You'll_See_What_You_Want@Corn.com

wait, no they were talented, but they lost too much of the talent,

wait no, they were lucky to be talented, but now they are going to be lost…

Fantastic

Hmmmm.

College football is so different from profesisonal—NFL—football. For example, in college football it seems that for some a controlled victory is perceived as a game in which the victor is never behind, wins by three scores or more and the fourth quarter is essentially moot—as in the victor is milking the clock or playing back-ups the whole quarter. An example of this is the Iowa victory over Iowa State last year (although Iowa was down 3-0 until late in the first quarter). Iowa won that game 35-3.

In the NFL a controlled victory appears to be a game in which the victor controls the line of scrimmage, manages turnovers, is ahead in the game by at least 7 points from the middle of the third quarter, or perhaps a bit earlier, on. An example of this could be the Jets victory over Cincinnati in the playoffs last year. The Jets won that game 24-14.

Had the Jets/Bengals been a college football game I believe the perception would have been that it was a close contest and that the Jets were fortunate to win. The Jets had fewer first downs, ran fewer total plays and benefitted from a crucial Bengals turnover. But from an NFL perspective the Jets controlled that game from the middle of the second quarter on and by the fourth quarter they put a virtual stranglehold on the Bengals. They had a very long drive that resulted in a FG and other than a Cedric Benson 47 yard TD run they stifled the Bengals effort to get back in the game. They held the ball in that quarter for one minute longer than the Bengals.

The Hawkeyes are not a traditional college football team. They approach each game much more like an NFL coach would and play it out as such. They expect to control the trenches, win the turnover battle and convert scores on drives (FGs are good in the Iowa scheme of things). They try to win the game on the field, not in the box score. They are not a fantasy team. Over the course of 13 games they expect this will amount to more wins than losses.

The problem—for lack of a better word—with Iowa’s approach is that it is an IDEAL system for playoffs and a dicey one for a system that relies on voting and impression management…in other words, the college football system. Iowa sees a season not in terms of perfection but in terms of devlopment and inevitable movement toward perfection. Ferentz coaches each game as part of a greater whole.

The notion that Iowa is lucky is a common one. However, if you look at Iowa against the spread in the typical Vegas line, they are one of the most reliable bets in all of college football in the Ferentz era. In fact, as I recall, they were the second best team two years ago and Top 10 last year. Ferentz’s system is one where Iowa will almost never be blown out and almost never blow teams out. Iowa State last year and Minnesota the year prior are flukes, lucky if you will. Michigan State last year and Penn State the year before, not so much.

I don’t think it’s particularly likely that any of the top ten schools will fall out of the polls, Iowa included. Not to mention that the notion of Iowa being fortunate to a degree for having gone 11-2 last year doesn’t mean that it was the luckiest team or that others couldn’t have been as lucky. Florida was pretty lucky to get to its win total last year (Arkansas in particular should have been a loss), but that doesn’t heighten or lessen anyone else’s luck/good fortune/whatever. The comparison means nothing in this case, especially since Northwestern and Minnesota didn’t win 11 games and go to a BCS bowl.

And regression to the mean is not a firm law that must be equalized within a certain timeframe. It happens over time, not necessarily in the course of a season or two. Just because 2009’s good luck didn’t perfectly equalize 2008’s bad luck, it doesn’t mean more good luck is on the way. Iowa could hit bad luck this year without breaking any laws of the universe.

I do offer up these two stats though; you can take them or leave them.

Iowa’s Pythagorean expectation for 2009 comes out to a winning percentage of .725, or 9.42 wins across a 13-game schedule. The 11 wins Iowa did get were 1.58 more than the expectation. I don’t necessarily believe in the common notion that the difference between expected and real wins amounts to luck, but it certainly points to the idea that Iowa ended up with more wins than a “normal” team would have with the same points scored and allowed.

The second is that Iowa’s offensive yards per point last year was 14.52, good for 73rd in the country. That stat doesn’t pertain to just offense though; it’s more a measure of how efficient your team is at scoring relative to how many yards it gains. For comparison, the next lowest BCS team was Florida at 12.77 (30th), and Boise State was tops at 10.66. The only teams that were less efficient in this regard since 2001 were ‘01 LSU (14.60) and ’07 Illinois (15.26). Teams that win 10+ games tend to be far better; Iowa’s rank in ’09 placed it in the range of teams like Troy and Mississippi State.

I also know that Stanzi’s tendency for a fourth quarter spike is unsustainable, especially with the turnover on the line. I think Iowa will end up a top 15 or so team, but that’s neither the ceiling nor the floor.

sounds like a discarded Ludlum book title.

Brian Cook has an ugly couch.

Because they’re still deploying an Iowa walk-on at tight end.

I feel cautiously optimistic that the Hawkeyes are going to do big things in 2010. More optimistic than I did in 2006. I know the pieces that are in place and from the interviews I’ve seen over the past couple of years I think you can tell the team leader’s mentality is good. To me that is reassuring. I also agree that the offensive line doesn’t need to be “all world,” they just need to be pretty serviceable and the offense could be pretty good. I would hope they are able to put together extended drives though to help the defense not get worn down. If Ferentz can really get the o’line to gel with run blocking, the combo with the receivers could be very explosive.

objective and measurable condition.

ALERT: ALERT: INCOMING MORONIC SCATTER PLOT.

Officially mark the death of the “Iowa is too slow to win” argument? Have we now moved on to the “Iowa is just lucky” argument? I, for one, look forward to the next chapter in the pseudo-science, irrational explanations of Iowa wins.

Thomas Jefferson: “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”

It was pretty UNlucky that so many of Stanzi’s interceptions went back for a touchdown… Though its difficult to find statistics on Pick-sixes, I am willing to bet Iowa was a couple standard deviations off the norm for college football…

http://www.advancednflstats.com/2009/02/pick-six.html

According to this site, a pick six is actually a -9 to expected points, when taking into account loss of field position. This made many of the games we played much more competitive than they probably should have been, and will most likely not be nearly as prevalent this year.

3/11 is “about half” of half the defense.

that seems to completely gloss over that 1) we lost our starting tailback before the season started, to be replaced by two guys with no experience, 2) We lose the cornerstone of our offensive line for several weeks, and whether he ever fully recovered during the regular season is debatable., and we had an RS freshman in for him, too; 3) We lose our starting QB for the last 2 3/4 games of the season.

Blocking 2 FGs can be called luck, but more accurately it is blowing up the opposing team’s special teams line twice in a row, the second time after a lack of knowledge by a player who was not adequately coached on a rule. The Indiana game had bad calls and a lucky bounce, but that fourth quarter wasn’t the product of a bunch of guys getting by on their luck. And we went conservative with about five left to go in the game. Once again, the whole luck concept is bolstered by all the INTs, which were frankly the product of a bad decision to toss deep balls into a 20 mph wind.

These are the games everyone points to as luck. Nobody ascribes luck to winning at PSU, at Wisconsin, at MSU. Further, does anybody not affiliated with jNW truly believe that, up 10-0 after one quarter and the way we were playing, we would have lost that game if Stanzi didn’t go down? I would never assume beating OSU, but without BAD luck, that game was at least at 50-50 proposition.

There are legitimate reasons to suggest that Iowa could do exactly as MGoBlog and Team Speed project they might. O-line is one example. But the whole luck angle, and the mathematical black hole left above, ring hollow to me. It has been said, in various forms, many times—in the life of every successful football team there are great decisions, awful decisions, and a few breaks, but none of that matters unless your team outperforms an opponent the other 80-90% of the time. Luck is nothing unless you capitalilze. Last year, this team did. What it hopefully learned from last year is what could drive them to meet the expectations this year.

I think a lot of people say Iowa is due for a regression every year.

Fourty percent of all people know that."

Homer Simpson

can we get back to what is really important – Wegher’s personal life.

Iowa will win games this year because they are good.

What is the point in even discussing “luck”? People must just be bored.