Weekly Draft 3: Classes Every Student at Reston Should Take

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Because our first category was "Superheroes we'd like to see star in their own movie", and we figured that wasn't nerdy enough, we decided to follow it up with "Classes at Reston every student should take." As upperclassmen as Reston University (Motto: "Sede En Me Vulta") we figured it was our duty to tell the freshmen and the ill-prepared about some of the great classes that await them at our fine institution of higher learning. And so the third contributor draft begins... now.

Well, not quite now, persay, because first, a moment of clarification. Because theShow and Torshin, for all their wonderful qualities, do not attend Reston, we're going to be a bit short-handed. Order is SoBDD, Doctor Dozer, blogsquatch, JuicyJuice. Four men, two rounds, eight picks. Andnowwestart.

Sons of Big Daddy Drew: Introduction to the Law.

Cliche? Sue me. Or better yet, take this class, then sue me. Taught by Reston legend Houston Taras, Social Org covers nearly every important Supreme Court case of the last 100 years. This class gives prospective Poli Sci and Pre-Law majors a solid foundation in understanding the law, its interpretation, and its failures. The reading load is heavy, and Taras is a master at exposing your ignorance on that one day you didn't do it, but ithe knowledge gained makes it well worth it. From the fittingly-named Loving v. Virginia to the strange case of Riss v. City of New York to poor, poor Ceballos, these are some of the most interesting, enlightening, and relevant cases that've ever sat on the SCOTUS docket.

Doctor Dozer: Introduction to Geology.

I'll admit my skepticism when first signing up for the course at the recommendation of my hippie-scum adviser, but I actually enjoyed the hell out of it. Let's face it: we all need to pad our GPAs every once in a while, so why not get a few outdoor field trips and a little bit of knowledge out of it? And if you're afraid of actual science, why not take a fake one? Over the course of a semester, I did in fact learn a bit, and I never studied, let alone opened a book. I had a box of rocks (really minerals) in my room, and the girls always love that. And at the end of the day, your professor is guaranteed to be a fun-to-talk-to grass-smoking granola who doesn't have the heart to give you less than an A-. Dinosaurs. Oil. Hawaii. Yup, all the cool things, kids.

SOBDD-I've heard of Rocks for Jocks, but now they've got Rocks for Kids Who Suck Cocks? What's next? Rock for Box? (Dozer's motha) Rocks for Fox? (Bloqsquatch's motha) Rocks for people who like to trade stocks? (Gary) Rocks for lovers of smallpox? (Jeff)

Blogsquatch: Vampires.

Yes such a class does exist at Reston. When first finding out about it, I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of learning, reading, watching, and writing about vampires for an entire semester. Surely such a class would attract the most interesting group of people. You know the type: dark shades of eye-liner, long straight jet-black hair, crooked and off-centered designs on t-shirt that look like they belong in the artwork for a Rob Zombie album/movie instead of on people's...well not really chest, more like shoulder-back-side-pectoral area. Very Docter Dozer-ish. But to tell you the truth, the class actually....was everything I expected, but not really. Not too many crazy-clothes wearing fellers in the class, but you definitely get a different feel for the good-ol' vampire. You almost learn to love the poor misunderstood, creature of the night. Where else can you be assigned to watch a variety films where you have elements including but not limited to action, plenty of exaggerated and hilariously funny gore, Salma Hayek dancing 85% naked before she turns into a horrifying creature that actually reminds me of one of my english teachers from back in the day (of course you wouldn't know them), or even cartoon vampires from Cuba who are incredibly thristy for blood and unsatisfyingly horny as well (does that even make sense, Doctor Dozer knows more about that than any of us do so we'll ask him later about that). Anyway, the professor may strike students as a bit free-spirited and chique, and he is defintely a cool guy, but he certainly adds an extra value to a class that already is very much under-rated and over-looked by much of the student body.

SOBDD-The vampires weren't the only thing in that class that sucked! Hoo Boy! Burned! Oh yeaaaaaah! Gotcha blogsquatch!

JuicyJuice: Biological Psychology.

This class is definitely the closest I will ever come to taking a real science course (a step above Geo, which I also took). I was considering being a psych major at the time but I also took this class because I was genuinely interested. Bio-psych is a great course for anyone who has ever wondered how the brain works and why the human body does some of the things it does. Each week you cover a new topic including topics such as how the brain controls eating, drinking, sleeping, sex, memory, and language and basic sensory and motor functions. Pretty cool stuff, not to mention you sound really smart when you can talk about things like how a ligand-gated ion channel works and what the hypothalamus does (I would list more things but I have obviously forgotten most of the cool and useless information that I learned). Despite totally misrepresenting himself in a picture on the "psych professor wall”, Professor Beard was a cool nerd that was sometimes funny and usually interesting to listen to. The class does live up to its slightly intimidating name though as almost every paper and test is a bitch. But I think most students’ GPA survive this class just fine. I enjoyed this class so much that I considered taking a neuroscience class and I signed up for Psycho-Pharmacology, which I promptly dropped after realizing that I remembered none of the little chemistry that is required.

JuicyJuice: World Politics (That's the 4th thing to come up when you google image search world politics, I swear.

If there is one political science class to take at Reston, this is it. I say that because this is the only intro course that provides students with a basic understanding of the important ideas in political philosophy and of today’s important political issues. Topics include – the dynamics of great power politics, the changing role of state sovereignty, international civil society, international legal institutions, and the United States’ relationship with the EU, China, India, Russia, the Middle East, and Latin America. The most valuable part of this course for me was that its emphasis on geopolitics forced me to learn geography. I am very grateful that I now know that the difference between the Balkans and the Baltic states and that I can now name and locate more than one country in Africa on a map. Professor Mancala doesn’t even attempt to hide his radically liberal views on every topic but it honestly doesn’t detract from the course because the readings are a fair representation of the spectrum of political views. I can also guarantee that over the course of the twelve week semester, Mancala absolutely will not learn your name. Despite his flaws, Mancala and his accent are funny to listen to and he shows some cool clips that waste class time.

Blogsquatch: India in Film

What you get from this course will more than likely serve you no purpose after you graduate. Many consider it to be a joke class, and a g.p.a. booster. Yes, it proves to be a relatively simple course that you can take to help boost your grades, but its actually an incredibly entertaining and fun course. The movies, all Bollywood films, are incredibly awkward and different at first, but after giving it a chance, the common storylines, spontaneous dance routines, and the catchy music will eventually grow on you, and you'll end up enjoying class far more than you ever thought you would.

Doctor Dozer: Writing Poetry

With his second pick, you might think Doctor Dozer would pick a biology related course, or maybe organic chemistry, given his affinity for the body and doing doctoral things to it. However, you'd be wrong. The Doctor chooses Writing Poetry. Taking a creative writing course should be important to everyone. Never again in your life will complete strangers be forced to listen to your ideas and smile politely, so you might as well take advantage. With poetry in particular, though, not only are you expressing yourself creatively, you're also finding things out about yourself that you never knew before. Once you finish your first 4 poems about how light and fluffy the world is or how that bird is singing outside your window on a Sunday morning after brunch with white pants and linen shirts, using your little rhyme schemes and meter and witticisms, there's nothing left to do but dig inside yourself and see what's really there. You simply have nothing else to write about. The ideas that pop into your head when you're struggling for a topic are mostly frightening, but don't shy away from them. That's who you are deep down. Learn to embrace it, express it, and shock people with your honesty. No other class gives you the opportunity to "Fight Off Your Demons" like Writing Poetry. Be careful, thought, because you might just find out who you are and where you came from.

Sons of Big Daddy Drew: Introduction to Economics

Want to understand the relationship between supply and demand? Want to know why the Fed raises interest rates? Want to know what the Fed is? Want to know what interest rates are? Want to know why the summer gas tax holiday (endorsed by Hillary Clinton and John McCain) is a pointless idea? Want to know why this is such a stupid facebook group? Want to learn about Supply-Side Economics, Reaganomics, the Trickle-Down Effect, and VooDoo Economics? Want to know what William Jennings Bryant's "Cross of Gold" speech, widely considered one of the greatest orations in American history, was actually saying? Want to know, once and for certain, that Ron Paul is a crazy person? Want to know what that weird dude Russell Crowe played in "A Beautiful Mind" was all about? Want to know why your father got laid off from work? Take Introduction to Economics. (Oh, and your father got laid off because he's a lazy, drug-addled man-child who hasn't worked a productive day in his life.)

What are your own recommendations for classes, either at Reston or elsewhere? Great topics, great professors, great pictures? Yours in the comments...

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So an intro Eh?

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My name is Torshin and I am video game addict. I've been playing video games ever since I was a little kid and haven't stopped since. Was first a huge console fan and was first hooked on play-station and N64 and then around nine or ten I discovered the beauty of online gaming and it all went down from there. I love the internet and I love the fact that it allows you to be who ever you want to be, but as of late I have become more and more cynical of it as we hear more stories of kids killing themselves over Facebook or eloping to Jordan because of a boy they met on Myspace. So as the newest member of BIBTTP I will be writing about all that is wrong with technology and the internet in general these days with a bit of my views on politics thrown in once and a while.

To start us off I'm going to mention BBN Technologies Inc. current pet project for which they recently received 12 million in government funding and a large amount of dedicated bandwidth to, well basically replace the internet. The name for this project is Global Environment for Network Innovations(GENI) and it is supposed to take a clean slate approach to the internet to fix serious security issues. Now looking at this very optimistically this project could drastically fix serious problems facing the internet such as transfer of copyrighted materials and things of that nature. But I look at this as government regulation of internet content, aka China. These are the kinds of things that interest me and these will be the kinds of things I will be writing about.

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BIBTTP Reviews... The Dark Knight

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As our Superhero draft showed, we're a bunch of nerds here at Bigfoot Is Blurry, That's The Problem. So with the big-time nerd movie of the summer hitting the theaters last midnight, of course I was there.

As the last preview rolled, the DC Comics logo flashed, and the screen went black for the 12:01 showing of "The Dark Knight", a strange thought popped in my head. Even though I'd been eagerly awaiting its release, watching every trailer, reading every review, going to see the movie as soon as humanly possible, I didn't want to see this movie. Everything I had seen, everything I had read, everything I had heard had told me how great "The Dark Knight" was going to be. And yet... what if it wasn't? What if they'd all been setting me up for some spectacular failure, if the explosions were crappy, if the storyline didn't make any sense, and if, worst of all, Heath Ledger's much-hailed Joker performance turned out to be a hack job. If I didn't see it, if it never started, I could always imagine it to be that truly great film, and I would never need fear disappointment.

What an idiot I was. "The Dark Knight" was everything I had been promised and more. To be clear--for the movie itself is not afraid to be blunt about it--this is the story of opposites, of light and darkness. District Attorney Harvey Dent (Nick Nolte of "Thank You For Smoking") is Gotham City's "White Knight", while Batman is its eponymous "Dark Knight". We are poignantly reminded that is it always darkest before the dawn. And characters are constantly fighting their own dual natures, as the dark and light that is in all of us fights for control.

I could go into some whole deep-psyche thing and talk about how both Bruce Wayne and Dent are each torn between the light, how other characters reveal their own struggles, too, and how each of us, truly, must confront that evil lurking within, balance it with the good we have and share with the world. But I'm not going to do that.

Instead, I'm going to talk about the Joker.


Now, I don't know how the Oscars voters are going to react to this. I don't know if they're going to be hestitant to recognize someone who's dead, or someone who was in a summer superhero blockbuster flick, or someone who spends the whole movie wearing ridiculous makeup. Hell, I don't even know if Ledger would be up for Best Actor or Best Supporting. But he'd better win. Because my God, what an amazing performance.

See, characters are usually great because of their complexity. As I said, in "The Dark Knight" we see figures torn between the light and the darkness, between good and evil, and these characters are great, and plenty complex. But with Ledger's Joker--and make no mistake about it: this Ledger's Joker, and the Joker is Ledger; Nicholson can suck it--there is no complexity. He is an absolute: he came out of nowhere, he wants nothing, and he won't be back. (That's not in any way a spoiler, just observing that no one else could put what Ledger did into the Joker.) Cast into a black-and-white morality play, the Joker is like a top spinning through a chessboard: he has no time for or interest in rules. As Alfred remarks of him, "Some men just like to watch the world burn." Madness personified, the nihilist Joker is spectacular because he's so simple. Let others determine the morality of their actions, let others fight it out for the soul of Gotham, let others struggle between light and dark. While the world around him burns, he is.

RIP, Heath. You put your heart and soul into this one.

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Weekly Draft 1: Unsung Superheroes

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Welcome to a new segment we're starting this week. As fantasy and sports nerds past, present, and future, we love all things that are drafts and drafting. But we really don't have enough opportunities to enjoy this interest of ours. Apart from our one or two fantasy drafts a year and a hand full of sports drafts that are worth while, for a long time we didn't know where to turn to feed our drafting urges. Well, now we do. In this new segment, we'll be drafting all kinds of different topics. Our goals are simple: to find an outlet for this need we have and to do it in hilarious fashion.

This week: Superheroes we'd most like to see made into a modern movie.
Drafters in order: SoBDD, Doctor Dozer, theShow, blogsquatch

1.1 - SoBDD - Captain America

His recent tragic death aside, there is no superhero I’d like to see get his own vehicle more than blurryfoot Captain America. Though Superman claims to stand for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way,” there is no costumed crimefighter more American than Captain America. Born weak and sickly, Steve Rogers became strong and good-looking through that distinctly American practice of pulling himself up by his bootstraps utilizing the wonders of science to cure his ills. His liberal "the government should solve all my problems" attitude patriotism is such that he handed himself over to the military to be experimented on. Now, he sticks his nose in other people's business serves America and humanity as a “super-soldier”, clad in red, white, and blue. (No flag pin questions with this guy!) Though there was a 1990 direct-to-video Captain America film, it is high time for another version starring, of course, Stephen Colbert.

1.2 - Doctor Dozer - The Ambiguously Gay Duo of Ace and Gary
If it isn't clear to you already, I like gay jokes. They are quite hilarious, and I'm not ashamed to say it. That being said, superheroes, as blogsquatch's recent superhero fashion guide post showed us, are straddling the line between normality and gayness. One more inch, and they'd be over. Well thankfully, Ace and Gary take us that inch and deliver us unto the promised land of unchecked jokes about the gay. In addition, SNL has a history of solid skits transitioning well into movies. From The Blues Brothers and Wayne's World to Superstar and Ladies' Man, they've done pretty well thus far. And let's be real, the recent slew of superheroes movies are in need of some serious mockery. Last but certainly not least, the voice actors for Ace and Gary are Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell, respectively. A movie with these two as the leads, whether it is animated or real life, would be damned funny. MAKE THIS MOVIE! (Ed. note: So we like Colbert, okay?)

1.3 - theShow - Hawkeye
I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Hawkeye. He is one of those forgotten superheroes and therefore well under-represented in the tv/movie realm. As a kid I loved action figures and the day I found Hawkeye is a day that I will always remember. Seeing that dark purple suit with his bow and arrow and quiver, complete with actual individual arrows. Very cool. Anyway, he is legit and can pull off the purple very nicely. Another attribute that makes him cool is the fact that he does not really have any superhuman abilities. He is just an excellent athlete (much like myself) with tremendous bow and arrow abilities. Hell he is even an accomplished acrobat and aerialist. Take that Captain America. I think it's time for the lesser superheroes to start popping up and Hawkeye should be the first. I mean they made "Daredevil" for God sakes. Can't they make this then. Let's make it happen and get a bad-ass actor like Eric Bana or Daniel Craig to portray him.

1.4 - blogsquatch - The Shadow
Yes, the Shadow was made into a movie in 1994 starring Alec Baldwin and yes this is supposed to be about unsung heroes that haven't been cinematized just yet, but this guy is awesome and I can just picture such an amazing movie from him (which they're already in the process of making...). He's a telepathic guy that is basically invisible when he wants to be, is a great marksman, and a gifted student of the martial arts (mixed or otherwise). He was evil for the longest time, but was brought to the "light side" by a bunch of Tibetan monks he came across. Anyway, this is an evil man! No wishy-washy emo Spiderman stuff in this movie. It would be more along the lines of Batman Begins (now that I think about it, almost exactly like it), but way darker. Well, whether I'm wrong or right, one thing is for sure: this movie is already in production, and I think it's going to be sick.

2.1 - blogsquatch - Aquaman
Some people say I look like Vince Chase (played by Adrian Grenier) of Entourage. Well you know what? I sort of do. I also really enjoy the work of James Cameron who directs the Aquaman film starring Vince in the show. I would definitely also blow off another director if I were to have already committed to him to be his star if James Cameron offered me the lead in Aquaman. What I'm trying to say is that Vince and I are very similar. But I'm better because I lax and I blog. Suck it, Vince.

2.2 - theShow - Wonder Woman
Yes that is right I picked a female superhero. I think it is time for a blockbuster movie about a hot, scantily clad chick kicking some bad guy ass. The Wonder Woman outfit is very easy on the eyes, as long as you fill it with someone worthy of exposing that much skin. I like to think Jessica Alba would have no problem doing that (I didn't like her as a superhero in "Fantastic 4"', but this role might work better than that one). Or maybe even Angelina Jolie, but she might not be PG-13 enough for this role. Get any hot actress (preferably one with some acting ability) and stuff her in those tights and low-cut top and we have ourselves and excellent flick right there! (Ed. note: Because that formula worked so well for "Catwoman"...)

2.3 - Doctor Dozer - Megaman
I want to see a Megaman movie for mostly one reason: Megaman was a nickname of mine in high school. Yes, an upperclassman on my football team called me Megaman. Was it because I had Mega ability? Was it because my quarterbacking arm was interchangeable as well as devastating? Was it because I had a flying robotic dog? No. It was because I had a big head and because it looked bigger in the Peyton Manning-esque helmet I wore as a junior. That was the reason. But I was dominant and my arm was more devastating than a large cannon blast from Megaman's power arm after holding down the B button for over thirty seconds. I know, right? And the thing is that I really was that good. Really.

2.4 - SoBDD - A Villain
Just as Christopher Nolan's "Batman" and Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" have reimagined their heroes with an eye towards the psychological demons superheroes must face, it would be fascinating to take a look at this whole good-evil thing from the other side. Sure, we all know Batman fights crime because of his daddy issues, and Spider-Man is a big ninny who feels bad if one person in a city of 12 million ever experiences discomfort (sounds like a pinko Democrat!) (Ed. note: or, you know, like Christ.) but why does any particular Supervillian behave in such a strange Supervilliany manner? Like, every villain (hell, everybody) wants to get rich and powerful, but what's with all the Supervilliany Z strange behaviors? I'm not talking about an anti-hero (think V from V For Vendetta or the Punisher); these figures work for the greater benefit, and their psyches have been well-explored. I want to plumb the depths of a man(Ed. note: He wants to plumb the depths of a man? Ultra-gay.)'s mind who has great abilities, yet purposely and knowingly works against the good of humanity. Perhaps a movie told from the villain's perspective can explain our questions away.

3.1 - SoBDD - Tom Brady
Hold your fire, Doctor Dozer. (Yes, I know that's difficult what with Brady's studliness and your, um, condition, but you'll have to do the best you can.) My third and final superhero selection is indeed Tom Brady, quarterback for the New England Patriots. Tom Brady is, without a doubt, the finest quarterback in the NFL. His good looks and charm leave nothing to be desired, and his girlfriend, Gisele Bundchen, is possibly the most beautiful woman on the planet, in addition to being extremely wealthy. Every man in this country wants to be him. Every woman in this country wants to do him--and hell, so of the men do, too. There is nothing Tom Brady could ever want for. Now tell me: if that's not being a superhero, what is?

3.2 - Doctor Dozer - Captain Planet
Everyone knows Al Gore is possibly the biggest whacko out there preaching fire and brimstone to the people of the world right now. Yes, we have to take care of our planet or it will blow up or something awful or blah blah blah ploygamy, terrorism, Iran. I've heard it all before, folks, when I was much younger and my head was just as large (literally) as it as now. That's right: CAPTAIN PLANET! Now he was a hero. He would take polluters down to zero. And above all else, one of the elements of the Earth that was called upon in order to call Captain Planet was Heart. You remember, I know. That kid that looked like he was from the Jungle Book. Well I can tell you this about Captain Planet: Rudyard Kipling hated people from India. And Captain Planet had blue skin and green hair. Beat that, characters from Doug! Oh wait. Crap, they do, too. Ummmmm....I guess my last point is that Al Gore sucks. Yeah, that'll do it.

3.3 - theShow - Gambit
I'm going to make this short and sweet. I sat through three X-Men movies and every time I was pissed to see that my favorite comic mutant was left out. Gambit spoke with a cool accent (Cajun) used a bo staff to beat down his enemies, and threw flaming playing cards. That's all that needs to be said. He is so damn cool. I just read that he will be portrayed in the new Wolverine movie by some dude from the Friday Night Lights tv show. That is weak having some no-name kid play Gambit. Give him his own movie and have the Govenator Arnold Schwarzenegger play him. I mean an Austrian accent and a Cajun accent are basically the same anyway.

3.4 – blogsquatch - The Green Lantern
I am a Mexican. Well, I guess Spanish-Mexican, but who's counting? As a Mexican (more or less), I love all that is our culture: tequila, coronas, Aztec warriors, tamales... you get the picture. As such, I did a little digging for a Mexican superhero and I present to you... no one. None worth writing about at the very least. So, instead, I choose another minority: John Stewart, the black Green Lantern. Now, there are more than one Green Lantern because his powers, power over the Earth around him, comes from a ring he wears that is given to him by the Guardians of the Universe. Only those that possess the willpower and inner strength the wield the rings are granted them. So clearly I would have a ring. Anyway, they're all green and they kill shit. And besides Hancock, how many minority superheroes have we had? We're well overdue. GREEEEEEN!

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Fantasy Football Defense (Part 1, Methodology)

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Blogsquatch and the Dozer aren't the only nerds in town, you know. I'm a bit of a nerd myself, which manifests itself in two ways--playing fantasy football, and being way too serious about numbers when playing fantasy football. This will be the first of a series of posts going inside the numbers, hopefully for your edification. As team defense is often an overlooked position, and I've done a lot of looking over it already this year, I figured it was a good place to start.

Something to keep in mind while reading this is that fantasy defenses score points just like any other fantasy position. And how many points they score will undoubtedly be affected by what offense they face. So when I talk about "defense points scored" and "offense points allowed", do not be alarmed. If it's really that confusing for you, just imagine everything in this post flipped upside down and describing real-life offenses scoring points against real-life defenses instead of fantasy defenses scoring points against fantasy offenses.

My first step was researching each team's predicted fantasy points this year. I went to a couple different websites and averaged my results, making sure all the inputs were based off of my league's point value. Our scoring system for defense is as follows:



So all the calculations are based off that.

From there, I took the total projected points and divided by 16, to get a projected points per game. But a defense won't score the same amount of points every week; offenses faced contributes mightily to defensive success. Because I was unable to find "projected points scored for a defense facing this particular offense" anywhere, I made my own using last year's numbers. For some of the numbers, you can get away with taking a straight average to find the prediction for each week, because counting stats are counting stats. I multiplied turnovers by two, sacks by one, and all the rest of it, but 'points scored' posed a bit more of a problem. If an offense averages, say, 22 points a game, simply punched in the average value, would mean you'd end up predicting defenses will score 0 points against them every time. Likewise, if you have a defense that scores 27 points a game, the defense will get 0 in that category. Obviously, that doesn't make sense, as an offense that scores 22 points a game will (often) score 17 or so points in games and (less often) 31 or so points in games, while a 27 point averaging team will score 31 points more often than it scores 17. So I figured out each team's average points per game and standard deviation from last year. I plugged those figures in an online normal distribution calculator that I cannot currently find, and determined the probability of any particular offense scoring between 0 and 6 points a game, 7 and 13, and so on. I admit I fudged it a bit, as I didn't want to grind through 256 online trials (32 teams, 8 different point ranges), so I picked about 10 different categories (14-15 points per game, STD 8-10) and put each team in a category. I had a chart that looked like this:



I then multiplied each probability by the points received to determine average points per week attributable to "points allowed". (This is the step shown in the screenshot. New England has a 20% chance of scoring between 28 and 34 points in a game, and if a defense allowed that, they'd be docked one point.) When coupled with the counting stats, I determined how many points each offense was expected to score each week. (I know that football scores are not normally distributed, and I screwed up a bit counting the number in each range--I set ranges at 0 to 6, 7 to 13, and so on, so all fractions between ranges were lumped into the 0 points set. I think, because it replaces extreme scores with scores of 0 points, it will have some normalizing--not in the same 'normal' sense, I'm afraid--effect, but it won't be the last time we see something like that.) Imperfect, I know, but the best I could do.

At this point, I had "defense projected points per week" and "offense projected points per week". I wanted to determined how many points would be expected when any particular offense played any particular defense, but this was easier said than done. You can't simply average these numbers, as that would pull extremes towards the center much too much. (Just as I promised!) Say you have an offense that is so dominant, they only let the average fantasy defense score two points a week. But an average fantasy defense, against an average offense, might score eight points a week. By averaging them, in the end you'd have an offense that's supposed to be only allowing 2 points a week allowing 5 points a week. I couldn't think of a better way to bridge the gap, though, so I settled on a compromise. I averaged the two numbers, then multiplied the averaged numbers by the percentage that the new total fell short of what the total should be, for both offenses and defenses. I did it again, and I got total numbers very close to what they should be, so I was happy with that. At this point, my excel sheet looked something like this:



I've included another image in case that one is hard to read, although you can simply click on it to enlarge. This one's only the top left corner of the original.



In each one, though, you can see the offenses down the left side--arranged by predicted points allowed per game--and the defenses accross the top, arraged alphabetically. So, when the New England offense--which is fantastic--faces the Cardinals defense--which is pretty good, Arizona can be expected to bank 2.0 points, slightly above the New England average of 1.6, and way below the Arizona average of 8.0.

I took all these potential match-ups--1024 in all--and put them on the real schedule. In Week 4, Arizona faces the slightly above average Buffalo offense, and can therefore be predicted to score a slightly below average 7.9 points. But the problem with simply converting matchup chart into a 16 week schedule is the total projected--through the use of individual matchups--points generated by the 16 teams on the slate will not necessarily equal the total projected points I started with for each defense. Arizona's overall sched is so easy, by simply plugging in each projected matchup, I ended up with a total about 7% higher than it should've been. So I took each team's individually-generated result and multiplied it by the inverse of the percentage it was off the original projection, and did that for each game. As it turned out, Arizona should only be projected to score 7.4 points against Buffalo. Hopefully, this step cancelled out the averaging issues I had on the per-game basis, because the outside generated numbers were complied with strength of schedule in mind, so this throws it back into the equation.

So now I can predict how many points every team will score in every week of the season, based on their past results, current professional projections, and future matchups. Now came a (relatively) simple step of matching every team up with every other team, and saying 'if I had both these defenses on my roster, and I could always play the one projected to score more points, how many total points could I score?' Unsurprisingly, two average defenses, when managed well, can outscore an excellent defense. More posts on this will follow, including all my results, but I just wanted to get my methology out there. It took almost as long to type up as it did to generate, and it's much more unclear in this format, so if you have any questions, hit me up in the comments. I can't necessarily justify anything I did mathematically--I don't have that kind of training--but I have an intutive sense of how things should go and should fit together, and I think my results make sense on some level. There's no way you're still reading this, so I'm just going to take this opportunity to say the Doctor touches babies.

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