All I want is college football with a frickin playoff

NCAA Division I football really really really needs a playoff system. Every year since BCS has been implemented there has been some controversy over who should play in the national championship game, etc. since it’s not uncommon to have several undefeated teams and because there are so many conferences they never play each other except in one bowl game.

People blame it on BCS because it’s an easy target but that’s not the real issue. The real issue is that there’s no way to tell who the national champion is if top teams from different conferences never play each other before the championship game. Period. I don’t care how much you trust sportswriters, it’s really just educated guessing until the teams actually play each other. Also, this year’s change to the BCS was one for the worse, I’m afraid. The point of the system in the first place was to minimize human bias, since humans might put too much weight on a school’s history, or overlook lesser-known teams, or whatever. Including a detailed, explicit strength-of-schedule correction was a very good idea. Quality wins are a little funny, but are justifiable. And I really have no problem with computer rankings as one factor. But after last year’s controversy, the attempts made to make the system more transparent have also removed most of what made it good to begin with.

And we’re running into the same problem this year, because, surprise surprise, the BCS calculation wasn’t the issue, it was just the scapegoat. I really have no idea why there isn’t a playoff. Division II and Division III football have playoffs. Every other NCAA sport does. And it’s not like the schools wouldn’t lose money — more games means more money. A number of people have formulated somewhat detailed plans that allow the current bowl structure to be kept (most involve using BCS or other rankings to seed an eight-team elimination tournament, which is the most sensible way to do it). A few examples of such plans:

• http://www.infoman.net/occ/playoff.htm
  
• http://www.bcssolution.com/pages/2/
  

And those were found in about ten seconds of Googling. I’m sure there are dozens more plans out there. Surely someone can come up with one that’s amenable to all of the NCAA bigwigs. So why isn’t there a playoff? Basically, you can try to patch BCS as much as you want, but you’re not going to solve the problem unless you have a playoff system. Case closed.

Random updates

Hello? Hello? Is this thing still on?

Sorry for not blogging lately, but I’ve been really busy. Here’s a brief overview of what I’ve been up to. Over the next few days I may or may not provide longer descriptions of each of the following:

• Going to St. Louis to hear Berlioz’s Requiem. Travelogue should be appearing shortly.
  
• Working on a project for Advanced Traffic Engineering that was due last Tuesday. I switched my topic twice, the last time being the Sunday before it was due. I’m actually kind of happy with how it turned out and I might post it here eventually.
  
• Turducken thanksgiving with my department. Very good.
  
• Having my family come and visit for Thanksgiving. Lots of fun, but since they stayed at my apartment I got to do the host thing which is all right but always involves a lot of work. We went into Houston to my aunt’s house for the family Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, and there were about 15 people there which was fun.
  

Anyway, off to bed for me. Like I said, I’ll probably explain these more over the next few days.

The Princeton Review is evil

Something that really annoys me is companies that try to market products to over-paranoid parents. One example that I ran across today:

The Princeton Review: SAT Honors Course

Basically it promises you a 1400 on the SAT or your money back. Sounds like a good deal, eh? What parent wouldn’t shell out the money to ensure that their child gets a top score on such an important test? Parents who are reasonably intelligent and aren’t guided by irrational fears, for one. Take a look at the restrictions: to apply for this course, you first need to have a score of 1250+ on an earlier SAT, in addition to writing an essay. Think about what this means. First, by excluding anybody who has not scored 1250 on the SAT, you’re only considering top applicants. More importantly, by combining that filter with an essay, The Princeton Review is essentially able to hand-pick applicants who were going to score a 1400 no matter what. With practice I think it would be very easy to identify students who would get such a SAT score based on a writing sample and previous test results.

What this means is that parents who pay for their kids to take these classes are wasting their money, because if their child is accepted for the course he or she is probably going to get a really high SAT score no matter what. In fact the whole test prep industry is a huge scam. Let’s face it, most standardized tests are designed well enough that there really aren’t that many “tricks” to learn. This isn’t a game like chess or checkers where you can “outwit the SAT.”
Either you have the cognitive skill and vocabulary to do analogies, or you don’t. Either you have the mathematical skill and reasoning to do quantitative comparison, or you don’t. Either you have writing skills, or you don’t. You can’t cram for those skills. If you don’t have them by the year you take the test, a class won’t give them to you. Your studying for the SAT takes place over twelve years, not ten weeks.

There is probably a small benefit to be gained by becoming familiar with the types of questions that are asked, or the style of the test. But you can take a free practice test for that. You can become familiar with the test for free. And by now most public school students take enough standardized tests that all of these question formats are old hat. I think I had to take a standardized test pretty much every year I was in public school, so filling out bubble sheets and doing sentence completions were nothing new. More specific to the SAT Honors Course, every applicant has already taken the SAT, so the course isn’t going to provide any familiarization with the test format — the applicants have already had the best practice, which is actually taking the test. And since it’s an Honors course, you can be sure the price tag is going to be pretty hefty (they hide the price really well on their site and I couldn’t find it, but third party reports are that the Honors course costs a mind-numbing $1400-$1999, as compared to only” $899 for their basic course). So basically parents are paying more and getting less, in order to guarantee that their child who was already going to score a 1400 on the SAT is actually going to do so.

But this is really just part of a huge industry built around convincing people that they have control over something that they really can’t control, at least not in the short term. At the high school level you have paranoid parents shelling out money for test prep programs that aren’t going to help their kids. At the university level you see tons of similar test prep programs for the GRE, MCAT, LSAT, and other tests that prey on undergrads worried about the graduate or professional school of their choice.

I suppose that this is the point of marketing and advertising, though: to try to convince people they have needs that they really don’t have, and to target these efforts at groups of people foolish enough to allow companies to create needs for them. How do we spell capitalism again? U-N-E-T-H-I-, oh, you get the point. Sure, it’s the best economic system that’s been discovered to date, but I really question the moral fiber of anyone who truly believes that capitalism is a good thing in any way other than being the lesser of evils. Exploiting the love mothers and fathers have for their children in order to make a profit is sickening. Period. I feel dirty even thinking about it. And that’s all I’m going to say on this topic.

I am nosy. Pedestrians can’t walk.

I went grocery shopping today, and that makes me happy. Call me weird, but I love waiting in line for checkout because it gives me a chance to look around and see what everybody else is buying. I think it’s fascinating how you can look at what groceries somebody is buying and find out so much about them. You see a basket full of frozen and pre-packaged foods, and guess that he either doesn’t like to cook or is short on time. Oh look, she’s buying lots of snacks and beer. She’s probably having a party. You see people with lots of fresh food and stuff from the organic/vegetarian aisle, and figure they’re health nuts. You’ll see Hispanic families buying tons of tortillas. I never knew how much soda people drink until I started looking at other people’s carts (surprisingly, many of these people buying huge amounts of pop don’t look very well off… you would think that you wouldn’t buy luxury items like soft drinks if you were poor). Anyway, I may be snoopy about this, but I just think it’s really interesting what people are buying.

Oh, one more thing. If you are a pedestrian, learn how to cross the street properly. On my way to class today after lunch, I was riding my bike down the street (not the sidewalk, you should never bike on the sidewalk). A couple pedestrians are crossing in front of me, no problem, they keep on walking, and I steer around them. But then somebody right in front of me freezes deer-in-headlights style, and forces me to swerve towards someone else, who also freezes, and in the end I have to slam my brakes hard enough that my wheels lock up and the front brake drags until I lock my bike up and can push the brakes back into their proper place.

Basically my point is this: if you are crossing the street, and anything is coming at you — bike, car, bus, whatever — DON’T STOP. I mean really, if there’s a car coming at you, you aren’t going to stop and stare at it as it runs you down, you’re going to finish crossing the street and maybe hurry up if the car is pretty close. So why would you freeze up if you see a bike coming at you? Over the past two years I’ve rode my bike in rather crowded pedestrian conditions, and I’ve never hit anybody — but the few close calls I’ve had are all because somebody walks in front of me, gets scared, and freezes. If you act predictably (i.e. keep doing what you were doing before, since a competent bicyclist is not going to run you over unless you freeze up) you are fine. This is how 95% of pedestrians are. But the remaining 5% need a basic lesson in common sense: if you are crossing the street and something is coming at you, don’t stop and stare big-eyed at the oncoming vehicle/bike/whatever. Either keep doing what you were doing before, or if you absolutely have to, get out of its way. Act predictably and you won’t get hurt. Act like a deer in headlights and you might end up as roadkill.

The magic number is 95

The magic number is 95. That’s how many pages are in the group project I just finished for Advanced Traffic Engineering. Sure, only fifteen or so of the pages are actual writing (the rest is tables and software output), but still, this is the biggest thing I’ve ever turned in. My 3-hole punch is still smarting from that one, and my print quota has a pretty big dent to show for it as well. I’m just glad that the two immediate big projects I’ve had are done with for now, so I can concentrate on the smaller assignments and another upcoming big project.

And isn’t the quarter supposed to be over by now? Oh wait, that’s right, they’re on semesters down here. Just when I think things should be wrapping up around week ten, we’re right at the busiest time of the semester. Oh well.

Le sigh

Four more years. Sigh. At least now I can update my personal blog more often now that I’m not spending all my free type writing long-winded rants for the political blog.

‘04 Election: Remind me, why do conservatives like Bush?

This one is short. Bush is not a conservative. He’s increased government spending and turned a surplus into a deficit. He’s advocated greater government intrusion into citizens’ lives through the USA-PATRIOT act and attempts to legislate morality. So why is it that he has the conservative base so strongly sewed up?