Troy/lsu Postponement Bad For Unt

[JesseMartin]

After thinking about it, I realize that I now wish to an even greater extent that the Troy vs. LSU game hadn't been postponed. Here's why.

First, we have to separate a "likely upset" (Troy) from an "unlikely upset" (NT). Though expected to lose, Troy had a good chance of upsetting LSU this weekend. As of right now, UNT does not. However...

When you look at upsets in the past, oh, 5-10 years, when a mid-major team takes down one of the "big boys", one of two things happens.

First, they can get down on themselves and play sloppy for a couple of games, sometimes for a whole season.

Second, they can get angry and motivated by the upset and go on a romp.

Now, assuming that the chances of UNT beating LSU with all else held equal were astronomically small, then losing with or without an upset by Troy would still yield the same result: UNT loses to LSU. So if LSU beat Troy, we would still only have a tiny chance at a win; if Troy beat LSU and LSU followed the second path (get angry, go nuts on opponents), UNT would also retain only the smallest possibility of an upset.

However, considering the intangible personality and behavioral factors that can come into play after an especially upsetting (and unexpected) loss, the likelihood of UNT beating LSU would increase, albeit by only a couple of percentage points (I'd have to run an analysis of all upsets over a span of quite a few years in order to get an accurate prediction, and that would take much more time than I'm willing to give without compensation!) if Troy were to beat LSU prior to the UNT game, and if LSU were to take the first path (disappointment leading to sloppy play).

Therefore, my untested theory is that a loss by LSU to Troy would have a slight increase in the chances that UNT would also be able to follow with an upset.

Untested or not, my belief in this theory makes me even more disappointed that Troy's LSU game was postponed until after ours.