Anyone who knows me knows that I love stats. One of the more underrated sports related stats website has to be ESPN Passport. It is an awesome service provided by ESPN that allows you to archive all the sports events you have been to (and even watched from home) and spews out stats about how the teams have done in those games. They show a win-loss record, active winning or losing streak and how the teams have done at home and on the road in the games you saw them play. Over time, they have added medals which you can earn if you attend events and the team goes on a winning or even a losing streak.

Full link to all the stats available here on Google Drive.

Here’s a look at some of the stats for my events: (Note: I only log the games that I have attended in person)

I am certain that I missed a couple of games that I attended in person but of the 38 games I have logged in so far, there are 10 teams that I have never seen lose (3 of them I have seen on more than one occasion):

New York Mets: 3-0, 2 games at Citi Field (vs. Yankees and Chicago White Sox) and one at Rogers Center
Seattle Mariners: 2-0 (both in the same stadium but once when it was SkyDome and one as Rogers Center)
West Virginia Mountaineers (CFB): 2-0 (both at High Point Solutions Stadium)

The following teams are 1-0: Houston Astros, Cincinnati Bearcats (CFB), Fresno State Bulldogs (CFB), Buffalo Sabers, San José Sharks, Miami Heat and Syracuse Orangeman (CBB).

The most frequent teams that I have seen are by far the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees:

Toronto Blue Jays: 6-9 record, 5-7 at home and 1-2 on the road (all road games at Yankee Stadium)
New York Yankees: 8-5 record, 5-3 at home and 3-2 on the road (all road games at Rogers Center)

List of Arenas with record of home team in brackets:
SkyDome/Rogers Center (5-7)
Old/New Yankee Stadium (5-3)
High Point Solutions Stadium (3-4)
Citi Field (2-0)
Izod Center (2-1)
Madison Square Garden (1-1)
Air Canada Center (0-1)
Rutgers Athletic Center (0-1)
TD Garden (0-1)
Citizens Bank Ballpark (0-1)

Stats by Sport:
Major League Baseball: 23 games
NCAA DI Football: 7 games
National Hockey League: 4 games
National Basketball Association: 3 games
NCAA DI Basketball: 1 game

Finishing off with the medals page, I have six in total which include easy ones like checking into your first event, posting comments and attending a game on a holiday. However two cool ones that I have is “Zero Hero” which is attending a game with a shutout (I just got at the Mets/White Sox game) and “Doubleheader” which is attending two games in one day. I got that one on October 27, 2007 by watching a college football game between Rutgers Scarlet Knights and West Virginia playing a game at noon and then heading over to Madison Square Garden to see the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers play at 7pm.

Anyone want to play a game of tag?

Also in an unrelated note, yesterday was the 20 year anniversary of the famous Jimmy V speech. If you have never seen it, or haven’t seen it in a while go take a look below:

Through day 2 of this March Madness, I still have a couple of brackets which are doing pretty well. I have different brackets on ESPN, Yahoo! Sports and Facebook. I’ll break each one down but the best of the 3 is a tie with ESPN and Yahoo! Sports both having 26/32 correct picks and then Facebook only one game behind at 25/32 but that might be the one in the best shape.

A couple of things to note before my review:

• With round one now complete … the ESPN.com Tournament Challenge looks like this:
• Approximately 4.8 million completed brackets were submitted.
• There are no brackets that are completely correct.
• There are 3 brackets that have missed only one game.
• There are 95 brackets that have missed two games.
• There are 1,111 brackets that have missed three games.
• Most brackets, on average, have missed 10 games.

  Click ‘Read more‘ to read the rest of review of my brackets.

ESPN: (Link to Bracket)

Correct Upsets: (9) Northern Iowa, (10) Georgia Tech, (10) Missouri, (10) St. Mary’s, (11) Old Dominion, (11) Washington, (12) Cornell, (13) Murray State:
I was beginning to get a little worried in this bracket with so many upsets and I did get burned on a couple too many 5/12 calls but was rewarded for my faith in a weaker Big East and picking ODU and Washington to beat Notre Dame and Marquette. 8/9 and even 7/10 to an extent I don’t consider upsets as much but 11+ are the real ones where this should not happen but it does — every year. Congrats to Cornell and Murray State and hopefully they can win a game or two more and bust some more brackets.

Incorrect Favorites: (3) Georgetown and (8) Texas:
I don’t think anyone in their right would have taken Ohio to upset Georgetown. A really tough year in the early goings for Big East might have them re-evaluating the tough conference schedule and tournament but I don’t think you change anything. You see favorites like Syracuse and Pittsburgh really blowing their opponents out like they should and a Villanova team that really struggled down the stretch showed it in a tough one against Robert Morris.

As for Texas, they had that game to win. A missed free throw inside 10 seconds and unable to come up with a semi-loose ball in the paint allowed Wake Forest to come down the court and eventually hit the game winner. Tough way for Texas to go out but it just symbolizes how rocky of a season it was for a team that was ranked #1 in the country at one point in the season.

Final Four: (1) Kansas, (1) Duke, (4) Wisconsin, (7) BYU.

Champion: (1) Kansas defeats (1) Duke.

Overall: This bracket does have 3 incorrect picks from the Sweet 16 and ideally, you only want to lose 1 or 2 from the first round but I will take it for now. I really like what I have done in this bracket in terms of upset predictions but I think this one finishes 3rd best out of the 3 I am listing in this post.

Yahoo! Sports: (Link to Bracket)

Correct Upsets: (9) Northern Iowa, (10) St. Mary’s, (12) Cornell, (13) Murray State:
No new upsets here from above, nothing more to add here.

Incorrect Favorites: (3) Georgetown, (6) Marquette, (6) Notre Dame, (7) Clemson, (7) Oklahoma State:
Way too many favorites there incorrectly picked and this is more of a protection bracket in the chance that Big East did not fail, this would have done even better than where it is right now at 26/32.

Final Four: (1) Duke, (1) Syracuse, (2) West Virginia, (6) Tennessee.

Champion: (1) Duke defeats (1) Syracuse.

Overall: Incorrectly picking Notre Dame and Marquette to be in the Sweet 16 might end up costing me in this bracket but I like my chances for it to finish 2nd best out of the 3. 13/16 still alive for the Sweet 16 but no mistakes into the Elite 8 yet and hopefully that will carry me.

Facebook: (Link to Bracket)

Correct Upsets: (9) Wake Forest, (10) St. Mary’s, (11) Old Dominion, (11) Washington, (12) Cornell, (13) Murray State:
New Mexico State and Utah State gave me momentary glimpses of hope that every single one of my predicted upsets would come true but it was not meant to be.

Incorrect Favorites: (3) Georgetown, (7) Oklahoma State, (7) Clemson, (8) UNLV:
Less than a handful of incorrect favorites here and selections of OK St and Clemson were just foolish on my part to think they might pull out the win even though they were overrated coming into the tournament.

Final Four: (1) Syracuse, (2) Villanova, (3) New Mexico, (4) Maryland.

Champion: (2) Villanova defeats (1) Syracuse.

Overall: By far, the best shape any of my brackets are in. 7 incorrect picks in the first round but I have none of those teams advancing into the Sweet 16 and all of those teams are still in tact. I think (6) Tennessee should be able to beat (14) Ohio and (5) Butler might be able to hang on against (13) Murray State where the right half of this bracket for me is basically chalk — only into the Sweet 16 though.

There is no argument in my mind about who should have been this year’s NFL Defensive Player of the Year and that was Charles Woodson who did end up getting 28 of the 50 votes with New York Jets’ Darrelle Revis coming a distant second with 14.

According to the ESPN.com article, “the versatile Woodson tied for the league lead with nine interceptions, returning three for touchdowns, and was a key to the Packers’ turnaround on defense. His role in Green Bay’s performance — second in the league in overall defense, first in interceptions (30), takeaways (40) and turnover margin (plus-24).”

Following the Packers all year long certainly made it obvious that he should win even though the local Revis came on strong towards the end of the season shutting down key #1 receivers but this is an award for the entire year, not just the first half or the second half of the season.

One thing to notice from today’s announcement was Rex Ryan’s reply and standing up for his player. He said, ”a number that I think is interesting is eight.  No, that’s not the amount of touchdown passes Green Bay gave up against Arizona.  That’s the amount of touchdown passes we gave up all season.  The biggest reason for that is Darrelle Revis.”

The Jets’ coach has a big mouth but he always backs his team and doesn’t hold anything back. You can respect that in a coach but no way was he winning the award this year. This year it belonged to Charles Woodson.

If you didn’t see it for yourself on ESPN, take a look at this filthy little crackback block that Brett Favre threw at the knees of Texans safety Eugene Wilson in the third quarter of the Monday Night preseason game.

A great job by the ESPN guys on calling the play dirty right away and I probably wouldn’t expect anything more to happen since a penalty was called on the play. Just giving me more ammo to not like Brett Favre more than I already don’t.

Well Done #4.

Yahoo! Sports: Brett Favre throws a dirty block at Eugene Wilson’s knees