Poisoning the well of public opinion against the Patriots

On January 21, Chris Mortensen published a story at ESPN.com that claimed, among other things, that

The NFL has found that 11 of the New England Patriots' 12 game balls were inflated significantly below the NFL's requirements, league sources involved and familiar with the investigation of Sunday's AFC Championship Game told ESPN.The investigation found the footballs were inflated 2 pounds per square inch below what's required by NFL regulations during the Pats' 45-7 victoryover theIndianapolis Colts, according to sources.

This claim wasn't true.

On January 19, league official David Gardi sent a letter to the Patriots claiming “In fact, one of the game balls was inflated to 10.1 psi, far below the requirement of 12-1/2 to 13-1⁄2 psi. In contrast, each of the Colts’ game balls that was inspected met the requirements set forth above.”

Two more claims, neither of which is true.  First that the Patriots had a ball that was 2.4 psi low.  Also the claim that none of the Colts' were low.

Reading the Ted Wells Report: Exponent report

There are various parts of the report which are used by the NFL to make their case.  They seem to rely more than anything else on the text messages.  This is odd to me, as the text messages are not, in fact, incriminating.  Embarrassing?  Certainly.  Consistent with guilt?  Maybe.  There are more problems with that than people are admitting.  Damning?  Hardly At some point I may go over that, but I think it's a better use of my time to go over the Exponent appendix, which makes the case that the Wells report and the suspensions rely upon.  It should be clear here that without the Exponent report, there is no evidence of any wrongdoing.  Without evidence that the balls were actually deflated, who cares what text messages a couple locker room attendants sent to each other?

The main problem with the Exponent report is that a lot of information is missing.  Where we should be using carefully recorded air pressures, we rely more upon half-rememberances, including on the question of which gauge was actually used to measure the air pressures.

A second issue that I find problematic is that it presumes uniformity to conditions that simply isn't reasonable to assume.  It also fails to consider the possibility that using a football playing a football game in the NFL might tend to lead to loss of air pressure.

Anyway, let's start.

Reading the Ted Wells report - Executive Summary

I am literally baffled that people seem to think that this report offers conclusive proof of anything.  And yet reporters around the country are piling on.  More evidence that the media isn't terribly rigorous with what stories they run.  Anywhere, here it goes...

Executive Summary

p.1 (p.5 of pdf)

"All eleven of the Patriots game balls tested measured below the minimum pressure level of 12.5 pounds per square inch (“psi”) allowed by Rule 2 of the Official Playing Rules of the National Football League (the “Playing Rules”) on both of two air pressure gauges used to test the balls."

Already the report is acting like it's the responsibility of the Patriots to keep balls at a certain pressure level during the game.  But it isn't.  The only thing the Patriots are obliged to do is provide balls pressurized to a level between 12.5 and 13.5 psi to the officials before the game starts.  Even then there is no sanction if a ball is over- or under-inflated.  It's up to the officials to adjust the pressure so the ball falls in the desired range.

Aside: let's remember what Chris Mortensen was told. 

The investigation found the footballs were inflated 2 pounds per square inch below what's required by NFL regulations during the Pats' 45-7 victory over the Indianapolis Colts, according to sources. 

Well, that turned out to be untrue, as we'll see soon.

Nimoy

He's passed, as we all know.  Let's consider the highlights of his career after the jump.

Quickie Saracastic Oscar Preview

Feels like the Academy is going to reward some stinkers again.  The nominations already have several issues, the worst of which is the bizarre decision to not include The Lego Movie in the Best Animated Feature category.

But rather than have an extended diatribe about the process, I'll just do a quickie scatter-gun preview.

The NFL's science-free smear campaign

So apparently the NFL has decided that they cheaty cheater New England Cheatriots have been cheating again, deflating footballs during games in order to gain some sort of advantage.  There are several problems with their campaign of accusation, though:

1. In cold weather, footballs lose air pressure.  (This is a consequence of what is known as Guy-Lassac's law from physics.)
2. Nobody on the team will admit to having done this.
3. Apparently they have no videos showing this happening.
4. It's not clear who had an opportunity to do this.
5. At least nominally, the balls were in the custody of the game officials.

Hosting the Broncos

Why do the Patriots host the Broncos 3 years in a row?

NFL Scheduling

Every once in a while, somebody will notice that a given NFL team will host another non-divisional team from the same conference three years in a row.  Today the Patriots are hosting the Broncos for the third year in a row.  That's so unfair!  Or so it would seem.  But it turns out that there are sound mathematical reasons that it works out this way. 

To explain the reasons, let's consider how the NFL schedule is generated.  The NFL has 32 teams, organized in two conferences, each of which has 4 divisions with 4 teams each.  And the season lasts 16 games long for each team.  This coincidence of numbers makes for a very elegant scheduling algorithm, which will disappear as soon as the NFL expands again.

Each team plays a mix of divisional games, intraconference games, and interconference games.  For starters, each team plays a home game and an away game against each of its three division rivals. 

The next consideration is the desire to have regular games against all the other teams in the league.  That's neatly arranged by having all of the teams in each division play all the other teams in each other division on a rotating basis.  For example, this season all of the teams in the AFC East play all of the teams in the NFC  North.  That rotation is on a four-year schedule, since there are four divisions in each conference.

In contrast, there is a three year rotation for interconference matchups.  This year, the AFC East plays the AFC West, while the AFC North plays the AFC South. Last year the AFC East played the AFC North.  Next year, they'll play the AFC South.  

So each team plays 6 games in the division, 4 games against all the teams of one other division in the same conference, and 4 games against all the teams in one division intra-conference.  The home-and-away matchups for division vs. division play alternates so no city will go too, too long without being able to see every other team.  That means every eighth season for interconference, every sixth season for intraconference.  These account for 14 of the 16 games played every season.

That leaves two slots to fill up the season.  The NFL fills the last two slots by having every team play one team from each of the other two divisions in the same conference, namely, the two teams that finish in the same respective place in the standings.  In recent years, the Patriots have finished in first place, and thus had to play the first place team from the other two divisions.

For many years, this led to the Patriots playing the Colts every season.  One season, when the Patriots finished in second, the Colts did the same thing, so they kept playing each other.  Now that Peyton Manning has moved to Denver, there is focus on that matchup.  And two years ago, back when Tim Tebow was their QB, the Broncos visited Foxboro to play the Pats.  Last year, they did the same thing.  

And a few weeks ago they hosted the Broncos again.

Why is that?  Well, let's look at how this can go.  The three other first place teams last season were the Broncos, the Bengals, and the Colts.  As I mentioned earlier, the Pats play all the teams of the AFC West this season.  That they host the Broncos is part of the divisional schedule.  Three years ago they went to Denver, and they'll go to Denver again three years from now.  And if they'd gone to Denver this year, they would have hosted Denver three years ago, so they still would have hosted Denver three years in a row.

Why does it happen?  It happens because the home-away switch has to interleave with the rotating division vs. division matchup.  Recall the list of the first-place teams: Patriots, Colts, Bengals, and Broncos.  Since the Patriots hosted the Bengals and visit Indy this season, the Broncos have to do the opposite, just to ensure all four teams have exactly 8 home games and exactly 8 road games.  This makes for a "cycle": Pats host Bengals, who host the Broncos, who host the Colts, who host the Pats.  A more compact notation  here would be (Pats, Bengals,  Broncos, Colts), where each team hosts the team after it.  Or, to use the geographic names, (East, North, West, South).  Last year was (East, West, North, South).   And the year before that was (East, West, South, North).  

If I keep East in the first slot, there are six ways to fill the other three slots.  And it turns out the NFL is on a 6-year rotating schedule in this respect.    Now if I keep East in the first slot, the third slot is in a regular rotation:

(East, *, South, *)

(East, *, North, *)

(East, *, West, *)

(East, *, South, *)

(East, *, North, *)

(East, *, West, *)

So, let's start with (East, West, South, North) and see what we're forced to do.  The next year we have (East, *, North, *).  If we want to avoid the (East, West, *, *) option, we have to use (East, South, North, West).  That gives us

(East, West, South, North)

(East, South, North, West)

and, if we want to again avoid a repeat

(East, North, West, South)

So far, so good, yes?  Well, at least as far as the East goes.  But notice that the South hosts the North two years in a row, the West hosts the South both times it is possible, and the North hosts the West two years in a row.

So, it's possible to schedule things so the East team doesn't have any repeat hosting, but doing so would force every other divisional matchup to be constant in terms of who's on the road and who's hosting.  You just cannot alternate a two-year rotation and a three-year rotation for everybody.  So what the league does is use all six possibilities.

(East, West, South, North)

(East, West, North, South)

(East, North, West, South)

and those three reversed

(East, North, South, West)

(East, South, North, West)

(East, South, West, North)

In other words, East@West, East@West, division vs. division, West@East, West@East, division vs. division.  And since the division vs. division matchups themselves alternate, either the third or sixth year is also going to be East@West, leaving us with three years in a row of East@West, followed by three years in a row of West@East.

[cross-posted at Pineapples in Alaska]