Since Sunday, I have been working on a whole marathon post about the media coverage of last Saturday’s events and every time I thought I was almost done, something worse would come out. At some point I decided that that wasn’t the post I wanted to make; that’s not what I want to say. Anyone with any sense already knows how much it sucks that THIS is what finally catapulted women’s football onto the national scene (albeit briefly), and anyone with the most basic ability to read knows that the comments on those articles are nothing less than an embarrassment to humanity.

So here is what I do want to say. I hope that you can hear it.

I don’t believe that violence defines you, and I believe that you can prove that it doesn’t.

I believe that the men who leave degrading, angry, repulsive comments on stories about you do so because they are fundamentally afraid of what it would mean if you really are as strong and powerful as you look.

I also believe that they are pathetic, cowardly assholes.

I don’t want any of you to get hurt, for any reason, ever. On the field or off.

I want to reclaim this sport from this low point. I have so much passion for it and the amazing women involved – in teams all across the country – and this isn’t what I want to have to focus on.

I need this sport to grow in strength and numbers, because I recently found out that I’ll be having another little boy later this year and since I don’t want either of my sons to ever actually play football, I want them to believe that it’s just a sport for women. So if you all could get on that, that would be awesome.

With true admiration and respect from the top row of the stands,

xo
militia cheerleader

Read More/Comments

You can check out the fully updated bracket here, but here’s the punchline:

Once I have game time & broadcast details I’ll post those too, of course. Off to check out flights to Chi-town (which I still don’t know how to pronounce).

Read More/Comments

Overheard in the stands

Person 1: MORE cops? What’s happening now?

Person 2: I dunno, but I hope it ends up involving handcuffs. [Pause] Huh. This isn’t usually the setting where I say that kind of thing.

Read More/Comments

OK, so the WFA Round 3 playoff game schedule is below along with all I know about where to find streams & updates. If you’ve got any more info, lemme know and I’ll add it ASAP. The coverage of American Division (west coast) games is surprisingly sparse!

[table id=2 /]

Read More/Comments

Below is the schedule for the WFA Round 2 playoff games (in EST first ’cause that’s where I am and it’s my blog) as well as any links I have been able to find to audio, video or social media feeds for each game. Should you have any additional information or corrections, please let me know in the comments or via the contact page and I’ll update the info right away. Thanks!

[table id=1 /]

And lest anyone think I’m just the TV Guide of women’s football, let’s cover two more items here:

1. There’s an ongoing debate about the line between “playing hard” and “running up the score.” Something that needs to be remembered, though, is that in the WFA (right now, at least) point differentials factor into the determination of who wins divisions, who makes the playoffs and where the games are held. The differential is generally capped at 40 points, which means it is always to a team’s advantage to try to make that max differential. Thus – and NY Sharks radio announcers, I’m talkin’ to you – if a team is up 30-something points in the fourth quarter, it’s actually not a dick move to try to get one or two more touchdowns, or go all-out to try to prevent their opponents from scoring. It’s a legit and necessary strategy if you’re thinking about the big picture. In fact, should the Militia make it to Round 4 of the playoffs this year, it’s almost definite that the game would be away (I can’t imagine it would be anywhere but Chicago) because of a difference of two touchdowns in the entire season.

   Now, if you’re up 60-something points and you’re going for two, ok, that’s pretty dickish. And there’s absolutely no effing excuse for a triple-digit score. This isn’t basketball, people. Put a friggin’ lid on it. You’re not helping the cause.

2. Backseat Coach believes I am stunting Tiny Coach’s emotional growth by not allowing him to learn how to boo.

That’s all for now – I’ll have an updated bracket posted after the games are completed. (Dear SD Surge & Pac Warriors: feel free not to go into overtime. I miss sleeping on Saturday nights. xo, militia cheerleader)

Read More/Comments

Your Militia Cheerleader is, by trade, a data analyst. As such, this is one of my favorite quotes ever (it’s attributed to Mark Twain): “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

I know very well that numbers can be manipulated, and the accuracy of any argument based on numbers is only as strong as the integrity of the person putting the argument together. That said, I think stats are wicked hot.

I was quite sad when the Massey Ratings site stopped analyzing women’s tackle football; I don’t know why that change was made but I felt like it was a real loss for the sport. So I was really psyched when I found out that someone had taken it upon themselves to calculate current ratings for the WFA using Massey’s formula – I’ve posted them here with express permission.

The Massey system is explained for laymen here and explained for data geeks here. Basically, it takes game results and uses them to predict the probable winner and margin of victory for the theoretical match-up of any two teams. For example, the ratings before Round 1 of the playoffs (I haven’t posted those but can if people are interested) had the Pittsburgh Passion’s rating at 46.843 and the Detroit Dark Angels at 19.649. Home field advantage was calculated at 3.319, so you take the difference of the ratings and add in PGH’s home field advantage and the data says that the Passion should win by 31 points. They did, in fact, win by 34 points (which is pretty damn close to predicted, all things considered).

The ratings correctly predicted the winner of all eight Round 1 games. Additionally, with a few exceptions the ratings also correctly predicted the comparative order of point differentials – that is to say, both the Passion and the Sharks should have won their games, but the Passion should have won by more than the Sharks did (34 points and less than 1 point, respectively – remember, these are theoretical computations, not dictations of actual scores). And guess what – they did! (31 points and 5 points, respectively).

So what, you say? Plenty what, I say! First, stuff like this is prime fuel for time-wasting arguments about the accuracy and validity of predictive models. Second, it’s pretty-looking. Third, it allows for tidbits like this: I calculated the total predicted point differential of all the games in Round 1 and then did the same for the upcoming Round 2 games. The total predicted difference is almost 20% higher in the Round 2 games than the first round – which really just supports what we all already know: lots of Round 2 and Round 3 games are far less competitive than regular season and Round 1 games. War Angels at Jynx? Interesting game. Crash at Force? Major snoozefest.

So just in case there are some of you who don’t enjoy playing with Excel as much as I do, I have gone ahead and posted the numerically-predicted outcomes of the Round 2 games scheduled for this upcoming Saturday. What do you think? Do you see any upsets coming? Any qualitative factors that might outweigh the quantitative ones? As ever, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Predicted outcome of Round 2 games using Massey Ratings

• Chicago Force over Indy Crash by 65 points
• Dallas Diamonds over Lone Star Mustangs by 57 points
• Boston Militia over NY Sharks by 43 points
• San Diego Surge over Pacific Warriors by 42 points
• KC Tribe over St. Louis Slam by 19 points
• DC Divas over Pittsburgh Passion by 11 points
• Jacksonville Dixie Blues over Atlanta Phoenix by 8 points
• Bay Area Bandits over Central Cal War Angels by 3 points

Read More/Comments