taino211

good stuff for all...

[OrbitWinder @OrbitWinder]

I have spent the last 20 hours building and designing NUTMEG.

It’s my own 2026 #FIFA World Cup prediction model. Here is how it works (at very high level):

🔹 Every team is rated off FIFA World Ranking points (not the best variable, but it’ll do for now just as a starting point)

🔹 Each match is simulated as real scorelines (Poisson regression)

🔹 Ratings update after EVERY match, this allows the odds to update and shift as the World Cup unfolds.

🔹 After each update, the ENTIRE tournament is re-simulated 8,000 times. This number will shift up as the model matures and I add more data and capabilities.

To be honest, Nate Silver, @NateSilver538, and his PELE model inspired me to build my own World Cup Prediction system.

It’s already live and updates after every game. Depending on demand, I may make it publicly available. This whole project though is setting the stages for my Premier League Model which will debut in the August/September time frame.

The NUTMEG model has some takes that’ll start arguments. Here are the top 12 teams:

[David McKenzie @mckenzielaw]

The Big 12 has gone to federal court to ask permission to have a conviction. There was a time when a conference could simply disapprove of a player who bet on his own team's games. Now it needs a declaratory judgment first.

The Texas AG's threatening letter to the Big 12 was an unforced error of the first order. Strip it out and there's no lawsuit— because there's no justiciable controversy. A conference privately mulling a sanctions vote isn't a "case"; it's a meeting. The AG's 200M per se antitrust threat is what manufactured the ripeness, handed the Big 12 its MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc hook, and let Sidley walk into federal court in Dallas with a complaint instead of a press release. Paxton's office didn't just pick a fight— it wrote the other side's standing argument for them, then signed it. Now TTU and the AG get to defend a theory the Oklahoma AG already called "facially absurd," in a real courtroom, against a national firm on its home turf. The letter was meant to intimidate. It functioned as service of process.

The complaint itself is well made, and its strongest section is also its most dangerous. Paragraphs 32 through 36 are devastating on TTU's hypocrisy: TTU voted for the Baylor sanctions in 2017 and now insists the conference has no power to sanction anyone. That is good lawyering, and it should sting.

But it cuts both ways. Baylor was sanctioned after findings, through process, for institutional conduct. The Big 12 wants to sanction TTU preemptively, for fielding a player a Texas court has enjoined the NCAA from declaring ineligible.

The state court injunction is the elephant in the room, and paragraph 62 works very hard not to look at it— "this isn't about the injunction." But it is. The District Court of Lubbock County enjoined the NCAA from barring Brendan Sorsby from practicing or playing for Texas Tech, on a 5K bond, through a trial not set until February 2027. The practical effect is that Sorsby plays the entire 2026 season. The Big 12 now asks a federal court to declare that it may bar Texas Tech from competing for letting him. Strip away the labels, and the conference is asking one sovereign's courts to restore the very exclusion another sovereign's court just lifted—relabeled, from "NCAA eligibility" to "conference governance," but identical in result.

That's a real trap, and it is structural. Federal and state courts keep a wary distance from one another's orders; neither likes to be handed the other's ruling to undo. A federal court will rarely enjoin a state proceeding, and it is nearly as reluctant to grant relief that achieves the same end through the back. The Big 12 was shrewd to choose a declaratory judgment over an injunction— a softer vehicle that does not, on its face, touch the state order. But that shrewdness cuts both ways: declaratory relief is discretionary, and a federal judge may simply decline to issue a declaration whose only real function is to neutralize a state court's ruling. The conference says it is exercising independent governance authority. A skeptical judge may see a conference trying to do through the side door what a state court has barred the NCAA from doing through the front— and may decline to hold the door.

The Big 12 should win this, and it should win because the law is not actually close: a private association enforcing its own bylaws against a member who bet on his own games is ordinary self-governance. The Texas AG has managed the rare feat of threatening a lawsuit so weak that he walked his adversary into court, drew a public rebuke from a fellow attorney general within 24 hours, and turned a meeting the Big 12 might never have held into a federal complaint with his own letter stapled to the back as an Exhibit. Crazy times.

Thanks to @TomMarsLaw for making the complaint available.

[taino211 @taino211]

@MurrDCU @JWMediaDC It will live on in the same way the Pac 12 lives on. Just not in a Power conference sense...

[Tyrann Mathieu @Mathieu_Era]

Can I return back to college football?
I only played 2 seasons, should have 2 more eligibility years left….

Can you find me a judge in Louisiana who can see to it that Honey Badger gets to finish his last 2 years of college football?
Who’s going to say no ?????

[taino211 @taino211]

@JWMediaDC After FSU/UM/CLEM leave and then some of the others are picked off by the B12, there's no way the ACC survives

[taino211 @taino211]

@Mike1625 @ForgettingSara I would say "always the bridesmaid,never the bride", but you've never even been the bridesmaid 😂😂😂😂😂😂🤡

[taino211 @taino211]

@Mike1625 @ForgettingSara A Central team you've lost to SIX times in a row? Lol we stepped up in competition and don't have you to beat up on anymore. All the good teams leave and still you've NEVER even APPEARED in a title game in your entire history lolol. That's the true definition of mediocre. 😂

[Ryanair @Ryanair]

to where exactly?

[taino211 @taino211]

@Nichola65954107 @SSN_USF @bigten These guys are cute. The delusion is very real. There *may* be room for them in the ACC once all the decent teams leave to the SEC/B10/B12.

[11Point7 College Baseball @11point7]

DAT BOY ANDREW WILLIAMSON DOES IT AGAIN 🔥🔥🔥

3RD OF THE NIGHT. KILFFFF

[taino211 @taino211]

@USFBullsfan @EngineerUCF @Bull_Disclosure Exactly my point 😂. Glad you proved me right with your eloquent and fact-based rebuttal.

Embarrassing for you guys. But we expect no less.

[taino211 @taino211]

@Bull_Disclosure @BasesOnBulls @KnightsNatty @KnightmarishJ I'm sure you'll be in the ACC..... once it implodes in 2030 and all the best teams get absorbed by the SEC/B10/B12 like everyone is predicting. Bookmark this tweet.

[taino211 @taino211]

@USFBullsfan @Bull_Disclosure @EngineerUCF Again, I provide data and you provide nothing except feelings. Talk about land of make-believe lol. And the reason you don't actually provide data is because it goes against your narrative and you know you'd lose. So you just feign ignorance. Very convenient 😂 Everyone sees it.

[taino211 @taino211]

@USFBullsfan @EngineerUCF @Bull_Disclosure I've not even mentioned a natty. So when one side is actually producing stats and facts that can be corroborated and the other is just resorting to name-calling, everyone can clearly see who won the debate here.

Sad existence you live in. Enjoy your irrelevance.

[taino211 @taino211]

@USFBullsfan @EngineerUCF @Bull_Disclosure So I state actual facts and instead of a rebuttal your response is: "Nuh-uh!"

😂🤡

Seems about right. See you never.

[taino211 @taino211]

@USFBullsfan @Bull_Disclosure @EngineerUCF Sorry to burst your bubble little bro

[taino211 @taino211]

@USFBullsfan @Bull_Disclosure @EngineerUCF All those mid sports programs own all of yours in most sports in recent history. And if by "no money", you mean compared to Bama, then yes. But compared to athletic $ against u guys there's no contest. We don't think, we know we're better and have stats, not feelings, to prove it

[taino211 @taino211]

@USFBullsfan @SportssFann1 @JWMediaDC @RandyR358 How can you be "miles ahead" when you've lost the last 6 times to UCF and never even APPEARED in a conference championship game in your programs entire HISTORY?

They truly do drink different water over there In West Central Florida lol

[taino211 @taino211]

@Bull_Disclosure @USFBullsfan @EngineerUCF 😂😂😂😂 a co-division championship? I didn't know you can have a division championship by finishing 2nd in the division. That USF math is next level. Next thing you're gonna tell me is that your school is in South Florida....oh wait....

[taino211 @taino211]

@USFBullsfan @EngineerUCF @Bull_Disclosure Lolol now I know u just make crap up. By our 28th year we already had three conference championships and 4 division titles.

usf - 0

Maybe some day you'll know what that feels like, but if history is any indicator most likely not lolol