Fresh Tomatoes and Rotten Tomatoes. What Do They Mean?

If you are not from this planet, you probably haven't heard that a new Star Wars movie is coming out.  I am about to see it myself in 5 hours right from this moment that I am writing this and I have jitters in me.  During this wait, it is hard to not see maybe some tiny spoilers are a glimpse of what people think about the movie who have seen it early because of our world of social media.  One website that a lot of people use to judge if a movie is good or not is the website rottentomatoes.com.  If you are unfamiliar with it, it gives scores of movies out of 100% according to critics and audiences that put their scores onto the website.  An example of what it looks like displayed is the image below representing the Rotten Tomatoes Score for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

The Tomatometer is the score from the critics and obviously the one on the right with popcorn is the Audience Score which gives the score that the audience puts for it.  When you click on the "MORE INFO" button, it shows more in depth about what these scores mean like on the image below.

As explained here, the Tomatometer represents the number of the critics that reviewed the movie with a positive review.  This means that 94% of the critics that reviewed Empire Strikes Back gave it a positive review.  That doesn't mean that that was the average rating that they gave it.  As it shows above, the average rating that they gave it was 8.96/10 which could be a 89.6% out of 100%.  For the Audience Score, it explains for this movie that 97% of the audience gave it a 3.5 stars or higher out of 5 stars.  That doesn't mean that the average rating that they gave it was a 97%.  Above it shows that the average rating is actually 4.64 out of 5 stars or 92.8% out of 100%.  As we can see, the scores that we've been reading on rottentomatoes.com may not represent what the average person usually thinks when they go to this website.  If we were to do a ranking on all of the Star Wars movies based solely on the Tomatometer %, it would go as (with the Rise of Skywalker as of now):

   1. Empire Strikes Back - (94%)

   2. A New Hope - (93%)

   2. The Force Awakens - (93%)

   4. The Last Jedi - (91%)

   5. Rogue One - (83%)

   6. Return of the Jedi - (82%)

   7. Revenge of the Sith - (80%)

   8. Solo: A Star Wars Story - (70%)

   9. Attack of the Clones - (65%)
 10. The Rise of Skywalker - (58%)

 11. The Phantom Menace - (53%)

 12. The Clone Wars - (18%)

Now, if we were to do the average ratings of the critics instead (using percentage for the ratings out of 100%), the rankings would go as:

1. Empire Strikes Back - (89.6%)
2. A New Hope - (87.8%)
3. The Force Awakens - (82.7%)
4. The Last Jedi - (80.9%)
5. Rogue One - (74.8%)
6. Revenge of the Sith - (72.8%)
7. Return of the Jedi - (72.5%)
8. Attack of the Clones - (65.9%)
9. Solo: A Star Wars Story - (64.2%)
10. The Rise of Skywalker - (62.2%)
11. The Phantom Menace - (59.7%)
12. The Clone Wars - (42%)

As we can see, the rankings don't really change except for the places of Solo: A Star Wars Story and Attack of the Clones.  But now it gives a little different picture about the scores on these movies.  When we see the actual ratings that the critics gave, you see that some movies did change a bit.  The Tomatometer for The Clone Wars was 18%, but the average rating gave it a 42% which is still not a good movie but not as terrible.  Now when it comes to the Audience Scores, things start to change a bit.  If we were to do a ranking now of all of the Star Wars movies using the percentage for the Audience Score, it would go like this:

      1. Empire Strikes Back - (97%)

      2. A New Hope - (96%)

      3. Return of the Jedi - (94%)

      4. The Force Awakens - (86%)

      4. Rogue One - (86%)

      4. The Rise of Skywalker - (86%)

      7. Revenge of the Sith - (66%)

      8. Solo: A Star Wars Story - (63%)

      9. The Phantom Menace - (59%)

    10. Attack of the Clones - (56%)

    11. The Last Jedi - (43%)

    12. The Clone Wars - (39%)

We can see that these ratings are a bit significant in some part compared to the Tomatometer rankings from the critics.  The critics had The Last Jedi at 91% and then fans had it at 43%.  Critics had The Rise of Skywalker at 58% but the fans had it at 85%.  Now if we accounted the average ratings as percentage for the Audience Score, it would go as:

      1. Empire Strikes Back - (92.8%)

      2. A New Hope - (91%)

      3. Return of the Jedi - (88.4%)

      4. The Rise of Skywalker - (86%)

      5. The Force Awakens - (84.6%)

      6. Rogue One - (81.8%)

      7. The Phantom Menace - (70.4%)

      8. Solo: A Star Wars Story - (68.4%)

      9. Attack of the Clones - (67.4%)

    10. Revenge of the Sith - (62.6%)

    11. The Clone Wars - (58.4%)

    12. The Last Jedi - (54.4%)

Now I will give one final rankings from the data from Rotten Tomatoes.  But this one will be calculated like this:  I will add together the numbered rankings of each movie and then divide the total by 4 since there are 4 rankings in total.  (Example:  The Empire Strikes Back was #1 for all 4 rankings, so I add those rankings together which gives me 4 and then I divide it to 4 like this: 4/4.  Then we get Episode 5 with the ranking score of 1.)  Now the rankings are according to this are:

1. Empire Strikes Back - 1
2. A New Hope - 2
3. The Force Awakens - 3.5
4. Return of the Jedi - 4.75
5. Rogue One - 5
6. Rise of Skywalker - 7
7. Revenge of the Sith - 7.5
8. The Last Jedi - 7.75
9. Solo: A Star Wars Story - 8.25
10. Attack of the Clones - 9
11. The Phantom Menace - 9.5
12. The Clone Wars - 11.75

Now I have given you all the rankings according to all of the data that Rotten Tomatoes has given us.  I did this because everybody seems to base rankings of movies according to this website.  But if it were up to me, this is not the website to do that.  First of all, the best way to know if a movie is good or not is to see it yourself.  Or, you could talk with peers who have seen it before you and get their opinion and then see the movie.  Either way, you need to see the movie to really judge it.  Also, the users on Rotten Tomatoes do no represent everybody who has seen Star Wars.  I have always seen every type of person going to see a Star Wars movie whenever I go.  It can be little children and even old people like someone's grandma.  Do you think that little children or someone's grandma is going to make an account on Rotten Tomatoes to rate it for everyone to see?  Heck my grandma doesn't have wi-fi so I don't really expect that to happen and little children don't judge movies like average age adults do.  

If you really want to get a better score from an audience, try cinemascore.com.  What they do is poll people at the theater and they ask about what score would they give the movie that they just saw.  By doing this they would include anybody who saw the movie.  That could even include those grandmas and little children that see Star Wars as well.  

If you always use Rotten Tomatoes as a way to grade movies, then that is ok.  But what bothers me is when people say that according to the Audience Score, like for The Last Jedi, was a 43% and then the critic score was a 91% which shows that The Last Jedi sucks because the critic score doesn't matter as much.  But then if they see The Rise of Skywalker which currently has an Audience Score of 86% and then the critic score is 58% then they say that that movie sucks, they just need to be quiet.  Be consistent with your judgement.  Quit being mean.  I have spoken!

NFL Week 16 Predictions

It is finally approaching Week 16 of the NFL Season which means there will be one more regular season week after this one.  It has been a pretty interesting season wit Lamar Jackson breaking so many records and the Patriots statistically have a great defense but in some way just look mediocre in a way now.  The 49ers are looking great and Drew Brees now has 541 passing touchdowns in his career which broke Peyton Manning's record of 539.  As far as I see, I am still staying with my recent pick that the Super Bowl will be the Ravens vs. the Seahawks.  But right now the Chiefs are playing great and I will not be surprised if they keep playing this well and somehow make it to the Super Bowl.  The Patriots have a great defense but their offense is just not working that well when they play against actual good teams.  Will that change once they get into the playoffs and what will these new allegations of a 2nd Spygate incident going to do to them?  I always like to make these type of questions because it will make how the season ends more interesting.
I stand for now with Ravens vs. Seahawks as the Super Bowl but it will not surprise if the the team representing the AFC was also either the Chiefs or the Patriots and the team representing the NFC was either the Saints, 49ers, or the Packers.  Probably it is least likely the Packers because they have not been that impressive even though they have a good record.  But, we will all see once it finally happens.  That is probably something that can make the NFL exciting to watch around this time because you just can't predict it all.  Some teams could really subvert your expectations in the most unexpected way.   I still remember the 2011 season where the Giants won the Super Bowl against the Patriots and they were 9-7 on the season!  They even beat the 15-1 Packers during the Divisional Round and that was when the Packers scored 35 points per game that season!  Anything could happen during this time and it is the season to get excited.

As far as College Football is going, the bowl season starts tomorrow.  Arkansas' new coach Sam Pittman has been doing a lot to help this program.  He has hired assistants from Mizzou's staff and has taken some 4-star recruits for the early signing period.  All that Razorback fans can hope is that he is still working hard and the team that he assembles will be the start of something good.

Last week there was only one College Football game with the Army vs. Navy team.  Now my record for College Football goes to 60-12 which is 83.3% and for NFL I went 10-6 which brings me to 43-28 which is 60.6%.

My bowl game and College Football Playoff predictions still remain the same.  If you want to remember those picks, just go to this link.  I did predict Joe Burrow getting the Heisman, but pretty much everyone did because he did such a darn good job.

Now my picks for the NFL this week are:
Texans vs. Buccaneers.  Winner: Texans
Bills vs. Patriots.  Winner:  Bills
Rams vs. 49ers.  Winner:  49ers
Cowboys vs. Eagles.  Winner:  Eagles
Chiefs vs. Bears.  Winner:  Chiefs
Jaguars vs. Falcons.  Winner:  Falcons
Ravens vs. Browns.  Winner:  Ravens
Saints vs. Titans.  Winner:  Saints
Panthers vs. Colts.  Winner: Colts
Bengals vs.  Dolphins.  Winner:  Dolphins
Steelers vs.  Jets.  Winner:  Steelers
Giants vs. Redskins.  Winner:  Giants
Lions vs. Broncos.  Winner:  Broncos
Raiders vs. Chargers.  Winner:  Chargers
Cardinals vs. Seahawks.  Winner:  Seahawks
Packers vs. Vikings.  Winner:  Vikings

A Quick Recap on Razorback Football's Disastrous 2019 Season

Bowl Games and NFL Games

The Bowl Season has finally come for College Football.  Of course Arkansas is not in a bowl game this year since they went 2-10.  But with the hire of Sam Pittman for the Head Hog, the bowl season will be busy for him hiring a new staff and visiting recruits to get them to play for the program.  All we can hope for is that he can do his job well and put into work his plan for the team during the off-season and develop them.

There is not much to say now about Arkansas Football now.  Now I will do all of my picks for Bowl Season and for the NFL this week.  Last week I went 6 - 2 for College Football and 9-7 for NFL.  That brings my totals for College Football at 59 - 12 which is 83.1% and for the NFL is  at 33 - 22 which is 60% flat for the season.  Below will be my picks for Bowl Season and NFL Week 15.

College Football

December 14, 2019 is still Army vs. Navy.  Winner: Navy

Buffalo vs. Charlotte.  Winner: Buffalo
Utah St. vs. Kent St. Winner: Utah St.
Cent Michigan vs. SDSU. Winner: SDSU
Liberty vs. Georgia Southern. Winner: Georgia Southern
SMU vs. FAU. Winner: SMU
FIU vs. Arkansas St. Winner: Arkansas St.
Boise St. vs. Washington. Winner:  Boise St.
Appalachian St. vs. UAB.  Winner: Appalachian St.
UCF vs. Marshall.  Winner: UCF
Hawaii vs. BYU.  Winner: Hawaii
LA Tech vs. Miami. Winner: LA Tech
Pittsburgh vs. E Michigan.  Winner: Pittsburgh
North Carolina vs. Temple.  Winner: North Carolina
Michigan St. vs. Wake Forest.  Winner: Michigan St.
Oklahoma St. vs. Texas A&M.  Winner:  Texas A&M
USC vs. Iowa. Winner:  Iowa
Air Force vs. Washington St.  Winner:  Air Force
Memphis vs. Penn St.  Winner:  Penn St.
Notre Dame vs Iowa St. Winner:  Notre Dame
Oklahoma vs.  LSU.  Winner:  LSU
Clemson vs. Ohio St.  Winner:  Clemson
Western Kentucky vs. Western Michigan.  Winner:  Western Kentucky
Miss St. vs. Louisville.  Winner: Miss St.
Cal vs. Illinois.  Winner:  Cal
Florida vs. Virginia.  Winner: Florida
Virginia Tech vs. Kentucky.  Winner:  Kentucky
Florida St. vs Arizona St.  Winner:  Arizona St.
Navy vs. Kansas St.  Winner:  Kansas St.
Wyoming vs. Georgia St.  Winner:  Wyoming
Utah vs. Texas.  Winner:  Utah
Minnesota vs. Auburn.  Winner:  Auburn
Michigan vs. Alabama.  Winner:  Michigan
Oregon vs. Wisconsin.  Winner:  Oregon
Georgia vs. Baylor.  Winner:  Baylor
Boston College vs. Cincinnati.  Winner:  Cincinnati
Indiana vs. Tennessee.  Winner:  Tennessee
Ohio vs. Nevada.  Winner:  Ohio
Southern Miss vs. Tulane.  Winner:  Tulane
Louisiana vs. Miami (OH).  Winner:  Louisiana

According to my picks, the National Championship will be
LSU vs. Clemson.  Winner:  Clemson

My prediction for a few match-ups didn't do that well, but I still think that the College Football Playoff Championship game will still feature LSU vs. Clemson.  I pick Clemson because they've been there before and they really know what it takes to be #1.  Also,  LSU is currently #1 and the team picked to be #1 in the rankings after Championship Weekend has never won the National Championship before.  Looking back at all of the National Champions for each year and their ranking into the College Football Playoff before the semi-final games started:
2014:  Ohio St. with rank #4
2015:  Alabama with rank #2
2016:  Clemson with rank #2
2017:  Alabama with rank #4
2018:  Clemson with rank #2

There have only been #4s and #2s winning it all.  But we have #1 LSU vs #4 Oklahoma and #2 Ohio St. vs #3 Clemson.  I don't see Oklahoma nor Ohio St. beating LSU and Clemson.  So this year's winner could be the first #1 to win it or the first #3 to win it.  But Clemson has had the most experience in winning it all out of this group and Dabo Swinney really can get his guys ready to play anybody.

But,  I predict the Heisman winner this week to be Joe Burrow.

NFL

Jets vs Ravens.  Winner: Ravens
Broncos vs. Chiefs.  Winner: Chiefs
Rams vs. Cowboys.  Winner:  Rams
Patriots vs. Bengals.  Winner:  Patriots
Buccaneers vs. Lions.  Winner: Buccaneers
Bears vs. Packers.  Winner:  Packers
Texans vs. Titans.  Winner:  Titans
Dolphins vs. Giants.  Winner:  Giants
Eagles vs. Redskins.  Winner: Eagles
Seahawks vs. Panthers.  Winner:  Seahawks
Jaguars vs. Raiders.  Winner:  Raiders
Browns vs. Cardinals.  Winner:  Browns.
Vikings vs. Chargers.  Winner:  Vikings
Falcons vs. 49ers.  Winner:  49ers
Bills vs.  Steelers.  Winner:  Steelers
Colts vs. Saints.  Winner:  Saints.

Let's see how it all goes!  I'll be updating my progress on bowl games as it goes on.

The End of an Era and the Beginning of a New One

Razorback football has finally hired a new coach to replace Chad Morris.  His name is Sam Pittman.  He was the Offensive Lineman coach and the Associate Head Coach at Georgia from 2016-2019.  Before that, he had the same position at Arkansas from 2013-2015 under Bret Bielema.  For both times, he had a lot of responsibility involving recruiting at both programs.  He has built the reputation as "one of the best recruiters and Offensive Line coaches in the SEC" as it says on ESPN from Chris Low about Arkansas hiring Sam Pittman.  He rightfully so should be called one of the best recruiters and Offensive Line coaches given is track record.  The total number of players that have been drafted to the NFL that have played or were coached or recruited when Sam Pittman was on the Arkansas staff is 21.  To put that into perspective, there have been 22 Arkansas players drafted into the NFL since the 2014 NFL Draft.  That 1 other was David Williams who was a graduate transfer after Sam Pittman left. 

Out of those 21 players:

• 2 were 7th round draft picks
• 6 were 6th round draft picks
• 6 were 5th round draft picks
• 3 were 4th round draft picks
• 1 was a 3rd round draft pick
• 1 was a 2nd round draft pick
• 1 was a 1st round draft pick.

You can see that Sam Pittman has already impacted basically the entire draft classes for the Razorbacks into the NFL since he came in 2013.  His recruiting has been great for Arkansas when he was here and it has still made an impact when he left.  But of course a coach has to coach up his players just as well as recruiting them to be successful.  His specialty is the offensive line.  The bar graph below shows over the years from 2012 to 2019 of how many sacks the offensive line gives up each season and per game of that season.

Remember that Sam Pittman's time here was from 2013-2015 under Bret Bielema.  Another interesting bar graph to show Sam Pittman's impact over the years is the total amount of offensive yards gained and defensive yards given up by Arkansas per game during the 2012-2019 span.  Remember that Sam Pittman was here from 2013-2015.

 See how much of an impact he had during his time here?  Of course the 2013 season was the first year after a crummy season.  But you see for 2014 and 2015, the offensive yards per game are a lot more than the defensive yards given up.  Once things started to pick up during Sam Pittman's time here, things started to change a lot. The final bar graph that I'll show is probably the most shocking one that really shows the impact that he had with his short time here under Bret Bielema.  This next one shows the total amount of points that we scored per game and the total amount of points that we gave up per game for each season during the 2012-2019 span.  

Notice that the only times where we scored more points per game than points given up per game was in 2014 and 2015 during the best seasons of the Bret Bielema era which is when Sam Pittman was here.  It is crazy to see how much of an impact Sam Pittman had made when he was on the Arkansas staff.  Now he is the new head coach and I think that this is a great hire.  He has already been here before and has a lot of experience recruiting in the SEC.  All of his former players love him and he is great in developing players.  Just look up on Twitter about any former Arkansas players that knew Sam Pittman and they will tell you their love for him.  Check out his first press conference speech that he gave here.

You can just see how great of a coach he is and the kind of character he is.  He even gets emotional about getting the job here!  I even feel like playing for this guy because of his character.  It looks like he will immediately start to get some great players here and hire a great staff.  But of course don't expect his first year to be great.  Arkansas is in a huge hole now and so he needs a lot of work to do.  But he has already hired the offensive lineman coach from Mizzou and a 4-star recruit that originally put his name in the transfer portal after Chad Morris was fired has already taken his name out of it since Sam Pittman is the new coach.  The future looks great with Sam Pittman.  He could bring great change to a suffering program.  Just to remind you of how terrible that this program has gone, here's is a video from my youtube channel MathSportsGuy that shows the worst moments during the Chad Morris Era.

 The official end of the Chad Morris era is now taking place and the beginning of the Sam Pittman era has begun.  Woo pig!

The Force Part 2 (Nerd Post)

It is only 13 days until Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker comes out in theaters with the early screenings on Thursday of December 19, 2019.  I graduate with my Bachelor's of Science in Mathematics and a Minor in Secondary Education on December 21, 2019 from the University of Arkansas.  With all of this, it is just how I wanted to celebrate my graduation.  I already pre-paid for a 7:30 pm showing of The Rise of Skywalker at the Malco theater in Springdale, Arkansas.  I am a huge Star Wars fan so it is definitely on my mind a lot even though I like to mainly blog about College Football and the NFL and especially Arkansas Football.  But, the football season for Arkansas is over and Star Wars season is hitting into full swing.

I've done one of these "Nerd Posts" before for my post The Force (Nerd Post)  which is linked if you want to check it out quickly.  I mainly blog about football but I also have other nerdy tendencies that I like to talk about.  This will then be another one of those nerd posts that I do that is not related to sports or football.  Today, I am continuing to talk about the subject from my last nerd post which is The Force.

It has been on my mind recently about how the story of Star Wars is about bringing balance to the Force.  It probably doesn't mean that Thanos has to snap is fingers in order to bring balance to the Force, but there might be some elements from the movies that could suggest to something like that.  What I mean is that we probably still don't understand what bringing balance to the Force actually means.  Maybe that is why we have the Sequel Trilogy and then  we can get our answers after we watch The Rise of Skywalker.

Let me tell you so far about what the movies have told or perhaps shown us about bringing balance to the Force.  On Wookieepedia, you can find the prophecy about the Chosen One to bring balance to the Force.  It says that, "A Chosen One shall come, born of no father, and through him will ultimate balance in the Force be restored."  Also from Wookieepedia is a statement about what the Jedi believed to be "bringing balance" to the Force.  It says that, "The idea of balance of the Force, a central tenet of the Jedi Order, refers to the ideal state in which the Force exists in nature, i.e. as the light side.  The presence of the dark side corrupts and destroys this natural balance, and the Jedi viewed it as their duty to restore it."  These statements from Wookieepedia pretty much tell us the basic idea of what the Prequel Trilogy was going for.  We have Anakin who was found by Qui-Gon Jinn who saw that Anakin had a ton of potential in the Force.  Anakin had no father, so he was already matching descriptions of this Chosen One.  He was accepted into Jedi training and grew up to be a powerful Jedi.  But along the way, his mother was killed by Tusken Raiders and Anakin grew more and more influenced by the dark side.  He started to fear that his secret wife Padme could meet the same fate as his mother and eventually was influenced by the ideas of Darth Sidious.  He then turned to the dark side and became Darth Vader.

If you think that perhaps Anakin's descent to the dark side seemed a little to fast, then watch the Clone Wars series and you'll see many instances where he gets tempted and even tries something dark for a moment that will eventually build up his fall to the dark side.

By the end of the Original Trilogy, Darth Vader saves Luke from being killed by the Emperor. George Lucas says that Anakin brought balance to the Force since he killed the Emperor in terms of what the Jedi believed from the statement mentioned earlier from Wookieepedia.

Now we get to the Sequel Trilogy and we see that there is still a ton of unbalance to the Force still happening with the First Order and Kylo Ren and the Jedi Order is not restored.  This brings the question, "Did Anakin bring ultimate balance to the Force by killing the Emperor or does the prophecy still need to be fulfilled?"  I am thinking that the prophecy still needs to be fulfilled but in a way that is not how the Jedi Order believed it would be.  Remember from the statement that the Jedi believe that only having the light side is the ideal state of the nature of the Force.  But of course the Force also has a dark side or where would the Sith get their influence and powers from?  Perhaps it was the Jedi Order's lack of understanding the dark side is what brought their downfall?

I love how the Sequel Trilogy does also bring things from the Prequel Trilogy that helps tie up the entire saga's story.  An example is from a little excerpt from The Last Jedi.

Luke in this movie tells Rey how the Jedi were flawed and fell.  This is also Luke 30 years after the story of Return of the Jedi so he has had more experience understanding the Force.  This next video tells a lot about Luke's findings about the Force that the Jedi Order seemed to not integrate into their beliefs since they were the guardians of keeping the light side all around the galaxy.

What catches my eye is about how much Luke's first lesson about the Force had to do with balancing the light and dark sides.  We are able to see instances were the light side happens and also where the dark side compliments that light side.  I love this segment because it is really the first time in a Star Wars movie where we are being taught about that balance in the Force that involves having equal light with equal darkness to match it.  This for the first time shows that the light side needs the dark side in order for life to happen in the universe.

Luke also mentions that all hope is not lost in the universe when the Jedi are all gone.  He says that the Jedi don't own the Force which means the light side doesn't go away if the Jedi are gone.  Which would mean the same thing for the dark side as well.  Just because the Sith are gone or any other dark side users are gone doesn't mean the dark side is because the Force doesn't belong to them either.  It looks like since both the Jedi and Sith seem to think that the Force belongs to either of them is why there has been unbalance in the Force.  If you are wondering when the conflict of the Jedi and Sith started in Star Wars history, it was an event called the Hundred-Year Darkness.  Wookieepedia says this was dated "Thousands of years before the Clone Wars."  The Star Wars people who do all the writing seem to not have specific year in the Star Wars timeline of when it happened.  But, we see that it has been happening for a long time.  The Jedi and Sith keep killing each other for thousands of years and the problem has still not been solved.  We see also in the movies that in key moments whenever a Jedi is to kill a Sith or a dark side user, they tend to influence even more dark side instead of suppressing it like they think they could.  Here are some examples:

You see the pattern here now?  Mace Windu thinks he could destroy the Sith by killing Palpatine.  We get Darth Vader now.  Luke thinks for a moment of ending Ben Solo, but his mistakes leads to the creation of Kylo Ren.  It looks like the solution to balancing the Force is not to having the light side over power the dark side or to have the dark side to over power the light side.  They must both coexist and to have balance into the universe like what Luke was teaching Rey in their first lesson.

Now this all comes to my theories about The Rise of Skywalker.  Lucasfilm says that this is probably the last movie of the Skywalker story.  If this is so, I think that the solution for finally bringing balance to the Force will come.  The Sequel Trilogy has really focused on Rey and Kylo Ren.  There is a fan theory about them ending up together called Reylo.  I do see some truth to this but not the whole theory per say.  If you have watched the Sequel Trilogy movies recently, we notice the Force bond that Rey and Kylo have.  Ever since they have met on-screen in The Force Awakens, Rey seems to grow with her powers and they both seem to become equals in the Force.  They are probably destined to bring balance to the Force because they are the Force themselves.

Hear me out.  Have you noticed the clothing design for both Rey and Kylo for The Rise of Skywalker?

Kylo is all black like how it always is but Rey is now completely white in her clothing design.  This gives me vibes from seeing their relationship so far with the story and the new emphasis of balancing the force with equal light and equal darkness that they are going to bring the ultimate balance to the Force together.  The color and balance emphasis gets me thinking about Ying and Yang.

Ying and Yang refers to light and darkness coexisting with each other to bring balance with each other.  Notice that the light side has some darkness and that the dark side also has some light.  These both describe pretty well the personalities and actions of Rey and Kylo Ren.  Rey, the light, is very much light side but does have some dark tendencies.  Kylo, the darkness, is very much darkness but does have some light tendencies.  It seems that the Force's will is to now have these two to finally bring balance to the Force in the universe.  It seems to me that the story of Star Wars has been building to this balance.  

The Prequel trilogy shows that the light side was very heavy around and the dark side was small.  But then the purge of the Jedi came and brought the light and dark side more balanced.  Then the dark side became more lop-sided and so the end of the Original Trilogy brought to the end of the Empire which helped balance the light side and dark side out.  Luke tried to form the Jedi Order again but that failed.  Every time that one side of the Force lop-sides the scale, that side gets lowered.  Now it looks like that perhaps Rey and Kylo are the chosen manifestations of the light side and dark side of the Force.  They have to team together to bring ultimate balance and then I guess Star Wars finally ends the wars in the stars.  But this is all just theory of course.  We will all have to see what happens when The Rise of Skywalker comes out.  

Furthermore, this could still fulfill the Chosen One prophecy.  It says that there would be ultimate balance through the Chosen One.  Kylo is the grandson of Anakin and Kylo and Rey could be the ones to bring the balance.  Without Anakin, Kylo wouldn't exist in order to be the dark side entity to help the light, Rey, to bring balance.  But this is all just theory.  

I would accept comments about what you think so that we can share ideas as well.  But, let's all enjoy Star Wars because it is just such a great event.  What other movies have you watched where people cheer when they see the big "Star Wars" during the opening crawl? 

Another Conference Championship Weekend, Another Early Hogs Off-season

Another early off-season has come to the Arkansas Football program again for the 3rd season in a row.  This time around is another coaching search for the job vacancy again just like in 2017.  This time it just seems like we are in a bigger hole than we've ever been in before.  We went back-to-back 2-10 seasons and it just does not look pretty.  Our stadium is beautiful and state of the art, but the football team seems to not follow the same standard as of yet.  The Hogs ended the season with an offense that averaged 21.4 points per game (110th of 130 in the country) and the defense allowed 36.8 points per game (124th of 130 in the country).  Compared to last year's 2-10 season, offense scored 21.7 points per game (115th of 130 in the country) and the defense allowed 34.8 points per game (108th of 130 in the country).

For both the 2018 and 2019 seasons, our strength of schedule was 39th out of 130 in the country according to Matt Smith at SouthernPigskin.com.  Strength of schedule refers to how tough your schedule is according how good the opponents are.  With that in mind,  Arkansas' stats in 2018 were just a little better than 2019's even with the same strength of schedule.  This means 2019 was an even worse season than 2018 because there was apparently no progress happening.  This alone shows that Chad Morris had to be fired and the continued coaching search is happening now.  A good coach always shows some progress each year whenever he is given a job to "rebuild" a program which everyone was expecting him to do when he was hired around this time in 2017.  Just even a little progress would have been satisfactory.  He went 2-10 in 2018 for his first year.  If he went 4-8 this year by beating all of our non-conference opponents and at least competed in a lot of games for conference, we would've let him stayed because we saw progress happening.  But there was no progress happening and change needed to happen.  As the coaching search keeps happening, we keep hearing about Cincinnati's coach, Washington State's coach, Tulane's coach, Memphis' coach, and even FAU's coach who is Lane Kiffin.  I hope that whomever it is, that they are committed to staying here and building a great program.

If you know, I have a Youtube channel now called MathSportsGuy as well.  The below video are the top 5 plays from the 2019 season for Arkansas Football.  Even though the season was terrible, there were still some bright moments.

The Razorback football season is over and now we are onto Championship weekend.  After this week, the final College Football Playoff rankings will come to determine which top 4 teams will be in the playoff.  Last week I went 16-3 for College Football and 7-6 for the NFL.  My College Football record is now 53-10 which is 84.1% and my record for NFL is now 24-15 which is 61.5%.  Below will be my picks for this week:

College Football

Utah vs Oregon.  Winner: Utah
Baylor vs Oklahoma. Winner: Oklahoma
Louisiana vs Appalachian St.  Winner: Appalachian St.
Cincinnati vs. Memphis.  Winner: Memphis
Georgia vs. LSU. Winner: Georgia
Hawai'i vs Boise St. Winner: Boise St.
Virginia vs Clemson. Winner: Clemson
Ohio St. vs Wisconsin.  Winner: Ohio St.

Then on December 14 will be the Army vs Navy game.  Winner: Navy

I guess with my predictions for College Football, the final College Football Playoff rankings will be:
1. Ohio St.
2. Clemson
3. Georgia
4. LSU.
Just to have it on record for the playoff and I'm right:
Ohio St. vs LSU. Winner: LSU
Clemson vs. Georgia.  Winner: Clemson

National Championship:
LSU vs. Clemson.  Winner: Clemson

We will just see if what I think will happen!  Of course I'll change it if the outcome for this weekend is different.

NFL
Cowboys vs Bears. Winner: Cowboys
Chiefs vs Patriots. Winner:  Patriots
Panthers vs Falcons.  Winner: Falcons
Ravens vs Bills.  Winner: Ravens
Bengals vs Browns.  Winner: Browns
Redskins vs Packers.  Winner: Packers
Lions vs Vikings.  Winner: Vikings
49ers vs Saints.  Winner: Saints
Dolphins vs Jets. Winner: Jets
Colts vs Buccaneers.  Winner: Colts
Broncos vs Texans.  Winner: Texans
Chargers vs Jaguars.  Winner: Chargers
Titans vs. Raiders.  Winner:  Titans
Steelers vs Cardinals.  Winner: Cardinals
Seahawks vs Rams.  Winner:  Seahawks
Giants vs Eagles.  Winner:  Eagles