Daily Short #201, July 12th, 2018: Preseason All-Big 12 Voting
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On Wednesday, we got the news alert from the Texas Sports Information Department that Texas senior DE Breckyn Hager and CB Kris Boyd had been selected as members of the Preseason All-Big 12 team.
While both players are surely worthy, it got me thinking ... 'why not Gary Johnson?' are there really three better linebackers in the league? What about Malcolm Roach or Lil'Jordan Humphrey or Collin Johnson? None of those guys could get a sniff? Johnson is being talked about by some in NFL draft circles like he could be an extremely high pick in the 2019 NFL draft with a big year and ESPN recently dubbed Humphrey Texas' 'most exciting player," saying "The versatile Humphrey lit up Texas' spring game, suggesting he could be in for a big season. The Longhorns have longed for a go-to wide receiver for years now. Humphrey and teammate Collin Johnson seem primed to finally fill that void." I wondered why a guy like Calvin Anderson, who seems to have been one of the higher-profile, national recruiting storylines on the transfer market -- and an immediate impact senior -- wasn't a lock to be nominated for "Newcomer of the Year."
Furthermore, it got me thinking: "how accurate are these lists?" We know it's the local media who covers these teams and the members of national outlets who're focused on the conferences in question who get votes, but as we also know, sometimes those very people seem to know less about the game than some maniacal and well-versed fans. If we look at preseason lists (created by this group of individuals) versus the post-season lists (created by the same group), we find that these media members are not only kinda bad at choosing who is going to be good in the coming year, they're actually #bad at choosing who they themselves will be voting for in a mere 5 months once all the regular-season games are played.
Looking over the last five seasons, here are a few takeaways:
Dating back to 2013, when looking at the preseason Offensive Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year predictions, the voters have only gotten one guy right: Voting for OU QB Baker Mayfield as OPOY in the 2016 and 2017 preseasons. That's technically two hits out of 10 total shots, so a 20% clip which is abysmal considering that Mayfield was the No.1 pick in the NFL draft and had the most efficient seasons of basically any QB in college football history over his junior and senior years. Miserable.
The fact that Mayfield was not even a unanimous selection in the 2017 preseason shows there's at least one mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragger on the selection panel.
But what about players that the voters were sure of? The ones that were preseason consensus, unanimous selections by the group to make the All Big 12 team. The locks. Over the last half-decade, there have been 14 of those guys. Of those 14, five were not on the post-season All Big 12 first team. On the surface, this seems like a pretty good record for the voters, but when you think about it, those selections are supposed to be the easy layups. Every single member of the panel voted for the exact same guy and when this sort of consensus is reached, it's only right 64% of the time? That's less than two-thirds of selections.
In all, 142 players have been named to the preseason All-Big 12 team over the last five years. Of those 142, only 63 (44.3%) have gone on to be the same media group's votes once again for the first-team All-Big 12 ballot once the season ended in December. Even if you add in the players who ended up making the postseason second team, only 22 more qualify, bringing the total numbers of (kinda) accurate predictions up to 85 which is 59.9%. Really just better than half.
The bottom line is that Texas fans should be glad that Hager and Boyd made the list as its a nice honor and it gives folks something to talk about. It gives the media department fodder for creating content that helps in recruiting and perpetuating images of the Texas brand socially even during this molasses-slow news cycle in the doldrums of summer ...
... but what it doesn't do is mean jack. Not only is it just a list of preseason predictions, it's a list of predictions that the predictors haven't even been all that good at making recently.
presented by the Dental Offices of Wendy Swantkowski, DDS
The Absolute BEST in family and cosmetic dentistry for the Houston-Memorial Area
Now Accepting New Patients --- 281-293-9140
Support the Short by supporting our sponsor - Give Wendy a call today!
On Wednesday, we got the news alert from the Texas Sports Information Department that Texas senior DE Breckyn Hager and CB Kris Boyd had been selected as members of the Preseason All-Big 12 team.
While both players are surely worthy, it got me thinking ... 'why not Gary Johnson?' are there really three better linebackers in the league? What about Malcolm Roach or Lil'Jordan Humphrey or Collin Johnson? None of those guys could get a sniff? Johnson is being talked about by some in NFL draft circles like he could be an extremely high pick in the 2019 NFL draft with a big year and ESPN recently dubbed Humphrey Texas' 'most exciting player," saying "The versatile Humphrey lit up Texas' spring game, suggesting he could be in for a big season. The Longhorns have longed for a go-to wide receiver for years now. Humphrey and teammate Collin Johnson seem primed to finally fill that void." I wondered why a guy like Calvin Anderson, who seems to have been one of the higher-profile, national recruiting storylines on the transfer market -- and an immediate impact senior -- wasn't a lock to be nominated for "Newcomer of the Year."
Furthermore, it got me thinking: "how accurate are these lists?" We know it's the local media who covers these teams and the members of national outlets who're focused on the conferences in question who get votes, but as we also know, sometimes those very people seem to know less about the game than some maniacal and well-versed fans. If we look at preseason lists (created by this group of individuals) versus the post-season lists (created by the same group), we find that these media members are not only kinda bad at choosing who is going to be good in the coming year, they're actually #bad at choosing who they themselves will be voting for in a mere 5 months once all the regular-season games are played.
Looking over the last five seasons, here are a few takeaways:
Dating back to 2013, when looking at the preseason Offensive Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year predictions, the voters have only gotten one guy right: Voting for OU QB Baker Mayfield as OPOY in the 2016 and 2017 preseasons. That's technically two hits out of 10 total shots, so a 20% clip which is abysmal considering that Mayfield was the No.1 pick in the NFL draft and had the most efficient seasons of basically any QB in college football history over his junior and senior years. Miserable.
The fact that Mayfield was not even a unanimous selection in the 2017 preseason shows there's at least one mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragger on the selection panel.
But what about players that the voters were sure of? The ones that were preseason consensus, unanimous selections by the group to make the All Big 12 team. The locks. Over the last half-decade, there have been 14 of those guys. Of those 14, five were not on the post-season All Big 12 first team. On the surface, this seems like a pretty good record for the voters, but when you think about it, those selections are supposed to be the easy layups. Every single member of the panel voted for the exact same guy and when this sort of consensus is reached, it's only right 64% of the time? That's less than two-thirds of selections.
In all, 142 players have been named to the preseason All-Big 12 team over the last five years. Of those 142, only 63 (44.3%) have gone on to be the same media group's votes once again for the first-team All-Big 12 ballot once the season ended in December. Even if you add in the players who ended up making the postseason second team, only 22 more qualify, bringing the total numbers of (kinda) accurate predictions up to 85 which is 59.9%. Really just better than half.
The bottom line is that Texas fans should be glad that Hager and Boyd made the list as its a nice honor and it gives folks something to talk about. It gives the media department fodder for creating content that helps in recruiting and perpetuating images of the Texas brand socially even during this molasses-slow news cycle in the doldrums of summer ...
... but what it doesn't do is mean jack. Not only is it just a list of preseason predictions, it's a list of predictions that the predictors haven't even been all that good at making recently.
