"The Rule"

Good evening. After posting on Sunday, this blog realized that it hadn't done a post on "the rule." Part of the reasoning is that most of this blog's 4 readers have heard Pun City talking about it on the street. But, in any case, for posterity, Pun City's going to post it here too.

This rule applies to men's college basketball games. There's a good chance that some variation of it could apply to other sports, but since Pun City knows college hoops best, and initially created it to be applied to the sport, this blog is sticking to just college hoops.

The rule states that if a team is leading by more points than there are minutes remaining on the game clock, and the lead in question is greater than 6 points (2 possessions), then the game is over and the team that is leading will win. A key part of this is that the minute column of the game clock is all that is considered, so if Cornell is leading Yale by 8 with 7:52 remaining, that game is over.

As you may note, this rule is not 100% effective. Matter of fact, scroll down to the previous post and you'll see an example where this rule was broken. But it's roughly 99.5% accurate, which is pretty cool. This certainly means seeing a "rule-breaking" game is truly extraordinary. This blog thinks it has only seen about 5 of such games in person, dating back to 1999. Pun City can't think of a single time a road team was able to break the rule, but definitely two occasions where the game was at a neutral site and the rule was broken. So, you heard it here, earth-shattering news, home teams with big leads win a ton.

In any case, tracking the rule can add another dimension to some blowout games, and tracking the rule being broken can help quantify how huge a comeback is. This blog isn't recommending it, but for those of you that like to bail on games early (where are you going that's more important than a college basketball game?), you could conceivably use the rule to determine a time to leave. Marquette leads Savannah State by 14 with 13:22 remaining? That game's over. Don't leave though, you could be missing some rule-breaking history.

This blog's cruising to the Marquette-Seton Hall game tonight, hopefully there's some rule breaking going on.

Pun City On The Defensive

Tecmo Super Bowl is often just as fun when one is on the defensive side of the ball as when one is playing offense. Three consecutive sacks setting up 4th and 42 for the offense, winning in overtime on a safety, forcing 3 fumbles in a game, all of which were brought back for touchdowns. These are great reasons for Pun City often preferring the defensive side of the ball.
This blog came to several conclusions when analyzing Tecmo defensive statistics. First off, the computer rules the Interception rankings, while Pun City rules the other metrics, mainly sack-related. There are a number of reasons behind these. Let us examine:

-Interceptions occur at an extremely higher incidence for the computer as opposed to Pun City. There are a bunch of reasons for this. Among quarterbacks with at least one attempt, the overall average number of attempts per season for each was 181.92. Pun City's average was 125.49. Pun City's average is so low because Pun City completes more passes on average (72.9% to 58.6%). More complete passes leads to more yards and less need for more passes. As we explored previously, Pun City's QBs get injured at a much higher rate than the computer, so a higher percentage of throws were made by backups. Backups aren't as good and therefore throw more interceptions. The computer isn't as good and therefore throws more interceptions. The computer plays the computer for almost all games. Pun City plays the computer for all games, but is hampered for a couple other reasons.

-Computer QBs hang on to the ball longer and are less prone to running. This leads to a ton more sacks for Pun City as compared to the computer. This also means less throws actually get made against Pun City, meaning less interceptable balls.

-Pun City normally calls running plays when defending against the computer (for a number of reasons). Anecdotally, this blog has seen evidence implying that calling pass plays leads to a higher chance of interceptions.

-Pun City calls more plays accurately than the computer. For whatever reason, the computer doesn't guess plays right very often. Even when it does, Pun City can sometimes find the open man anyway. When a play is called accurately against the computer, there is a much higher likelihood of a sack instead of an interception.

-Pun City has a sneaking suspicion that the computer makes up some phony stats for games when it plays against itself. Through 8 weeks of the attempted 8-8 season where Pun City is playing every game, the most interception return yards for one player is at 17. Interception returns both for and against Pun City are very challenging to get any significant yards on. Very suspicious that the totals just happen to be pretty high when Pun City isn't involved in the game.

So, the lessons are: humans get more sacks, computers get more interceptions.

Tecmo doesn't keep track of some awesome statistics that wouldn't be necessary in real life (due to their rarity), but are a good measure on the game. Safeties, Blocked Extra Points, and Fumble Recoveries for Touchdowns are some that Pun City can manually track without a great deal of extra effort.

A final note is the statistic of "Points Prevented." Pun City invented this stat and based it only off of Blocked FGs and Blocked Extra Points. The number is the sum of the points that would have been accumulated had the kick gone through the uprights as opposed to being blocked by the player in question. It's kind of a cool way to see how helpful a player was outside of his normal defensive statistics. With that, here we go:

Records Set By Pun City:

• Sacks: Lawrence Taylor, 99
• Fumble Recovery TDs: Tim McKyer and Lemuel Stinson, 3
• Safeties: Lawrence Taylor, 34
• Blocked Extra Points: Derrick Thomas, 8
• Blocked Field Goals: Lawrence Taylor, 4
• Points Scored: Lawrence Taylor, 68
• Points Prevented: Lawrence Taylor, 17

Records Set By The Computer:

• Interceptions: Dave Waymer, 16
• Interception Return Yards: Richard Johnson, 250
• Interception Return Avg (min. 2 Interceptions): Eugene Robinson, 55.3
• Interception TDs: 24 tied with 2

Hopefully that post was worth the wait, sorry for the delays on it. Until next time, hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut.....

Pun City's Celebrity Encounters and Strange But True Confessions

This blog is headed to the Weird Al Yankovic show at Summerfest tomorrow, so Pun City figured it would put one up a day early. Two sources of inspiration here: one was a MySpace "survey" asking for 10 random facts about you. The other was an article/post on si.com where they were talking about encounters with famous people, in particular athletes. Without further ado:

10. This blog enjoys the music of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Hilary Duff. It's good stuff, have a listen some time.

9. Pun City has never exceeded 5 dates with the same girl. This might be common in the blogging community, but them's the breaks.

8. This blog sometimes prefers taking statistics to actually playing video games. Playing is often the means to the end of the statistics.

7. While working for Enterprise Rent-A-Car for two summers, this blog found over $20.00 in change in the rental cars each summer.

6. This blog was once accosted by a man playing church league softball for calling a ball that had hit the plate a strike. All balls that hit the plate are strikes. The ball clearly had hit the plate. This blog was a volunteer umpire pressed into duty 2 minutes before the game. Key words here: volunteer, accosted, and church league.

5. This blog's most recent video gaming system is Playstation 1. The NES and SNES are good enough for now. But this blog is waiting until they create a system where the graphics are better than real life.

4. Pun City has a hat and shirt rotation that matches up 223 hats with 223 shirts. This blog grabs the next one up in the closet every day, as detailed here. On Sunday, a Wisconsin Basketball shirt came up in the order. This was notable in that Pun City was headed to Marquette basketball season ticket renewal. After arriving in full Wisconsin regalia, the MU workers told this blog "You are about 90 miles east of where you need to be....." "Argh! It's, like, blinding! Ahh! Red shoes!" Once the initial pleasantries were dispensed, Pun City had a seat and awaited its appointment time. Minutes later, a female worker emerged from the back with a Marquette t-shirt. She presented it to Pun City, saying "We're going to ask that you wear this in to the appointment, because otherwise they're going to rip you to shreds in there." This blog graciously obliged, now knowing that the t-shirt order is self-sustaining.

3. Pun City doesn't eat breakfast. In college, this blog found out that it was a huge waste of time. It also noticed that gaining weight is easier when you eat breakfast. Pun City is a firm believer that breakfast is the least important meal of the day.

2. Pun City has attended 14 of 30 NCAA men's basketball conference tournaments in the last 4 years. The goal is to get to all 30 in Pun City's lifetime.

1. Pun City was half of the first (and still only) doubles victory for Grafton tennis at the WIAA state tournament.

Athletic encounters:

This blog has had brief encounters with quite a few athletes and coaches in its time. This blog didn't play against any famous athletes head-to-head, but was able to meet a few for a few minutes.

1. Homer and Bryce Drew - Both were at the Mid-Contenent Conference tournament in Tulsa, OK, watching Valparaiso's women play and this blog approached them for autographs. Homer was very gracious and amiable, every bit the gentleman that his public image projects. Bryce was on his cell phone but was happy to sign and as nice as you can be while talking on a cell phone yet still addressing the autograph seeker.

2. Marcus Allen - Kansas City Chiefs training camp in River Falls, WI. One year Pun City's brother and this blog asked him for an autograph just as he had refused a group of about 15 regular autograph hounds. In fairness to them, he said he couldn't, although he seemed to wish that he hadn't turned down the group and probably wouldn't have if he had known we were there. The next year, this blog was able to get his autograph. Pretty nice guy.

3. Joe Montana - Also Chiefs training camp. Very elusive, would never sign for any more than the bare minimum it took for him to get from his dorm into the meal hall. This blog realizes he had a lot of demand for his time, but that was a little poor.

4. Jim Larranaga - Cinderella George Mason's head coach, at the CAA tournament in Richmond, VA. He was in a concourse watching a game prior to GMU's matchup later in the day. This blog handed him a jersey and asked for his autograph. He nodded and signed in blue on the green part of the jersey, thus obscuring the autograph. (This blog had hoped he'd sign on the white number, but oh well). A very brief encounter, for as affable as he seems in the media, he came across as very introverted during this particular meeting.

5. Shane Battier - Hotel lobby in Indianapolis, IN during the 2000 Final Four. Duke was not in the Final Four, he had just completed his junior season. This blog believes he was in town for a summit on collegiate athletics as a student-athlete representative and probably as an NABC All-Region team rep. The hotel was hosting a pep rally for Wisconsin's fans. He had to get through the crowd to get to his destination, and was working the crowd very well, giving high fives and saying something to the effect of "Alright Wisconsin! Go get 'em!" He seemed pretty cool to be doing that when other student-athletes (like Brian Cardinal and to a lesser extent Marcus Fizer) and head coaches (like Steve Fisher and especially Bob Huggins) just shuffled past trying to avoid all fans. Cool guy, Pun City's a fan.