The Nostalgia of Backyard Football 2002

I grew up playing Backyard Sports. Backyard Baseball 2001 was my first video game, and I've played every sport Humongous Entertainment made (except for hockey). As much as I love both Baseball 2001 and 2003, Football 2002 will forever be my favorite of all-time. And although we're all 21+ and seniors in college, my friends and I still regularly play it... And often debate who should be the first overall pick: Pablo Sanchez or Pete Wheeler. Pablo is the best all-around player (and Deadspin determined he was on steroids??) in all of the games, but you draft Pete first and this is why:

You can outrun everybody on the field every time you touch the ball. Admittedly, the computer difficulty for Football is pretty easy, and even though I (purposely) drafted a mediocre team (with Pete as the star), I've gone 46-0 over 3 seasons, easily scoring 100+ (see additional screenshots at bottom).

However, even in a video game there's variance, as is evident by the fact that 2 games before the 218-6 shellacking shown above I only won by 2 (in the rain) on a late Ricky Johnson field goal. So how can I determine the probability I've gotten this far without a loss?

While a game intended for 12-year-olds may not exactly be analogous to the NFL, estimating my team's Pythagorean Expectation is one estimation technique I can try. I've scored 3059 points for and given up 565 over the 46 games, resulting in Pyth = 0.9821. On average I should be playing an average team (by definition), so I can generate my win probability via Log5 for a game against a .500 team, resulting in a 98.21% chance of victory for a typical game (exactly equal to my Pythagorean Expectation). This results in a 43.50% chance that I've gone 46-0.

Alternatively, if I assume I have a 50/50 chance of being where I am at 46-0 (for lack of any mathematical justification for a higher or lower figure), I had a 98.50% chance of victory in each game. The Log5-generated probability using my Pythagorean Expectation was extremely close to this figure.

Honestly the likelihood I win any given game is probably very near 1. Use "Outside Handoff" to run the ball with Pete or throw a Hail Mary to him every play and you won't lose (against the computer). That's why he's the first pick. I will acknowledge, however, that Pablo has the greatest walk-up music of all-time.

More examples of domination, featuring Pete Wheeler: