An open letter to Tuesday Morning Quarterback

The BBQ Pit
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I’m a big fan of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column by Gregg Easterbrook, now on ESPN’s Page 2. It’s fun to read and it’s full of interesting commentary on football, politics, and television. TMQ also goes on inspiring tirades against things like Direct TV’s monopoly on expansive NFL television coverage in the USA, the media’s habit of reporting long-term contracts with exorbitant dollar-figures that will never be paid, flaws in Star Trek plots, and the unfair advantage that Detroit and Dallas get from always playing at home on Thanksgiving.

This last tirade was the title of an article last year, Pass the turkeys out of Dallas, Detroit, and TMQ mentioned it again last week, arguing “As TMQ has written before and will surely write again, the league’s system of allowing Dallas and Detroit to host on Thanksgiving every year is one-sided. Hosting every Turkey Day both confers an annual half-game advantage on the Cowboys and the Lions in the standings, and totally screws whatever team is sent on the road with just three days’ rest.” In the article from last year, he supported this position with these stats: “Consider that since 1936, Detroit has won 46 percent overall, but 53 percent of games played at home on Thanksgiving. Since 1966, Dallas has won 60 percent overall, but 65 percent of games played at home on Thanksgiving. This works out to roughly a half-game annual bonus for the Cowboys and Lions, a windfall at the expense of all the league’s other teams.”

It seems plausible that the short rest and the holiday crowd in the opponent’s stadium would put the visiting team at a disadvantage. There’s just one problem with this view: the data don’t support it. For some reason, TMQ chose to compare Detroit & Dallas’s home Thanksgiving records with their overall records, instead of comparing them with their home records. After all, the Thanksgiving game replaces another home game for Detroit and Dallas, not just any game.

Carrying out my duty to fight ignorance wherever it is found, last fall I took the time to look up the home records of Dallas and Detroit. I found that Detroit had a 252-189-12 home record. That comes out to a 57% winning percentage, which is better than their Thanksgiving winning percentage of 53%. I couldn’t find the stats for Dallas. I sent a letter to TMQ with this information. I also mentioned in the letter that, even if his stats were correct, that would only give Detroit an advantage of 7% of a game (53% - 46%), not half a game. TMQ did not print anything about it. My guess is that he did not see it, since he gets so many reader comments.

This year, TMQ repeated his claim so I spent some more time looking up the data. I found more complete numbers from a variety of sources, put it all together, and wrote him a letter saying:

Again, TMQ made no comment in his column. Since I wanted to spread the word somehow, I decided to post this open letter to TMQ. I will also continue to write him. I hope that I can get through to him.
If anyone is interested, here is how I did the statistics for my argument.

My sources for the numbers are:

From these assorted data, I had to calculate:

The Lions had a home record (1934-2002) of 256-200-12, a home record for 1939-1944 (when they didn’t play on Turkey Day) of 17-17-1, and a Thanksgiving record of 32-28-2. So their record for non-Thanksgiving home games in seasons with a Thanksgiving game is (256 - 17 - 32 = 207) wins, (200 - 17 - 28 = 155) losses, and (12 - 1 - 2 = 9) ties. Ignoring ties, that’s 207 wins in 207 + 155 = 362 games, or a .572 record.

The Cowboys had a home record (1974-2001) of 144-69-0, a home record (1966-1973, 2002) of 49-14-1, a home record for 1975 and 1977 (when they didn’t play on Turkey Day) of 11-3-0, and a Thanksgiving record of 22-12-1. So their record for non-Thanksgiving home games in seasons with a Thanksgiving game is (144 + 49 - 11 - 22 = 160) wins, (69 + 14 - 3 - 12 = 68 losses), and (0 + 1 - 0 - 1 = 0) ties. That’s 160 wins in 160 + 68 = 228 games, or a .702 record.

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Nerd!

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Not to mention the fact that the Lions have been playing on Thanksgiving since 1934(which you did kinda note). That’s almost a 70 year tradition. In this era of Expansion, free agency and realignment, do we really want to abandon one of the NFL’s oldest traditions?

and yes, I’m a little biased since I’m a season ticket holder and the Thanksgiving Day game is a big tradition for me personally.

4

Yes. We do want to abandon it. It’s not the Rose Bowl, after all. It’s just a game promoted as a “special” game simply by dint of appearing on a holiday. There’s no reason in the world for Dallas and Detroit to always get a game at all, let alone at home, on Thanksgiving.

I say: Keep the two games on Turkey Day, but vary the participants. Maybe one year have Jets-Colts and Broncos-Raiders. You know, actual rivalries. Maybe have both games featuring the championship game participants of the previous year. That sort of thing.

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Well, you might not think it’s a good reason, but there is the fact that we came up with the whole idea.

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Yeah… Detroit invented it and Dallas was the only team willing to do it when the NFL went looking around for another Thanksgiving Day game.

Add a night game with random teams. Detroit and Dallas should be left alone.

There’s nothing like ignoring my family while my ‘Boys are playin’ on Turkey Day!

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Since when are the Jets and Colts rivals? Even when they were in the same division, it wasn’t a rivalry. Next you’ll be saying that Giants-Cardinals is a rivalry.

But I like the rivalry concept…I’d love to see the Thanksgiving day games be big rivalry games out of division:

Giants-49ers
Bucs-Eagles
Cowboys-Steelers

Or even better, have whichever local rivalries happen to exist that year be the turkey day games:

Giants-Jets
Rams-Chiefs
Raiders-49ers
Bucs-Dolphins
Redskins-Ravens
Steelers-Eagles
Cowboys-Texans

I think that’s all of them. Without spending the time to do the calculations based on the NFL schedule formula, I’d venture to guess that there will never be a season without at least one of those local rivalries.

But when all is said and done, I’m just as happy to let the hapless Lions (looking good this year so far) and Cowboys have their moment in the sun each year.

8

They’ve been rivals since the days of Weeb Ewbank, I thought. Oh well. I’ve always thought of them as rivals.

9

This is amazing. I, myself, saw the same flaw in TMQ’s logic last year, did the same research, and sent TMQ almost the exact same letter.

-lv

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Oh, suuuure you did, LordVor.

Based on your user name, I know for a fact that you couldn’t have had time to send a letter because you were too busy mismanaging the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons.

You evil man, you.

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Um…of course I just realized that the spelling of your name indicates that I may be thinking of someone else entirely.

[sub]I’ll just slink away now[/sub]

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I did, really. And I didn’t mention it here to sound smart, just to add emphasis that TMQ really doesn’t care about the validity of his statistical models. Like how he keeps insisting that you should never blitz on 3rd and 8, because the average NFL pass play nets 6.7 yards, like one has anything to do with the other.

I think at one point in time I wrote him a note asking him to track down Phil Neyer and get a lesson in using sports statistics.

And I explained my user name in the “what does your user name mean” thread that’s floating around somewhere, it’s non-Potter in origin.

-lv

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Drat. I thought as much. What this board needs is a “Let users remove jokes that fall flat” button.

Of course if we had a button like that, my post count would only be around 12 or so.

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It may seem like nickpicking to complain about some trivial error like this in a sport column, but:

  • TMQ is supposed to be an intelligent sports column
  • TMQ complains about things like this all the time - plot flaws, dishonest or misleading presentation, etc.
  • TMQ is a visiting fellow at the highly respected Brookings Institution think tank

So his column should be held to a higher standard. He made the wrong comparison & he got a misleading answer, which he’s spreading as a fact. Some of his other claims are also questionable, like the one that LordVor pointed out. So someone should call him on it.

BTW, I found Bottle of Smoke’s joke funny, even if it didn’t quite fit LordVor’s name.

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Oh, I found the joke funny as well. The first time I heard it. :slight_smile:

-lv

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Hmmm, on second thought, you may be right. I say this because giants.com, which is where I usually spend “maintenance hour”, proudly declares this week as “rekindling” one of the “oldest” Giants rivalries.

Now, if ever there was a division opponent who should not be considered a rival, it’s the Cowboys. Aren’t rivals supposed to have good matchups? Close games? Meaningful games?

I can’t think of a single meaningful (to both parties) game in the history of the Giants and Cowboys. I can’t even think of a close game between the two, offhand. I can’t even think of a single season when both teams were good.

But hey, that’s just me. I guess all division matchups are considered to be rivalries, despite how much that devalues the term. (Now Giants-Eagles…that’s a rivalry for the ages.)

And also, I know almost nothing about Jets history. Or Colts history, for that matter. (Except that they snuck out of Baltimore in the middle of the night, and they traded away Marshal Faulk.)

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No. It gives sportscasters a change to trot out such gems as:
“Throw away the record books on this one!”
“No love lost between these two…”
“An historic matchup…”
And, even in a sleeper, someone wil Step Up and Take Their Play to a Whole New Level.

BTW, Arkie here. We play our traditional rival Texas tomorrow. There. Last week we won a stunning upset at home against historic rival University of Tulsa.:rolleyes:

18

A good rivalry will be on in which the participants have an intense dislike for each other. In the NFC East, most of the teams really despise all of the others. Philadelphia has intense rivalries with New York and Dallas (not so much with Washington).

Of course, part of this comes from the fact that for a while now, teams in the same division played each other twice a year. It’s tough to be eternally pissed at someone in another division.

19

I generally like this column, but I have found it to seem sort of stuck-up at times. Not as bad as Rick Reilly (who has graced us with columns about him selling his classic Corvette and taking his family on a safari), but kinda like George Will.

Personally, I wish they’d fire the Sports Guy from that stupid Jimmy Kimmel show, and hire him to do a mailbag column once a week. His mailbags, followed closely by his event diaries, are the best thing on Page 2.

20

I don’t have anything to add except I can’t stop laughing over Neurotic’s post.