Monday, December 12, 2005

Taking My Medicine

Ok, time to own up. On the Futility '05 tour, I badly over estimated the Falcon football team. I had them losing one game--@Boise--and other than that we were set to run the table. We had too much talent not to--and I wasn't even factoring in that the MAC was down this season.

Well, not so much. I'll look more in a while on what happened, but here's the game by game.

@Wisconsin W WRONG
@Ball State W RIGHT
@Boise State L RIGHT
Temple W RIGHT
OU W RIGHT
@Buffalo W RIGHT
WMU W WRONG
Akron W WRONG
@Kent W RIGHT
@Miami W RIGHT
Toledo W WRONG
MAC Championship (NIU) W NOT APPLICABLE, THOUGH I TAKE SOME SOLACE IN PICKING NIU TO WIN THE WEST.

I got 7 right and 4 wrong. Nothing in the world would have made me think we would lose to WMU and Akron. And we never should have lost to Akron. I was wronger than this, though, because I envisioned us just dominating the weak teams in our conference, and it wasn't to be.

As solace, I decided to look at how the media did picking the standings.

Here's what the media picked for the West. Clearly, they saw NIU as a strong contended, and correctly id'd two of the top contenders in the division. They overshot EMU, and missed the resurgence of programs in K-zoo and Mt. Pleasant.

1. Toledo (31)

237

2. Northern Illinois (11)

220

3. Eastern Michigan

133

4. Central Michigan

111

5. Western Michigan

103

6. Ball State

73


In the West, they badly missed the Akron run to the title. BG and Miami did end up in a tie for the title, so that's not too bad...still, I doubt if that was what they were seeing when the whole season started. The overestimated OU, and knew exactly what they were getting in Buffalo.

1. Bowling Green (30)

241

2. Miami (12)

221

3. Ohio

125

t-4. Akron

122

t-4. Kent State

122

6. Buffalo

51

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