Sports Guy vs. Scotty Win

Sports Guy crossed the line in his "More Cowbell" column yesterday.

You can see the article here.

If you don't want to read it, basically he makes excuses as to why the Colts beat the Patriots on Monday Night Football.

Scotty Win and I love Sports Guy (I even wrote a post declaring my love for the guy, and gave him his own link over there on the right), but Scotty is all about the Colts, and Sports Guy is a rabid Patriots fan. There is nothing wrong with extreme Patriotism, and the level at which he supports his favorite NFL team is understandable, but his bias went too far.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Sure, the Patriots ended up converting that first down and eventually scoring seven. But Belichick's message was clear: We need all the points we can get; our defense can't stop these guys. And they couldn't. Forty points and a gazillion first downs later, Manning was smiling on the sidelines, his teammates were pretending they liked him, ABC was rolling their fake MasterCard commercial and the fans were pouring out of Gillette Stadium. The torch, for all intents and purposes, had been passed. After four arduous years, various rule changes to help their passing game, and a cream-puff schedule highlighted by a fortuitous bye before last night's game, the Colts (and the NFL) finally got their wish. There was a new alpha dog in the AFC.

Yes, Sports Guy, it's all a scheduling and rule-changing conspiracy to keep the Patriots down and the Colts up.

Now, when you bash the Colts, you bash Scotty. And what do you get when you bash Scotty? A biting, yet respectful, well thought-out response, which I have pasted below. I fear that's Scott message may get lost in the sea of e-mails that Sports Guy receives, but Scott has mad research and writing skills and I want to share them with all four of my readers. So here you go...

Dear Sports Guy,

I love your column, but this time your Patriots bias
(can we call it “Patriotism”?) went too far. I could
tell from your pre-MNF column that you had all your
bases covered. If the Patriots won, you could again
proclaim them as the NFL’s almighty, and you and the
Mastermind could rail on about their constant
disrespect. If the Colts won, you could justify it by
bringing out the tired excuses about rules changes and
easy scheduling.

In response to the Colts’ supposedly easy schedule,
let’s take a close look at it compared to the Pats’.
First, you shouldn’t consider division games, because
those happen every year, and you shouldn’t consider
2005 winning percentages, since the season obviously
hadn’t happened yet when the schedule was put
together. If you take out division games, the Colts’
opponents’ winning percentage in 2004 was .544,
compared to the Pats’ opponents’ .575. Besides being
small to the naked eye, this difference is not
statistically significant (and I know I’ll get made
fun of for this): based on inferential statistics, if
you compare the two averages, a difference of that
magnitude could happen due to chance alone 77% of the
time. In other words, if you just drew opponents out
of a hat for the Colts and Pats, getting a difference
that big (or small) would happen three-fourths of the
time – not quite conspiracy-worthy.

Besides their own division games, each team plays all
the teams of one NFC division – again out of the
league’s control. Is it the Colts’ fault that they
play the weak NFC West and the Patriots have to play
the NFC South? Now taking out own-division and NFC
games, the schedule-makers can seemingly only freely
choose 6 opponents for each team. Colts’ opponents:
Ravens (.562), Browns (.250), Patriots (.875), Bengals
(.500), Steelers (.938), and Chargers (.750). Pats’
opponents: Raiders (.312), Steelers, Chargers, Broncos
(.625), Colts (.750), Chiefs (.438). Colts’ opponents’
’04 winning percentage: .646. Patriots: .636. Again,
not a significant difference, and definitely not
conspiracy-worthy.

The one scheduling disparity you do have a point on is
that the Colts have had the easier schedule so far –
but look at their remaining non-divisional opponents
(Saints, Chiefs, Bucs) compared to the Colts (Bengals,
Steelers, Chargers, Seahawks, Cardinals). This one’s a
toss-up in my opinion – would you rather play the
worse teams first (and risk a second-half slide) or
play the worse teams last (and build playoff
momentum)?

And what is it with you and Peyton Manning? Granted,
the Peyton Manning face definitely is funny (although
Belichick and Brady certainly were making their own
faces during the 2nd half Monday night), but why the
personal attacks on him? His teammates “pretended to
like him”? He has been an admired and respected leader
of that team since he got there. I have never heard
anything to the contrary from local or national press
(besides you). And your boy Tom Brady (and now his
5-layers-of-protection offensive line) aren’t exactly
disrespected, underappreciated, overlooked, or
whatever else New England has been complaining about
for years.

Granted, nothing counts until the playoffs. I agree
that that Patriots winning three Super Bowls in four
years is a huge achievement, and they should be lauded
for it. And maybe you and New England have had good
reasons for those chips on your shoulders the past few
years, with the Colts getting so much individual
glory. But if Indy does win it all, give them some
credit, like you did with the White Sox after they
beat your Sox this fall.

Scotty Win

Take that, Sports Guy! You have just felt the full wrath of Scotty Win. Statistical data and all. Deal with that.

I hope someone on the receiving end of Scott's e-mail reads it, even if it's just an ESPN.com intern or something, because it's just too good to be ignored.

Keep up the good work, Scott.