More thoughts on the BCS championship game. As I mentioned over there in that post, I didn’t watch very much of the game but at one point I turned it on and it was halftime so I saw the “Allstate Alumni Kicking Challenge”.

In case you missed it, there were two kickers playing – one an alumni from Ohio St. and one an alumni from LSU. I don’t know if they were former college kickers or what but they definitely looked like they knew what they were doing. The rules of the challenge were that each kicker got 3 attempts. The sum of the yardage from each MADE field goal was added, and whichever kicker had the highest total won.

Seems to make sense – I’m not sure of the optimal strategy but you have to weight going further to get more points with not going too far and increasing your odds of missing.

LSU won the coin toss and went 2nd. Huston made from 43, and then Browndyke missed. And here is where I think Huston made a HUGE strategic error. Rather than move in to say 30 yards, he kicked again from 43, and missed. Browndyke made his from 43 and put himself into the driver’s seat. Huston made again from 40-ish but then Browndyke blew it and OSU won anyways.

Seems to me that had Huston gone into say 30 (fairly automatic I guess, depending on their actual level of skill but they seemed to both know what they were doing), that puts him up 73-0. Even if Browndyke makes a 50 yarder, Huston can put in another 30 yarder and force Browndyke to make from 54 to win. If that seems like not good enough odds make it 32 or 35.

Given that field goals get harder the further you go out, I think Huston made a monumental error and was lucky to win.

(Yes, I realize nobody cares and this will be one of those posts I make that gets 0 comments)