Ron Morris article

I'm not one to get worked up about his columns, but today's was particularly stupid. He points out the SEC wins 77% of their hosted regionals (he actually makes it sound like they win 77% of all regionals) which sounds impressive until you discover that the rest of the field wins 68% of their home regionals. But, what is most depressing is to see him succumb to the SEC group-think mentality. First, ACC schools win 72% of their hosted regionals over the same period - not a dramatic difference. But, more pertinent to this upcoming series is that the 16 seed (or team pared with the #1 overall seed for you sticklers) is 7 of 14 or exactly .500 in advancing from their hosted regional. So, while he'd have us believe that Clemson has a less than 25% chance of winning this regional - it is really a coin toss from a statistical standpoint. Comparing like seedings and performance against similar levels of competition is far more pertinent to making a prediction than averaging in the overwhelming win percentage that a conference's national seeds tend to bring into the equation.

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Re: Boyd Nations probabilities

May 29, 2013, 2:03 PM [ in reply to Boyd Nations probabilities ]

I was aware that these weren't actual probabilities. My problem was with a columnist for a major paper not understanding the difference between a statistic and a probability and further perpetuating this the SEC is best at everything mythos and acting like there is little to no reason to even bother to play this regional. His stated conclusion is that there is only 23% chance that someone other than South Carolina winning this regional. I'm pretty sure Ron Morris is actually smart enough to understand that this holds no water from an actual probability stand point - but there he is putting it in the paper. My point was that if you want to play loose with facts you could easily go the opposite way. If Ron is smart enough to know better then he actually has started spouting garbage to appease his higher ups who are bending over a barrel for the University.

The University's role in using advertising money as a bully stick to get the State paper to reflect their wishes has been a very real problem for the City of Columbia - this isn't just anti Carolina, Tiger jargon. Morris was one of the only writers to have demonstrated any willingness or been allowed the flexibility to speak out in any way about the University. Something about this column just struck me as the final white flag of surrender on his part. It probably seems minor to most but it was so sloppy and pandering that it had to be deliberate on his part.