Tier 1, Task 4: 4. “Sim gonna sim” is a popular expression in the league. Write about teams that have been graced by the sim gods and had amazing performances despite statistical odds, and/or about teams that were considered favorites but may have dealt with some bad sim luck that hampered their efforts. How much of an impact did it have on their season(s)?
If there is one expression common to the ISFL that everyone that will eventually run into, no matter how active you are or committed to understanding and closely following the games is the good old “sim gonna sim”. It means that sometimes, no matter how much effort GMs put into building their rosters and how many hours they spend simming for one single game, it may all end up going down the drain because the game engine decided that it was best that your team ran the ball on 3rd and 5. And to some extent, I don’t really like the idiom. Financial Analyst Michael Mauboussin wrote a book in 2012 called The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing. In it, he managed to calculate how much luck goes into deciding standings of all 4 major American sports and soccer. And Football ended up being the 2nd most lucky sport, behind somewhat surprisingly hockey. The complexity of the game and the matches (16 regular season games and 1 game per playoff series, which is nothing in comparison to other sports, that can play as many as 10 times more matches per season) make upsets a common theme in our league. So the same way one can say “sim gonna sim”, one can also say “football gonna ball”. I understand that I am overanalyzing a simple expression that is mostly used for comedic effect, but alas.
My distaste for this expression does not make it less accurate, however. As in real sports, some teams are luckier than others. And I’m here to show which teams were mathematically the luckiest and the unluckiest.
For this, I’m going to use the method of Pythagorean wins. It was first developed by the father of sabermetrics, Bill James, yet has since been adapted to other sports, including football. Since all games are won by teams that score more points than their opponent, the formula estimates how many games a game should have won based on their points for and points against, using the formula PW = (PF^(2.37))/((PF^(2.37))+(PA^2.37)*16). It is also important to say that one shouldn’t expect a big surprise here, since these stats aren’t made to surprise people, but to mathematically confirm what we already know. James himself once said that sabermetric statistics “are not intended to tell you anything at all about the player that you do not already know.”
We’ll start off with the NSFC champions: the Berlin Fire Salamanders; who won 12 games, yet were projected to win 9.6. It is tough to call #1 NSFC seed and the #2 overall seed lucky, and for good reason. They have a great roster, have made great progress from the last few seasons, and deserve to be atop the standings. Yet maybe 12 wins might be a little bit too much. They have 11 games where they either lost or won by 1 possession, winning 8 out of 11. Some include a W1 win against Philly on a 15 point 4th quarter comeback; a W3 win against NYS with another 4th quarter comeback, now by 13 points; a W6 win against the Yeti with, you guessed it, another 4th quarter comeback, now by 10 points, and a W15 win against Chicago with an 8 point 4th quarter comeback. I believe a team that wins by so few points with so many comebacks once or twice a season can be really called lucky. A team that has that many wins? Not really. They also suffered their own comebacks against Chicago and the Yeti, as well as losing by a single point against the Wraiths. After the Wraiths unexpected win against Sarasota in the Wild Card game, who knows how the NSFC would look like with Berlin and Yellowknife in the wildcard and a bye for the Wraiths?
The second luckiest team this year, again, according to Pythagorean wins, were the Honolulu Hahalua, who 9 games, despite being expected to win just below 7 games. This one is tougher to defend. Whilst Berlin had an average margin of victory just below 10, with a 9.6 point difference/win, Honolulu had an average of 4.4. They won just 2 games by more than 4 points and were the only team to go above 0.500 having allowed more points than they scored. Yet again, this doesn’t take credit away from their work. They stopped their opponent from scoring at all in the 4th quarter on 4 of those 7 close games and only conceded a Field Goal in 2 other, which makes a lot of sense. Their defense line includes some of the best in the league and allowed the 3 least yards and points in the entire ISFL. But again, you need to outscore your opponent to win, and that was tough for Honolulu. If they had conceded a couple more touchdowns or field goals, they could have easily gone below 0.500.
I will start off with the second unluckiest team in the year, since the unluckiest one is a special case and something I think all reading expect, the New Orleans Second Line, who reached the Ultimus last season through a string of results that were, ironically, opponents claimed they won through “sim luck”. This season, they had the least games won compared to their Pythagorean expectation, with only 5, despite an expected 6.6, but again, I’m opening an exception here for first place. They conceded a lot of comebacks and close losses, such as a 1 point W1 loss by a last minute field goal against San Jose; a 3 point loss the next week against Honolulu; followed by 14 loss to Austin where they failed to score a single point in the 2nd half and conceded 24; another comeback loss to the Silverbacks, who scored 10 in the 4th quarter; and a W10 loss to the Silverbacks with another double digit comeback by New York. Despite what the math might show, this really did not affect much on their season. Most expected NOLA to have a negative season filled with player regression, and that happened, as they claimed the 2nd worst record in the league and the 2OVA pick in the S29 ISFL draft as a consolation prize.
I’m not going to make a big speech here because we already know who’s here, it’s the Chicago Butchers, the team some have gone so far as ironically point out they were fixing matches against themselves (again, an obvious joke). Things were looking good for the Butchers early on, as they had won a close game against the reigning Ultimus champions in W1 with a 4th quarter 10 comeback at home, blown Baltimore out by almost 20 points in W2, and had seemed to clinch a win against Philadelphia with a FG by kicker Sam Sidekick, which got Chicago a 2 point lead with 5 seconds remaining, meaning the Liberty would have to return a kickoff for a touchdown to win it! They did. In W5, they lost to the Wraiths after conceding a Field Goal with 45 seconds remaining. In W9, they lost to San Jose after conceding a 63 field goal with 19 seconds on the clock. On W11, they faced Sarasota and were winning with 19 seconds on the clock, until the Sailfish scored a 51 yard field goal, which made the scores tied with both teams at 34 points. Sarasota made the kickoff, which resulted in a touchback. This meant they had the ball at their own 25 yard line. They proceeded to pass three times, and have some completions, yet not enough to get a first down. Which meant they obviously punted went for it with a run play, failed to gain yardage, and conceded a last second field goal, which lost them the game. I don’t care what the stats say, what were Chicago’s expectations for the season, and what could have been. This deserves a thousand-word article of its own. Stats are supposed to just mathematically state what we already know yet have not already expressed in concrete concepts. This needs no concrete concept. I cannot say for sure that they were the unluckiest team in ISFL history, but I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, they were the unluckiest in Season 28. For those curious, they won 6 games, despite 7.5 Pythagorean wins expected. Not that it matters anyway.
(1436 words)
If there is one expression common to the ISFL that everyone that will eventually run into, no matter how active you are or committed to understanding and closely following the games is the good old “sim gonna sim”. It means that sometimes, no matter how much effort GMs put into building their rosters and how many hours they spend simming for one single game, it may all end up going down the drain because the game engine decided that it was best that your team ran the ball on 3rd and 5. And to some extent, I don’t really like the idiom. Financial Analyst Michael Mauboussin wrote a book in 2012 called The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing. In it, he managed to calculate how much luck goes into deciding standings of all 4 major American sports and soccer. And Football ended up being the 2nd most lucky sport, behind somewhat surprisingly hockey. The complexity of the game and the matches (16 regular season games and 1 game per playoff series, which is nothing in comparison to other sports, that can play as many as 10 times more matches per season) make upsets a common theme in our league. So the same way one can say “sim gonna sim”, one can also say “football gonna ball”. I understand that I am overanalyzing a simple expression that is mostly used for comedic effect, but alas.
My distaste for this expression does not make it less accurate, however. As in real sports, some teams are luckier than others. And I’m here to show which teams were mathematically the luckiest and the unluckiest.
For this, I’m going to use the method of Pythagorean wins. It was first developed by the father of sabermetrics, Bill James, yet has since been adapted to other sports, including football. Since all games are won by teams that score more points than their opponent, the formula estimates how many games a game should have won based on their points for and points against, using the formula PW = (PF^(2.37))/((PF^(2.37))+(PA^2.37)*16). It is also important to say that one shouldn’t expect a big surprise here, since these stats aren’t made to surprise people, but to mathematically confirm what we already know. James himself once said that sabermetric statistics “are not intended to tell you anything at all about the player that you do not already know.”
So now, onto the teams themselves. Firstly, I will talk about the luckiest teams, the ones where their real wins exceeded their theoretical wins the most.
We’ll start off with the NSFC champions: the Berlin Fire Salamanders; who won 12 games, yet were projected to win 9.6. It is tough to call #1 NSFC seed and the #2 overall seed lucky, and for good reason. They have a great roster, have made great progress from the last few seasons, and deserve to be atop the standings. Yet maybe 12 wins might be a little bit too much. They have 11 games where they either lost or won by 1 possession, winning 8 out of 11. Some include a W1 win against Philly on a 15 point 4th quarter comeback; a W3 win against NYS with another 4th quarter comeback, now by 13 points; a W6 win against the Yeti with, you guessed it, another 4th quarter comeback, now by 10 points, and a W15 win against Chicago with an 8 point 4th quarter comeback. I believe a team that wins by so few points with so many comebacks once or twice a season can be really called lucky. A team that has that many wins? Not really. They also suffered their own comebacks against Chicago and the Yeti, as well as losing by a single point against the Wraiths. After the Wraiths unexpected win against Sarasota in the Wild Card game, who knows how the NSFC would look like with Berlin and Yellowknife in the wildcard and a bye for the Wraiths?
The second luckiest team this year, again, according to Pythagorean wins, were the Honolulu Hahalua, who 9 games, despite being expected to win just below 7 games. This one is tougher to defend. Whilst Berlin had an average margin of victory just below 10, with a 9.6 point difference/win, Honolulu had an average of 4.4. They won just 2 games by more than 4 points and were the only team to go above 0.500 having allowed more points than they scored. Yet again, this doesn’t take credit away from their work. They stopped their opponent from scoring at all in the 4th quarter on 4 of those 7 close games and only conceded a Field Goal in 2 other, which makes a lot of sense. Their defense line includes some of the best in the league and allowed the 3 least yards and points in the entire ISFL. But again, you need to outscore your opponent to win, and that was tough for Honolulu. If they had conceded a couple more touchdowns or field goals, they could have easily gone below 0.500.
Now for the real proponents of “sim gonna sim”: the unluckiest teams.
I will start off with the second unluckiest team in the year, since the unluckiest one is a special case and something I think all reading expect, the New Orleans Second Line, who reached the Ultimus last season through a string of results that were, ironically, opponents claimed they won through “sim luck”. This season, they had the least games won compared to their Pythagorean expectation, with only 5, despite an expected 6.6, but again, I’m opening an exception here for first place. They conceded a lot of comebacks and close losses, such as a 1 point W1 loss by a last minute field goal against San Jose; a 3 point loss the next week against Honolulu; followed by 14 loss to Austin where they failed to score a single point in the 2nd half and conceded 24; another comeback loss to the Silverbacks, who scored 10 in the 4th quarter; and a W10 loss to the Silverbacks with another double digit comeback by New York. Despite what the math might show, this really did not affect much on their season. Most expected NOLA to have a negative season filled with player regression, and that happened, as they claimed the 2nd worst record in the league and the 2OVA pick in the S29 ISFL draft as a consolation prize.
I’m not going to make a big speech here because we already know who’s here, it’s the Chicago Butchers, the team some have gone so far as ironically point out they were fixing matches against themselves (again, an obvious joke). Things were looking good for the Butchers early on, as they had won a close game against the reigning Ultimus champions in W1 with a 4th quarter 10 comeback at home, blown Baltimore out by almost 20 points in W2, and had seemed to clinch a win against Philadelphia with a FG by kicker Sam Sidekick, which got Chicago a 2 point lead with 5 seconds remaining, meaning the Liberty would have to return a kickoff for a touchdown to win it! They did. In W5, they lost to the Wraiths after conceding a Field Goal with 45 seconds remaining. In W9, they lost to San Jose after conceding a 63 field goal with 19 seconds on the clock. On W11, they faced Sarasota and were winning with 19 seconds on the clock, until the Sailfish scored a 51 yard field goal, which made the scores tied with both teams at 34 points. Sarasota made the kickoff, which resulted in a touchback. This meant they had the ball at their own 25 yard line. They proceeded to pass three times, and have some completions, yet not enough to get a first down. Which meant they obviously punted went for it with a run play, failed to gain yardage, and conceded a last second field goal, which lost them the game. I don’t care what the stats say, what were Chicago’s expectations for the season, and what could have been. This deserves a thousand-word article of its own. Stats are supposed to just mathematically state what we already know yet have not already expressed in concrete concepts. This needs no concrete concept. I cannot say for sure that they were the unluckiest team in ISFL history, but I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, they were the unluckiest in Season 28. For those curious, they won 6 games, despite 7.5 Pythagorean wins expected. Not that it matters anyway.
(1436 words)