Back to back 10am games

[seabowl]

Almost the first thing I look at when the schedules come out is how many 10am games the Hawks have. I cringe when I see more than 3 knowing that we don't do well in these situations. Hopefully the league wakes up on the issue better than the teams having to get up 4:30am in their time zone to play these games.

 

[Sports Hernia]

Win the division and get HFA and we avoid all 10AM games.. pretty simple.

BINGO!

 

[Msfann]

Hi Again Guys -
Football Outsiders promised me an article on the "morning body clock" issue when the schedule comes out later this month (hopefully they keep their promise). Anyways, below is a draft of what I'm going to send. I figured I'd post it here to see if anyone has any feedback, and also to give a shoutout to AgentDib whose statistic I used.

http://webpages.sou.edu/~stonelakb/math/pdf/Schedule Release.pdf

That's pretty cool, I hope that gets people talking and gets the nfl to listen. :th2thumbs:

 

[gaucho]

Win the division and get HFA and we avoid all 10AM games.. pretty simple.

BINGO!

"Well okay, you admit, but maybe Seattle should have gotten a higher seed to avoid playoff road games all together. Yes, a higher seed would have prevented the unfair situation from occurring in this instance, but why should certain teams have to overcome a systematic disadvantage exclusive to them in the regular season just to avoid possibly facing that same disadvantage in the playoffs?"

 

[hawksfansinceday1]

Win the division and get HFA and we avoid all 10AM games.. pretty simple.

BINGO!

"Well okay, you admit, but maybe Seattle should have gotten a higher seed to avoid playoff road games all together. Yes, a higher seed would have prevented the unfair situation from occurring in this instance, but why should certain teams have to overcome a systematic disadvantage exclusive to them in the regular season just to avoid possibly facing that same disadvantage in the playoffs?"

They shouldn't, and thanks for this post and again for your efforts in this matter.

 

[Siouxhawk]

I like this conversation. I've always wondered why there's 9 to 11 games at noon (CST) and only 3 or 4 at 3 p.m.? It seems to me the West Coast teams should be slotted into those 3 p.m. games on the road all the time. It wouldn't be that much of an adjustment for the home team and it wouldn't be such a shock for the West Coast teams. Cmon NFL ... this is easy

 

[Popeyejones]

Hi Again Guys -
Football Outsiders promised me an article on the "morning body clock" issue when the schedule comes out later this month (hopefully they keep their promise). Anyways, below is a draft of what I'm going to send. I figured I'd post it here to see if anyone has any feedback, and also to give a shoutout to AgentDib whose statistic I used.

http://webpages.sou.edu/~stonelakb/math/pdf/Schedule Release.pdf

That's pretty cool, I hope that gets people talking and gets the nfl to listen. :th2thumbs:

Not to be that ninny, but anyone with a passing knowledge of data visualization is going to spend a half second looking at the y axis on the "home team win" graph and recognize the cooking of the books that's going on in here.

What the author is trying to get away with is even an example used in Darrell Huff's bestseller from the 1950s titled How To Lie With Statistics.

As I tell the students I work with, if you find yourself doing stuff like that you need to slowly back away from your entire research project, and likely start the whole thing over again with an eye toward curiosity rather than advocacy so that you can rethink the other hundreds of small decisions you almost definitely made along the way to get to your desired conclusion. Even better yet, think about studying something you can be more dispassionate about, so that you don't have to constantly fight the urge to try to just confirm your priors.

For statistics, it's almost always a LACK of curiosity which kills the cat, IMO.

 

[gowazzu02]

Hi Again Guys -
Football Outsiders promised me an article on the "morning body clock" issue when the schedule comes out later this month (hopefully they keep their promise). Anyways, below is a draft of what I'm going to send. I figured I'd post it here to see if anyone has any feedback, and also to give a shoutout to AgentDib whose statistic I used.

http://webpages.sou.edu/~stonelakb/math/pdf/Schedule Release.pdf

Holy smokes, Well done. That was a great read.

Only thing you should add, if I may, is the fact that the NFL bent over backwards for the east coast teams when Belichick complained about back to back west coast trips. That shows the NFL CAN in fact make scheduling amends......

 

[gaucho]

Hi Again Guys -
Football Outsiders promised me an article on the "morning body clock" issue when the schedule comes out later this month (hopefully they keep their promise). Anyways, below is a draft of what I'm going to send. I figured I'd post it here to see if anyone has any feedback, and also to give a shoutout to AgentDib whose statistic I used.

http://webpages.sou.edu/~stonelakb/math/pdf/Schedule Release.pdf

That's pretty cool, I hope that gets people talking and gets the nfl to listen. :th2thumbs:

Not to be that ninny, but anyone with a passing knowledge of data visualization is going to spend a half second looking at the y axis on the "home team win" graph and recognize the cooking of the books that's going on in here.

What the author is trying to get away with is even an example used in Darrell Huff's bestseller from the 1950s titled How To Lie With Statistics.

As I tell the students I work with, if you find yourself doing stuff like that you need to slowly back away from your entire research project, and likely start the whole thing over again with an eye toward curiosity rather than advocacy so that you can rethink the other hundreds of small decisions you almost definitely made along the way to get to your desired conclusion. Even better yet, think about studying something you can be more dispassionate about, so that you don't have to constantly fight the urge to try to just confirm your priors.

For statistics, it's almost always a LACK of curiosity which kills the cat, IMO.

I appreciate the skepticism. How would you have presented the data? Y-axis from 0 to 1? .5 to 1? Seem like that would obscure the (significant) result. Just curious - where do you teach? (I also work in academia)

The delta in win percentage had a p-value on the order of .0001. I appreciate the skepticism, but there were no shady assumptions made. If you wont take my word for it, you might take solace in knowing that an accompanying paper was published in a national, peer-reviewed journal.

Everyone else - thanks for the kind words. I'll let you guys know what I hear.

 

[AgentDib]

Popeye does reference a book that most people should read and anytime you see a truncated Y-axis you should indeed take a moment to calibrate in your head whether the result is actually significant or just appears so because of Y-axis trickery.

In this case the result is highly significant and the Y-axis scaling emphasizes that in a reasonable way. Not all Y-axis scaling is bad. Personally, I would have set the lower Y limit at 0.50 as the logical way to frame this discussion is around a break-even point. In other words, an advantage of 60% rather than 55% is twice as impactful relative to no advantage.

 

[RichNhansom]

Win the division and get HFA and we avoid all 10AM games.. pretty simple.

BINGO!

If you guys keep saying this the rest of the league is going to be onto it and try and do it too and most of those teams won't have to play 5 regular season games 3 hours earlier than what they are use to.

Another thought though is to look at the Cards. They played thier hearts out all regular season and won home field only to be gassed and a shell of their regular season self when it was time to play their best ball.

It also might be just a little Jed York like to assume your team should automatically win 15 or more regular season games every year. However if we could turn half of our 10am losses into 1pm wins then that goal you've set as the standard would be much more achievable.

 

[gaucho]

Popeye does reference a book that most people should read and anytime you see a truncated Y-axis you should indeed take a moment to calibrate in your head whether the result is actually significant or just appears so because of Y-axis trickery.

In this case the result is highly significant and the Y-axis scaling emphasizes that in a reasonable way. Not all Y-axis scaling is bad. Personally, I would have set the lower Y limit at 0.50 as the logical way to frame this discussion is around a break-even point. In other words, an advantage of 60% rather than 55% is twice as impactful relative to no advantage.

Thanks for the feedback. People agree that this is an improvement?

 

[Jazzhawk]

Hey, great job on the pertinent points of your article. On a critical but hopefully positive note, I think your two introductory paragraphs are week, and too 'cutesy', and you could be stronger there by getting rid of the campiness. Stick to the style later in the article where you are given data points and making those arguments.

Every time I see Seahawks scheduled for a 10:00am East Coast game, I look at the schedule and see what's also scheduled in the later games. I see TONS of opportunities for our game to be scheduled later. Unfair indeed. Maybe it's time for us rowdy and unruly Seahawks fans to file a class action lawsuit to overturn the disadvantage?

 

[gowazzu02]

Hey, great job on the pertinent points of your article. On a critical but hopefully positive note, I think your two introductory paragraphs are week, and too 'cutesy', and you could be stronger there by getting rid of the campiness. Stick to the style later in the article where you are given data points and making those arguments.

Every time I see Seahawks scheduled for a 10:00am East Coast game, I look at the schedule and see what's also scheduled in the later games. I see TONS of opportunities for our game to be scheduled later. Unfair indeed. Maybe it's time for us rowdy and unruly Seahawks fans to file a class action lawsuit to overturn the disadvantage?

Yeah the afternoon window is always small compared to the amount of games played in the morning window.

Also like I mentioned above, the NFL has set precedent, they WILL make rules based on teams time zone. When Belicheat bitched about traveling to the west coast back to back weeks.

 

[gaucho]

Thanks again, guys! Great feedback. I submitted the article just before seeing Jazz's reply, but appreciate the suggestions. And yeah, Wazzu02, you make a good point. I am lucky enough to have specifics on the changes made that you referenced and included them in one draft of the article, but ended up taking them out (perhaps in error).

 

[Jazzhawk]

Thanks again, guys! Great feedback. I submitted the article just before seeing Jazz's reply, but appreciate the suggestions. And yeah, Wazzu02, you make a good point. I am lucky enough to have specifics on the changes made that you referenced and included them in one draft of the article, but ended up taking them out (perhaps in error).

I hope it goes well. I'm sure they've got editors that can 'tweak' it a bit. Keep us updated, I'd love to see it published.

 

[Hasselbeck]

Win the division and get HFA and we avoid all 10AM games.. pretty simple.

BINGO!

"Well okay, you admit, but maybe Seattle should have gotten a higher seed to avoid playoff road games all together. Yes, a higher seed would have prevented the unfair situation from occurring in this instance, but why should certain teams have to overcome a systematic disadvantage exclusive to them in the regular season just to avoid possibly facing that same disadvantage in the playoffs?"

Because thats how home field advantage should work in sports. Complaining about kickoff time would be like opposing fans whining about crowd noise at CenturyLink during a playoff game.

Why should a team like Carolina win 15 of 16 games and then play in a more accommodating time slot to the last team in the tournament? A team they went to on the road a few months earlier and BEAT? It makes absolutely no sense. HFA should encompass every advantage that comes with winning the most games that year.

If the Seahawks didn't enjoy it (I'm guessing they didn't) then I don't know.. don't blow 17 point leads to the Bengals. Don't face plant with the lead in the opener against the Rams. Don't blow a 13 point lead at home to the Panthers. Don't lose at home to Case Keenum. Don't spot the Cardinals a 19-0 lead on your home field.

The crazy thing about sports is more often than not, you control your own fate. The Seahawks didn't do a good enough job of that last season and that's why they played on the road for their entire postseason.

 

[Hasselbeck]

I like this conversation. I've always wondered why there's 9 to 11 games at noon (CST) and only 3 or 4 at 3 p.m.? It seems to me the West Coast teams should be slotted into those 3 p.m. games on the road all the time. It wouldn't be that much of an adjustment for the home team and it wouldn't be such a shock for the West Coast teams. Cmon NFL ... this is easy

Never going to happen thanks to the wonderful world of TV and TV ratings.

May make more sense, but just not going to happen as FOX/CBS covets the ability to have a small slate of games in that 4:25 slot so they can feature a game to a national audience.

 

[MD5eahawks]

Great job and great read, Gaucho. Good luck and I hope this does not fall upon deaf ears. This issue doesn't really seem to be a tough thing to address.

 

[rideaducati]

Win the division and get HFA and we avoid all 10AM games.. pretty simple.

BINGO!

"Well okay, you admit, but maybe Seattle should have gotten a higher seed to avoid playoff road games all together. Yes, a higher seed would have prevented the unfair situation from occurring in this instance, but why should certain teams have to overcome a systematic disadvantage exclusive to them in the regular season just to avoid possibly facing that same disadvantage in the playoffs?"

Because thats how home field advantage should work in sports. Complaining about kickoff time would be like opposing fans whining about crowd noise at CenturyLink during a playoff game.

Why should a team like Carolina win 15 of 16 games and then play in a more accommodating time slot to the last team in the tournament? A team they went to on the road a few months earlier and BEAT? It makes absolutely no sense. HFA should encompass every advantage that comes with winning the most games that year.

If the Seahawks didn't enjoy it (I'm guessing they didn't) then I don't know.. don't blow 17 point leads to the Bengals. Don't face plant with the lead in the opener against the Rams. Don't blow a 13 point lead at home to the Panthers. Don't lose at home to Case Keenum. Don't spot the Cardinals a 19-0 lead on your home field.

The crazy thing about sports is more often than not, you control your own fate. The Seahawks didn't do a good enough job of that last season and that's why they played on the road for their entire postseason.

For the playoffs, that would be fine and deserved, but think about the disadvantage West coast teams have in the regular season that afforded the East coast teams to get home field advantage. It is a distinct disadvantage that tilts the playing field to the opposition all while the NFL is spouting nonsense about parity.