Argument that chaps my balls: Beating a team three times is so hard

You hear it all the time. "OMG, it's so hard to beat a team three times in the same season". Yes. It would be. Assuming you said this at the beginning of the season. But you never hear it then...only in the playoffs with one game remaining. And at that point...why is it so hard?

If you flip a coin 374 times, yes....getting them to land on heads 374 times is indeed extremely difficult. To the tune of...ok. My calculator can't even calculate it. Let's say you want to flip a coin on heads 20 times in a row. You have a 1 in 1,048,576 chance of accomplishing this feat. However, if you flip it on heads 19 times in a row, you still have a 1 in 2 chance of the 20th flip landing on heads. So if someone said to you, "you know, it's very hard to flip a coin heads up 20 times in a row", they'd be right. However, if they said it to you after you had done it 19 times and used it as their reasoning that it would be hard to do it a 20th time, you should be able to legally cockwhip them. The football example of this playing out cannot be that much different. And the statistics back up this claim.

It was broken down empirically here.

This post was written before the Cowboys prepared to take on the Giants for a third time last season, a game they did end up losing to the eventual Super Bowl champs. So you have to add that to the loss column of his stats. However, they are telling. 18 such instances have occured in which a team had a chance to beat another team 3 times, and in 11 of these instances, they did. 11-7, and 9-4 at home (odd that so many had to go on the road). This just shows that it is not hard to beat a team three times AFTER YOU'VE ALREADY DONE IT TWICE. That's the important part. Yes, few teams beat other teams three times. But that logic only makes sense at the start of the season.

"But now the losing team is more familiar with the winning team", you may say. I may then slap you. The winning team is also more familiar with the losing team. Might the Ravens win this weekend in spite of the statistical odds being against them? Of course. But it will have nothing to do with the fact that they lost the first two games. Think about it...if Jeff Reed misses that OT field goal in the first game and the Ravens drive down the field to win...are the Steelers now more likely to win this playoff game (assuming they are still at home)? No. Not an f-ing chance. If the Ravens win, it will be because both games this year could have gone either way. The teams have been evenly matched. It will have nothing to do with the fact that the Steelers went 2-0 against Baltimore in the regular season. At all. My balls have so much chap right now that you would think they were a young English lad.

Assuming this argument is true, the following must also be correct:


- It's harder to get away with beating your third wife if you got away with beating the first two.

- Didn't get AIDS the first two times you didn't wrap it up? Fuck. You are screwed the next time.

- If you have already killed two people in DUI accidents, you might as well keep doing it because you are pretty much in the clear at this point.

- Let's just say that this argument is the reason you never see "triple-penetration" in a pornographic film.

- Already ate two Subway $5 footlongs after hearing the stupid commercials? The third one might make you gay.

- The Chicago Bulls had two three-peats in the 1990s? No wonder Michael Jordan's wife divorced him.

- R. Kelly has carte blanche to piss on a third teenage girl. So don't be surprised if he's already done it and we just haven't heard about it yet.

- Twins are ok, but anytime you meet a set of triplets, they might tie you down and forcefully shave off your pubes.


Assuming that it is so damn hard to beat a team for a third time after already defeating them twice....well, then those must all be true!