… two college athletic teams with the same nickname could reach the sport’s championship? It happened last week at the College World Series when the Georgia Bulldogs faced the Fresno State Bulldogs. What are the odds? This is a question for one man: Our numbers specialist, Max Wasserman. Just missing out on the numbers gig: Us. In third grade, nobody beat us in multiplication tables. Ever.

After last week’s surprise championship victory by Fresno State in the College World Series, the college sports season has officially come to a close. For me, basketball and football aren’t all college sports have to offer in terms of enjoyment. I also follow college lacrosse, hockey, and wrestling, although it helps that those are the sports my school (ever heard of it?) is most competitive at. But even for the collegiate sports that I don’t have an investment in, like baseball, I still take pleasure in following them. And with last week’s College World Series final, watching it gave me the idea for this post.

As was mentioned several times during the three games of the CWS final, both teams involved, Fresno State and Georgia, had the nickname “Bulldogs”. Two teams with the same nickname meeting in a college tournament final does not happen very often. It’s only happened twice in Men’s Basketball, in 1951 (Kentucky over Kansas State) and 1997 (Arizona over Kentucky). This begs the question, what are the odds of two teams with the same nickname meeting in a collegiate tournament final?

To find out, I looked at the nicknames of Division I championship-eligible teams in four sports: basketball, hockey, baseball, and lacrosse. I also looked at D-I football teams in both the FBS and FCS subdivisions, as well as men’s volleyball, which only has one championship for all three divisions. I only looked at men’s sports in order to avoid complications with a school’s women’s teams having different nicknames than its men’s teams. Then, assuming everything random, I found the probabilities of two teams with the same nickname meeting in a championship final.

I actually found two different probabilities of same-nickname finals for each sport. The first probability strictly adheres to nicknames being exactly identical, so a NC State Wolfpack-Nevada Wolf Pack final would not count. The second probability is more lenient in terms of pronunciations and adjectives. In the latter case, NC State-Nevada would constitute a same-nickname final, as would a Baylor Bears-Cal Golden Bears final.

Anyway, here are the numbers:

chart

Anyone else not surprised that a cold-weather animal is the most popular nickname in D-I college hockey?

Obviously, assuming everything is random isn’t the most accurate predictor of finals pairings. We’ll be crowning Ronnie Belliard the National League MVP before we see an NCAA Basketball Championship game between Detroit Mercy and Cal State Fullerton. (Note that there still could be a future Ronnie Belliard.) But a more accurate probability cannot be calculated without predictions of each team’s performance. Which is why you can expect a revisit to this topic when more betting sites put out odds on college football teams reaching the 2009 BCS National Championship game.

One more thing about college nicknames. In my research for this post, I found what I believe to be the collegiate conference with the coolest nicknames. It is the Summit League and it consists of:

Centenary Gentlemen

IUPUI Jaguars

UMKC Kangaroos

North Dakota State Bison

Oakland (MI) Golden Grizzlies

Oral Roberts Golden Eagles

South Dakota State Jackrabbits

Southern Utah Thunderbirds

Western Illinois Fighting Leathernecks

And best of all, the IPFW Mastodons!

Should IPFW make the NCAA Tournament, the CBS graphics department must include a clip of Zack Taylor becoming the Black Power Ranger.

A team should really change their name to the “Sabre-toothed Tigers.€ I mean, what’s a Purple Ace anyway Evansville?