bad statistics are really retardo

so I'm reading an article (you can try to find it here, but the link might be broken by now) by Stewart Mandel, a normally very reliable writer for SI.com. he is explaining how unlikely it is that NDSU (go Bison!) beat Wisconcin on Saturday. I take exception to Mandel's use of scurrilous statistics to support his claim that home court advantage is most significant for men's college basketball. here's the relevant portion:

homecourt advantage plays a bigger role than in any other major sport.

not sure what he means by "major sport", or if college basketball is a major sport; I guess it's paying his bills, but is it bigger than golf? bigger than NASCAR? Is NASCAR a sport? I digress...

Entering Saturday's games, Big Ten teams had won 90.2 percent of their home games this season. Jeff Sagarin factors in a 3.8-point advantage for home teams in his college basketball computer ratings, higher than he does for the NFL (3.51), NBA (2.98) or college football (2.48).

Let's compare apples to apples here, Stewie: Do the scores of home teams in the NFL and home teams in college basketball equal approximately the same number? No. Is the overall average home score for D1 men's basketball in the same ballpark as the average home score for an NBA game? it's probably closer, but no. The notion of comparing college football and basketball home scores is so retardo i'm not even going to consider it here. You get the idea.

So Stewart's point, that the home-team point advantage somehow indicates that college basketball teams have more of an advantage, than, say, an NFL home team, is silly, because what is relevant is not the total point advantage, but what percentage of the points that advantage represents. 3 points is a lot in football. You might score 21 points, and that field goal was 14% of your total output. In a college basketball game you might score 60 points (if you play slowly), and that 3 points? it's 5% of your output. Which is a long way from 14%, and which means that you're just making stuff up.

okay if you're still reading you're either a huge geek or my mom. thanks.