Your best guess....What say you about Miami game?

[Towaliga]

Actual signals for no huddle... Cheaters gonna cheat.

That implies you think ThugU would do something unethical! How dare you think something so nefarious from such a fine upstanding program!

 

[ibeattetris]

Actual signals for no huddle... Cheaters gonna cheat.

Is that cheating though? Here is a quote from Johnson talking about signals. He doesn't say whether the information was used, but his Navy teams stole signals:

“We used to signal plays in and we still could, but when I was at the Naval Academy (1995-96 as offensive coordinator and 2002-07 as head coach), our kids could steal signals pretty easily,” Johnson said with a smile.

(https://sports.yahoo.com/news/why-g...--and-why-it-still-works-221335927-ncaaf.html)

I've always felt that if your signals are easy enough to be stolen, you should have no expectation that the team won't capitalize.

 

[flea77]

Miami has always sucked and will always suck. Have zero respect for that program. JMO.

 

[85Escape]

Miami's speed worries me. I think we can win, but the margin is very thin. If we don't turn it over, we win. If we turn it over but are even to -1 on TO-margin, it's a toss-up. If we lose the TO margin by 2 or more we lose easily.

 

[MikeJackets1967]

Miami's attendance is an embarrassment. Just like Duke.

Go Jackets!

Miami didn't even have decent home attendance in the 1980s-1990s unless it was FSU or Florida that they were playing.

 

[Stony157]

I'm new to this board and glad to read some friendly notes. I'm an old Tech and UM grad and live in Coral Gables so I hear more about and follow UM more closely than Tech. The game should be close. Since I'm a very casual follower of football and know more about Miami, I'll just post what I know about them. So far, they are thrilled with Mark Richt, who, I know, is no friend of Tech. Richt, however, has a really positive reputation among most football fans and is exactly who should be coaching at Miami. As a Miami grad and experienced head coach, he looks like he will be the coach they've needed and haven't had for 15 years.

For those going to the game, the stadium will be a LOT louder than in the past for two reasons. Attendance was up last year 23% to over 58,000 per game. As everyone knows, Miami fans don't show up for mediocre football. And the Dolphins stadium has a partial roof on it which reflects the noise back into the stadium so it's been much louder last year and so far this year.

Miami's depth is much better this year than last and they have an excellent recruiting class coming in so Tech will have tougher cahllenges from them in the future. This is a good year to improve our record against them.

Miami had a tough day running against FSU, but FSU's defensive front is one of the better ones in the country. Several future NFLers there. Plus Mark Walton shouldn't have played as he had a gimpy ankle. Miami always struggles (as do most teams) against Tech's running game, but they seem to slow it enough to win most times. This year may be different. Let's hope. Go Tech!

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Reminder to the board that henceforth it is University-7, not Miami. The FBI says so, and we must respect authority.

 

[ilovetheoption]

After FSU/UM game:

I think we get slated for 3:30 game
Line will prob be -10 to -14 UM
I give us about a 25% chance to win the game, especially due to our previous history of ALWAYS losing Bigly at UM under CPJ

Previous Scores at UM under CPJ:

2015: UM 38 GT 21
2013: UM 45 GT 30
2011: UM 24 GT 7
2009: UM 33 GT 17

Based on our history the score will probably be in the neighborhood of:

2017: UM 35 GT 20

Let's face it, we crap the bed when we head down to Miami, whatever the excuses may be (raining, Jet was missing, etc). Until we actually make a dramatic turnaround and Win a game down there I will continue to predict we lose in a Yuge way.....hope this is the year we turn it around.

I don't know you, but I hate you. Cannot put my finger on why...

 

[ilovetheoption]

1. Stealing signals isn't cheating, imo, it's good coaching.

2. I'm 100% in favor of calling them University 7 from here on out.

 

[IEEEWreck]

Is that cheating though? Here is a quote from Johnson talking about signals. He doesn't say whether the information was used, but his Navy teams stole signals:
(https://sports.yahoo.com/news/why-g...--and-why-it-still-works-221335927-ncaaf.html)

I've always felt that if your signals are easy enough to be stolen, you should have no expectation that the team won't capitalize.

It's just math. It helps that human intuition of what is complex and obfuscated is very often extremely simple when subjected to a few basic mathematical tools. I used to try to break signals at home games with some friends when I was a student. It almost always worked, and if you bring along a TI-83 or TI-89 calculator it's simple enough to keep you entertained during down time (and using a calculator while doing a cheer is a neat brain teaser in itself).

I wonder if CPJ asks for some CS or ECE help with designing signals to be hard to break. In fairness, I think the incident with Miami was more likely theft or espionage than cryptography. Of course, cryptography can help with that as well.

 

[Madison Grant]

1. Stealing signals isn't cheating, imo, it's good coaching.

2. I'm 100% in favor of calling them University 7 from here on out.

Did they get the signals from a disgruntled former coach or player though instead of by "being smart"? That is the question I have.

 

[Kareem]

Let’s just send in the plays like we always do

 

[IEEEWreck]

After FSU/UM game:

I think we get slated for 3:30 game
Line will prob be -10 to -14 UM
I give us about a 25% chance to win the game, especially due to our previous history of ALWAYS losing Bigly at UM under CPJ

Previous Scores at UM under CPJ:

2015: UM 38 GT 21
2013: UM 45 GT 30
2011: UM 24 GT 7
2009: UM 33 GT 17

Based on our history the score will probably be in the neighborhood of:

2017: UM 35 GT 20

Let's face it, we crap the bed when we head down to Miami, whatever the excuses may be (raining, Jet was missing, etc). Until we actually make a dramatic turnaround and Win a game down there I will continue to predict we lose in a Yuge way.....hope this is the year we turn it around.

I sympathize with the sky is falling kind of folks, sort of. I experience plenty of heart-wrenching terror that sticks around until I know the circuits I designed have passed burnout overvoltage tests, but I guess I just use it all up at work.

That's human nature, right? You come up with the reasons things might be terrible, and you focus on them to mitigate risk. Sometimes it works well. I'm not sure why I'd examine @miami scores since 2009, but then anxiety is not rational, right?

I humbly suggest that football might be more fun if we treat it like a brain teaser, and engage ourselves with a sort of hobbyist Bayesian approach. You might find yourself driven to closer observation that makes the exercise more fun, and you might find the whole thing less anxious in general. Here, I'll use my thoughts on Miami as an example.

Using the time honored tradition of pulling things out of my *** (known in academic papers as heuristic methods for generating prior probability distributions) let's lay some ideas down:

Offense:
We've looked pretty good. Blocking is excellent, and we've gotten consistent 10 yard gains from basic penetration (i.e. the line and linebackers were blocked, but either a farther back defender got in or a jumble at or near the line prevented a footrace. Not, that I've seen, has there been a lot of 'well, the play was executed correctly, but there wasn't a lot of space/a key block on the second level was missing and we consistently have to smash some mouth for 3 yards. If I were serious about this, I'd go work with LongestDay's stuff and try to actually quantify the probability of yardage gains given all blocks made, X blocks made but Y blocks missed, etc, as well as the frequency of those blocking situations. But I'm just some smug EE on the internet, so I'm gonna take wild guesses instead, as so:

45% of plays have good primary and secondary blocking, or are completed midrange passes with +-2 sigma yardage in the 6-14 yard area.
35% of plays have good primary but broken secondary blocks, with +-2s in the 3-5 yard area.
12% of plays are missed reads or other (successfully predicted counter plays like the rocket toss or called dive) that result in +-2s in the -2 to 3 yards area.
8% of plays either have perfect blocking and become footraces or long passes for 30+ yards

Now, a real statistician would stop here and update the probabilities based on observation. But what kind of fun is that? Let's prognosticate and tweak!

Miami's line looks meh from the few clips I've seen. Midlines, Iso's, and called dives look like they could be purely dominant. FSU hammered them up the middle until they mysteriously decided to stop. Let's say a 35% chance of pure run it up the middle scoring all game long.

Other thing to consider is that Miami has historically gone pretty far in on trying to jam the mesh and time the snap. Results have been mixed. I'm actually less worried because successful execution of no-huddle has shown we seem to have the nerves to mess with our timing, if not directly our counts. I really, really hope we see fake a-back motion to catch the the defense looking. We'll tweak generously for Miami, and say 40% good, 35% meh, 17% bad and a range tweak to -5 to 2 yards, 8% to the house.

Defense:

Here's a nearly totally uninformed prior distribution for Miami:

5% 30+ yds
55% 10-30 yds
30% -1 to 10 yds
10% -8 to -1 yds

GT has shown two different things on D so far to my inexperienced eyes:
1. We're getting effective pressure
2. We're making tackles consistently and well
and a same thing
3. We have smart eyes and make well timed picks

I think the recaps of FSU I've watched show Miami's QB is really, really good. He's not going to blink in the face of pressure. At least, he sure didn't against a FSU defense that's darn good at bringing it. Where FSU ate it was a mixture of pretty, pretty, highly difficult throws and catches that made the highlight reel, but that were set up by fairly basic execution failures 2-3 plays in a row on denying yards with solid tackling. I think FSU made a conscious decision to go ahead and have a battle of talent on the secondary in order to avoid giving Miami a rhythm to get going in the middle ranges. I think GT takes the opposite strategy, thinking we're more likely to make a good pick over the middle than win consistently one on one on the big throws. I predict swarm fans will be miffed.

Turnovers and special teams:

I'm not optimistic about our special teams. I'm looking for reasons to update my distribution. I think Miami makes comfortable field goals, but isn't amazing from marginal ranges.

I think (or do I hope) we've got a fire in our hearts about turnovers, and hold it to 1.
I think we get 1 pick against Miami, because that QB has some skills, but we have time and film study.

Just for fun, let's say we and Miami both have a 30% chance of scoring or so deep redzoning a turnover that it's effectively more a score than a stop.

Ok, great. Now all we need to do is integrate over the various Bayesian outcomes (i.e. P(yards gained on drive > yards to TD on drive given yards to TD on drive is {bins of yards to go}). Luckily, we've set up bins and assigned uniform probabilities over the bins, so we can substitute (Riemann) multiplication for integration.

I kid, I kid. Instead I'll just look at what I thought about and use the 'whatever comes to mind' Bayesian replacement heuristic and say:

It's almost certain we knock Miami's teeth in on offense, with substantial ability to control the clock.

It's almost certain Miami moves the ball consistently on us, but less than 20% probability they can move so successfully that they overcome time of possession and all the efforts of our defense.

Mean score before turnovers, GT+8

I give a 20% chance no turnovers, 50% chance 1 turnover, 20% chance 2 turnovers, 10% 3+. We'll say each turnover is +9.1 for Miami (7 for stopping a drive, .3*7 =2.1 for pick six)

thus:
.2 gt by 10.1
.5 gt by 8
.2 miami by 1.1
.1 miami by 10.2

gives me GT by 4.78.

Was that all bs? Of course. But ask any entrepreneur or executive and they'll tell you that the plan is almost always worthless, but the act of planning indispensable.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

I sympathize with the sky is falling kind of folks, sort of. I experience plenty of heart-wrenching terror that sticks around until I know the circuits I designed have passed burnout overvoltage tests, but I guess I just use it all up at work.

That's human nature, right? You come up with the reasons things might be terrible, and you focus on them to mitigate risk. Sometimes it works well. I'm not sure why I'd examine @miami scores since 2009, but then anxiety is not rational, right?

I humbly suggest that football might be more fun if we treat it like a brain teaser, and engage ourselves with a sort of hobbyist Bayesian approach. You might find yourself driven to closer observation that makes the exercise more fun, and you might find the whole thing less anxious in general. Here, I'll use my thoughts on Miami as an example.

Using the time honored tradition of pulling things out of my *** (known in academic papers as heuristic methods for generating prior probability distributions) let's lay some ideas down:

Offense:
We've looked pretty good. Blocking is excellent, and we've gotten consistent 10 yard gains from basic penetration (i.e. the line and linebackers were blocked, but either a farther back defender got in or a jumble at or near the line prevented a footrace. Not, that I've seen, has there been a lot of 'well, the play was executed correctly, but there wasn't a lot of space/a key block on the second level was missing and we consistently have to smash some mouth for 3 yards. If I were serious about this, I'd go work with LongestDay's stuff and try to actually quantify the probability of yardage gains given all blocks made, X blocks made but Y blocks missed, etc, as well as the frequency of those blocking situations. But I'm just some smug EE on the internet, so I'm gonna take wild guesses instead, as so:

45% of plays have good primary and secondary blocking, or are completed midrange passes with +-2 sigma yardage in the 6-14 yard area.
35% of plays have good primary but broken secondary blocks, with +-2s in the 3-5 yard area.
12% of plays are missed reads or other (successfully predicted counter plays like the rocket toss or called dive) that result in +-2s in the -2 to 3 yards area.
8% of plays either have perfect blocking and become footraces or long passes for 30+ yards

Now, a real statistician would stop here and update the probabilities based on observation. But what kind of fun is that? Let's prognosticate and tweak!

Miami's line looks meh from the few clips I've seen. Midlines, Iso's, and called dives look like they could be purely dominant. FSU hammered them up the middle until they mysteriously decided to stop. Let's say a 35% chance of pure run it up the middle scoring all game long.

Other thing to consider is that Miami has historically gone pretty far in on trying to jam the mesh and time the snap. Results have been mixed. I'm actually less worried because successful execution of no-huddle has shown we seem to have the nerves to mess with our timing, if not directly our counts. I really, really hope we see fake a-back motion to catch the the defense looking. We'll tweak generously for Miami, and say 40% good, 35% meh, 17% bad and a range tweak to -5 to 2 yards, 8% to the house.

Defense:

Here's a nearly totally uninformed prior distribution for Miami:

5% 30+ yds
55% 10-30 yds
30% -1 to 10 yds
10% -8 to -1 yds

GT has shown two different things on D so far to my inexperienced eyes:
1. We're getting effective pressure
2. We're making tackles consistently and well
and a same thing
3. We have smart eyes and make well timed picks

I think the recaps of FSU I've watched show Miami's QB is really, really good. He's not going to blink in the face of pressure. At least, he sure didn't against a FSU defense that's darn good at bringing it. Where FSU ate it was a mixture of pretty, pretty, highly difficult throws and catches that made the highlight reel, but that were set up by fairly basic execution failures 2-3 plays in a row on denying yards with solid tackling. I think FSU made a conscious decision to go ahead and have a battle of talent on the secondary in order to avoid giving Miami a rhythm to get going in the middle ranges. I think GT takes the opposite strategy, thinking we're more likely to make a good pick over the middle than win consistently one on one on the big throws. I predict swarm fans will be miffed.

Turnovers and special teams:

I'm not optimistic about our special teams. I'm looking for reasons to update my distribution. I think Miami makes comfortable field goals, but isn't amazing from marginal ranges.

I think (or do I hope) we've got a fire in our hearts about turnovers, and hold it to 1.
I think we get 1 pick against Miami, because that QB has some skills, but we have time and film study.

Just for fun, let's say we and Miami both have a 30% chance of scoring or so deep redzoning a turnover that it's effectively more a score than a stop.

Ok, great. Now all we need to do is integrate over the various Bayesian outcomes (i.e. P(yards gained on drive > yards to TD on drive given yards to TD on drive is {bins of yards to go}). Luckily, we've set up bins and assigned uniform probabilities over the bins, so we can substitute (Riemann) multiplication for integration.

I kid, I kid. Instead I'll just look at what I thought about and use the 'whatever comes to mind' Bayesian replacement heuristic and say:

It's almost certain we knock Miami's teeth in on offense, with substantial ability to control the clock.

It's almost certain Miami moves the ball consistently on us, but less than 20% probability they can move so successfully that they overcome time of possession and all the efforts of our defense.

Mean score before turnovers, GT+8

I give a 20% chance no turnovers, 50% chance 1 turnover, 20% chance 2 turnovers, 10% 3+. We'll say each turnover is +9.1 for Miami (7 for stopping a drive, .3*7 =2.1 for pick six)

thus:
.2 gt by 10.1
.5 gt by 8
.2 miami by 1.1
.1 miami by 10.2

gives me GT by 4.78.

Was that all bs? Of course. But ask any entrepreneur or executive and they'll tell you that the plan is almost always worthless, but the act of planning indispensable.

 

[MountPGT1990]

Hahahaha, video is worth a thousand words. Perfect

 

[MountPGT1990]

I sympathize with the sky is falling kind of folks, sort of. I experience plenty of heart-wrenching terror that sticks around until I know the circuits I designed have passed burnout overvoltage tests, but I guess I just use it all up at work.

That's human nature, right? You come up with the reasons things might be terrible, and you focus on them to mitigate risk. Sometimes it works well. I'm not sure why I'd examine @miami scores since 2009, but then anxiety is not rational, right?

I humbly suggest that football might be more fun if we treat it like a brain teaser, and engage ourselves with a sort of hobbyist Bayesian approach. You might find yourself driven to closer observation that makes the exercise more fun, and you might find the whole thing less anxious in general. Here, I'll use my thoughts on Miami as an example.

Using the time honored tradition of pulling things out of my *** (known in academic papers as heuristic methods for generating prior probability distributions) let's lay some ideas down:

Offense:
We've looked pretty good. Blocking is excellent, and we've gotten consistent 10 yard gains from basic penetration (i.e. the line and linebackers were blocked, but either a farther back defender got in or a jumble at or near the line prevented a footrace. Not, that I've seen, has there been a lot of 'well, the play was executed correctly, but there wasn't a lot of space/a key block on the second level was missing and we consistently have to smash some mouth for 3 yards. If I were serious about this, I'd go work with LongestDay's stuff and try to actually quantify the probability of yardage gains given all blocks made, X blocks made but Y blocks missed, etc, as well as the frequency of those blocking situations. But I'm just some smug EE on the internet, so I'm gonna take wild guesses instead, as so:

45% of plays have good primary and secondary blocking, or are completed midrange passes with +-2 sigma yardage in the 6-14 yard area.
35% of plays have good primary but broken secondary blocks, with +-2s in the 3-5 yard area.
12% of plays are missed reads or other (successfully predicted counter plays like the rocket toss or called dive) that result in +-2s in the -2 to 3 yards area.
8% of plays either have perfect blocking and become footraces or long passes for 30+ yards

Now, a real statistician would stop here and update the probabilities based on observation. But what kind of fun is that? Let's prognosticate and tweak!

Miami's line looks meh from the few clips I've seen. Midlines, Iso's, and called dives look like they could be purely dominant. FSU hammered them up the middle until they mysteriously decided to stop. Let's say a 35% chance of pure run it up the middle scoring all game long.

Other thing to consider is that Miami has historically gone pretty far in on trying to jam the mesh and time the snap. Results have been mixed. I'm actually less worried because successful execution of no-huddle has shown we seem to have the nerves to mess with our timing, if not directly our counts. I really, really hope we see fake a-back motion to catch the the defense looking. We'll tweak generously for Miami, and say 40% good, 35% meh, 17% bad and a range tweak to -5 to 2 yards, 8% to the house.

Defense:

Here's a nearly totally uninformed prior distribution for Miami:

5% 30+ yds
55% 10-30 yds
30% -1 to 10 yds
10% -8 to -1 yds

GT has shown two different things on D so far to my inexperienced eyes:
1. We're getting effective pressure
2. We're making tackles consistently and well
and a same thing
3. We have smart eyes and make well timed picks

I think the recaps of FSU I've watched show Miami's QB is really, really good. He's not going to blink in the face of pressure. At least, he sure didn't against a FSU defense that's darn good at bringing it. Where FSU ate it was a mixture of pretty, pretty, highly difficult throws and catches that made the highlight reel, but that were set up by fairly basic execution failures 2-3 plays in a row on denying yards with solid tackling. I think FSU made a conscious decision to go ahead and have a battle of talent on the secondary in order to avoid giving Miami a rhythm to get going in the middle ranges. I think GT takes the opposite strategy, thinking we're more likely to make a good pick over the middle than win consistently one on one on the big throws. I predict swarm fans will be miffed.

Turnovers and special teams:

I'm not optimistic about our special teams. I'm looking for reasons to update my distribution. I think Miami makes comfortable field goals, but isn't amazing from marginal ranges.

I think (or do I hope) we've got a fire in our hearts about turnovers, and hold it to 1.
I think we get 1 pick against Miami, because that QB has some skills, but we have time and film study.

Just for fun, let's say we and Miami both have a 30% chance of scoring or so deep redzoning a turnover that it's effectively more a score than a stop.

Ok, great. Now all we need to do is integrate over the various Bayesian outcomes (i.e. P(yards gained on drive > yards to TD on drive given yards to TD on drive is {bins of yards to go}). Luckily, we've set up bins and assigned uniform probabilities over the bins, so we can substitute (Riemann) multiplication for integration.

I kid, I kid. Instead I'll just look at what I thought about and use the 'whatever comes to mind' Bayesian replacement heuristic and say:

It's almost certain we knock Miami's teeth in on offense, with substantial ability to control the clock.

It's almost certain Miami moves the ball consistently on us, but less than 20% probability they can move so successfully that they overcome time of possession and all the efforts of our defense.

Mean score before turnovers, GT+8

I give a 20% chance no turnovers, 50% chance 1 turnover, 20% chance 2 turnovers, 10% 3+. We'll say each turnover is +9.1 for Miami (7 for stopping a drive, .3*7 =2.1 for pick six)

thus:
.2 gt by 10.1
.5 gt by 8
.2 miami by 1.1
.1 miami by 10.2

gives me GT by 4.78.

Was that all bs? Of course. But ask any entrepreneur or executive and they'll tell you that the plan is almost always worthless, but the act of planning indispensable.[/QUOTe


The reason I'm examining at Miami scores since 2009 is because that's the first year CPJ coached us down there and all four of his visits have resulted in GT getting blown out. It's really quite rational if you think about it.

The reason I'm examining at Miami scores since 2009 is because that's the first year CPJ coached us down there and all four of his visits have resulted in GT getting blown out. We are playing at Miami this weekend. It's really quite rational if you think about it, CPJ's teams have crapped the bed 100% of the time playing at Miami since 2009 (you can blame it on rain or JeT getting hurt, or whatever excuse) but CPJ hasn't been able to keep us within two TD's of Miami at their place, it's a trend....hence my anxiety

 

[CuseJacket]

I'm new to this board and glad to read some friendly notes. I'm an old Tech and UM grad and live in Coral Gables so I hear more about and follow UM more closely than Tech. The game should be close. Since I'm a very casual follower of football and know more about Miami, I'll just post what I know about them. So far, they are thrilled with Mark Richt, who, I know, is no friend of Tech. Richt, however, has a really positive reputation among most football fans and is exactly who should be coaching at Miami. As a Miami grad and experienced head coach, he looks like he will be the coach they've needed and haven't had for 15 years.

For those going to the game, the stadium will be a LOT louder than in the past for two reasons. Attendance was up last year 23% to over 58,000 per game. As everyone knows, Miami fans don't show up for mediocre football. And the Dolphins stadium has a partial roof on it which reflects the noise back into the stadium so it's been much louder last year and so far this year.

Miami's depth is much better this year than last and they have an excellent recruiting class coming in so Tech will have tougher cahllenges from them in the future. This is a good year to improve our record against them.

Miami had a tough day running against FSU, but FSU's defensive front is one of the better ones in the country. Several future NFLers there. Plus Mark Walton shouldn't have played as he had a gimpy ankle. Miami always struggles (as do most teams) against Tech's running game, but they seem to slow it enough to win most times. This year may be different. Let's hope. Go Tech!

Welcome to the board.

Not trying to be a smarta**, but what do you think actual attendance is at the Hard Rock for Miami games? Given the stated capacity of 65k and never seeing it over half full, I don't expect anyone to buy the 58k number. Does Miami even attract 35k?

E.g., this game last year alone would likely pull real attendance numbers for a whole year to a ceiling of 58k avg, let alone the other games like it that pull the average lower.

Here's another game from last year (vs Duke).

As you know GT has its own attendance issues, so I'm not beating my chest, but I think most acknowledge the attendance numbers are all about tickets sold.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Welcome to the board.

Not trying to be a smarta**, but what do you think actual attendance is at the Hard Rock for Miami games? Given the stated capacity of 65k and never seeing it over half full, I don't expect anyone to buy the 58k number. Does Miami even attract 35k?

E.g., this game last year alone would likely pull real attendance numbers for a whole year to a ceiling of 58k avg, let alone the other games like it that pull the average lower.

Here's another game from last year (vs Duke).

As you know GT has its own attendance issues, so I'm not beating my chest, but I think most acknowledge the attendance numbers are all about tickets sold.

The difference is we don't lie about our numbers. If our stadium is a third empty, we will all acknowledge it here. Their emporer has clothes dammit.

 

[Stony157]

The numbers I quoted were tickets sold. The crowds are usually late arriving so the stadium looks even less crowded than midway through the first half, but I usually guess about 10,000 empty sold seats. So if they quote 58,000 average, it's probably been close to 45,000 - 48,000. This year, the crowd was noticeably larger for the first home game angainst a lesser opponent (Bethune Cookman) which is typically poorly attended. I expect the game with Tech will be well attended since everybody is very enamored with Richt and the win over FSU. The bottom line is South Florida fans will not go to any event unless it is a special occasion. Watching mediocre football is not interesting enough to tear them away from sailing, boating, the beach or other outdoor activities.

 

[Stony157]

I sympathize with the sky is falling kind of folks, sort of. I experience plenty of heart-wrenching terror that sticks around until I know the circuits I designed have passed burnout overvoltage tests, but I guess I just use it all up at work.

That's human nature, right? You come up with the reasons things might be terrible, and you focus on them to mitigate risk. Sometimes it works well. I'm not sure why I'd examine @miami scores since 2009, but then anxiety is not rational, right?

I humbly suggest that football might be more fun if we treat it like a brain teaser, and engage ourselves with a sort of hobbyist Bayesian approach. You might find yourself driven to closer observation that makes the exercise more fun, and you might find the whole thing less anxious in general. Here, I'll use my thoughts on Miami as an example.

Using the time honored tradition of pulling things out of my *** (known in academic papers as heuristic methods for generating prior probability distributions) let's lay some ideas down:

Offense:
We've looked pretty good. Blocking is excellent, and we've gotten consistent 10 yard gains from basic penetration (i.e. the line and linebackers were blocked, but either a farther back defender got in or a jumble at or near the line prevented a footrace. Not, that I've seen, has there been a lot of 'well, the play was executed correctly, but there wasn't a lot of space/a key block on the second level was missing and we consistently have to smash some mouth for 3 yards. If I were serious about this, I'd go work with LongestDay's stuff and try to actually quantify the probability of yardage gains given all blocks made, X blocks made but Y blocks missed, etc, as well as the frequency of those blocking situations. But I'm just some smug EE on the internet, so I'm gonna take wild guesses instead, as so:

45% of plays have good primary and secondary blocking, or are completed midrange passes with +-2 sigma yardage in the 6-14 yard area.
35% of plays have good primary but broken secondary blocks, with +-2s in the 3-5 yard area.
12% of plays are missed reads or other (successfully predicted counter plays like the rocket toss or called dive) that result in +-2s in the -2 to 3 yards area.
8% of plays either have perfect blocking and become footraces or long passes for 30+ yards

Now, a real statistician would stop here and update the probabilities based on observation. But what kind of fun is that? Let's prognosticate and tweak!

Miami's line looks meh from the few clips I've seen. Midlines, Iso's, and called dives look like they could be purely dominant. FSU hammered them up the middle until they mysteriously decided to stop. Let's say a 35% chance of pure run it up the middle scoring all game long.

Other thing to consider is that Miami has historically gone pretty far in on trying to jam the mesh and time the snap. Results have been mixed. I'm actually less worried because successful execution of no-huddle has shown we seem to have the nerves to mess with our timing, if not directly our counts. I really, really hope we see fake a-back motion to catch the the defense looking. We'll tweak generously for Miami, and say 40% good, 35% meh, 17% bad and a range tweak to -5 to 2 yards, 8% to the house.

Defense:

Here's a nearly totally uninformed prior distribution for Miami:

5% 30+ yds
55% 10-30 yds
30% -1 to 10 yds
10% -8 to -1 yds

GT has shown two different things on D so far to my inexperienced eyes:
1. We're getting effective pressure
2. We're making tackles consistently and well
and a same thing
3. We have smart eyes and make well timed picks

I think the recaps of FSU I've watched show Miami's QB is really, really good. He's not going to blink in the face of pressure. At least, he sure didn't against a FSU defense that's darn good at bringing it. Where FSU ate it was a mixture of pretty, pretty, highly difficult throws and catches that made the highlight reel, but that were set up by fairly basic execution failures 2-3 plays in a row on denying yards with solid tackling. I think FSU made a conscious decision to go ahead and have a battle of talent on the secondary in order to avoid giving Miami a rhythm to get going in the middle ranges. I think GT takes the opposite strategy, thinking we're more likely to make a good pick over the middle than win consistently one on one on the big throws. I predict swarm fans will be miffed.

Turnovers and special teams:

I'm not optimistic about our special teams. I'm looking for reasons to update my distribution. I think Miami makes comfortable field goals, but isn't amazing from marginal ranges.

I think (or do I hope) we've got a fire in our hearts about turnovers, and hold it to 1.
I think we get 1 pick against Miami, because that QB has some skills, but we have time and film study.

Just for fun, let's say we and Miami both have a 30% chance of scoring or so deep redzoning a turnover that it's effectively more a score than a stop.

Ok, great. Now all we need to do is integrate over the various Bayesian outcomes (i.e. P(yards gained on drive > yards to TD on drive given yards to TD on drive is {bins of yards to go}). Luckily, we've set up bins and assigned uniform probabilities over the bins, so we can substitute (Riemann) multiplication for integration.

I kid, I kid. Instead I'll just look at what I thought about and use the 'whatever comes to mind' Bayesian replacement heuristic and say:

It's almost certain we knock Miami's teeth in on offense, with substantial ability to control the clock.

It's almost certain Miami moves the ball consistently on us, but less than 20% probability they can move so successfully that they overcome time of possession and all the efforts of our defense.

Mean score before turnovers, GT+8

I give a 20% chance no turnovers, 50% chance 1 turnover, 20% chance 2 turnovers, 10% 3+. We'll say each turnover is +9.1 for Miami (7 for stopping a drive, .3*7 =2.1 for pick six)

thus:
.2 gt by 10.1
.5 gt by 8
.2 miami by 1.1
.1 miami by 10.2

gives me GT by 4.78.

Was that all bs? Of course. But ask any entrepreneur or executive and they'll tell you that the plan is almost always worthless, but the act of planning indispensable.

I like your analysis. Or you could quote Mike Tyson "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."