College Football is Here!

Well, almost here, but hey, I've had it in the heading since day one, so you knew it was coming. The first games are now only 12 days away, and I'm pumped. Sure, I'm not in mid-season form, and I know a lot more about the Houston Astros bullpen right now than I do about the Kansas State backfield, but that's the way it should be. Summer fades into Fall.

Kansas State, by the way, is one of four participants of two early games this year. On August 23rd, Kansas State plays California in Kansas City, and Grambling plays at San Jose State. It was while looking over the Kansas State schedule that I found my first College Football story of the season, Bogus Scheduling.

Bogus Scheduling is a deliberate attempt to play absolutely meaningless and safe non-conference games in order to best boost a team's ranking, and chances for an undefeated season. It can actually work against you in the Eisenberg National Championship, or ENC (to be released Monday, August 18th), but in a pollster-driven world it can get you straight to the Sugar Bowl. The Sugar Bowl is the site of this year's game between the two top BCS teams (I refuse to call it a National Championship game),and with that in mind, let's take a look at some of the top teams to rig the event with Bogus Scheduling. I found three:

Kansas State - KSU starts with the neutral-field game in neighboring Kansas, then plays three straight home games against teams that aren't even Division 1A - Troy State, McNeese State, and UMass. Then, they play another home game against a team from a non-BCS conference, Marshall. They do not play a single road game that is part of their non-conference schedule.

Virgina Tech - VT opens the season with UCF, James Madison, Texas A &M, and UConn at home. They do not play a non-conference opponent on the road all year.

Ohio State - The Buckeyes open with five straight home games, Washington, San Diego State, North Carolina State, Bowling Green, and Northwestern. They play only four road games the entire year with the first one not being until October 11.

If there was a Cowardice Award for an entire conference, it would go to the Big Ten in a landslide. It must be in their by-laws to schedule no one who could possibly damage the conference's reputation, but I'll save that for another day. And the ENC might have to come up with some kind of rule for KSU's scheduling of so many non-1A games. If you don't want to play in 1A, why should you be eliglble for the 1A championship?

The ENC name is up in the air, too. I think I'm going to have change the blog heading on top to:

Eisenberg Sports - A Work in Progress.

BAP Scores -

Seattle 8 New York 6
BAP- Sea .681, NY .714
OPS - Sea .935, NY .843
BAP loses. This game has circumstances that comes up from time to time, where the BAP idea works, but the percentages don't. Seattle actually accumulated 32 bases to NY's 30. It's occurred to me that if we have one unit of measurement already built in (a single game), why do we need another (number of plate appearances)? Seeing the actual thing we're trying to figure out is who will win the game, does the number of plate appearances even matter, or should it just be who accumulates the most bases? Open for discussion.

Sat 8/9 - SEA 2 NYY 1
From Jeremy in NY
BAP - Sea .419, NY .172
OPS - Sea .494, NY .352

We're all tied up:

BAP 10-1
OPS 10-1

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