2018, The Year Of The Underdog

I thought that the claim that Philadelphia's chances of winning the Super Bowl riding on the fact that they wear green jerseys was the weakest argument I saw in the discussions. And I'm going to stick with it. There was a 7 tie in which became an important #, especially as a teammate with another 7 in 77. Other than that, for the most part, people regard green as a color and not numerology. (Except Dan).


Somebody went out on a limb and suggested that not only did Philly win the big game Sunday, but mark their words, the NBA champ this year will be the underdog, presumably once the finalists are determined. This is the Year of the Dog on the Chinese calendar, dog=underdog. I'll let you ponder what's wrong with that while I go off on a tangent. Don't strain yourself, it's pretty obvious and not a trick question. Here's a hint:


http://www.northernthreads.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Chinese-New-Year-Calendar-of-Animals.jpg


I could ramble on about exactly what counts as a "sport" and argue about made up things like there actually being Quidditch leagues, chess boxing, individual (i.e. not team) sports like cycling. Mental competitions like chess without the boxing and cards are considered sports by the aficionados. I'm pretty sure when we hear "all sports are rigged" we mean competitive team sports with some kind of formalized scoring system, organized in to some kind of league with tournaments and champions.


Let's also assume that it's just the professional leagues. Although the NCAA tournaments are rigged they are just in training so they can learn to follow the script. Let's also assume that even if there are paid golf events (e.g. a 'scramble' format) played by professionals that it's just the big four sports in the U.S. Sorry Wollongong, you're out of the picture on this one.


The big sports leagues have the following number of games in the regular season:
NFL 256
NBA 1230
NHL 1230
MLB 2430


Other than pick'em point spreads that's 5,146 games the underdog should win in the year of the dog. OK , that's bonkers. It's just the playoffs, and not even the playoffs, but the finals. I don't need to review every year of the dog to know that the underdog did not win the championship in all four sports every year. But now, if you paid attention to the link, we get this. The year of the dog cycles through once every twelve years.


Maybe it would be fun to organize cage matches and see if a dog beats a monkey or a rabbit beats a snake. I'd pay good money to see anything fight a dragon. But clearly from the calendar any year that is not the year of the dog should be the year of the favorite. 11 out of 12 years each of the four championships will be the favorites.


Sports, even rigged as they supposedly are, don't work that way. Statistically it's closer to a coin flip on a game by game basis, these are after all the best teams a grueling regular season schedule has to offer. Mathematically you don't even need to distinguish favorite or underdog being the winner. Each team of the four is supposed to be because of this "gematria". Flip a coin four times and the chance it comes out to all heads or all tails is 50% x 50% x 50% x 50% = 6.25%. I did say CLOSER to a coin flip. Thanks to some teams being dominant like the Golden State Warriors their chance is much better. Which really screws up the chances for underdogs in year of the dog years. But lets say all four sports are really dominated every year. Each year, 90% x 90% x 90% x 90%=65.61%. It's still only 2 in 3 chance FOR ONE YEAR. You do the math for that to repeat 11 years in a row. It's a tiny number and it doesn't happen in real life.


And bullshit like this Chinese calendar nonsense and uniform colors is presented on a game by game basis like our 5,146 regular season schedule, which is exactly why the discussions never can come to an agreement on victory based on gematria. It's the same thing to declare 62 means something (which is never known exactly WHAT it means) as to say that the Eagles wear green.