people could think different things and that leads to disputes over who won, which team is better, and who is the best. Really illegitimatizes lots of statistics involved in my opinion.

Subjectivity is not a clear line at all though, even if it may appear to be. It's a spectrum. You have sports such as synchronized swimming that are all based on judges, and then darts where there's no way anyone could argue over opinion because it's all very clear. There's in between though, a big example being officials/refs/umpires in sports such as football, basketball, soccer, baseball, and more, almost every sport to varying degrees. So while there's a clear way to score without much dispute in basketball, there's still disputes over which events are fouls or not. And even further on the spectrum are fighting sports such as boxing, wrestling and UFC. They are mixes of both aspects because there are technical ways to win such as knocking out an opponent, but if that doesn't happen its up to judges to decide, and as I'm sure many of you are aware, that can end poorly often.

When I was young and we'd create backyard games with the extended family and due to hypercompetitivity any small crack in the rules would be exploited and result in endless arguing. If any rule was subjective neither team would admit they were in the wrong so we had no choice but to make all rules objective and clearly defined. As a result of this, I believe all competition should strive to have as little subjectivity as possible and the less it has the more of a "sport" it becomes. I'm very into ranking teams and players and comparing statistics and as I mentioned earlier, it's hard to compare that when its all a result of some dudes' opinions.

The question we (me) are all wanting to know the answer to is whether the level of subjectivity effects the sporty-ness of it or not. Not just me but I think many people believe it does, many people when asked if cheer leading or dancing, even in their competitive atmospheres are sports, they'll respond no, I think it's a valid opinion but many probably think otherwise. I just think such a beautiful part of competitive is the ways you can mathematically approach it and its much harder hwne subjectivity is involved.

Really lame post this week but next time I'm talking about solved forms of competition and how luck plays a role, will be very exciting. Thanks

What is a Sport?

Near everyone at one point in time has played a sport or talked about sports and everyone for sure has participated in competition as it's very inherent to us. While everyone talks about sports not many people try to find out exactly what a "sport" is. Probably because it means zero, but regardless.The main discussions I hear of defining sports is between athletes themselves whether it be soccer players, cross country runners, tennis players, or chess players. These discussions often go hand in hand with the inherent value of the sport though but I will discuss that later. The point is over the years I've heard and read just about every definition possible, maybe some better than others.

If you google "define sport" you will get "an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment." which is a good place to start. Most people define a sport with “physicality” or “athleticism” which is respectable. This clearly cancels out many candidates such as chess, poker, and all other less common board and card games. But it doesn’t clearly draw a line as physicality of a sport is a spectrum. Is golf athletic? Shuffleboarding? Darts? Video Games? The biggest issue of defining it with just words and not examples is it just isn’t clear enough. Skill is also mentioned and skill can be applied to almost all forms of competition but even that faces a large spectrum of examples.

I’ve heard someone define a sport as a “physical game” and a game is defined as “interactive competition between two (or more?) parties”. So football and basketball fit the bill while less interactive forms of competition such as track and field and golf don’t count as games. I like this definition because I think a huge aspect of competition is interaction with the opponents. If the Cleveland Cavaliers play Uni High Basketball their outcome would be much different than playing against the GS Warriors. On the other hand if Usain Bolt runs against me rather than Justin Gatlin, the outcome for him will be just about the same aside from minor psychological factors. So forms of competition with no interaction are in their own vacuum and very much different. The whole element of preparing for a certain opponent and various matchups is gone with them.

Going off of those two aspects, to better define "sport" I split up all forms of competition by two factors. Whether it is a game or not (which is clearly defined and I loove that) and the degree of physicality but because that isn't well defined I tried to scrape up three categories: Athletic, Physical by Nature, and Mathematical (very easy to define). So if you can imagine a table with 6 boxes that should encompass all competition for now. I will give examples for each, the order being how strong it fits in the category.
Athletic Game: American Football, Basketball, Soccer, Hockey, Tennis, Fencing?
Physical by Nature Game: Shuffleboarding/Curling, Billiards, Darts, Video Games?
Mathematical: Chess, Bridge, Checkers, Connect 4, Poker?
Athletic Non-Game: Sprinting, Golf, Shotput, Long Jump
Physical by Nature Game: Piano, Sowing Competition, Cow Milking Competition (Don't knowidk
Mathematical: Solitaire,

I purposefully left out all forms of competition based around subjectivity and judges so that will be where I pick up on this juicy topic next post. Thanks for reading.

Introduction to "The Theory of Sports (and Organized Competition as a Whole)"

Hello all readers, which probably is made up of only NFW students and Dr. Majerus. My first blog post will be an introduction as to what my blog will be about, or at least what I hope for it to be. You can see the title is "The Theory of Sports (and Organized Competition as a Whole)" and over the weeks you'll understand more of what that means.

Competition is something very innate with us, dating back to first humans and in animals, and as a big sports fan I find it only right to delve deeper into it. I'm into looking at different arguments of what defines a sport or even competition in general and looking at individual forms of competitions and how the various aspects compare. My goal with comparing various aspects, I will try to see what forms of competition have more competitive parts looking at measures such as athleticism, strategy, skill, etc. Relating back to definitions, there's a lot of categorization within competition I am into, more than just what is sport vs what is not and what is competition vs what is not.

The focus is on sports just because it is by far most popular form of organized but I will also be talking about things such as video games, card games, or board games such as chess which has recently been pretty popular at Uni.  This blog won't be a guide or advice though, strictly overarching thoughts on competition. I won't spoil all this blog will give though by revealing all topics in addition to me not knowing what I will talk about really.

I left the topic quite broad in case I run out of content over the next several posts, and because of that many of you readers will probably get bored as it is an inherently boring topic that I'm interested in. If this all seems confusing I apologize, hope it will clear up in next few weeks after I start posting more. This is the boring one because it is the introduction, I swear the next ones will at least be a little bit thought provoking.

Stay tuned, thanks.