WHADDYA GOT THERE, NUMBERS?: NO HUMAN WILL EVER PICK THIS TOURNAMENT CORRECTLY

This in addenda to the Washington Post's article covering the futility of picking this year's Sweet Sixteen.

Offering a million dollars for a complete bracket is a safe marketing bet by ESPN that stirs up considerable interest with very little risk. There are 2⁶³ = 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 possible ways to fill out a bracket given the play-in game is not counted, and only one way to win that money. If we assume that a bracket weighted with knowledge of the game improves those odds by about 6 orders of magnitude (base 2), let's say the four 16-1 gimmes and two other games, and that the 3.65 million participants of ESPN's Tourney challenge each entered a unique bracket (didn't happen, but irrelevant), the odds of ESPN paying up each year are about 0.0000000002814%, which will not happen in our lifetime, or in the expected lifetime of the human species. In fact, the odds of ESPN paying up at least once between now and 900 million years from now (when the surface of the Earth becomes inhospitable due to gradually rising solar luminosity) is only about 0.3%.

If during those 900 million years, ESPN invested their million dollars in an average mutual fund (with a nominal interest rate of 5%), they'd double their money every 14 years and have a total of 2^64285714 million dollars at heat death Armageddon. However, if the treasury was continually printing $100 bills (about 2^64285727 of them by the end) to allow ESPN to cash out their savings to actual currency (which is ridiculous, but bear with me), at a point of about 5 solar masses (1 gram per bill) their combined weight would collapse Earth to a singularity. This would happen in only about 1,416 years. This is without considering that college basketball would become a much more difficult game to play as the surface gravity of Earth steadily rose under all those dollar bills. So I think it's safe to say that we should either rob ESPN or stop this whole bracket thing sooner rather than later.

The Earth would look roughly like this in 3424 A.D.
thanks to ESPN. You, as the observer, would also die
if you got this close.

Lloyd released by Redskins: Dan Synder proves up to task of overpaying for underachievers, yet again!

There's a reason why I had to use a photo of
him making a catch with San Francisco.

The Redskins released Brandon Lloyd after two years of such unparalleled lack of productivity coupled with amazing financial reward. During this two year stint with the Redskins he earned ~$11 million between a signing bonus and salary. Let's get a breakdown of just how much the Redskins paid for his productivity:

-25 games "played": $440,000.00 per game

-14 games in which he actually caught a pass: $785,714.29 per game where he actually did something

-23 catches (total, over two season): $478,260.87 per catch

-379 yards receiving: $29,023.75 per yard receiving

He was able to earn all this money from a team where he was still able to do things such as:
1) Blow up at the WRs coach during OTAs--it's OTAs, easy buddy.

2) Throw his helmet on the sideline during a game--okay, I
am inclined to think this happens often, but he must have thrown it at Joe Gibbs' wife or something because he was able to get himself benched for the game that followed and from then on lost his starting position.

3) Wouldn't learn certain receiver routes and expressed his discontent with being asked to run certain routes--Mr. Lloyd, you get to "play" football for a living. I would gnaw off a finger for the abilities you have and the chance that affords to play in the NFL. Perspective.

Lloyd is probably a nice guy and if karma is the bitch she claims to be then he'll go to Philly and catch 15 TDs next season. Either way, Brandon Lloyd got a nice bit of sweet cash for doing basically nothing for two years.

WHADDYA GOT THERE, NUMBERS?: SMART PEOPLE DO NOT DEFEND THE BIG TEN

For the second January in a row, we've seen "the" Ohio State University lay an egg against premier competition, and the Big Ten take an absolute beating in bowl season. The popular media has, among other things, shoved the SEC's superior athleticism and week-in and week-out competitiveness down our throats as the rationale for what we've seen.

Unfortunately as a Penn State fan, I have to agree here. Look at the Big Ten's Sagarin rankings by conference for the last 10 years. Outside of an anomalous 2005 where Ohio State and Penn State had phenomenal years and each won BCS games, the Big Ten has been in a relative freefall since 1999 (use the central mean numbers in parentheses to draw cross-year strength comparisons):

1998: 2nd (79.83)
1999: 1st (82.79)
2000: 3rd (76.76)
2001: 5th (76.59)
2002: 5th (77.50)
2003: 3rd (77.59)
2004: 5th (75.63)
2005: 1st (80.72)
2006: 5th (74.89)
2007: 6th (74.63)

I'm avoiding doing the linear regression for now, but let me assure that it's a clear negative slope. The difference between 1999 and 2007's strength index is about 8 points, a decline of about a point per year. During that same period (smoothing over a two year period at each extreme), the delta for each conference on a half point scale:

ACC: even
Big East: +4.5 pts
Big Ten: -6.5 pts
Big 12: -2 pts
Pac-10: +3 pts
SEC: +3 pts

Fairly clearly, the past ten years have been disastrous for the B10 (and not great for the B12 -- think Nebraska). The 1999 peak represents by nearly a full point the best showing across all conferences (next closest? this year's SEC). How the mighty have fallen. There is no question that the B10 is not even close to past levels of competition at the moment. This has been great for the pack leader, OSU -- only two conference losses in the last three years has led to three consecutive BCS bowl births and two national title appearances. However, there is no question that winning out the way they did in 2001 in a conference a full two points stronger prepared them far better for the national championship, or at least suggested they were a better team.

To put this year's 74.63 rating into context, the best non-BCS conference ranking of the last ten years (excluding independents) is the MWC of 2004 which finished with a 72.08, which marginally beat out the Big East's 71.98 (thank you, Alex Smith!) This is the only instance of this happening. Holistically though, the BCS/non-BCS gap has dwindled from 8-10 points to 0-2 points over that period. Is increasing parity good for college football? We're finding out as we speak. I struggle to envision how the BCS would defend itself if the MWC began consistently fielding stronger conference competition than the B10. If current trends continue this might only be five years away, but with average Sagarin rating across all BCS conferences holding steady its more likely that the B10 is the (mostly) lone sufferer. I leave calculating the reasons for this general trend as an exercise for the reader.

To summarize rather bluntly, the Big Ten blows right now, and watching Penn State the past two falls I've felt a particularly excruciating irritation with the quality of play. The 2004 Iowa-Penn State game was probably the ugliest piece of NCAA football ever produced. The past two years have been a return to mediocrity. The end result of all of this? OSU has an excellent chance at another run to the crown next year, but if that doesn't happen there likely will only be one B10 entrant in the BCS.