Evil Wordsmith

Ok,so it’s Week 4 and we’re learning a lot about each team. New England made some very bad choices in not renewing a few contracts and making trades of some key players. The Lions might be able to break their label as the worst team in the NFL and my poor Skins, well it’s looking like they’ve forgotten how to play ball. For now, here’s Week 4s picks:

We’ll see how it turns out.

All in all it wasn’t a bad week, though there were a few surprises. Who would have thought Pittsburgh would have lost. It might have been just by a field goal, but they’re better than the score proposes and should never have gotten into that dilemma. I can’t believe my Skins lost against the Lions, breaking their 19 game losing streak. And I had to sit by and watch my Titans self destruct as well. Had I kept up on the news of the games I would have picked the Eagles and Vick’s debut over Kansas City.

But even with those issues, I didn’t have a bad week and still beat SirEvil’s computer picks. Yes!

I remember way back in broadcasting that the worst thing that could happen was “dead air”, meaning you’re transmitting silence.  Yesterday however, Nick decided that they would have hours of planned dead air.  Apparently some idiot figured if kids watching TV on Saturday suddenly couldn’t find their cartoon they  would go outside and play instead of what they really did… change the fricken channel.

The thing that annoys me about this is that I don’t need help, especially from TV networks, rearing my child.  He’s thin, energetic, reads, writes and understands math far beyond his grade level.  If he is watching TV it is because I’m allowing it, just like when he’s playing tag on the playground.

There was upside to this, the alternative to Nick was something called Moment of Impact.  The kid watched the world record hockey fight and came up with a new sport.  “Daddy! Someone should make a game called Ice Wrestling!”  I told him that’s what I thought hockey was.

E.W.

Great timing for Nick on this “go out and play day”, from the weather radar it looked pretty much like it was raining on the entire eastern half of the US.  That is the Thunder Beings smiting you, let’s hope the advertisers follow suit.

Here are my week 1 picks:

I wrote a new game simulator, the spreadsheet based one was painfully slow, took nearly 30 minutes to get answers out of it. Now it takes about 5 minutes to simulate over a million games. It got 11 this week, so I’m happy with it.

Week 2:

Got 7 games… ouch. I’m beginning to wonder if I passed stats II or not now. I recall having a headache, but not much else.

Anyway, here are the week 3 picks:

The computer has flagged no good bets for all three weeks so far, which makes me think that the rabid crazy fans who always bet big on Detroit don’t have money for Vegas lately. As a result, only pros show up to bet.

The better modeling program lets me do something I wanted to do before, predict the playoffs. So here it is:

So far for the first three weeks the Pats win the Superbowl. I show this game twice cause it matters who has home field in the calculation, and by default there isn’t a home field in the Superbowl.

E.W.

Statistics is the art of using massive computer resources to make predictions so non-statisticians can say, “I told you so.”

Getting Ready For Week 3

So Week 3 begins and hopefully we’re out of the Twilight Zone. The Eagles will still be struggling without McNab. Tennessee is still feeling the sting of their loss last week going into NY where the Jets have home field advantage. While the Jets are flying high from their win over New England. I think this is the emotional game of the week and the Jets will have the advantage. New England has something to prove in Atlanta and I think they’ll do just that. Miami should easily take San Diego in California. And Indianapolis proved to themselves last week that they can come back and win on someone else’s home field, so I expect they’ll take Arizona with relative ease. Though it may not be as easy as they think, Arizona is showing they have some skills this year.

On Monday, I expect Dallas to come back on their home field angry and feeling they have something to prove. I love that they lost their home opener in the “Palace in Dallas” that Jerry built to his own ego. But I think that sting of defeat on their home opener, and in their new stadium with all it’s hype; well over hype if you ask me; has their blood boiling and they’ll take Carolina.

So here’s the picks for the week from me. Hopefully it’s not a continuation of last weeks miserable picks.