Cougar Football Pipe Dreams

Every year, starting somewhere around August, BYU football fans start getting all hyped up with delusions of grandeur.  These quests for perfection induce eye rolls from most non-BYU fans as well as many BYU fans, myself included, and recent history has proven those eye rollers correct.

But it's not August.  It's October, and BYU is still undefeated.  (Yes, I know the calendar still says September, but you can't lose if you don't play, which BYU doesn't until October 3rd.)  So, I'm officially declaring myself on the grandeur bandwagon.  It's been really well documented in the last few weeks, but BYU has as good a shot as anyone at going undefeated this year.  (per ESPNs FPI, where BYU has slid to 2nd most likely to win out, slightly behind Marshall.)

The biggest reason that BYU has such a high chance of going 12-0 (25% for now) is that their schedule is decidedly mediocre. Here's how the schedule looks broken into rough quintiles by opponent ranking, with the road games italicized.  (I'm using the FPI for this, but I doubt it would be significantly different using other ranking systems.)

Rank	# of Opponents
1-30	0
31-60	5	(Texas, BSU, Houston, Virginia, Cal)
61-90	4	(UCF, Nevada, Middle Tennessee, USU)
90-120	2	(UConn, UNLV)
120+	1	(Savannah State)

The schedule isn't bloated at the bottom, it's bloated in the middle.  Rankings obviously have a lot of evolving to do over the rest of the season, but there are a number of "good" teams on there. BYU has a chance at going undefeated and proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are consistently better than good.  The more games BYU wins, the more you'll hear about the lack of a single ranked opponent on the schedule.  The narrative would be totally different if Texas was at their typical level and ranked in the top 15.  Even if BYU had gone and pulled off a 1 point win (rather than a 34 point win) if Texas was ranked, then the pundits would be mostly placated.  Would changing one opponents ranking from 37 up to 15 really tell you that much more about the quality of BYU?  A bit more, but not all that much more, in my opinion.  But rather than another thousand words about schedule strength, let's move on to what we care about:

Bowl Projections.

The point of winning football games is to get a ranking, and the point of that ranking is to get yourself a good bowl.  BYU has 4 bowl possibilities:

• No bowl.  Win 5 games or less and this is your fate.
• The Miami Bowl, or whatever it's called, against some AAC team.  If BYU wins 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 games, this is where they are going for sure.  Even at 11-1 this very likely where they end up.
• a New Years Day Bowl (Orange, Cotton, Fiesta or Peach, with Fiesta probably the most likely).
• a Playoff Bowl (Rose or Sugar).

Let's talk about those last two options.  The way it works these days is that 13 people go into a room, and pick 12 teams to go to the big 6 bowls.  The top 4 go to the Rose and Sugar bowl (this year) and play for the right to play for the national championship in one more game.  The other 8 get fancy bowls, lots of publicity and even more money.  So, it's all about convincing those 13 people that you're one of the top 12 teams.

Of course, it isn't quite that simple.  The Power 5 conferences (ACC, B1G, Pac12, Big XII and SEC) are all guaranteed one of those 12 spots.  This doesn't bother me much, as it's pretty likely that one team from each of those conferences really is in the top 12.  One more spot is also reserved for the top team from the "group of 5" conferences.  (Those are the "other" conferences, namely the MWC, Sun Belt, AAC, MAC and Conference USA.)  (I only had to cheat to remember 1 of those!)  In general, I like this, because it provides some assurance that when one of the "little guys" has a great season, they can't be totally left out.  This year specifically, however, there aren't any group of 5 teams that look particularly great and this hurts BYU, because the top group of 5 team is likely to be ranked (by the committee, the only rankers who matter) out of the top 12.  But they get a spot anyway.

So what it comes down to is this.  If BYU gets into the top 11, they get into a new years day bowl, and if they get into the top 4, they go to the playoff.  I consider the former to be very likely at 12-0, while the latter is so unlikely that it's almost not even worth considering.

There's no news from the committee yet (they start giving updates on their thinking in a few weeks), but the other polls and rankings probably give a reasonable picture of where BYU stands as of right now.  FPI has BYU at #18, AP at #20 and USA Today at #21.  BYU only needs to move up about 1 spot each week to hit the magic #11.

In 2006 and 2008 BSU was 12-0 and ranked #9 to end the regular season, 2004 they were #10.  In 2007 Hawaii was 12-0 and ranked #10, despite having a schedule that included 2 FCS teams, as well as UNLV, Idaho, USU (before they got decent), and NMSt.  Also, their two toughest games (BSU and Fresno) were both at home.  Even including their Sugar Bowl gave against Georgia, Sagarin rated their schedule the 132nd toughest in the nation. (For comparison, BYU probably ends this year witha  strength of schedule in the 60s with 4 of their 6 toughest opponents on the road.) Other undefeated "non-BCS" teams (BSU, TCU, Utah) have been ranked even higher.  There is no precedent* for an undefeated team to be ranked outside the top 11.

(* This is partly because we have never had more than 2 non-BCS teams go undefeated in the same season.  Even in the new system with 12 total spots, there isn't enough room for more than 2 non-Power 5 teams.  There are only 3 non-Power 5 teams that are still undefeated this year, BYU, Marshall and Cincinnati.  If they all win out, only one would be guaranteed a spot (either Cincinnati or Marshall because they're in a conference) and one of them would almost certainly not get into the big bowl (likely Marshall, because Cincinnati has the tougher schedule).  The odds of this happening are slim (0.01% according to ESPN) but I wanted to point out that a lot of teams still don't control their own destiny in reaching a new years day bowl, and BYU is in that group.)

As I mentioned earlier, the odds of reaching the top 4 and getting to the playoff, or getting in the top 11 with an 11-1 record are very remote, but not impossible.  Here are the teams that could have done it in the last dozen years:

"Non-BCS" teams that reached top 4 in final regular season polls since 2002:

Year	Team	BCS	AP	USA Today
2010	TCU (12-0)	3	3	3
2009	TCU (12-0)	4	3	3

"Non-BCS" teams that reached top 11 in final regular season polls since 2002 without being undefeated:

Year	Team	BCS	AP	USA Today
2011	BSU (11-1)	7	8	6
2010	BSU (11-1)	10	10	10
2008	TCU (10-2)	11	11	11

You might notice there's not a lot of variety on those lists.  The BSU teams with losses didn't have very tough schedules in the WAC, but they did have signature wins over Virginia Tech and Georgia.  The 2008 TCU team had one win over a ranked BYU squad, and 2 losses to undefeated Utah (by 3 points) and #1 Oklahoma.  The undefeated TCU teams had multiple wins over ranked teams (BYU and Utah ).  BYU is unlikely to have the quality signature wins to match those teams this year.  (Though it's technically still possible for Cal to be 10-1 and PAC-12 north champs when they play BYU at the end of the year, which would be an opportunity for a huge win.  It's far more likely, however that they are 5-6 at that point.)

If BYU got a lot of help, and I mean A LOT, they could equal those BSU and TCU teams.  Provided they keep winning, this might be something I'll come back to later. 

Pathfinder and Ruins

I've read a lot of books by Orson Scott Card over the years (37 by my count) and I'd been slow to read some of his more recent books.  Maybe it was OSC burn out, or maybe it's just that I've been only reading his Ender books which seem to be getting progressively less good, but I haven't read a number of his more recent works.  But once you've read 37 books by an author, why not a few more? So I added Pathfinder and it's sequel Ruins to the list.  (The total is now 39, not counting short stories, poems, collections, etc.)

Anyone familiar with Card's work won't be surprised to find that the story centers around a young male (Rigg) who has some special talents.  If you've guessed that these talents might just come in handy for saving the world you'd be right!  It's a pattern that has turned up before in [insert every OSC novel here], but it's not like he's the only one to do this.  (A few stories about Hobbits or Jedi come to mind.)  In this case, Rigg can see the paths that all living being leave behind.  Sort of like a slime trail behind a snail, only with no slime, and he's the only one who can see it.  This makes him an excellent tracker, and he can also see into the past somewhat, at least to see who was where, and when they were there.  Adventures ensue, and along the way he meets some companions who have some interesting time related talents, and, of course, that whole saving the world thing comes up eventually.
Even though I'm poking some fun at it, the book is quite good, particularly the first one.  Though he's perhaps grown quirkier in his old age, Card is still a very good writer.  I'm not sure how I feel about the novel writing world we live in these days where adults spend most of their time reading books written for teenagers (and then watching all the movies), but I didn't find the books to be particularly "young adult".  (Perhaps we've reached the point where authors want their fiction labeled as YA, because more people will read it?)  Anyway, I don't want to ruin the plot too much, but there are two things that I did want to cover in a little more detail about these books.

First, the books, particularly the second one, continue Card's habit from the last 10 years of having characters in his book randomly launch into lengthy rants that don't seem to quite fit in with the story.  You're reading along, and suddenly one of the characters wants to go off for 5 pages about marriage and how it preserves society and even humanity as we know it.  Amazingly, these characters always seem to be echoing a sentiment that Card happens to personally hold.  I've read a fair amount of his political musings (which range from interesting to bizarre, in my opinion) but I'd prefer it if he'd leave them out of his books.  But, this only happens from time to time, so I just roll my eyes and skim for a page or two until he gets off his soap box.

The other interesting thing about the series is that there's time travel.  This starts happening early enough in the story that I don't feel too bad about writing about it.  Generally, stories that deal with time travel all follow the Back to the Future model.  Namely, that there is a certain way things happened, and stories should be cleverly written so that characters can always manage to stay away from their past selves and make things turn out alright.  Marty McFly hides under the table at the dance to keep from being seen by himself, and Harry, Ron and Hermione save Buckbeak but in a way that they don't know that they've saved him until after they've gone back in time and done the saving.  OSC bravely throws away all these "rules" about time travel and builds a universe that hasn't been this chaotic since Bill and Ted were running around with their phone booth.  In Pathfinder, you can travel back in time, walk up to yourself and say, "hey self, don't leave for work on time today or you'll get in a car accident."  Then, you future self goes back to a the future where he's from.  But - here's the tricky part - because you don't leave for work at the usual time, you avoid the accident and consequently, there's no need to go back in time to warn yourself of something that didn't happen.  So what happened to your future self that came back to warn you?  I don't know. Maybe he doesn't exist any more, maybe OSC has created an infinitely branching multiverse.  The only thing that matters is what happens to the you that you are right now, and we let the strange circumstances take care of themselves.  It gets confusing at times to both the reader and the characters, but it's rather fun.

One final warning, there is at least one more book in the series which is supposed to come out late this year.  I don't know if that's the last one or not.

Shhhhh

I recently finished the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.  the book came out about a year and a half ago, and I seem to vaguely recall people talking about it back then.  Shannon picked this up at the library as something that seemed interesting, and indeed, it does seem interesting, but the book came up a bit short, in my opinion.

I don't think it surprises anyone to say that American culture holds up an extrovert ideal.  To get ahead in life we're constantly told to throw on our winning smile and tell our best anecdote.  It's all about winning friends and influencing people, collecting Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections, twitter followers, big groups of friends and being the "life of the party."  Well, it turns out that a pretty big chunk of people don't like that stuff, and aren't good at it.  Personally, I generally come out as borderline introverted on the little quizzes that abound on the topic.  Ms. Cain has devoted a book to explaining who introverts are, what they like, what they don't, and to remind the world that we aren't all natural born door-to-door security system salesmen.

While the book has plenty of interesting factoids, studies, stories and theories, it never managed to move the needle past "good" for me.  I found the basic premise to be rather obvious "introverts have value, too!" and most of the major points of the book to be pretty obvious as well.  Introverts can be more cautious, they need space to work quietly, privacy and time to relax away from stressful social settings.  Many of these things are ideas that just about anyone could probably come up with if we spent some time to think about it - the thing is we probably haven't.

So, the book is good, and the topic worth thinking about even if I found the pace a bit slow at times.  Even more valuable than the time spent reading it, is some time spent thinking about how we interact with different personalities in our every day lives, particularly people who spend a lot of time with people.  This week at work I'm spending 12 hours a day in a room with just me and some whirring equipment - it's pretty loud, so it must be an extrovert.  But hopefully this book prompts teachers to think about how it effects the introverts when every assignment turns into a group project, or managers to think about employees in open offices, or parents who are concerned about their kids social lives.

As an added LDS topic, I think we could do a lot more to talk about introversion and missionary work.  What could be a better example of an extrovert lifestyle than 2 years in a foreign place approaching strangers about religion?  And even for the many people who aren't full-time missionaries, what are the roles of introverts in spreading the gospel?  To what extent so missionary messages tell introverts that they have to be extroverts?  It's a stressful thing to put on that persona when it doesn't feel quite natural.  And are there strengths of interverts that we're over looking because we can't hear over the noise of the extroverts?

This book is probably great for a book club like discussion, or something like that.  Or, if you're introverted, you can just read it by yourself, I guess.

Meat is Back!

September is here, which means cooler weather, football and a return to meat.

Our month long meatless experiment has ended, and it was pretty uneventful.  I didn't feel healthier, stronger or more energetic.  I also didn't feel sicker, weaker or more lethargic.  I didn't "miss" meat all that much either.  In the end, it all comes down to a great big "meh".  I think I've proven that I can eat meat, or not, and I don't really care.  If I were to give up meat permanently, I think I'd certainly miss it, particularly on holidays where the food is an important part of the tradition.  But on an average day, I'm just as happy with all the other foods.

Labor Day was on the 1st this year, and we celebrated with turkey burgers, which were very tasty.  We spent the long weekend in Michigan, so on the drive back I added a McDonald's cheeseburger to the meat tally for the day - just as tasty as ever.  Shannon is in charge of the cooking, and she plans to implement a somewhat lower meat diet than we have had in the past, but for now we don't have any plans to have any more meat prohibitions.

Triple Digits

We don't live in St. George anymore, so thankfully, this isn't about the weather.

Last November I ran 95.2 miles.  We went to Michigan for Thanksgiving, and between the driving, the friends and the turkey, I lost some running time in there.

This April, I was over 83 miles by the 19th of the month. I was pretty much a lock to hit 100 miles, until I went out on the 20th and something was wrong with my foot.  I ended up getting in 6.4 miles in the last 11 days of the month to finish with 90.02.

This month, I didn't really set out to break any records, but as of today, I'm sitting at 104.34 miles for the month - my first time into triple digits.  I told Shannon at the start of the week that I was going to run 19 miles this week even if it killed me.  I was afraid to mention it too much for fear of bringing down the wrath of the fates upon my feet or knees.  After the aforementioned foot injury, all my goals for the year are pretty well shot.  I suppose if I keep turning out 90+ mile months I can still get there, but that is probably too much to expect.  The inevitable cold, or snowstorm will start limiting my running, or I'll just get worn out.  But for the time being I'm enjoying hitting a new round number plateau, and I do plan to go running for the next 2 days and get that total over 110.

How to Drive in Illinois

There is a non-zero chance that you might come to Illinois someday.  There are a fair number of states on either side of it, so even if you aren't coming to visit me, you still might be driving through.  If/when that finally happens, I wanted to help you out a little bit by letting you know how to drive here.  There are some special rules.  I don't know how much they apply to the whole state, but they seem to be true for the parts in Chicagoland that I've experienced.

1. Freeway speed limits aren't really "limits" they're more like "meaningless numbers someone wrote on the side of the road."  Every interstate I've been on here has a posted limit of 55.  No one goes 55.  I know that you're thinking that no one goes the speed limit in whatever state you live in, but you're wrong.  Some people do: they're the ones you complain about all the time on facebook.  But here, literally, no one goes 55.  Or 60.  Around 65 is where the traffic flow starts, and provided there isn't too much traffic, most people are buzzing along at 70 or 75.  Since 55 is an unreasonably low limit, it's like everyone has agreed to pretend it says 65, and then they drive their normal 5-10 over.  Of course there are people doing 80+.  Interestingly, even the cops seem to be ok with this arrangement.  No one seems to get tickets.

2. When you think a light is about to turn green, start pulling into the intersection.  Even though you've stopped 5 feet in front of the stop line, start pulling into the intersection when it seems like it's about to be your turn.  If the light doesn't turn green though, you'd better stop.  At this point your entire car is over the stop line.  But then, when it feels like the green is about to come, start pulling forward again.  Don't worry about the red light or anything, just keep scooting up.  Tonight I saw someone get at least 20 feet past the stop line this way, and they were getting very close to being in the way of traffic that was still going through the intersection, because, you know, they had a green light.  I don't understand the reasoning for this creeping, but if you want to blend in with the locals, you'd better do it, too.

3.  Don't merge until the last possible moment, even if there are dozens of signs warning you of what going on.  You folks from Utah are already pros at this, so just keep doing what you've always been doing.  You Michiganders, just turn off your brain and drive like you're the most important person in the world, even if you end up slowing down everyone including yourself.

4.  Smoke.  Make sure your window is down with your cigarette hanging outside.  And make sure you're stopped in front of me at every single red light. If you have friends, surround my car on all sides, particularly if it's a nice day and I have the windows down.

5.  Make sure you drive as much as possible.  The way I figure, this must be what the Chicagoans are doing.  How else can they ensure that there is a traffic jam on the freeway on a Saturday morning?

Behold

Over the last few nights, we've made it through Samuel the Lamanite's famous speach in chapters 13, 14 and 15 of Helaman.  There are some things that are easier to behold when you're reading out loud, and boy, did I behold one.  Behold, it was very apparent, at there is a certain word that Samuel likes to use repeatedly.  It felt like in nearly every verse, behold, there it was.  So, let's all pull out our calculator watches, do some quick math and behold whether I'm right, or just beholding a mirage.

I pulled out Samuel's full speech, which consists of 3711 words.  He uses "behold" 53 times, or once every 70.0 words.

The internet tells me that the Book of Mormon has 268,163 words in it.  Or 267,332.  Or 270745.  It seems the internet isn't quite sure, but it doesn't really matter.  Sticking with that first number, I'll take out the 3711 words that are Samuel speaking for 264,452 non-Samuel words.  scriptures.lds.org says that there are 1499 instances of "behold" in the Book of Mormon, so once we take out Samuel's 53 uses, there are 1446 left to go around.  The math reveals that this is once every 182.9 words.

Divide those two numbers, and we behold that Samuel is using the word "behold" at a rate 2.6 times that of the rest of the Book of Mormon as a whole. Lo and be - well look at that.

Martian

After taking months to read a book, I needed something that would make me want to read, which I found in The Martian by Andy Weir.

(I figured you might think I made the whole book up unless I included a picture of it.)

The book has been aptly described as "Apollo 13" meets "Cast Away".  (Sadly, the movie adaptation set to come out next year doesn't have Tom Hanks.)  Basically, astronaut Mark Watney gets left behind on Mars when a mission is aborted and he is presumed dead.  He has no way to contact anyone, and enough food to last 300 days.  The good news is that another manned mission to Mars is planned.  Bad news: it's not for 4 years and they'll be landing 2000 miles away.  Mark is a resourceful and surprisingly chipper guy who sets about figuring out how to not starve to death, how to contact Earth and how he's ever going to survive as the sole inhabitant of an entire planet.

The book is written by a nerd who does a good job of addressing nerdy things like calorie consumption, heat generation, solar power collection and things like that.  The book is set in the not-so-distant future (a few decades from now perhaps) and doesn't resort to any sort of magical technology break through to explain anything, which I appreciated.  Sure, we have to take for granted that NASA has invented the best super glue in the galaxy, but that's a small leap to take.

So, it entertained me, and made me want to keep reading.  There is some language in there that I wouldn't repeat in front of my grandmother or anyone else, but considering it's a book about someone stranded on a planet a hundred million miles from home, I didn't think the language was excessive.

Living a Luxury Vacation

The other night, Shannon and I were talking about vacations, specifically lavish, exotic, all-inclusive type vacations.  We're not too familiar with those, opting for more of the drive-a-zillion-miles-stay-at-Grandpa's-house sort.  We talked about what a sweet gig it would be to get a fabulously wealthy person to take you on vacation so you can watch their kids, or carry their luggage, or let them step on your back as they get in and out of cars.  Then, I figured, maybe they need someone to stay in their enormous house with giant TVs, every channel imaginable and the 3,000 square foot kitchen.  You know, so someone is there to bring in the mail and all.  I'd do that job for a good price.

And then I asked this question: How many people out there would view living in your house and having your disposable income as a fabulous vacation?

But now back to thinking about our standard of living.  I live in a luxury apartment.  It has 4 freaking bathrooms.  It has hardwood floors.  It has a balcony.  I've got a magic lever on my refrigerator that makes ice appear whenever I want it.  I can control the temperature in all the rooms except the girls room.  (Seriously, too hot all summer and too cold all winter in there.)  It's amazing.  Now, half of these things are a fluke of what was available to rent when we were moving here.  I really don't want 4 bathrooms, but there they are, and the price was the same as places with 2 or 3 bathrooms, so, it's not like I'm paying extra for it.  But you get the point.

We also go on wild shopping sprees.  Julia has a perfectly functional bed, but we're on the verge of buying her a new one.  Why?  Just for fun!  The girls want a bunk bed, and it's likely they'll get one soon.  I can make arguments about Ella needing a bed in the not-so-distant future (she's still in the converted crib) (and no, she doesn't need the bed because of any demand for the crib, but because she's 4 years old and can't sleep in the crib forever) and the girls want a bunk bed.  Part of me is a bit concerned that the bunk bed won't be as fun in practice as it is in theory - but even in spite of that, off we go to buy a bed we don't need.  (From IKEA, granted.)

Even in the richest country in the world, there are millions of people who would spend a week in my home and feel like they're in a luxury resort.  And they'd take my budget for clothes, toys, eating out and bunk beds and for them it would a fabulous shopping spree.  And to those millions of Americans, we can also add this cute kid:

It's probably worth remembering more often that life is pretty good.  The standard of living across the entire world is as high as its ever been, and I'm somewhere around the 90th percentile globally.  (The poorest 2% of the US is in the 55th percentile, globally.)  Perhaps rather than complaining about my leaky faucet at home, I'll remember to be a little more amazed at everything that I do have.

I guess I should fix the faucet, too.

The Three Musketeers

I just finished reading The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.  Occasionally, I get in my mind that I should read some famous book or another.  Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.  (Robinson Crusoe, I'm looking at you.)  The Three Musketeers barely worked out.

I'd like to dedicate this book review to Shannon, who dutifully kept renewing the book at the library as I made my way through.  It turns out there is a limit to how many times you can do that, though, and we hit that limit.  So we took the book back, but since the girls are at the library multiple times a week (because, you know, Julia's read 267 books so far this year) they checked out the same copy a few days later.  I can promise that no one else in St. Charles has read The Three Musketeers this summer.

The thing is, I liked the book.  I didn't want to give up on it, but at the same time, I didn't want to read it enough to chose reading it over things like checking facebook on my phone.  So, that's about as hearty of a recommend as I can give.

I went into the book not knowing much about it.  Sadly, there isn't a girly looking guy who spends the whole book shrieking "D'Artagnan!"  Apparently Disney can only get you so far in life.  The book can be quite silly at times, which I didn't expect.  At one point D'Artagnan receives 4 excellent horses and gives one to his friends, Athos, Porthos and Aramis.  Within 24 hours, they have each managed to sell, gamble or eat the horses, but each manages to keep the saddle.  They have an extremely happy-go-lucky outlook on life as they race around Paris dueling and plotting.

Unfortunately, I just never got all that "in" to the story.  Perhaps if the book didn't have to reach across 170 years and a translation to get to me it would have had a better chance.  I wish I could have mustered more excitement for it, but both in reading it and reviewing it it gets a good, hearty, "meh".