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OT -- Weekend Football Observations -- Long
Posted By: Steve Mellen In Response To: OT -- Weekend Football Observations -- Long (Bill Riles)
Date: Tuesday, 26 October 2010, at 12:11 a.m.
You seem unduly focused on the notion that Missouri can sit on the lead if they are up by 9. Of course Oklahoma will rarely win if they miss the two-point conversion; by the same token, they will never win if they wait until the end of the game to attempt the two-point conversion and never miss, but you seem oddly untroubled by this flaw in your strategy.
To clarify matters, let me recapitulate my last post, with one simplifying change: we will assume that if Oklahoma attempts the two-point conversion and misses then they never ever ever win.
A = chance of making a 2-point conversion B = chance of making a 1-point conversion C = chance of Oklahoma getting the ball back and scoring another touchdown after this conversion
Following your strategy, there is only one way to win: take the PAT now, get the ball back and score, and make a 2-point conversion to force overtime. This parlay can be expressed as B * C * A.
Following the moronic Bob Stoops strategy, if we assume it is impossible to win after missing the two-point conversion, there is also only one way to win: make the 2-point conversion now, get the ball back and score, and make a 1-point conversion to force overtime. This parlay can be expressed as A * C * B.
Even this liberal arts major knows that B * C * A = A * C * B. In other words, even if we assume Oklahoma never ever wins after attempting the conversion and missing, the smart strategy and the moronic strategy still come out exactly the same.
To demonstrate that there is a difference between the two scenarios, you would have to show that the teams will play differently depending on whether Missouri leads by 7 or 8. That is a difficult sell. Sure, Missouri would play differently if they led by 9 (not much differently, actually; the scenarios where Oklahoma scores twice in three minutes virtually all involve Oklahoma never giving up the ball); but that is irrelevant, because we have already assumed that scenario away by pretending that Oklahoma never ever wins it.
As for the idea that my analysis disregards the clock, that is a bizarre claim since it is the fact that very little time remains which permits us to break the situation down into a very small number of permutations. If Oklahoma were instead down by 15 in the second quarter, I assume the correct play after scoring would be to kick the PAT, but I certainly wouldn't be claiming I could establish that fact with a trivial mathematical calculation.
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