(12-31-2015 12:10 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(12-30-2015 11:07 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  The combined record of the 10 teams that the 2008 team defeated was 46-78 (.371).

Does that mean they won't be outliers, or that they will?

I'm not doing the graphs. I simply looked at that season's results. The three teams with winning records among the 10 were Southern Miss (7-6), Houston (8-5) and Western Michigan (9-4).

(12-31-2015 04:04 AM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  

(12-31-2015 12:10 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(12-30-2015 11:07 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  The combined record of the 10 teams that the 2008 team defeated was 46-78 (.371).

Does that mean they won't be outliers, or that they will?

I'm not doing the graphs. I simply looked at that season's results. The three teams with winning records among the 10 were Southern Miss (7-6), Houston (8-5) and Western Michigan (9-4).

Thanks for the info. I will just wait and see which games, if any, are dismissed as outliers.

unless we change the approach to football, it won't make any difference who the coach is. what would Saban's record be with these recruits (can't go national, remember, can't take anyone under 1,000 SAT), and with this coaching staff (forget Kirby Smart - he makes more than Bailiff), and up until end of next year, with these facilities ?

(01-01-2016 06:45 PM)davidw Wrote:  unless we change the approach to football, it won't make any difference who the coach is. what would Saban's record be with these recruits (can't go national, remember, can't take anyone under 1,000 SAT), and with this coaching staff (forget Kirby Smart - he makes more than Bailiff), and up until end of next year, with these facilities ?

That's simply bull____, and a great excuse. Again, I don't think Top 25 is a realistic goal for Rice in football, given our enrollment size, budget/resources and academic requirements, but your nuts if you honestly think another coach could not get more out of his players than Bailiff has. Our schemes stink...our preparation and execution is sub-par....and we don't utilize the one advantage we have over almost every one of our opponents-- player intelligence.

(01-01-2016 06:45 PM)davidw Wrote:  unless we change the approach to football, it won't make any difference who the coach is. what would Saban's record be with these recruits (can't go national, remember, can't take anyone under 1,000 SAT), and with this coaching staff (forget Kirby Smart - he makes more than Bailiff), and up until end of next year, with these facilities ?

Not talking national championship here... C-USA title contention and some T25 votes - G5 teams have been known to achieve that.

(01-01-2016 07:00 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(01-01-2016 06:45 PM)davidw Wrote:  unless we change the approach to football, it won't make any difference who the coach is. what would Saban's record be with these recruits (can't go national, remember, can't take anyone under 1,000 SAT), and with this coaching staff (forget Kirby Smart - he makes more than Bailiff), and up until end of next year, with these facilities ?

That's simply bull____, and a great excuse. Again, I don't think Top 25 is a realistic goal for Rice in football, given our enrollment size, budget/resources and academic requirements, but your nuts if you honestly think another coach could not get more out of his players than Bailiff has. Our schemes stink...our preparation and execution is sub-par....and we don't utilize the one advantage we have over almost every one of our opponents-- player intelligence.

I agree with you that it's bull to think that other coaches couldn't get more out of our players.

I do wonder, however, how much of an asset the increased academic intelligence is for our players. Is there proof that the ability to do well in school actually translates to better understanding the complexities of a sport? I've always wondered if this was a superficial argument that might not hold up with greater scrutiny. I actually think sometimes being smarter is a hinderance because a player could be overthinking the situation. Just because someone understands calculus or biology better than someone else, doesn't necessarily mean they'll understand more complex coverages or blitz packages as compared to someone else, right?

(01-01-2016 06:45 PM)davidw Wrote:  unless we change the approach to football, it won't make any difference who the coach is. what would Saban's record be with these recruits (can't go national, remember, can't take anyone under 1,000 SAT), and with this coaching staff (forget Kirby Smart - he makes more than Bailiff), and up until end of next year, with these facilities ?

I can tell you exactly what Saban's record would be under these circumstances. 0-0, because he wouldn't take the job under these circumstances.

But I'm tired of "losing is okay as long as you have enough good excuses." We don't need somebody who can win if we changed all those things, we need somebody who can win if we DON'T change all those things. Because that's what it's going to take. I would think that we should have comparable academic standards to Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, and Vanderbilt, and a comparable admissions process (and my understanding is that the standards are pretty similar, I know examples where we get some guys they won't take and I know examples where they get some that we won't take, but our process is much less efficient than theirs). I think we will have to improve performance with what we have, and that will generate additional revenues, and the staff and facilities improvements will come after we generate those revenues. One thing that I think would help immensely would be the removal of whatever restrictions we have that prohibit or restrict corporate donations to athletics. Back in the McKinsey days, I struck up a friendship with a professor at Illinois-Chicago, whose research specialty was collegiate athletics economics and finance. When the McKinsey report came out, I sent him a copy. His first reaction was that the corporate revenues number had to be low, because Illinois-Chicago had more corporate revenues for athletics than we did. That's how bad that situation is.

(01-01-2016 07:25 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I do wonder, however, how much of an asset the increased academic intelligence is for our players. Is there proof that the ability to do well in school actually translates to better understanding the complexities of a sport? I've always wondered if this was a superficial argument that might not hold up with greater scrutiny. I actually think sometimes being smarter is a hinderance because a player could be overthinking the situation. Just because someone understands calculus or biology better than someone else, doesn't necessarily mean they'll understand more complex coverages or blitz packages as compared to someone else, right?

Todd and Major both told me, in separate conversations, that they found it to be a HUGE advantage. I think the extent to which it is an advantage depends on the extent to which the coaching staff recognizes and knows how to use that advantage.

I see indications that Navy uses it. I see indications that Stanford uses it. I see indications that Northwestern uses it.

I don't think this staff makes use of it at all. I don't think they know how to use it. Meerkat and other schematic approaches would certainly indicate that they don't.

(01-01-2016 07:00 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(01-01-2016 06:45 PM)davidw Wrote:  unless we change the approach to football, it won't make any difference who the coach is. what would Saban's record be with these recruits (can't go national, remember, can't take anyone under 1,000 SAT), and with this coaching staff (forget Kirby Smart - he makes more than Bailiff), and up until end of next year, with these facilities ?

That's simply bull____, and a great excuse. Again, I don't think Top 25 is a realistic goal for Rice in football, given our enrollment size, budget/resources and academic requirements, but your nuts if you honestly think another coach could not get more out of his players than Bailiff has. Our schemes stink...our preparation and execution is sub-par....and we don't utilize the one advantage we have over almost every one of our opponents-- player intelligence.

Walt and DW, I know you both and respect your both. DW, you make some good points, but those things aren't going to change. We need somebody who can win without changing them, or we need to give up and go to D3. Those are the only viable options. I've endured 50 years of half-assed efforts and I'm tired of that.

I don't think David Bailiff can get it done. Whether Saban could or not is irrelevant, because we don't have Saban, we have David Bailiff, and we're not getting Saban. I don't think David Bailiff can get it done for the same reasons Walt lists. Our schemes don't make effective use of our personnel. We tolerate sloppy practice, and that leads to sloppy games. And we don't utilize our players' intelligence, which as I noted above, both Todd and Major told me were huge advantages for them.

(01-01-2016 08:46 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(01-01-2016 07:25 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I do wonder, however, how much of an asset the increased academic intelligence is for our players. Is there proof that the ability to do well in school actually translates to better understanding the complexities of a sport? I've always wondered if this was a superficial argument that might not hold up with greater scrutiny. I actually think sometimes being smarter is a hinderance because a player could be overthinking the situation. Just because someone understands calculus or biology better than someone else, doesn't necessarily mean they'll understand more complex coverages or blitz packages as compared to someone else, right?

Todd and Major both told me, in separate conversations, that they found it to be a HUGE advantage. I think the extent to which it is an advantage depends on the extent to which the coaching staff recognizes and knows how to use that advantage.

I see indications that Navy uses it. I see indications that Stanford uses it. I see indications that Northwestern uses it.

I don't think this staff makes use of it at all. I don't think they know how to use it. Meerkat and other schematic approaches would certainly indicate that they don't.

I can see how running the triple option would take advantage of it, but what exactly does Standord and Northwestern do that takes advantage of the players' increased intellect? I'm not saying they don't, just that it isn't obvious to me.

(01-01-2016 09:17 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I can see how running the triple option would take advantage of it, but what exactly does Standord and Northwestern do that takes advantage of the players' increased intellect? I'm not saying they don't, just that it isn't obvious to me.

Their quarterbacks appear to change plays at the line, which ours are not allowed to do. They don't make much use of the Meerkat. Navy actually does more Meerkat than the other two, but none of them use it as much as we do, and as you noted, anytime you run the triple option you rely on your quarterback to make a lot of decisions.

It's hard to tell exactly how much freedom they have to change things on defense, but I do see some shifting and movement that appears to be initiated by players on the field.

To the extent that they allow players any freedom, they do so more than we do. I don't think our staff trusts our players to make the right decisions if they are given freedom to do so. Or maybe they don't trust their own abilities to teach the players properly.

The R^2 value on these linear regressions isn’t great, so the next goal was to remove outliers. Error bars were added to represent one standard deviation.



The following games were removed as statistical outliers

This list reveals a few insights as well

1. The 2011 team was the “most unlucky” as they played several top 20 teams (all losses)
2. The 2015 team was by far the worst team Bailiff has fielded. 3 wins were against teams so bad they were dropped as outliers. Our two losses against UTEP and UTSA were also so bad that they were removed from the equation.
3. 2013 also benefitted with weak scheduling

Replotting the data without the outliers



This reveals a few interesting things
1. We see that the losses are to better teams (slightly) over the Bailiff tenure
2. The victories are coming against worse teams on average
Combining the two, the data does not support the assertion that the teams under Bailiff have really improved at all over his tenure.

Also, the average Sagarin of our opponents was the worst in 2015. second was 2013.

(12-30-2015 03:19 AM)Almadenmike Wrote:  I would suggest that in #48, the y-axis be inverted, going up from the higher Sagarin numbers (worse teams) to the lower numbers (better teams).

That would show most of our victories on the bottom of the graph, consistent with them often occurring against bottom-feeder teams.

Here it is

This is possibly the most damning graph of them all. Plotted is number of wins by year compared to the number of wins against teams ranked better than Rice as well as Losses against teams ranked worse.

Our supposedly awesome 2013 season with 10 wins? Rice beat ONE team ranked better than them.

Since 2009, Rice is 9 and 78 against teams ranked better than them.

In 2012-2014 , which is the often cited success period, Rice is 2-38 against teams ranked better.

Yeah, I don't understand why #75 is damning. All that says to me is that Sagarin does a pretty good job of estimating team quality prior to a given matchup.

Anyway, your graph labeling could use a lot of work. The standard is to name a graph "[dependent variable] vs [independent variable]" (e.g. "distance vs. time"). In the cases where you've properly identified both, e.g. #49, you've got them reversed. Separately, in a lot of these, you haven't properly identified the independent variable (e.g. in #48 that you're ordering games chronologically starting in 2011). And then in #79 you're taking descriptions of your various series and saying they're being plotted "vs" one another, which again is not how that term is typically used.

I say this not to be pedantic, but because it takes a while to figure out what you're graphs are trying to say, making the much experience much more painful for the reader than it should be. I'd suggest that on every graph, you label all your axes (with both a description of the measure and its units) and you include a legend describing each series. Then the titling issues wouldn't much matter.

(01-02-2016 07:55 AM)Antarius Wrote:  Since 2009, Rice is 9 and 78 against teams ranked better than them.
In 2012-2014 , which is the often cited success period, Rice is 2-38 against teams ranked better.

Not 2-38. I doubt we played 40 teams ranked better than us in 3 years, and we didn't lose 38 games total in those 3 years. I think you have a typo.

Here's my problem with where you are going with this. I don't think the goal should be to beat teams that are ranked better than us; I think the goal should be to be ranked better than those teams. In 2015, for example, I don't think the goal should have been to upset a clearly down Texas team; the goal should have been to be better than that Texas team, so that beating them was not an upset. It's a different mindset, and one that has been lacking for a long time.

(01-02-2016 09:28 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(01-02-2016 07:55 AM)Antarius Wrote:  Since 2009, Rice is 9 and 78 against teams ranked better than them.
In 2012-2014 , which is the often cited success period, Rice is 2-38 against teams ranked better.

Not 2-38. I doubt we played 40 teams ranked better than us in 3 years, and we didn't lose 38 games total in those 3 years. I think you have a typo.

Here's my problem with where you are going with this. I don't think the goal should be to beat teams that are ranked better than us; I think the goal should be to be ranked better than those teams. In 2015, for example, I don't think the goal should have been to upset a clearly down Texas team; the goal should have been to be better than that Texas team, so that beating them was not an upset. It's a different mindset, and one that has been lacking for a long time.

We played in bowls so 13 games a season plus the conference championship. Thats 40 total games. Aggregated, we beat 2 teams ranked higher than us in those 40 games.

So 2 and 38

As for the mindset I completely agree. The issue is you have to beat teams better than you to be better than them. We have colossally failed at the former so the latter is completely out of the question.

(01-02-2016 05:28 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(01-02-2016 09:28 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(01-02-2016 07:55 AM)Antarius Wrote:  Since 2009, Rice is 9 and 78 against teams ranked better than them.
In 2012-2014 , which is the often cited success period, Rice is 2-38 against teams ranked better.

Not 2-38. I doubt we played 40 teams ranked better than us in 3 years, and we didn't lose 38 games total in those 3 years. I think you have a typo.

Here's my problem with where you are going with this. I don't think the goal should be to beat teams that are ranked better than us; I think the goal should be to be ranked better than those teams. In 2015, for example, I don't think the goal should have been to upset a clearly down Texas team; the goal should have been to be better than that Texas team, so that beating them was not an upset. It's a different mindset, and one that has been lacking for a long time.

We played in bowls so 13 games a season plus the conference championship. Thats 40 total games. Aggregated, we beat 2 teams ranked higher than us in those 40 games.

So 2 and 38

As for the mindset I completely agree. The issue is you have to beat teams better than you to be better than them. We have colossally failed at the former so the latter is completely out of the question.

2 and 38 would suggest we beat 2 out of 40 teams that were better than us and lost to the other 38 teams that were better than us.

How many of the 40 games have we played against teams that were ranked higher than us? Let's say that nunber is X. We would then be 2 and (X-2) in games where teams were ranked better than us.