Posted by Dr Fro 9:26 PM

Sorry for the dearth of posts. It's been a crazy-busy week at work with two big things going on, both of which are now done. I am travelling to Austin tomorrow to go to the big game against Baylor ;-) and then staying in Austin for work on Monday and Tuesday.

I'll start by telling all those of the west Texas plains Good Game.

People expect me to be upset, but those people don't know me well. I can be passionate about UT football and also keep it in perspective. Things I think about to keep in perspective are:

If you had offered me at the season's beginning to have our record, I would have taken that. We are much better than I thought we would be.

We just had a 4-game stretch that some thought we might go 0-4 or at best 2-2. With 2 seconds left in the Tech game, we just about went 4-0. I say 3-1 ain't bad.

And even if you judge success only by championships (which I do not), it is worth noting that our Big 12 Championship chances went from "sure thing" to "in the running" with Crabtree's touchdown. A downgrade, but not an elimination of hope.

It was one of those games where you can point to 20 things that, had they gone the other way, a different team would have won. For the past 5 years, there must be 10 different games where, when a game could be described that way, we were the ones that won. Once, we lost. I'll take 10-1 in crazy, anybody-coulda-won-that-one games.

I am cool with the loss.

Now enough about the past. How about the future?

How will the Big 12 South play out?

This diagram helps to answer that question

Diagram

If you don't understand it, go study Big XII tiebreaker rules, which are similar to most conferences. Lets do some simplified math. First assume that any game between Tech, UT, OU and OSU is 50/50, and lets assume those teams have a 100% chance to win all other games. This is a simplification of the math to show the teams relative chance of winning the Big XII South, not a precision prediction of the future (for instance, knowing that A&M has beaten UT the past two years, I am not suggesting we have a 100% chance of beating them. But any one of UT, Tech, OU or OSU could lose a big upset...I am calculating what would happen IF that doesn't happen).

So, using that diagram, you get
4/8 chance Tech wins
3/8 chance UT wins
1/8 chance of UT/OU tie that would be broken by BCS standing - more likely to go to UT

Interesting. Call it 50/50 between UT and Tech

Okie State can only win if they win out AND UT drops one to somebody else. OU relies on, inter alia, the tiebreaker of who is higher in the BCS or for UT to drop one down the road.

(I STILL think OU is the best team in the league. We will see how it plays out.)

I have an analogy for you to explain UT/Teach being 50/50:

All in with one card to come and
- Tech holds 5s 6c and
- UT holds 7d 8d to a board of
5d 6d 7c Qc

In that situation, Tech appears to be ahead, holding 2-pair versus a pair. But....

UT would have 22 outs. (9 diamonds plus 2 sevens plus 3 eights plus 3 fours plus 3 nines plus 2 queens).

That is 22 outs with 44 in the deck or 50/50. Do you call UT behind because two-pair is better than a pair of sevenes. If so, do you say they draw out if they win? Or do you see that they are 50/50 and not be suprised by either outcome?

Mmmmmm poker football anaolgies mmmmmmmmmmmmm (Homer Simpson voice)

Can we stop using the word "gauntlet"? PLEASE! That, and "woodshed" Let's stop saying those words when I stop using "sick"!

I have a leak in my poker game, but I just hit my bedtime, so we can talk about that later.

2 Comment(s):

Posted by  Anonymous, at 12:06 PM, November 07, 2008  

I agree with Tech having 4/8 chance, and UT having a 3/8 chance, but I disagree with your assumption that Texas wins out in a 3-way tie with OU and Tech.

Personally (and admittedly thru crimson colored glasses), I think the human polls and definitely the computer polls move OU up with wins late in the season at Aggieland, vs. undefeated Tech, and at top-15 OSU...

Also, one point of interest is that all 3 of UT's chances are on the Tech losing vs. OSU side of the bracket, so a Tech win this weekend, almost effectively eliminates UT.

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Posted by  Dr Fro, at 8:21 PM, November 07, 2008  

I didn't assume UT would win the tiebreaker, I said they probably would.

I think that it depends on margin of victory in the relevant games ( to the humans) and our loss was about as close as it gets and our win over OU will be viewed as decisive.

Hey, if OU beats Tech by a bunch, I totally see them winning the BCS tiebreaker, but until that happens, I still see us ahead in the BCS (mainly due to computer points for the Missou win)

The point of my post wasnt to speculate on how that tiebreaker will work out, just to point out that we went to appr. 50/50, even if it is somewhere between 37.5%-50.0%

(I think OU will beat Tech and I plan to bet on it)

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