Monday, March 12, 2007

You won't hear me say this very often but...

There was actually an interesting piece on the flaming pile of poo known as Coldhardfootballfacts.com. Generally, their work is self indulgent and crappy, but this time they made an interesting point on free agency. http://coldhardfootballfacts.com/Article.php?Page=1365&Category=1 Take note of the three examples of teams that were heavily involved in free agency last year. Interesting stuff.

I'll use this as an opportunity to comment briefly on my favorite football sites. Indystar.com is a must read for any Colts fan. The beat writers including Philip B. Wilson and Mike Chappell are excellent and the q and a feature by Chappell is great. Kravitz is a moron, but all Indianapolis residents have known that for years now. His opinions are often a hot topic among Colts fans though, so you have to read him.

Colts.com can be bland 'team approved' information, but the multimedia section with postgame locker room interviews, Tony's press conference and best off all, the Bill Polian Show makes it a must visit. I like the Tuesday Morning Quarterback on ESPN.com as well, although Easterbrook isn't really an analyst, he's more of a fan with a witty take on football. Peter King's MMQB is alternatively awesome and putrid, but I read it anyway.

Deserving of their own mention for excellence in thought and analysis is the footballoutsiders.com. It's a great site, with excellent data. I'm primarily a baseball fan at heart (Go Reds), so their sabermetric bent is fascinating to me. They also post articles on foxsports.com thus providing the only reason to visit that site. If you are bothering to read this blog, you probably already visit many such sites and no doubt rarely miss these. We here at 18 to 88 will try to make interesting info we pick up here and there availble to you.

Analysits/pundits I like:
John Clayton
Chris Mortenson
Pete Prisco
Don Banks
anyone affiliated with the Footballoutsiders
Joe Theisman (on radio)
Ron Jaworski

Guys I dislike:
Bob Kravitz
Michael Silver
Jeremy Green from Scouts Inc as heard on ESPNs 1st and 10 (a raving moron)
Joe Theismann (print/tv)-yes I know it's the same guy, but he couldn't be more stupid on TV while sounding more smart on radio
KC Joyner the Football Scientist-his book may be great, I don't know, but his collumns always hit me as obvious
John Madden
Chris Collinsworth-self important and smug. Widly overrated
Anyone who appears regularly on the Fox pregame show

2 comments:

Deshawn Zombie said...

Facts ARE facts, and it's CHFF selective use of them that's the problem. CHFF has lots of OPINIONS about which facts are better. They invent stats that they import with meaning because they BELIEVE they are better. They take extremely limited sample sizes and extrapolate them into 'cold hard facts'. Football Outsiders actually did a great article savaging them for using the wrong data to predict winners by (especially their use of 'quality wins'-which was a stat that basically work for a couple of Pats teams, but historically has been useless). But as long as you have good arguments like 'turd brain', it's clear you must right.

Deshawn Zombie said...

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/index.php?p=3303

Here's the link to the Footballoutsiders article that argues for other stats over the just the cold hard 'facts'