NERDstats

Here's a crazy thing I was thinking when I saw the CFP Rankings come out last night. Had we not lost to Wisconsin and Washington and were sitting at 10-2 right now... we'd still be out of the playoff. We'd be Vanderbilt. 10-2 with

I've been splitting the NERDstat posts into two this year. Last year I was writing "the thing I want to say and the stats I want to evaluate" into one big, long post (sometimes 5,000 words). This year I've done a lot of

My youngest son was the first one to let me know that "OK" wasn't a proper text response. This was at least 10 years ago. He'd be all "I should be done around 5:45 so you can pick me up at 6:

This is probably the best stat so far this season: Against a top-10 schedule (currently #9 in the FPI SOS), the Illini are +1 in turnover margin (10 turnovers gained, 9 turnovers lost). That's good for 59th nationally, so right in the middle of the pack. Tough schedule

Apologies for not getting this up until Friday afternoon. Other stuff (including the basketball preview, coming out Sunday night/Monday morning) has taken up most of my time this week. But I always need to NERDstat after every game, so let's NERDstat. We'll start with the

I really enjoy crazy box scores. I'm not a Los Angeles Rams fan (not only did Stan Kroenke lie and cheat, he lost $790 million to the City of St. Louis in a lawsuit because he lied and cheated), but I was a St. Louis Rams fan. I