WGN Morning News Blog

For centuries, men have gathered in public places to ponder the great questions in life. At Le Procope coffeehouse in 18th century Paris, Voltaire asked the nature of God, and Benjamin Franklin pondered the issues of fair government. All well and good but, of course, that was before more exciting things---like football. At taverns in 21st century America, people debate whether the ’85 Bears could beat the 2004 Patriots, or whether Brian Urlacher is better than Dick Butkus.

As a philosopher might point out, those are unfair questions. But hold on---Diderot never had a laptop. A website called www.whatifsports.com gets to the bottom of such “what if” questions. By using lots of zeroes and ones in ways that most of us will never understand, you can now generate answers to some of the biggest questions in sports history: Is Bonds better than Ruth? Would the ‘96 Bulls beat the ‘86 Celtics?

Corey Lamb of Lake Forest, asked if the 1978 Steelers would beat the ’85 Bears. He simulated the match-up on www.whatifsports.com hundreds of times.

“It always comes out pretty close. You can match different years and eras on the computer that you can’t do in the corner bar,” Lamb said. “It allows you to have a printed piece of paper to say ‘this is what happened.’”

Why? Our passion for our team has been with us longer than even many of our closest friends.

“In our formative years we attach to them and we create heroes and we want them to be our heroes forever,” Lamb told me.

“So much of sports is the debate and camaraderie and attaching yourself to a team and community and group of other people,” said Paul Bessier of www.whatifsports.com. “It’s not just the team but the time period or the guy you appreciated more than others, the more you can associate with what you believe in, the better we feel about that.”

Bessier says the site has had 450,000 registered users in it’s simulated leagues since the site debuted in 2000.

Just for fun, I ran through each game of the Bears season to see how they would do. The simulation is based on 2006 stats but I figured it was close enough.

I matched the season projection from the folks of What-If and Sports Illustrated, with the Bears ending at 11-5.

The bad news: Rex Grossman’s projected ’07 stats were about what they were last year. They include 9 interceptions in the two Green Bay games.

The good news: While SI projected the Bears to lose in the playoffs, I had them in a thrilling come-from-behind victory in Superbowl XLII. The Bears suffer six sacks, but the defense holds Tomlinson to 75 yards and 0 touchdowns. The offense comes from a 16-0 half-point deficit with 16 fourth quarter points to win in overtime thanks to a Robbie Gould field goal from 48 yards out! Final score Bears 19 Chargers 16. Bears are Superbowl champs!

But that’s not really doing www.whatifsports.com justice. The experts are already doing their 2007 projections and they run each game 61 times to find an average.

So while I have the Bears beating San Diego Sunday 38-30 on my one simulation, What-If has San Diego winning by an average of 25-15. The Chargers won 53% of the simulated games. This means the Bears still have an even chance of winning, but if they win, it won’t be by much, which is important for people engaged in gambling (for fun.)

How can they pick for ’07 with so many unknowns---new coaches, rookies etc.?

They look at stats from college, and compare performances from players who have come out of similar college programs to see how they did in the NFL their rookie year.

Bessier says over the last two seasons, his staff has accurately projected the winner of NFL games 69% of the time straight up and 58% of the time against the spread.

But as the site attempts to end great sports debates of legend, its simulations also stimulate more debate. For those passionate fans who don’t like the results of 61 simulated games, they can always play dozens more, until their favorite team is finally a winner for the ages.