In New York City, however, euphoria whipped through the streets like a hurricane wind. Gleeful citizens hugged and cheered. There was an extra bounce in their step. A columnist for the New York Daily News called it one of the biggest stories of the year.

What happened?

The New York Giants football team defeated the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.

That’s all. Two cities are in an uproar over a game – a game in which the fans don’t play or participate in (other than spectators) and the result of which has no concrete affect on their everyday lives. Do we really get excited by Giants Quarterback Eli Manning winning the MVP trophy and a new car? Isn’t he already a multi-millionaire?

“Fans become passionate about their team and try to find personal satisfaction in their team's wins,” Allyce Najimy, senior associate director at the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston, told National Geographic.

“Our sports heroes are our warriors,” Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology at Arizona State, said about sports fans in the New York Times. “This is not some light diversion to be enjoyed for its inherent grace and harmony. The self is centrally involved in the outcome of the event. Whoever you root for represents you.”

A scary thought, but this is what happened after the favored Patriots unexpectedly fell to the Giants. Fans from Boston took an enormous hit to their own self worth and their regional pride. In New York, fans are ecstatic as if they – not quarterback Eli Manning – somehow moved the New York Giants down the field and scored the winning touchdown.

As an avid sports fan (and die-hard Patriots loyalist), I experienced this disappointment first hand. I went through all the emotional anguish by last night’s Super Bowl loss – the fist-gripped stomach, the dizziness, and the disbelief.

And afterwards, as I reflected on the silliness of it, I wondered why I couldn’t be so passionate about real things in my life. Voting for the right candidate can actually make a difference in my life. Getting involved in my local schools can show real benefits. Spending more time with my parents and my wife and daughters. I know logically that the Patriots winning the Super Bowl will not make my life better or change it in anyway.

Why get so emotional (or concerned) about something I can't control the outcome of? I’m not involved in the game – I’m merely a passive observer. So why get worked up about the pretend rather than the real?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if our unbridled passion for watching sports on television was duplicated in other areas of our lives? Think of the possibilities:

• Polling stations across the country would run out ballots as voters crowded into schools, town halls, and municipal buildings to cast their votes for the next president of the United States
• Protesters would fill the streets to vocalize their discontent with the war in Iraq
• National Guard headquarters would be packed with citizens as soldiers returning from months of grueling warfare overseas were greeted with ticker tape and celebratory champagne
• Fed up with mediocre education, parents flock to school committee meetings to demand accountability from school administrators and push for new programs and better funding
• Inner city and rural poor ban together to protest the band-aid programs to battle poverty and demand real action to eliminate penury in the United States.

I know I'm right, but then again I know this is all bullshit and I’m just trying to rationalize it away because the goddamn Patriots fucking choked on a chicken bone.

Read something real funny: our interview with the Ironic Times

Labels: Essay, Football, Humor, Sports

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An Interview with NFL Expert Kerry J. Bryne

(Yeah, we like football. On Sunday mornings, DaRK PaRTY pours Miller Lite on our corn flakes, pulls out the Sunday sports section, and then calls our bookie with for a few grand in bets. Then we break out the whiskey, dial up a few cheerleaders, and party like its NFL Game Day, which it is. Then, of course, we wake in our New England Patriots pajamas next to the wife. Still, we do like football and when we want information we called Kerry J. Bryne, the founder and main troll over at the best NFL site in the world: Cold, Hard Football Facts. Here is everything you need to know about the 2007 NFL season and the upcoming play-offs)


DaRK PaRTY: What have been the three biggest surprises of the 2007 regular NFL season?

Kerry: Well, I guess number one would have to be the New England Patriots at 16-0. I know it’s been an endless story everywhere so it seems old and unsurprising. But, let’s face it -- nobody expected 16-0 because it’s never happened before. Hell, we knew the Patriots would be good, but we predicted 12-4 good. In retrospect their march to 16-0 seems to have an air of inevitability. But, really, if something’s never happened in history, and it’s something people said could never be done, it has to be a pretty big surprise when it happens, doesn’t it?

TWO – The rebirth of Brett Favre. We had him written off for the great big cheese larder called retirement. In fact, we caused a bit of snit among Packers fans when we dubbed Favre “Old Yeller” – sure, he was once the best dog on the prairie, but it was time to put him out of his misery. Production-wise, he was completely washed up and his play was beyond reckless – costly interceptions that almost single-handedly lost games for his team time and again. In 2005, in something like nine of Green Bay’s 12 losses, he had the ball in his hand in the fourth quarter with a chance to tie the game or take the lead and threw picks in every single one of those opportunities. It was piss-poor quarterbacking and any other QB would have been benched.

He responded here, at age 38, with one of the best seasons of his Hall of Fame career: Personal bests with 7.8 YPA and 66.5 completion percentage; a mere 15 interceptions, tied for the fewest since his MVP and championship 1996 season; and a 95.7 passer rating, third best of his career and only a micro-fraction behind the 95.8 he posted in that same 1996 season.

Hell, when baseball players show that kind of improvement so late in their careers Congress launches and investigation. Favre has literally had a career year – at age 38. Even if he wasn’t 38, the improvement from 2006 to 2007 has been remarkable.

THREE – The deafening silence of the Colts. For years, this team has generated fawning praise and attention out of all proportion to its actual on-field accomplishments. It was a flashy team that generated hype, but showed little substance.

Now here they are, the defending champs, and even better than last year. And suddenly, in the hype surrounding the flashy Patriots, NOBODY is talking about the Colts.

That’s a mistake.

The true irony here is that this may be the single greatest team in Colts franchise history. If they win the Super Bowl, they certainly will be the best team in Colts franchise history. The 2007 Colts are 13-3 and would have been 14-2 if they had put up any kind of fight in the finale against Tennessee. They scored 450 points, second highest total in franchise history (2004 Colts, 522). Their +188 point differential is second best in franchise history (2005 Colts, +192). And only the 2005 Colts have won more games (14), but that team couldn’t win a single playoff game.

You get the feeling that this team is quietly lurking in the shadows of the NFL season, waiting to pounce on its quarry and tear it to shreds. Honestly, it will not be surprising is if they win the Super Bowl.

DP: Let's talk New England Patriots and their 16-0 regular season record. How good are they really?

Kerry: Well, we put a lot of stock in our Quality Standings, and they tell us that the 2007 Patriots were probably the greatest regular-season team in history.

Before I get to why, first a little background: Our Quality Standings are the foundation of our Quality Stats, which, in turn, are the foundation of the Cold, Hard Football Facts. There is no magic formula to our Quality Stats – the term simply refers to stats that have a direct correlation to winning football games.

Our Quality Standings, specifically, measure each team’s performance only against opponents with winning records (or what we call Quality Opponents or Quality Teams).

The theory behind it is this: performances against bad teams don’t mean shit. Great teams are either going to pound bad teams – big whoop – or they’re going to put it in cruise control and not really play their best ball. Every year there’s a team that puts up big numbers but then when you look back at the Quality Standings you find that they really didn’t beat anybody. Almost invariably, these teams don’t do anything in the playoffs.

So these games against bad teams don’t tell us much. So we literally dismiss them.

We want to know how teams perform when the pressure’s high and the opponent is tough. These performances give us a look at the true essence of team: they’re either pretenders who will wilt, or truly great teams that are strengthened in the forge of tough competition.

It’s a fairly effective formula come playoff time. Since we introduced this “Quality Wins Quotient” in 2004, teams with the better record against Quality Teams are a remarkable 25-8 in the playoffs. Vegas favorites, over the same period, are 23-10. Teams with a better overall record are a mere 19-14. Home teams, meanwhile, are just 18-12. You can see more about the Quality Wins Quotient as it relates to the 2007 playoffs here.

So, with all that said, our look at the 2007 Patriots through the prism of Quality Wins indicates that they may just be the greatest team of all time.

They’re 7-0 vs. Quality Teams this year, matching the 2003 Patriots for the best record ever vs. Quality Teams. The 2003 Patriots, of course, went on to win the Super Bowl, giving them a perfect 10-0 record vs. Quality Opponents. That 2003 Patriots team didn’t blow anybody out of the water. But they played more than half their games against Quality Teams and beat every single one of them.

Only one other team in history beat 10 Quality Teams in a single season: the dynastic 1979 Steelers went 7-3 vs. Quality Opponents in the regular season and 10-3 including playoffs. There weren’t a lot of puff-cakes in that team’s schedule.

But more impressive than the 7-0 record of the 2007 Patriots is the utterly dominant way in which they beat these Quality Teams. These seven Quality Opponents include a record four wins over division winners (Indy, San Diego, Pittsburgh, Dallas) and wins over two other playoff teams (Washington and N.Y. Giants). New England outscored these Quality Teams by a whopping 38.3 PPG (points per game) to 19.0 PPG – a +19.3 PPG differential.

To put that 7-0 record and +19.3 PPG into context this year, consider that only three other teams boast as many as four wins over Quality Opponents (Indy, 4-3; Jacksonville, 4-3; Dallas, 4-2. The Packers, meanwhile, are 3-1 vs. Quality Opponents and second to New England with a +5.5 PPG differential. So, as you can see, New England is ridiculously far ahead of the field.

They’re also ahead of the field of greatest teams in history. Our Quality Standings don’t go back before the founding of the ColdHardFootballFacts.com in 2004 (we are working on a historic database). But we did take a look at the performance against Quality Opponents of the greatest teams in history and found that only the 1962 Packers and 1985 Bears even come close to the 2007 Patriots:

2007 Patriots (16-0 overall): 7-0 vs. Quality Teams, +19.3 PPG

1985 Bears (15-1): 5-1, +17.9 PPPG

1962 Packers (13-1): 3-1, +17.5 PPG

1991 Redskins (14-2): 6-2, +15.0 PPG

1984 49ers (15-1): 4-1, +12.0 PPG

1972 Dolphins (14-0): 2-0, +10.0 PPG

1975 Steelers (12-2): 4-2, +6.9 PPG

1992 Cowboys (13-3): 3-2, +0.6 PPG

1999 Rams (13-3): 0-1, -3.0 PPG

DP: As a New England die-hard -- I'm confident they'll go the distance. But the Colts are worrisome. What are your thoughts on Indy?

Kerry: Well, you saw my thoughts about the Colts above in the first question. The 2007 Colts are probably the best team in franchise history and already took the Patriots to the wire back in November. They have all the ingredients you need: great coach, great quarterback, great defense and, more importantly, they’re all wearing Super Bowl rings, too. They’re also the first team in history to win 12 or more games in five consecutive seasons.

If they were to beat the Patriots in the AFC title game – and I’d give them about a 40-percent chance of doing so – it would be treated by the media as the “upset of the century.”

But it really wouldn’t be that great of an upset. This is a very, very good Colts team – probably a great Colts team – and is very capable of beating the Patriots.

DP: The NFC was interesting this year. What team do you think is going to emerge at the Super Bowl contender and why? And what is your Super Bowl prediction?

Kerry: We like Green Bay. We really do. Dallas has received all the hype. And, obviously, the Cowboys are a great team and won their regular-season meeting and will host the Packers again if they both advance to the NFC title game.

But Dallas has a few warts that get covered up by its great offense and by the general hype that surrounds America’s Team. Namely, for all their big names and Pro Bowlers, they have a very inefficient defense, at least among playoff contenders. They stand at a mere No. 17 in our Bendability Index, our way of quantifying the “bend but don’t break” phenomenon. Opponents need just 106 yards against Dallas to score the equivalent of 7 points. Whereas No. 1 San Diego forces opponents to march more than 126 yards to score the same 7 points.

It tells us that Dallas is doing a lot of little things wrong to make it easy for opponents to score, whether it’s poor red zone performance, turnovers, and poor field position. Indeed, our Special Teams Index reveals that the Cowboys were a mere 22^nd this year in that category. Basically, the Cowboys don’t make opponents work very hard for points.

Green Bay, however, was the single most well-balanced team in football this year, even more so than the Patriots. They rank between number three and number seven in every single one of our Quality Stats, from offensive and defensive lines, passing offense, passing defense, offense and defensive efficiency, even special teams and relative scoring differential. The Packers were packed in from number three to seven in every single one of these categories. That’s pretty fuckin’ impressive. You can see the whole breakdown here.

For Green Bay, it will all come down to the performance of their greatest asset and greatest liability: Brett Favre.

If he plays like the vintage 1996 Brett Favre we saw for much of 2007, the Packers will win a rematch with Dallas. If he plays like the vintage 2005 Old Yeller we saw in the Thursday night loss to Dallas this year, the result will be the same. Favre was dreadful that day, resorting to his old Rex Grossman-style “gunslinger” (a euphemism for “shitty quarterback”) ways, just tossing away hopelessly misguided passes into the hands of Dallas defenders.

Remember Favre got hurt that night and the offense improved dramatically when untested Aaron Rodgers came in off the bench because he played smart football and didn’t throw stupid passes. The Packers actually outscored the Cowboys, 17-10 I believe, after Favre went down.

Green Bay is definitely the more solid all-around team. If Favre plays smartly, the Packers go on to the Super Bowl. If he doesn’t then Dallas advances. Pro football is pretty simple that way, actually. You can break down all kinds of stats (and we often do). But at the end of the day the team with the quarterback who plays better that day invariably wins.

DP: Let's hand out some awards. Who was the best offensive player of the year? Defensive player of the year? And what two teams were the absolute worst?

We just handed in yesterday our Pro Football Weekly/Pro Football Writers of America year-end awards ballot.

We picked Tom Brady, obviously, as the best offensive player in football this year. I don’t know if there’s much of an argument there. A guy already destined for the Hall of Fame has a career year, breaks numerous records, throws for the third most yards in history and, more importantly, leads his team to a 16-0 record.

Yes, there’s a groundswell of support for Brady’s battery-mate, Randy Moss. We can understand that sentiment. Consider that New England’s entire corps of wide receivers in 2006 caught just 12 TD passes. Moss caught a record 23 this year. Clearly, he remade the New England offense (as we predicted when he was acquired back in April.

But it’s a QB’s league and you can argue that nobody in history played the position better than Brady did this year.

On the defensive side of the ball, we named Indy safety Bob Sanders our defensive player of the year. It strikes some as a clichéd choice. He’s generated a lot of hype and this “Superman” status among his fans on the web. But we don’t care about the hype and the buzz, only the substance.

And there is plenty of substance behind his selection as Defensive Player of the Year. Most notably, Sanders is the best player on one of the best defenses in the league. He’s tremendous against the run, and he’s the leader of one of the stingiest secondaries in the NFL. The Colts rank number three in Defensive Passer Rating (a “Quality Stat”) and number two in passing yards per attempt against them. And, as we showed earlier this year, the Colts defense is lost without him back there.

His impact on that unit is profound. We discussed his fairly quantifiable statistical impact on the defense and on the Colts in general early this season.

Over the past two seasons, the Colts are 10-4 (.714) without Sanders in the lineup, which is pretty good. But they’re a remarkable 32-6 (.842) when he is in the lineup.

As for the two worst teams, you gotta give a nod, of course, to the Miami Dolphins. Not only were they one of the few teams in history to lose 15 games in a season, but they have to suffer the indignity of losing out on the division race to New England by an embarrassing record of 15 games.

But don’t forget St. Louis, too. One of our readers, a guy named Brian Sheppard, created for us something called the Relativity Index, which measures how teams perform relative to the average game of their opponents. The Rams were dead last, an average of 11.8 PPG worse than the average performance of their opponents. Even the 1-15 Dolphins were only a mere 10.2 PPG worse than average.

St. Louis has truly become the Most Miserable Show on Turf and the decline from its heyday just a couple years ago has been stunning and dramatic.

Labels: 5 Questions, ColdHardFootballFacts, Football, interview, Kerry Byrne, Sports

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(DaRK PaRTY lives and breathes NFL football – especially our hometown New England Patriots. So on the eve of Championship weekend in the NFL, DaRK PaRTY wanted to talk pigskin – and we found the man who can talk the talk better than anyone in the business. Kerry J. Byrne is the founder of Cold, Hard Football Facts.com – the destination for football analysis (and stuff about beer and hot chicks). Who better to give us the inside scoop of the NFL playoffs?)

DaRK PaRTY: Cold, Hard Football Facts likes to take sports reporters to task for getting things wrong. Why do you think sports reporting is so bad?

Kerry: Couple reasons:

1.) It's too much work to do what we do ... research everything, study the numbers, and then draw conclusions based up on the evidence. It’s easy to puke out vomit on to a keyboard and try to pass it off as analysis.

Basically, the Cold, Hard Football Facts apply the scientific method to sports reporting. Of course, we add a lot of self-congratulatory bombast and gratuitous references to cold beer and hot chicks to keep everyone from getting bored. But, essentially, it takes a lot longer to do what we do than it takes the average sports reporter to do what he/she does … which is essentially take notes and then spit out a story.

2.) In defense of sports reporters, a lot of them are spread thin and are basically turning out copy the way strippers turn out lap dances for dirty old men. Sure, there are other things they'd rather do, like maybe impale their genitals on barbed wire. But the almighty dollar, not to mention their bosses, demand that strippers and sports writers just keep grinding, no matter how dirty they feel inside about the job. Most sports writers would prefer to pen the next "Tuesdays With Morrie." But to survive they really just need to bang out copy to fill space. Right, wrong ... it doesn't matter. They just need to fill space.

3.) Another problem is that, for some reason, sports writing puts a premium on opinions, no matter how fuckin' stupid those opinions may be. Everyone from Jim Rome to sports radio hosts in local markets is praised for their cutting-edge opinions, or for "having the balls" to tell you what they think. Well, every drunk at the end of the bar has an opinion. How much value is there in that?

And, sorry, it doesn't take any balls to tell a bunch of people "what you think" about sports. It takes balls to invade an enemy beachhead under deadly withering fire. It takes two or three semi-functioning synapses to tell people what you think about sports. Most people can "think" for themselves and form their own "opinions." I think most sports fans listen to the uneducated opinions of your average sports pundit and say, “What a fuckin’ moron.”

Jim Rome is a perfect example. Actually caught him on TV the other day talking about the AFC title game, and I quote: "How in the world can you pick against the Patriots? With that said, I'm picking the Colts. But how can you go against the Patriots?" This guy has the analytical skills of a three year old. Actually, he must be a genius to turn that utter lack of ability into that kind of money. He’s like the Paris Hilton of the sports world, except not quite as hot. So I guess you gotta admire that.

4.) Finally, the consumer has a role in all this, perhaps the primary role. People like salacious dirt, bombastic opinions and gridiron gossip. Whether it's right or wrong, the consumer typically just wants some juicy mind candy to suck on while they're killing time at work or knocking back a few beers at home. Factless opinions about sports go a long way toward filling that need.

With that said, there's definitely a demand in the marketplace for what we do: intelligent, well-researched and entertaining sports writing that offers consumers something they can count on: the truth. I think our pretty impressive growth in a very crowded market shows there’s a thirst out there for people who offer up something a little deeper than “what I think.”

DP: Let's talk some football. What are two of the biggest surprises to emerge so far in the 2006/2007 NFL season?

Kerry: First surprise: the fact that the sports media continues to misunderstand the way the New England Patriots run their organization. Win or lose against Indy, this team has pulled off the single most remarkable run in the history of playoff football. For example, in their playoff games since 2001, they’ve beaten five teams who were 13-3 or better in the playoffs. That’s pretty remarkable. To put it into context: Joe Montana, during his four Super Bowl postseasons, played and beat just one team that was 13-3 or better, and that was the 14-2 Dolphins in Super Bowl XIX.

One other example: the 2004 Patriots beat opponents in the playoffs who were a combined 40-8 – that’s the toughest postseason schedule a champion’s overcome in the Super Bowl Era. The Patriots this year are fresh off a road win over a 14-2 No. 1 seed.

Yet here we are heading into the AFC title game, and the majority of “pundits” out there are picking Indy, a team that’s never even reached a Super Bowl and that has serious defensive questions, to win the game. Indy CAN certainly win this game. It’s just amazing, based upon the track records of each team, and the performances of each team this season statistically and otherwise, that so many people are pegging the Colts to win. It makes no sense, logically speaking.

Second surprise: the fact that so-called “parity” in the NFL is dead and buried – yet nobody’s got the message. Everyone likes to talk about parity in the NFL. It’s a big buzzword. Every time there’s a close game, you hear parity, parity, parity.

But look at the playoffs: the same teams dominate year after year after year: New England is always good. Indy is always good. Denver is almost always good. Same with Pittsburgh. They had down seasons this year, each missing the playoffs. But that’s always been the case. And, generally speaking, the same teams are in the mix year after year.

The NFC is a bit more of toss-up, and the Saints are a surprise team, obviously. But if you look back on history, there have always been surprise teams. There have always been lousy teams that shocked powerhouses – the NFL has ALWAYS been competitive.

There was a period of parity in the NFL … back in the mid-80s, but it’s over and dead.

Look at 1985 – everyone remembers the great 15-1 Bears. But nobody else won more than 12 games that year. Hell, the Browns won the AFC Central with an 8-8 record. If that’s not parity, I don’t know what is.

In 1988, no team in football won more than 12 games, and only three were that good. Three of six division winners that year were 10-6 or 9-7. That’s parity. The 49ers won the SB with a 10-6 record - worst ever for a Super Bowl winner.

That’s parity. It doesn’t exist anymore. The Colts and Patriots, for example, are setting records for most wins ever over a whole series of given time periods.

The bad teams, meanwhile, generally continue to suck: Cleveland, Arizona, Detroit shit the bed year after year. If parity truly existed, these teams will make a run once in a while. They don’t.

DP: The Chicago Bears will take on the New Orleans Saints for the NFC championship. Who do you like and why?

Kerry: I like Chicago … they have problems, but New Orleans has bigger problems. The Saints defense is truly inept, especially considering the level of the competition they’ve faced this season, which has been poor. Their run defense, for example, surrendered 4.94 yards per attempt this year … that’s pretty friggin’ poor, not just this year, but historically speaking.

The Saints are 10-6 and only one 10-6 team has gone on to win a Super Bowl – the 1988 49ers. Of course, they had Bill Walsh and Joe Montana. The Saints can get by Chicago, but they have no shot, really, of winning the Super Bowl.

I think it ends for them this weekend.

DP: The big match-up of the weekend has to be the AFC title match of New England Patriots vs. Indianapolis Colts? Who do you see winning and why?

Kerry: The Colts are like the Saints: a team that’s won a lot, despite glaring flaws. The Colts, for example, surrendered 360 points this year – far worse than even the worst Super Bowl winning defense (1983 Raiders, 338 points). They also have one of the worst run defenses in the history of football.

Now, with that said, the Colts have gone 14-4 through this point in the playoffs. But if you’re looking at this solely through Cold, Hard Football Facts – that is, through the pigskin prism of stats and data – it’s inconceivable that they could go on to win the Super Bowl.

Sure, they can win this weekend. But if we have to take a pick, we’re going to base our decision upon what the numbers tell us. And the numbers tell us that New England is the stronger all-around team and, therefore, the safer bet to win the game.

DP: How does the New England Patriots winning streak compare to other dynasty and to what do you attribute their success?

Kerry: We just reported on this topic this week. A couple facts for you to digest:

• The 2004 Patriots, as we stated, overcame the toughest postseason schedule ever to win a Super Bowl.
• The Patriots of the past couple years have set every single win streak in the entire 87-year history of football: most consecutive regular-season wins (18), most consecutive overall wins (21), most consecutive postseason wins (10). One team owns all those records.
• Should the Patriots beat Indy, they’ll be favored to become just the second team to win four Super Bowls in six years.
• The 2003-04 Patriots won more games over a two-year period (34) than any other team in NFL history.
• The 2003-04 Patriots beat 20 teams with winning record over those two seasons – nobody in history has come close.
• The Patriots, heading into the Indy game, own the best postseason winning percentage in NFL history (.633), just ahead of the Packers (.632).
• Since Bob Kraft bought the team in 1994, New England has won 15 playoff games. The Bears, one of the original NFL franchises from 1920, have won 15 playoff games in their history.

Add it all up, and it is the most remarkable streak of dominance in the history of football.

Labels: 5 Questions, ColdHardFootballFacts, Football, Kerry Byrne, Sports

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Labels: 5 Questions, baseball, Sports, Tom Caron

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