Schafer Now Second-Reddest Coach

What am I talking about?

TBRW? has a feature that tracks the "warmth" of the season: [www.spiritone.com]

There are now two spinoff tables.
One summarizes results by season: [www.spiritone.com]
The other sums results by coach: [www.spiritone.com]

With tonight's result, Mike Schafer has now racked up 16 "red" days in his coaching career, which moves him past Dick Bertrand into second place on the alltime list (he has a ways to catch Ned Harkness at 46). Note that he did this with about 33% fewer chances than Dick -- a chance is each game from the 10th game of the year onwards -- the first nine games are eliminated because... say it with me now, class ... you can't be 10 games over .500 with fewer than 10 GP. That was very good.

The idea, besides generating a fun, geeky, and pretty table... well, ok, that is the idea... but a far-secondary idea is to try to catch the mood of the Faithful at any given time (and over any given period) both now and in the past. The Warmer the color, the Happier we were.

We're currently Really Happy.

Once again: thank you, Mike.

Since we are now 15-2-1 with four games remaining, one more point will guarantee that we stay Red for the remainder of the season. Since we've been Red six days so far, we should end up with double digit red days for only the third time ever. The significance of the other two seasons this has happened is left as an excercise for the reader...

Greg, I'm not getting it. Quote: "For each season (column), after each number of conference games played (row), Cornell's number of points over or under .500 in conference games (cell contents). E.g., after 18 games in the 2001 season, Cornell was +5 points (10-5-3)."

Two questions: Why are the cell contents in the table actually 23? And in your
calculations above, I assume that a win is +2, a loss is -2, a tie is zero?

I don't see the loss to Yale reflected in the 1966-7 season. What am I missing? I think Ned loses two red squares.

The cell contents are 23 for the total number of points. Points are computed normally: 2 for a win and 1 for a tie. Therefore 10-5-3 = 23 points. 23 points in 18 games = 5 points over .500 (and 10 wins minus 5 losses = 5 games over .500).

The expression "number of points over or under .500 in conference games (cell contents)" was certainly misleading and I have made the wording more clear:

For each column (season) and row (game number within season), a cell has two values: the number of total points at that point in the season, and a color corresponding to the number of points above .500 (refer to the Key above).

Example: row 18, column 03 refers to the state of Cornell's record after the 18th game of 2003. At that point , Cornell had 31 points (they had a 15-2-1 record), therefore the cell numeric content is 31. To determine the color of the cell, note that 31 points minus 18 games = 13 games over .500. (This checks against reality: 15 wins minus 2 losses = 13 games over .500.) Refer to the Key and confirm that for 10 or more over .500, the cell gets a red color. Therefore the cell is red.

The idea, besides generating a fun, geeky, and pretty table... well, ok, that is the idea... but a far-secondary idea is to try to catch the mood of the Faithful at any given time (and over any given period) both now and in the past. The Warmer the color, the Happier we were at that specific point in the season.

Note that, for example, a theoretical 11-11 season in which the team lost the first 11 games and won the last 11 would have 21 green cells followed by one final yellow cell. Conversely, a season in which the team won the first 11 games and then lost the final 11 would show an increase from yellow through orange to three midseason red cells at games 10, 11, and 12, followed by a decline back through orange and ending in a long string of yellows. While the final records of these seasons are identical, this table captures the difference in fan mood -- dejection through almost the entire season, as opposed to early optimism slowly degenerating into ambivalence.

I have also renamed the page "The Color of Winning," since the former name keyed one to look for the points over .500 as the numeric value of the cell, whereas in reality the numeric value is the total points, and the COLOR is the amount over .500.

Al, you were absolutely correct, and I have updated all three pages to reflect the Yale loss in '67. Thank you for the sharp eyes!

For those of us who don't recall all the hire/end dates of the coaches, maybe a vertical line between years separating the coaches would be nice to help indicate their reigns. I don't recall exactly when Reycroft left, for example.

Tom

Well, I'm trying to avoid tying the generalized table to any particular analysis -- cleaner is better. Otherwise, for instance, I would simply delete the top 9 games from the table altogether. But I like the totality of the image as it is.

I could, however, include a subtable on the coaches page, with rows 1= and dividers (which are between 63/64, 70/71, 82/83, 87/88, and 95/96, by the way).

Wow... some serious Clarkson/Vermont colors for Mike's predecessor's last three years...

Yep, 39 straight. It aint easy be green.