(08-13-2017 11:14 PM)nzmorange Wrote: [ -> ] (08-13-2017 08:48 PM)quo vadis Wrote: [ -> ] (08-13-2017 02:37 PM)nzmorange Wrote: [ -> ] (08-13-2017 11:12 AM)quo vadis Wrote: [ -> ] (08-13-2017 09:54 AM)nzmorange Wrote: [ -> ]My mind and, so I'm told, the minds of the players involved. Given the stuff that makes locker room bulletin boards as motivating material, I find it incredibly hard to believe that the general consensus is wrong.
Since the SEC title game was introduced in 1992, the winner of the regular season game is 14-6 in CCG rematch games among the P5 conferences. A 70% win rate. That's a pretty good winning % against a quality opponent for teams allegedly suffering some big, unfair psychological or motivational disadvantage or whatever. Maybe that motivational 'disadvantage' is counterbalanced by the fact that the losing regular season team might have their own doubts going in to the rematch because, you know, those other guys already proved they can beat them?
Or maybe you think that since team A beat team B the first time, they should beat them 100% of the time if they play again?
100%? No. But all other factors being equal, the team that won the first game is more likely to be more talented/better coached/etc., so they're more likely to win the second game (+50%).
The problem is that the outcome of repeat games is probably closer to 50% than it otherwise would be, save for the systemic advantage that the underdog has. Unfortunately, to your earlier point, this situation makes the game less valid, and therefore less interesting - at least to me (and probably many others because I don't think that repeats get the same kind of ratings that they otherwise would).
And I have yet to see any evidence supporting your theory about first loss insecurity. I have, however, seen at least anecdotal evidence supporting my theory. For example, I have heard a number of interviews where players and coaches have talked about how they're motivated by a loss earlier in the season. I've also heard interviews from players and coaches where the winning team didn't want to play the losing team again. I have, however, not heard the inverse. It may exist, so I'm sure someone can cherry pick an article if they look hard enough, but those kinds of articles/interviews are far less common.
Like it or not, as far as I can tell, your argument rests on wishful thinking. Mine rests on experience of the people involved.
I've provided data on rematch results, and those results do not comport with the notion that the team that won the first game suffers a penalty in a rematch situation. The winner of the regular season game also has a strong tendency to win the rematch.. All you have done is assert your belief that if there was no rematch motivational penalty for the regular season winner, their win rate would be even higher than the 70% that i posted. That's unsupported, and it doesn't make much sense. I mean, 70% is a pretty high percentage to beat another very good team.
And it really isn't surprising that players/coaches wouldn't talk about fearing a team that already beat them. Football is a macho sport and you aren't supposed to admit fear and doubt. Much easier to talk about not feeling motivated to play a team you already beat, there's no 'wimp' factor in that kind of talk. But every competitor knows that when someone beats you and you face them again, there are often doubts and fears in your mind about that.
If the evidence had shown that the regular season winner won only 50% or less of the rematch games, that would be stronger support for your position. But as of now, there's really no support for it, except for your belief based on unscientific anecdotes.
First, that 70% number doesn't mean as much as you're trying to make it mean.
1. It's a cherry picked number. As per the other poster, the total FBS number is about 60%.
2. The better team almost certainly won the first game more often than not, so the expectation is that they would win X>50% of the rematches.
3. Football is probably the most predictable mainstream sport. It's not like baseball, where a really good team wins ~60% of their games. Really good football teams win ~95% of their games. Alabama, for instance, hasn't lost a game to a non-ranked team in about a decade, and I'm not sure that Alabama was even ranked when that last loss happened.
Second, your benchmark of +/- 50% is overly strenuous, and arguably arbitrary. The only benchmark that should matter is whether the actual results is materially lower than the "should be" result. Given we don't have any concrete proof of what the "should be" results are, the best evidence that's available would be the opinions of the people who are directly involved. It's admittedly imperfect evidence, but we live in an imperfect world. To quote John Ashcroft, "you go to war w/ the army that you have, not the army that you want."The same sentiment applies here.
Still, the belief that the loss is a substantial motivating factor is consistent w/ other actions. Coaches harp on numerous slights directed at their team to try to get/keep the players motivated. I have a hard time seeing an actual loss as less of a motivating factor than something like a clerical error on a school's website.
1) My data may be not 100% inclusive of all possible data points, but it is not cherry picked, it focuses on P5/Power, a perfectly legit thing to do. If you want to expand it to FBS, FCS, high school, or whatever, that's fine too, even though typically the discussions here focus on the power leagues. But even if we use FBS, 60% is still a pretty strong tilt in favor of the game 1 winner. It speaks against some powerful down-motivation factor for the game 1 winning team.
2) Not necessarily the case that we should expect the winner of game 1 to have been the better team in some existential sense. The first game could have been played at the home of the winner, the loser might have had key guys injured, may have been the victim of some critical bad calls, etc. Lots of factors could have tilted the table in favor of the winner in game 1 other than them being just better.
3) You keep repeating your anecdotal evidence like there's a voluminous amount of it, but you haven't proved that. Personally, i follow college football pretty close, and I've never heard players/coaches complain about rematches as being a motivational downer. But you act like it's this Big Meme that is talked about constantly.
You also keep talking about it as if it's good evidence, when there's little reason to think it is. It's anecdotal, and last post I explained why it's much more likely players/coaches would talk about that rather than admit to being psychologically down at the prospect of facing a team they already lost to, though the latter is a pretty obvious natural reaction.
And no, 50% isn't arbitrary. The win rate is everything here. Conference division winners tend to be very good teams. Not always, but usually. It's hard for a very good team to beat another very good team twice in a season. We'd expect a 1-1 result even if Team A is better than Team B. E.g., lets's say that 10-2 Syracuse really is in some abstract sense "better" than 9-3 Pitt. But both are good teams, so they aren't overwhelmingly better, such that Syracuse has a 60% chance to beat Pitt in any given game. Well, if they play twice, the overall odds that Cuse wins both are just 36%, there's a 64% chance that they end up 1-1 or something other than 2-0 for Cuse.
So in that kind of context, a 70% win rate for the game 1 winner is pretty high, and it speaks against your theory.
