Nebraska Football: Dallas Morning News Not Built on Mathematics

I’m a numbers guy.  When you think numbers, you live numbers, and it’s not uncommon to be reading a newspaper and see a writer horribly misapply, misinterpret, or flat-out misunderstand a number.  So it’s not really surprising when you see an author make a mathematical error.

Chip Brown makes his Big 12 predictions and has the Huskers going 5-7 overall and 3-5 in the conference.  He spells out the five losses he sees in conference (Missouri, @ Texas Tech, @ OU, Kansas, and @ KSU).

That’s a reasonable prediction, I suppose, though neither Missouri nor Kansas has won in Lincoln since Carter and LBJ (respectively) were in the White House, and even Bill Callahan had an easy time with Ron Prince’s teams.

But putting that aside, it leaves a 2-2 non-conference record. He wants to give Virginia Tech a win in Lincoln?  Fine.  Their lousy offense may not look so bad if Nebraska’s still playing lousy defense.

However, that would mean he’s predicting a win by Western Michigan, San Jose State, or New Mexico State.  In Lincoln.

Western Michigan went 5-7 a year ago playing in the MAC.  San Jose State went 5-7 and New Mexico State went 4-9 a year ago, both playing in the WAC.  Mind you, those WAC schools finished behind the Nevada team that NU annihilated in Lincoln in 2007.

Either Beck’s got a lot of faith in these MAC/WAC teams, or he’s not yet skilled in adding single-digit numbers.

I’ll withhold my season predictions until closer to kickoff, but any way you add it up, Beck has got it wrong.