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Articles
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The Lew Rule, the Mafia and Locker's PE
Richard Linde, 4 May 2009
Think the Lew Alcindor rule for starters, the “Lew rule,” as a prominent example of eastern bias. Dunking the basketball was banned by the NCAA from 1967 to 1976, coincidentally at the time when Lew Alcindor, now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was entering his sophomore season at UCLA. In my opinion, the mafia suffered a hissy fit at the sight Lew’s backhanded dunk, which was new to college basketball at that time. Out of New York City, Alcindor was one who got away from the eastern establishment. This year the BCS voters used the “so-called weakness” of the Pac-10 conference schools to vote USC down in the BCS polls after it had lost to Oregon State in its third game of the season, this game coming after it had embarrassed Ohio State, 35-3. Normally, a BCS team moves its way back up in the polls if it loses early in the season. That didn't happen to USC thanks to east-coast bias. Their rationale, marked by its Howard Cosel accent, was sophistry at its worst. To wit: showing its "weakness" as a conference, the Pac-10 won all five of its bowl games last season. USC ended up number two in the final USA Today Poll and had 11 members of its team go in the NFL draft, including starting quarterback Mark Sanchez, who was the fifth player drafted. Oregon State had 7 players drafted. All in all, the Pac-10 had 32 players drafted, or 3.2 players per team, finishing ahead of the South Eastern Conference. The Pros put their money where their mouths are. From USC's standpoint, it would have been nice if the Trojans hadn't had to play the Beavers last season. I'm sure a lot of Pac-10 schools, once in a while, would like to avoid that hick trip to the Palouse and its limited monetary payout. But each team in the conference has to play every other team nowadays. Stupid. This is something for incoming Pac-10 commissioner Larry Smith to consider. See the californiagoldenblogs.com. With its round-robin scheduling format, the Pac-10 is playing into the mafia’s hands. Playing a nine-game conference schedule ensures that the conference will lose five more games than it would have if it had stuck with its old 8-game schedule. As Ted Miller writes in his blog, “…(this) hurts national rankings and strength of schedule ratings, which then combines to hurt the conference in the BCS standings." (See “Should the Pac-10 end round-robin scheduling? Of course it should.”) "If the Pac-10 tossed away a ninth conference game, then it could add another nonconference game, like other BCS conferences do," Miller writes. The conference gets no credit from the voters for playing its rugged round-robin schedule. Every other year, conference members have to play five Pac-10 games on the road. Suicide. Freeing up an extra game, Washington could play a softer out-of-conference schedule and begin to win more games, which would make it easier to recruit blue-chip prospects into the program for new head coach Steve Sarkisian. As blue chippers and wins both accumulate in the Huskies' football program, whatever money is lost to the Athletics Department by playing a few patsies along the way would resolve itself in the end. For example, Ohio State drew 105,011 fans to Ohio Stadium for its 43-0 victory over Youngstown State (an FCS football member) in its season opener in 2008. Ending up twelfth in the USA Today poll, Texas Tech played the likes of Eastern Washington, Nevada, Southern Methodist, and Massachusetts in its OOC games last year. Washington might have been 6-7 last season if it had played that OOC schedule in lieu of its own and had won a couple of conference games it should have won. This assumes Jake Locker hadn't broken his throwing thumb. What about playing for the national championship some day? Rep. Joe Barton of Texas has introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from labeling a game a national championship unless it's the outcome of a playoff system. Duh. I thought everyone knew the BCS championship game was a mythical national championship game and not a real one. There is no playoff system in place. So... The BCS is all about money, and it would be nice if the Pac-10 got its fair share of that money by playing in an additional BCS bowl game every year along with its de facto one, the Rose Bowl. That sounds nice, but forget it. If Pac-10 teams begin to play softer OOC schedules, the mafia will likely penalize them in the polls. At the least, though, more Pac-10 teams would be eligible for post-season bowl games, regardless of any bias directed against them for inclusion in more than one BCS bowl game. (That's Taylor Bean, Ronnie Fouch, and Jake Locker in the photo above). Locker's passing efficiency rating over his last 8 games, which includes four scrimmages, is 130.29. He has completed 61.1% of his passes in these last 8 outings. These numbers suggest that when Locker's offensive line and receivers are the equal or the better of the pass defense he is facing, he is as good a passer as any other quarterback in the Pac-10, if not better. His Oklahoma stats from last season buttress this notion. Jake posted a rating of 120.57 against the Sooners, while completing 66.7% of his passes. The Sooners ranked 99th in the country in pass defense last season, but still played in the BCS title game. Yes, the mafia is alive and well. In Table 2 below, we try to make sense of Locker's numbers, which are labeled "Schrödinger's cat" over at bearsnecessity.com. See (Give me bad numbers). Locker's stats below mostly correlate (numbers in purple don't) with the passing efficiency defense he faced. Ohio State, USC, and ASU, each having a strong PED, held him in check, for example. He had five games in which he bettered the PED he was facing. In two of those games, he faced non-BCS opponents. In the other games, the three teams' overall pass defenses were rated 70th, 71st and 86th in the country. He was injured and lost to the team in the Oregon State game, which explains his mediocre number. Finishing up the game for Locker, Carl Bonnell posted a PE of 144.69. The game against WSU marked Locker's return to action after that injury and he had a poor day passing. The glaring anomaly was in the Stanford game. He completed half of his passes in that game and threw one pick against no touchdown passes. He had 16 rushes for 97 yards, as part of 388 yards rushing the Huskies posted on the game. Perhaps, his passing wasn't needed in that game, in a game the Huskies won. (Link). Table 1. Locker's passing efficiency over his last 8 games.
Table 2. Schrödinger's cat. Jake Locker's throwing versus pass defenses in the 2007 season. So, are his numbers really a conundrum? His numbers all make sense except for the Stanford game.
Richard Linde can be reached at malamute@4malamute.com |
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