Author and Thinker
They probably didn’t get the idea from me, but RealClearSports is using essentially my SuperPower Rankings concept!
But I’d like to make two suggestions for additions: the Sporting News Power Poll and the Fanhouse power rankings. I know you don’t want an even number of power rankings because that facilitates ties, and I would think a prime number would be even better.
Who cares about those amateur college scrubs? THE league of record in America is the National Football League, and Da Blog and Morgan Wick’s football site is ready with complete team coverage there as well!
Start with the NFL Lineal Title; as I said last week, it’s analogous to the college football lineal titles, but because of the NFL’s schedule structure there’s rarely more than one at a time, and never more than two. I need to explain something that I forgot to make clear last week: Split titles in the college football lineal title arise from teams going undefeated, or winning the BCS Title Game (which is why LSU gets a new lineal title this year despite not going undefeated). Obviously, it’s exceedingly rare for an NFL team to go undefeated, so what happens instead is that split titles are created when the title holder doesn’t make the playoffs. Obviously, that’s rather rare as well, and the Patriots nabbed the lineal title on their march to an almost-perfect season, so the Giants start the season with the title this year and will defend it against Washington tonight on NBC.
Speaking of which, starting Week 3 or 4, I’ll start my weekly SNF Flex Schedule Watch, which was perhaps the prime contributor of traffic to Da Blog last year, before it was taken over by webcomics. I correctly predicted the Week 12, 14, 15, and 17 games that were moved to primetime as part of NBC’s flexible scheduling, only missing Weeks 11, 13, and 16. I had thought I did the Flex Schedule Watch on Tuesdays last year, but it was actually a Wednesday feature last year so it’s a Wednesday feature this year.
There is a third concept that I used last year: the “SuperPower Rankings”, my experiment in creating a set of “super-power rankings” from the power rankings produced by the eight leading sports sites (ESPN, CBS, Fox, NBC, SI, Yahoo, USA Today, and Sporting News – Yahoo produced two rankings). It proved to be way too much work, so I’m not doing it this year, but I leave the concept open for someone else to pick up the gauntlet.
So it seems we have a few more readers now than we did a week ago, especially with a second LiveJournal linking to us. Yesterday and the day before, Da Blog had nine times more visitors than it did the day before that, so it seems some housekeeping is in order.
First: RSS feeds. The-zaniak has created a LiveJournal feed for Da Blog, and my response is: Um… you do know Blogger comes with its own RSS feed, right? If you have IE 7 or Firefox, you should see an RSS icon light up when you see the page. (I can only speak to IE there; I don’t know how it works for Firefox.) Unless I get something else cool from having an LJ feed, it seems a bit unnecessary. This has prompted me to add feed links to the sidebar. (If you wanted to create an LJ feed, you’d have done better to create one for Sandsday. I’d create one myself if I knew how to create an RSS feed from a pre-existing MySQL database.)
I’ve also posted in the past on the idea of Da Blog as a collection of sub-blogs, and as such I’ve also added a list of all of Da Blog’s labels to the sidebar. They come complete with their own feeds; this post explains how you can form them. Both those new sidebar items are right below the larger blog archive, which makes them, and Da Blog Poll, less visible.
I’m also re-opening and extending by one week one of Da Blog Poll questions, removing the Random Internet Discovery from the list of options and replacing it with the fairly self-explanatory “Explorations into History”, which could include such things as my opinion on the presidents. Although I have saved the other results to a personal file, if you are one of the three people that have voted on the poll before, I strongly urge doing so again. If you vote “other” I expect you to specify what you have in mind on this post (where you can also learn more about the options) or this one. This is probably the last time I’m going to re-open this particular poll, which has existed in some form almost since Da Blog was founded. I’m also giving you until the end of August 16 to tell me whether you think I should post every time I put up a new strip. You can vote on any or all of the poll questions. I also encourage you to contribute to the poll on the front page of the web site.
Also, after nearly a year since the Web site was put up, I’ve finally deleted the long-dormant Da Blog Poll from the days when Blogger didn’t have its own poll element.
Finally, I’m offering you the chance to have your name in lights, as long as you won’t get paid for it, at least not right away. If you’re a movie buff – and not just the “Spiderman” kind, but one with a real grasp of film history – I invite you to join my 100 Greatest Movies Project, my seemingly endless quest to create the definitive list of greatest movies from all the ones that have come before, to sing the praises of the movies that make the list. E-mail me at mwmailsea at yahoo dot com if you’re interested and I’ll show you a sample write-up and a list of movies that are either on the list or close enough to make it on when I retabulate the list (or at some point in the future when new lists come out). I used the same principle in creating the NFL SuperPower Rankings, and released lists for last year, but it proved to be too much work. If you’re an NFL buff, and you’re willing to put in the work, you can have it for your own website as long as you credit me with the idea, and I’ll link to you on Da Blog.
And if you have any other ideas for what the web site or Da Blog could use, feel free to leave a comment on this post.
UPDATE 7/25: Okay, this is why I have long thought about leaving Blogger, because of unnecessary bullshit. Evidently for the last 24 hours the reposted poll and the two new features were at the top of the sidebar even though I had THOUGHT I had saved their moves. Then when I was told I had changes I hadn’t saved, it wouldn’t save, and then it would tell me “an error occured” no matter what I did after that. lk asfdasilnbg grlkldoe m,x bjfk dsndihtsgugvwbgjwhidxdyf
As I’ve said before, it’s a bit of a chore to put out the SuperPower Rankings each week. Therefore, I have made an important decision:
I will not put them out this week.
There’s even less impetus this week than there normally is, I’ve delayed it to Friday already, and there’s a bunch of stuff I’ve been meaning to do over the vacation that I haven’t done, which the SuperPower Rankings would only delay.
But if you want to put together some ratings yourself, look at the following URLs:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/powerranking
http://www.sportsline.com/nfl/powerrankings
http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/powerRankings
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/dr_z/01/02/rankins.part1/index.html
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/2007-power-rankings.htm
http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=331743
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ys-rankings010108&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
http://www.nbcsports.com/portal/site/nbcsports/menuitem.26521619de8457ec32288a6f8a3c2d04/?vgnextoid=af1c7e8491615110VgnVCM10000082c3d240RCRD&vgnextfmt=default
I still like the idea behind the SuperPower Rankings, but I’m not enjoying it as much as I thought I might. Let’s move onward into the NFL Playoffs and whatever else we look at on Da Blog from here on out.
New SuperPower Rankings, of course, and an update on the Patriots’ blitz through the entire NFL.
The Upset Special for the week is Miami beating the Bengals.
Can someone explain to me why Atlanta is favored over Seattle, even with the Seahawks having nothing to play for?
I was going to add something else really insightful, but I forgot it. But here are the teams that could get each pick of the NFL Draft, in selection order for all rounds. I’m discounting strength of schedule because that’s too hard to look up and I’m not sure of the formula anyway.
Some notes:
Very briefly: Picking Detroit over San Diego as the Upset Special, because I still believe the Lions are almost as good as everyone thought they were when they were 6-2. No one will look at the schedule and notice that this losing streak has come almost entirely against good, playoff-bound teams.
You know what I just realized? The 2004 Auburn and Utah titles are going to be unified at the Sugar Bowl. Meanwhile, the BCS Title Game won’t involve an undefeated team and neither team holds any lineal title. Arkansas will defend its Princeton Title at the Cotton Bowl (“Just a few days ago, Missouri was playing for a spot in the BCS Championship game. While unsuccessful in that match, they did manage to get into another National Championship Game,” writes HeavyweightFootballChamps.com), and Illinois will defend the 2007 Boise State title in the Rose Bowl. I’m not sure if I should create a new lineal title or not. Heaven knows that both the Princeton and 2004 Auburn titles managed to stay in the SEC all year without being unified, so if Ohio State and Illinois both win their conferences, there’s no guarantee any imaginary “2007 BCS Championship” title would be instantly unified with 2007 Boise State. If LSU wins, and the two SEC titleholders win their bowls, it’s a lot less likely that LSU will completely escape winning a lineal title, or at least its lineage escaping being unified with one.
On the other hand, they may be being forced into going 12 rounds, but nothing’s stopping the Patriots and its run with the NFL Lineal Title, as shown by the latest logo to be X’ed out. But there are definitely concerns. This is now two straight weeks the Pats have been taken to the wire… by a mediocre team. The Steelers are no mediocre team. The Pats’ struggles have shown their defense to be porous against the run, and the Steelers have Willie Parker. And the New Steel Curtain just might be up to the task of stopping Tom Brady.
So the Steelers have no chance.
Maybe I’ve been watching too much wrestling, but New England is going to basically crush the Steelers – and I had been thinking about picking the Steelers just to stop the winning at some point. The point spread, I’ve heard, is -10 New England; I am guaranteeing that the Pats are going to cover and win by at least that much, or I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe you could suggest something.
Other news and notes:
The SuperPower Rankings and the SNF picks are going to be VERY late tonight. I wouldn’t expect them before 10 PST at the earliest.
News and notes: