rgbilliken

I don't know if others ever look at this site, but it's really interesting (to me, at least). You can see everyone's AP ballots. https://collegepolltracker.com/

As a side note, I have an extension on my chrome called "decreased productivity." You can easily toggle it on and off and it makes everything look like a plain white screen with black Arial text, and greys out images unless you hover over them. Example below. Has saved me many times when my boss walks into my office.

8 1/2 months pregnant, can confirm this is probably what’s going on with him.

This. And it's really hard to account for actual in-game scenarios in basketball stats. Matchups, spacing, combinations of players, etc. Not to mention for baseball there are simply more data points. They play like a million games per year, allowing for more regression to the mean. An example of a good, but flawed, statistic often used in basketball is the "+/-". Seems obvious, better players will have a positive +/-, i.e. their teams will score more than the opponent when they're in the game. BUT, what about the end of games, when you might have a player subbed out on offense if he sucks at free throws? If you're out on offense and in on defense, your +/- will be skewed; obviously, if you're out of the game when your team has the ball, and in the game when the other team has the ball, your +/- will take a hit. Does that mean a player like that is worse overall than another one? No...it means he's bad at free throws and isn't good to have in the game in certain scenarios. Same could be said for the "should Bell start" argument. He might not be one of the top 5 best players but it's clear he brings something to the table not reflected in stats, i.e. French not racking up early fouls.

This. It’s written in a way to be purposefully misleading. Any non-sociopath would write it as either 8/(2(2+2)) or (8/2)*(2+2) depending on the intent. Also apparently in some parts of the world they teach PEDMAS not PEMDAS so it’s doubly confusing.

Hey, @The Wiz, with regard to this debate... in your pre-game analyses, you always have the WWN2D2W section, which tends to include players on the opposing teams for us to focus on. Curious what a "W[They]N2D2W" would look like against the Bills?

I'm in.

I don't have kids but have one on the way - I was kind of on the side of "if our kid really really wants to play football I'm not going to stop them." My husband, who played football, was the one who said absolutely not. He only played up through high school and suffered multiple concussions, and his knees, ribs, and shoulders are not what a 31 year old guy's should be like at this stage because of it.

Saw the title of the thread before seeing the date and it really freaked me out before realizing it was old. Glad she's still going strong.

Totally agree with this. My husband grew up in Kansas and went to KU and is a big KU fan. I've tried, but I just can't care about it that much. Huge part of the reason is it's just not that exciting when they're really good, because they're always really good. And it's not that big of a deal if they don't have a great-by-KU standards year, because it's just like...So what? They'll land one of the top recruiting classes again the following year and have a shot at the final four every single year. When was the last time they didn't make the tournament? Who cares if they make a second round exit lots of years.....they'll be back again next year, probably as a 1 or 2 seed. It's really hard for me to care about a team under those circumstances because it just feels like the stakes during any given season aren't that high. Maybe that's just me rationalizing. I would obviously love for SLU to be in a similar situation to the teams who are always at the top. But for the time being I do enjoy the highs and lows.

Shalhoub recounting the entire episode of the Twilight Zone about that dude who hates people and loves reading and getting p!ssed off when his audience guesses the twist ending was basically a throwaway joke but is one of my favorite things I've seen on TV.

I HATED it when it first came out, only because I loved the old one. I've since come to accept that the new billiken looks better on the court, on graphics, and on merchandise. I still miss the old billiken mascot costume though because I feel like I get way fewer comments from friends who didn't go to SLU these days about our mascot being terrifying, which I always enjoyed/thought was funny. Most people (understandably) probably don't wan't the mascot to be nightmarish though, so that's fine.

I just posted the response I was given and gave the source of the response. Each person on this board is an adult and more than capable of understanding that Chris May's job is to spin things to look good for SLU. Several people have said that the truth is probably somewhere in between. Now at least we have two sides and people can decide what to believe, whether it's ESPN, the SLU AD, or something in between. Personally I don't care what people choose. But I'm a scientist and I like having all of the data. Thought other people might, too.

Yeah, my takeaway from that was that he wouldn't be able to play if he accepted the scholarship, so he chose to go somewhere he could continue to play.

Take this for what it's worth, but I received this reply from Chris May to an email I sent to Dr. Pestello's office. My original email basically just said I was disappointed in what I had read, and would like further clarification on the way Saadiq was treated by SLU and the AD.