In a post yesterday, we linked to a Luke Winn article on SI wherein he said Purdue was "due some positive karma" after what happened to Rob Hummel this past season. Those of us who've lived (and had many parts of ourselves die) with Purdue athletics for any length of time immediately noted that "positive karma" thing and laughed. Yes, we agree, Purdue is "due" for some positive karma. However, none of us expect things to simply turn in our direction. Which I think is good -- it means our boys need to go take it.Which brings us to luck. Senor Jacobi of Black Heart Gold Pants has a post up over there regarding the factor of luck on football. He even has a handy little data plot for it.
You'll be shocked to know -- SHOCKED, I tell you -- that Purdue was among the most unlucky football teams in the Big Ten in 2009.
Oh, AND in 2008.
In fact, according to the data that I am far too lazy to corroborate, nobody in the Big Ten has been anywhere near close to as unlucky as Purdue has been over the past two years.
Adam points out that Northwestern is in the interesting position of being the luckiest bastards in the Big Ten over both of the past two years and posits:
"Now, anybody with even a cursory education in high school mathematics would use this occasion to point out that the odds of jNWU leading the way twice in a row is so sufficiently low that there's more than luck that goes into their record."
Indeed. And by the same logic, the chances of Purdue being the unluckiest saps in the conference for two years running are equally low. So what happened? Did Morgan Burke run over a black cat looking at itself in a cracked mirror while carrying a ladder? Did Purdue somehow anger the gods of football?
Who knows. What we do know is that this further illustrates that when it comes to Purdue often getting a raw deal in the breaks department, we're not insane.
We're insane for other reasons.
4 comments:
Thinks back to the end of the first half of Purdue-Northwestern '09. Nods.
...in the membrane...
insane in the brain.
If luck is completely unconnected with skill, experience, etc. than it's statistically similar to a series of coin tosses. Like a coin toss, we could be "the most unlucky" for 100 years in a row and still have the same odds of being most unlucky the 101st year. Being average in our luck, or being above average in our luck, only occurs when you look at it over time.
Like a Markov chain, however, any positive probability of being "lucky" one season will result in a 100% probability of it occurring eventually. It just might not happen within our lifetimes. This is the same dilemma we mortal Cubs fans face.
:)
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