"Watch. Them. Play."

Sirhouseman

Sirhouseman

Well-Known Member
Really really tired of hearing "watch them play" as a metric for ranking teams. I'm not intending to start ANOTHER thread about stupidity and bias on ESPN, but I suppose I am. I have a short drive to work and was listening to no more than 4 minutes of Mike and Mike and Herbie was on the show saying, "throw every metric you know out the window. Watch them (Alabama) play." So, it's absolutely a beauty contest. Who cares about wins and losses anymore.

This goes beyond trying to champion for Iowa at this point. Herbstreit is right when he says Iowa has nothing to worry about as long as they win out, and everyone knows Alabama is damn good, but to say the reason they deserve to be up there ahead of unbeatens is because they "look good" is so ridiculous. They do look good! But they also have a loss to a 3 loss team at home. But that doesn't matter, cuz bama. OK

He has now twice in two days asked Iowa fans publicly to stop tweeting him (which is hilarious).
 
Might I suggest NPR or something in the easy listening category? The new My Morning Jacket is pretty good.
 
Sirhouseman said:
He has now twice in two days asked Iowa fans publicly to stop tweeting him (which is hilarious).
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We really should be tweeting him bout NW being behind Stanford by 9 spots dispite having the same records and their 2 losses are against top 12 teams.
 
I think herbstreit is like most of the pundits..they will give us our due if we beat osu...possibly msu....but not before. Only cowherd sounds like he thinks we suck. The rest just don't believe that we are as good as other too teams. I'm not certain that we beat alabama head to head. I think that's the argument they are making. I'm a huge hawk fan but i wouldn't bet my life's savings on us beating alabama.
 
pmchawk said:
We really should be tweeting him bout NW being behind Stanford by 9 spots dispite having the same records and their 2 losses are against top 12 teams.
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If the SEC bias was the Big 10 bias, Iowa and OSU would both be top 3, Michigan State would be ahead of Bama and ND, Michigan would be 10th, Northwestern would be ahead of Stanford, and Wisconsin would be ahead of Ole Miss. It's funny how moving every team up 3-5 spots higher can change national perception. All spots would be justified by constantly talking about how tough the conference is week in and week out. Bottom feeders like Indiana can give the top teams all they can handle. There's never a week off.
 
pmchawk said:
We really should be tweeting him bout NW being behind Stanford by 9 spots dispite having the same records and their 2 losses are against top 12 teams.
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This truly makes no sense. Not only the same record, but NW beat Stanford. It violates virtually every metric the committee has. And to add insult to it, NW went down two spots, despite winning (granted, it was Purdue, but the Boilers do have a win against Nebraska they can tout). Only TCU, who scraped by Kansas (who has 0 wins), met the same fate. It's almost as if they want to keep the Pac 12 relevant in the discussion, so they couldn't drop every team in the conference too far.
 
I also would not bet my life savings on Iowa beating Alabama. I'm just commenting on how crappy it is that a team's record doesn't really matter as long as they "look good."
 
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Wow I didn’t realize NWs ranking was that far below Stanfordsafter this last wk. That is insane. That’s your “eyeball test” and big namebias out in full force. Although that far down you can say it don’t matter foranything more then respect. I don’t think outside the top 4 the polls mean much for bowl slots.

 
I think the watch them play argument works for iowa too. We've dominated games more than the scores indicate. The only game we didn't seem to control was Wisconsin and the first half of iowa state. Even pitt we controlled most of the games.
 
A agree. How do you measure that anyway. Watching a team play one team may not resemble what it looks like playing another secondary to a weak schedule or eventually going up against a tough D. Too subjective.

Put into the equation that many teams have a different style than the video game style.
 
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