This just isn't fair:

Zack

The Physics of Baseball

Alan Nathan, a physics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign maintains a website devoted to the physics of baseball. In honor of the opening days of the 2009 Major League baseball season, Scientific American recently conducted an interview with him on this subject. An edited transcript of the interview is available on their website. Among the topics discussed are the trajectory of a batted ball:

Typically, if you want to hit a long fly ball, you want to put backspin on that ball. The so-called Magnus force on the spinning baseball will be upward for a ball with backspin, and basically it opposes gravity. It keeps the ball in the air longer so it travels farther. So this leads to batting strategies—you actually undercut the ball. You don't want to hit the ball head-on, which would give you sort of a line drive. You want to undercut it a bit, which gives it more of a vertical takeoff angle and also gives the ball backspin. And the backspin is essential if you want to hit a long fly ball.

On the other hand, if you do the opposite—if you hit on the topside of the ball—generally the ball goes down, so it's going to be a grounder, and it's going to have topspin on it. But topspin itself can lead to interesting things happening. Sometimes a batter can hit a sinking line drive; again, it's another hitting strategy. In this case the ball is hit as more of a line drive, but it's slightly topped, so the ball has topspin on it. Topspin makes the ball fall more rapidly, and that's what you might want to do for a line drive so it falls in front of the outfielder. So there are all sorts of hitting strategies that batters can employ, and I suspect that although they don't think of it maybe quite in these terms, they really do understand what it's all about.

And corked bats:

The idea of corking a bat is that you drill a hole through the barrel end of the bat—maybe a foot deep, maybe about an inch in diameter—and you backfill it with cork. The cork itself doesn't do anything other than hide the fact that you've done this illegal act. The idea is the following: with less weight of the bat at the head of the bat, in the barrel, you're able to swing the bat faster. But it's a trade-off. Because the business end of the bat has less weight, you can swing it faster, but it's less efficient at transferring energy to the ball. And so there's something of a controversy as to whether the net result is positive or negative from the point of view of the batter. My conclusion from the point of view of getting the highest batted ball speed, which is what you want if you want to hit the longest fly ball, is that it's a net loss for the batter. That is to say, what you gain in swing speed does not quite make up for what you lose in the efficiency in transferring energy.

So then you might ask, well, why do batters do this? There's actually a good reason for why they might do it. It's not to get the highest batted ball speed but to have the best bat control. So with less weight of the bat in the barrel, you're much more easily able to manipulate the bat, to get the bat into the strike zone quicker. Batters make the distinction between bat speed—how fast the bat is actually moving when it hits the ball—and bat quickness, which has more to do with the acceleration, the batter's ability to get the bat from where it is initially on his shoulder into the strike zone as quickly as possible. And that means the ability to be able to even change your swing in the middle of the swing, which happens once you get more information on where the ball is going to end up.

So whereas corking the bat very likely does not allow you to hit a longer home run, it might allow you to make good contact more often.

And why a knuckleball can be ridiculously difficult to hit:

The key to understanding the knuckleball is that if a ball were perfectly smooth, the air would flow over it in a fairly smooth fashion. But the stitching on the ball disrupts the flow of air, causing the ball to break. It's not at all the same effect as the effect due to the spinning baseball—it's different altogether. So the key to throwing a knuckleball is that if you throw a ball that's spinning, one way to think about it is that the spinning baseball is averaging over different seam orientations, so there's no net effect due to the air interacting with the seams. But if you throw the ball with almost no spin at all—maybe it rotates a half or even a quarter of a revolution on its way to home plate—then as the air moves over the ball, it's the interaction of the air with those seams that changes the character of the airflow, making it go from a nice, smooth flow to sort of a turbulent flow. That causes local pressure variations which make the ball break, and it breaks in a more or less unpredictable way.

It's really an interesting read and is worth a few minutes of your time. Now if he could only explain what it will take to put the Royals in contention...

NCAA Title Game (2nd half)

I'm not sure how much fun this will be, just counting down 20 minutes until Roy's Boys cut down another net. Like I said...UNC by 12...

15:00: (UNC 59-41)...MSU is trying to get something going, but Ty Lawson just broke a title game record with 8 steels.

...good to see Griffin get the Naismith
..."I Like Square Butts"...?
...Love the Guitar Hero Metallica commercial...(That means you've gotta put on some pants, pops)

12:15: (UNC 46-62) One gets the feeling the MSU is a big play or two away from making this a game.

12:00: (UNC 65-46) Nevermind...3 pointer by Danny Green (UNC)

...Google searching "Live blog title game"...
...this is how the pro's do it:

Update | 11:01 p.m. Perhaps the answer to that question is no. Danny Green drills a 3-pointer and North Carolina’s lead is back to 19.

Update | 10:56 p.m. With 12 minutes left, Michigan State has cut the lead to 16 points, 62-46. Can Izzo’s guys make it interesting?

Didn't I just say that?

11:00: (UNC 65-47) MSU is continuing to turn the ball over...

10:00: (UNC 68-50) Lawson's made free throws makes him the 3rd Tar Heel to score in double figures

8:45: (UNC 70-53) Izzo promised to shave his head at the end of the season if the Spartans won the Big 10 (which they did)

7:33: (UNC 72-53) Davis's field goal makes him the 4th UNC player in double figures

...Facebook status updates from KU folks:

...is wondering if anyone else out there wants NC to get blown out by 100 points tonight. Or at least for Roy to get hit in the head with a basketball really hard!
...Yes! But not looking like it is going to happen.
...Yes, yes, yes, yes! I thought that my mom and I were the ONLY people who would like to see Roy beaned with a basketball! It's so nice to know that we're not alone!!
...GO MSU! Down with Roy.
...anyone but UNC...

6:11: (UNC 74-59) All time record attendance at a championship game.

4:57: (UNC 76-63) Another athletic trainer moment as Lucious (MSU) goes down. He's got two of the Spartans' 6 3-pointers tonight.

4:46: (UNC 78-65) The lead's down to 13. Can they make a final run? (NC has scored only 23 points this half)

3:51: (UNC 80-65) Ty Lawson (UNC) 2-pointer and an offensive foul on Kalin Lucas (MSU). The 'Heels are keeping them at arms' length here.

...MSU has committed 20 turnovers to NC's 7

2:45: (UNC 82-65) Hansbrough has some time here while he shoots free throws to think about how happy he is to have come back for this season.

1:03: (UNC 87-70) Roy subs in the scrubs...count it down

...240 minutes of basketball played in the tournament by UNC...double-digit leads for 154 of those...trailed for only 10...

0:00: Final score UNC 89, MSU 72

Final four MVP is Wayne Ellington

Team Stat Comparison
	MICHIGAN STATE	NORTH CAROLINA
Points	70	87
FG Made-Attempted	21-52 (.404)	27-58 (.466)
3P Made-Attempted	7-23 (.304)	5-12 (.417)
FT Made-Attempted	21-29 (.724)	28-40 (.700)
Fouls (Tech/Flagrant)	28 (0/0)	22 (0/0)
Largest Lead	1	24

Game Leaders
	MICHIGAN STATE	NORTH CAROLINA
Points	G. Suton 17	T. Lawson 21
Rebounds	G. Suton 11	E. Davis 8
Assists	K. Lucas 7	T. Lawson 6
Steals	D. Green 1	T. Lawson 8
·

NCAA Title Game

Live blogging the NCAA title game...
(This will be updated throughout the night, or until I get bored of it or fall asleep.)

8:05: Trying to get Littlemagette to go to sleep. So far I'm not having much luck...
8:07: Interview with Roy Williams...
8:10: Listen in on Izzo's pep talk...
8:12: Littlemagette's out of bed again...
8:19: I don't think you can call a #2 seed with MSU's tradition a "giant killer"
8:22: Larry Bird and Magic Johnson...SWEET

FIRST HALF
17:00 first half: Littlemagette's out of bed again, and NC's starting the game on a run. By the way, I'm calling UNC by 12.

16:00: UNC's first double-digit lead (15-5)

14:00:UNC is the "epitome of spurtability"...didn't I just hear something about that on a Bud Light commercial? (UNC 22-7)

-Checking on Littlemagette...why won't this kid go to sleep? Daddy wants to watch the game...

-As a science guy, I understand that the sample size in this poll is too small to make the results valid...but it still makes me wonder how KU folk get off with calling themselves the best fans in the world.

11:15: UNC 29-11...no team has ever won the title by defeating 3 #1 seeds. MSU has already beaten two (Louisville and UConn).

10:15: UNC up by 20 (31-11)...MSU is 4 of 14 from the floor.

7:33: (UNC 38-18) 5 UNC players have scored as many or more points as MSU's top scorer...UNC outscoring MSU 20-4 in the paint

7:01: good athletic trainer moment as Raymar Morgan gets popped in the nose again

-I'm kind of digging the commercials for Terminator 4
-Littlemagette's asleep!

4:45: (UNC 46-22) MSU has turned it over 11 times...Ellington has 15 for UNC

1:45: (UNC 51-30)

Halftime: UNC 55-34...Most points scored in the first half by a team in championship game history...largest halftime lead in championship game history

TEAM STATS SUMMARY
	MICHIGAN STATE	NORTH CAROLINA
Points	34	55
Field Goals	12-27 (44.4%)	18-34 (52.9%)
Free Throws	6-9 (66.7%)	15-19 (78.9%)
3-pointers	4-10 (40.0%)	4-9 (44.4%)
Personal Fouls	13	9

March Madness

March madness is in the air, and for a K-Stater like me, it means something all together different: it's March and I'm mad. And I'm mad because my Wildcats are, once again, watching the action from the comfort of their couches. I wouldn't say I'm disappointed as much as I am frustrated with what's become the status quo.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the tournament as much as the next person, and look forward to it each year. I enjoy the big wins, the amazing individual performances (I'm talking to you, Cole Aldrich), the upsets and all of the hoopla surrounding it. I also enjoy the quirky little stories that come out every year, like this one that was posted last week on 60-Second Science:

The NCAA men's basketball "March Madness" tournament may have just tipped off, but one academic is already thinking about the later rounds. Once the "Elite Eight" teams emerge, says Sheldon Jacobson, a professor of computer science and the director of the simulation and optimization laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, throw out a team's initial seeding—it's no better than flipping a coin to figure out their chances of winning.

So, statistically, once a team reaches the quarterfinals, each one has basically the same chance of winning it all. The basic idea here is that seeding matters when you're comparing 15 or 16 seeds to 1 or 2 seeds, but for the top three seeds in each region, there's not really a statistical difference in terms of who has the best chance to win it all. Other researchers, though, have devised models based on probability that attempt to make predictions with a remarkable amount of success:

The tournament's notorious unpredictability didn't stop Joel Sokol, a Georgia Tech operations research professor whose statistical model correctly selected last year's Final Four, championship game and overall tournament winner (the University of Kansas Jayhawks), from developing his own computer program. His picks? The University of North Carolina Tar Heels, University of Pittsburgh Panthers, University of Louisville Cardinals, and University of Memphis Tigers will make the Final Four [...](Michigan State and Oklahoma are ranked too high and due for an upset, statistically speaking, he added.)

So the good news (according to Jacobson) for all you Hawk fans is that KU, with one more win, has (statistically) as good a shot as anybody else to win it all (again) this year, and that Michigan State is (according to Sokol) evidently ripe for an upset. The bad news is Sokol's predicted national champion...the Tar Heels of North Carolina.

Way to go Joe!

Look who wrote the cover story for next week's edition of Sports Illustrated:

He'll tell you all about it on his blog. (Of course, you won't be able to get to it from a school computer...)

You Deserve This...

A HUGE congratulations to the EHS girls' basketball team and their coaching staff for winning last week's class 4A sub-state tournament on their home court. Following an opening round win against Spring Hill, the Lady Cards upset K.C. Piper and St. James Academy to win a berth in next week's state tournament in Salina.

College Football Playoffs?

Some thoughts on college football as I watch the BCS National Championship game...

It seems that at this time of year there's always a lot of talk about the need for a playoff system in college football. I know that I'm in the minority here, but I don't think it's a good idea. Or, to be more accurate, I don't think it's something that can happen, so we might as well stop wasting our time talking about it every year. Here's why:

Bowl games are important for building programs. The purpose of a playoff system would be to choose a champion from the top four or eight teams. But what would a playoff system do for the other programs? What happens to the team that has a breakout year and manages to win 7 or 8 games for the first time in decades? The current bowl system provides incentives and rewards, while a playoff system would simply place that team in a large group with the "also rans". A bowl game for this team provides national exposure and a chance to build fan and alumni support. It's a chance to cash in on merchandise sales and put a feather in their cap for recruiting purposes. And it's a chance to give the underclassmen a few more weeks of experience in preparation for next year. Under a playoff system, these benefits would be reserved for only a small number of teams each year.

So let's say that the bowls are left in place and some sort of an "and 1" situation is set up. Under this scenario, teams 1-4 would play in two of the BCS games, and the winners of those two games would play for the national championship. There are, however, a few problems with this. Most importantly, how do you decide who the best 4 teams are? If the final BCS rankings from this season were used, Oklahoma would play Alabama and Florida would play Texas, with the winners playing for the title. Guess who's on the outside looking in? The number 5 and 6 teams are USC and Utah, respectively. I don't think there's a college football fan in the nation that wouldn't agree that they should probably have a shot in a playoff situation.

The second problem with an "and 1" scenario is that it would be a step backwards in several regards. One reason cited for adding the national championship game as a 5th BCS game was to allow more teams the opportunity to play in one of them. Under the current system, a strong team from a "mid-major" conference can look forward to the possibility of a BCS bowl berth. In a 4 team playoff, that possibility all but vanishes. Especially if the champions of the major conferences continue to be given automatic berths. In addition to this, does it really make sense to ask a team to spend all of December prepping for their semifinal bowl game, and then give them a week or less to prep for the national championship? And will the teams that advance to the final game get a second BCS-level payout? And how will teams sell tickets to the BCS games if a large number of their fans decide to hold out on the chance that their team will play for a title the next week?

Another option would be to add two more bowl games (Probably Cotton and either Capital One or Chik-fil-A). Now you've got 7 games and can have an 8 team payout. This, however, doesn't solve any of the problems that we had in the "and-1" scenario. In fact, it compounds the problems of concentrating the payouts and prestige among fewer teams, and trying to prepare for, travel to, and sell tickets to, up to three games in a couple of weeks. Sure, more teams are in the BCS, but only because you've added two more games. And you've STILL got fewer teams in than you do under the current system. For this situation to work, you would also have to completely scrap conference tie-ins and automatic bids. Oh, and there's always going to be a #9 team that doesn't get in. This year, that team is Boise State. What's the purpose of a playoff if one of the undefeated teams doesn't get in?

Please don't misunderstand me here. I'm not saying that there aren't problems with the BCS system. I'm not saying that I'm happy with the way things are. But it would be inappropriate to talk about a playoff system as some sort of magic bullet that would fix everything. In order for it to work, you would have to completely scrap the bowl system. Let in 24 teams. Set up a 24 team bracket, giving the major conferences and a couple of highly ranked at large teams a first round bye. If the first round was played at the beginning of December, the whole thing could be finished up by the middle of January.

I guess my point is this: the only way that a playoff system would work is if we make it big and completely replace the current bowl system. This isn't going to happen...there's too much at stake. Until that time, there's not much point in trying to have a conversation about a college football playoff.