re: Gumps... Why is history decades old more important than history a year old?

quote:

---

Have you ever heard of recency bias? It is a bias introduced into the reasoning of fans of teams who historically suck because they think that the outlier of them accidentally butt fricking their way to a win once in a blue moon means they are actually good over time and a threat over time.

---

I would (biasedly) give that definition to our loss to Arkansas last year. We played without our best player, QB out, on the road, in the rain. Outside of this game being in TT, what makes last year's game an outlier? We beat you with our most talented team in a long time. If we were less talented this year, then I could see it. If we constantly lost to Bama with more talented teams than 2014 then I could see it. But if you are more talented than you have ever been and win in a normal fashion, thats not an outlier unless you can never match that level of talent again, and not only have we matched it, we have increased it.

I could see our previous history with Vandy being an example of recent bias. Franklin and Johnson beat OM 4 out of 6 years. A coaching change occurs and things are back to where they should be historically. I could see this argument for us if we lost Freeze or if Bama went from Shula to Saban, but not when the coaching staff's are the same as are most of the players.