Quuuuuuuue

This makes me really happy:
from Adam Lucas on Tar Heel Blue:
"• Quentin Thomas had seven assists and three turnovers. He was making his sixth consecutive start at point guard. In the last seven games (including the Florida State game in which Ty Lawson got hurt), Thomas has 46 assists, 23 turnovers and 56 points. He is averaging 6.6 assists in those seven games. His assist-error ratio of 2 to 1 is the best among all ACC point guards in the last seven games. Thomas has seven or more assists in five of the six games in which he has started this year."

The best assist-turnover ratio among all ACC PGs in the last 7 games!? Wow, Q has come so far and I am so happy for him. UNC is winning, Q is playing great. I wish I could be there for Senior Night to wish him well. The teams really seems to have gotten behind him and has been playing great lately.

UNC Basketball Museum

Today, I visited the recently opened Carolina Basketball Museum, just a couple buildings away from the Dean Dome. It's a very fancy place with all sorts of memorabilia and highlights. Admittedly, parts are a bit cheesy, but it's definitely the first museum to get me teary-eyed reliving all my favorite plays over the years. It was funny to watch other people watching highlights too, and see their reactions to games played over a decade ago, like the guy shouting, "Oh come on, Montross, get that ball!"

Overall, it's a fun place. As my sister said, "This is first time I've actually enjoyed going to a museum!"

For me, one surreal part of the experience was watching footage from the 2005 championship game. I completely missed this game and most of the 2005 season while overseas, so I had followed their progress from game recaps, but had never seen the highlights before. For the first time, I got to see Felton's key steal and free throws that sealed the game, as well as some other highlights. I couldn't believe that I had really never seen any of that before. Almost every Carolina fan except for me has vivid memories of that game and the celebration afterwards, but all I remember is waking up the next day and reading the espn.com recap and box score and then being really happy and smiling hard. I was particularly proud of Sean May's stats and how this final game consummated his development into a complete beast. But it was a little awkward because I couldn't even shout or get too excited in my room because no one else even knew what college hoops were. I tried to explain how happy I was to my apartment mates, but they were like "Uh, good for you!...I guess." Although I was very happy about the championship, I feel like I missed what a lot of my fellow UNC students consider their favorite college memory.

Besides my memories from reading espn.com the day afterward, most of my happy memories come from reading the Daily Tar Heel front page spread, which was posted on the wall of my psych lab, about a year after the game. I remember being unusually fascinated by the paper, like the Sean May fist pumping photo where it looks like his jersey in in his mouth, and the Felton pullout quote about his key steal and free throws. It was all a little foreign, but I could just happily stare at that poster completely fascinated by the emotions on the faces of the players and coaches.

This comparison is pretty extreme, but it'd kind of be like going into a coma in 1968, then waking up in 1973, and completely missing all of the lunar landings. You read about it and see pictures of joyous people celebrating and astronauts with moon rocks. Then a few years later, you happen to see actual footage of the guys bouncing on the moon and people celebrating, and you think, "Wow, that's what it was like!" followed by "...too bad I totally missed it. I wonder if it'll happen again sometime so I can celebrate too..."

Let's hope for the best!

Virginia Tech - UNC

UNC played one of it's best games of the entire year, even though the team was shorthanded, toppling Virginia Tech 92-53. Since I just had a post about UNC's offensive and defensive efficiency, I figured I would mention this game since it was notable. Offensively, UNC was back at its average with an efficiency of 116.4. Defensively, we easily had our best game of the year with a season low efficiency of 67.1 A lot of that was due to the fact that Virginia Tech played terribly, but perhaps some was due to improved defense.

Obama Catching Up

If you've read the news lately, you've heard about how Obama is crushing Clinton in one state after another, having swept 8 of the last 8. This is very impressive; however, the race is still quite close. The AP delegate count favors Obama 1,275 to 1,220; the more conservative NY Times count favors Obama too with a margin of 934 to 892. The media have played up the closeness of the race for quite some time, but until the last few weeks, Clinton was far ahead nationally.

Here is a look at his dramatic rise over the last month and a half:

clipped from www.pollster.com

Even in the beginning of January 2008, a mere month and a half ago, Clinton was ahead by about 20 percentage points nationally. According to this recent polling data, they are basically tied, although Obama may have a slight edge. This month, there are two more Democratic primaries, both occuring February 19th. They are in Hawaii (29) and Wisconsin (92 delegates). Though Wisconsin should be very close, Obama is favored to win both at this point; however, when all is said and done, the delegates will be split fairly evenly between both candidates.

Although Obama has some momentum going, Clinton is banking on the next few delegate-heavy states to take a lead. However, her lead in these has been shrinking too:

On March 4, there are four major primaries, the two largest are Ohio (161 delegates) and Texas (228 delegates). Obama has made serious inroads into Clinton's huge lead, but has yet to catch her.

In Ohio:

clipped from www.pollster.com

In Texas:

clipped from www.pollster.com

Further out, there is a Pennsylvania primary on April 22 with 188 delegates at stake. Here, Obama has has yet to cut into Clinton's lead:

clipped from www.pollster.com

The other big issue is the 796 superdelegates, important individual party members who each count as a delegate themselves. About 300 of these have committed to a candidate so far, a ratio of about 2:1 in favor of Clinton. There is some talk that the Democratic superdelegates will, in the end, all align with whomever wins the most delegates in the state by state match up to avoid taking democracy out of the process. At this point, it seems unlikely that either candidate will be able to garner the 2,025 delegates necessary to win the nomination based solely on the results of the state primaries and caucuses. We'll have to wait and see how the primaries go, and if that's still inconclusive, see what the Democratic superdelegates decide. I think it's generating excitement and I think it'll be be nice for some states (like North Carolina, perhaps) to have a say in the nomination.

The Lawson Effect

Ty Lawson of the UNC basketball team has missed several games this season and he is currently injured. UNC clearly hasn't played as well with him gone. Points per game have gone down and turnovers have gone way up. Let's have a little look into how he affects the Heels from a statistical point of view.

The best place to start is with Ken Pomeroy because he runs an excellent college basketball statistics site. I have taken the follow numbers from his UNC Game Plan page

Here is a chart I made detailing UNC's offensive (pink) and defensive (blue) efficiency. Efficiency is basically a measure of how many points you score per possession. You want a high offensive efficiency and a low defensive efficiency (points allowed per possession).


As you can tell, the last couple of games, Lawson has been missing and the offensive and defensive efficiencies are nearly equal, and the scores reflect that as we've played very close games. There is also a large drop in offensive efficiency in late November when Lawson missed games against BYU and Ohio State (he played 2 minutes against BYU before being injured, so I'm not counting it).

To better determine Lawson's effect on the team, lets look at the overall season averages, conference averages, averages with Lawson, and averages without Lawson. Any game where Lawson only played a few minutes and then left due to injury was counted as game without him. Explanation of the columns is available here.

		Offense
	Pace	Eff.	eFG%	TO%	OR%
Sea. avg	76.36	115.48	52.26	18.42	42.26
ACC avg	75.00	110.92	49.16	19.03	41.86
w/Lawson	77.26	119.98	54.01	17.67	43.52
w/oLawson	73.50	101.25	46.72	20.82	38.28

	Defense
	Eff.	eFG%	TO%	OR%	FTR
Average	94.05	48.32	20.96	28.40	23.71
ACC	100.49	48.92	17.07	29.63	24.57
w/Lawson	93.97	49.08	22.08	28.45	25.27
w/oLawson	94.32	45.92	17.40	28.23	18.75

This offers some more insight into where Lawson matters most. Here are some of the notable differences in playing without Lawson:
On Offense:
- UNC has about 4 fewer possessions per game
- UNC's offensive efficiency is much lower, going from about 1.20 points per possession with him to only 1.01.
- Effective field goal percentage (values 3 point shots 50% more than 2 pointers) drops from 54.01 to 46.72
- The number of possessions on which we turn the ball over increases from 17.67% to 20.82%.
- One thing that is a bit confusing is that with Lawson, a 5'11'' point guard, we do a better job of collecting offensive rebounds than without him: 43.52% to 38.28%
- Our free throw rate is about the same on offense, 40.31 with Lawson to 39.63 without him.

On Defense:
- Our defensive efficiency is about the same, 93.97 with to 94.32 without
- Curiously, opponents shoot better when Lawson is playing: 49.08% with to 45.92% without.
- However, opponents turn it over more frequently against Lawson: 22.08% with to 17.40% without
- Opponents have the same offensive rebounding rate with or without Lawson playing; however, they do have a slightly better free throw rate when Lawson plays.

Conclusions:
Obviously, we're really hurting offensively without Lawson. Anyone watching recent games could tell you that. It's impressive that almost all of our offensive numbers are better (except FTR) with him playing, even offensive rebounding.

On the other hand, our team doesn't seem to be suffering much from his absence on the defensive end. UNC doesn't create quite as many turnovers and opponents make more free throws, but their field goal percentage drops.

On the whole, the extra playing time for Quentin Thomas may help to make UNC a more complete team in the future. From here on out, all the games are against high quality competition.

The Searchers

Since love is in the air on Valentine's Day, here is a fun little video. I can't believe I had never heard this song until Monday. It's a classic:

Comparing "1/2 Hour" with the Daily Show

There are several key differences between the FoxNews "1/2 Hour News Hour" and The Daily Show. As I mentioned in the last post, The Daily Show uses actual people and has them defend their beliefs, as well as criticizing both conservatives and liberals. One other major difference is that The Daily Show uses actual news clips and critiques them, catches people in lies, and makes a point of showing dishonesty and prejudice. Here is one such example of TDS using actual footage to demonstrate a point about how Republicans are attacking Democrats. Note that Jon Stewart analyzes the way Romney presents his resignation speech (around the 2 minute mark, Stewart begins addressing Romney's resignation speech, and at about the 3 minute mark, he gets the part about the Democrats):


Now this is a nice piece of journalism that catches Romney implying that supporting the Democrats is akin to supporting the terrorists. This is downright offensive to Democrats and completely unsupported by evidence. By broadcasting this clip and analyzing it closely, Stewart is holding Romney accountable for his claims. He then goes on to address Romney's claims about faith in god and how that affects a country's government.

The viewers have been primed and are now ready to bash Mitt Romney for his comments. The Daily Show then segues into a segment with Jason Jones in which they discuss Mitt Romney being a douchebag.



I suppose it's also worth noting that The Daily Show at least shows some self-deprecation and Jones calls himself a douchebag, as well as Jon Stewart. Clearly, had The Daily Show not preceding the Jason Jones segment with clips of Romney demonizing Democrats, it would have come across as baseless slander. Instead, I think most viewers feel little sympathy for Romney.

If the "1/2 Hour" program wanted, they could use a similar format to promote conservative ideas. For instance, one major claim of conservative media is that mainstream media has a liberal bias. So, the "1/2 Hour" could try to find clips that demonstrate liberal media bias and analyze them. They could show clips to present evidence to the audience, and then crack jokes. However, I have not found any clips of "1/2 Hour" using real media segments. Here is one way in which FoxNews has promoted the idea of liberal media bias:


I think that this segment could be much stronger if they could actually find a clip of a reporter blatantly demonstrating liberal media bias. If liberal media bias is as rampant as conservatives claim, it shouldn't be too hard to find. Instead, they go straight for the jokes. As for actual evidence, they do loosely paraphrase a Democrat, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, who did say that if the surge works, it'll be a problem for the Democrats to pass legislation to set a timetable to end the war. True, what Clyburn said wasn't particularly well phrased, but it was taken out of context. However, FoxNews can't claim this as evidence of liberal media bias since he is a Democrat and not part of the media.

All told, it is a weak attempt to demonstrate liberal bias in the media. Most critical viewers watching this FoxNews program will not be able to take it seriously or consider it a watchdog program on par with the Daily Show without some evidence. Perhaps that's why it didn't last very long.

FoxNews: 1/2 Hour News Hour

As I mentioned in the last post's comments, the FoxNews channel briefly had a satire show called the "1/2 Hour News Hour," which was, in the words of creator Joel Surnow, meant to be a sort of "Daily Show for conservatives." So I looked up the show online to see what it was actually about and see how it and the Daily Show compare. I found a couple of clips for you to look at; I chose these based on what I could find on Youtube and won't take up too much of your time.

This first one is about Barack Obama.

As you can see, the show gets humor by mentioning things like his drug use as a teenager, a Marion Berry reference, making up a nickname "Gassy," his middle name Hussein, his initials BO, etc. The Daily Show also makes fun of stupid things, like Condoleezza Rice's name ("a starchy side dish often served with beans"). However, the Daily Show also regularly makes fun of Democrats, and recent examples include Hillary Clinton and Edward Kennedy. I have yet to see a single criticism of conservatives on this FoxNews show. Once again, this is based on a small sample of clips that I've seen.

The Daily Show and Colbert Report frequently have real conservatives on their shows and press them to defend their opinions and actions. John McCain and Bill Kristol are two of the most frequent Daily Show guests. I haven't seen any real people defend their beliefs on the "1/2 Hour News Hour," only actors. The only "guests" seem to be caricatures of liberal opinions.



I think that this show could have done a much better job by actually interviewing a gun control activist and trying to find holes in his argument.

Here is another, similar example:


The Daily Show or Colbert Report would actually interview real authors, both conservatives and liberals.

Although I don't find these clips particularly entertaining or funny, I do think that it is valuable to see them. As I watch them, I can pick out tons of things I disagree with or think are plain irrelevant or irreverent. Being able to recognize this issues can help you to look at The Daily Show with a more critical eye. Not all that Jon Stewart says is perfect and not everything they make fun of is deserving of criticism. For instance, making fun of CNN's Election Center and all of their fancy television screens and floating pie charts isn't very useful, nor is it funny. Sure, CNN may be a little proud of their fancy studio, but that doesn't mean they're doing a bad job of reporting. In the next post, I'll directly compare a couple of clips from The Daily Show and 1/2 Hour News Hour.

Television News - Comedy Central's Take

As far as I can tell, there are a variety of "watchdogs" out there that attempt to hold the media responsible for their mistakes. I think that they have been somewhat successful; however, there is still room for improvement. I think that one example of a major success of these groups has been identifying FoxNews as a conservative network, and then increasing public awareness of this fact. Nowadays, it is fairly common knowledge that FoxNews has a conservative take on the news. Two popular media watchdogs are the Colbert Report and Daily Show.

My favorite parts of the Daily Show and Colbert Report are when they hold people accountable. The shows are similar, so I'll pull an example from the Daily Show. For instance, in this clip (go to the 3:05 mark), FoxNews' Chris Wallace brings up the fact that his employer has just hired Karl Rove. Wallace then asks if Jon Stewart has any questions that he would like to ask him. Stewart replies, "Does lying feel bad?" For the rest of the clip, Jon Steward makes Wallace ends up regretting that he even mentioned Rove. It is clear that Wallace and FoxNews aren't going to ask Rove any tough questions about his dealings with the Valerie Plame scandal or anything else. In my opinion, this is The Daily Show at it's best. It's funny, edgy, and it makes a point.

The shows often have insightful political analysis and dig out the truth when other places are too timid. On the other hand, sometimes I feel like the shows are wasting my time. For instance, the recent Colbert-Stewart-Conan O'Brian feud about who made Huckabee was not even very funny. Okay, it was a little funny. But the point was to kill time because they don't have any writers; I didn't feel like I learned anything useful. Filler pieces like that don't do it for me. There's a whole world outside the US that I could be learning about. In general, American news is way to US-centric. I realize Comedy Central's goal is to be funny and not edgy, and I'm not going to hold Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert responsible for my education, but I wish they had found a better way to use the time.

Derek Jeter's Tax Evasion

Basically, Derek Jeter, you disappoint me. You work for the NY Yankees, you have an apartment in Manhattan, and yet you claim to be a Florida resident so that you can avoid paying NY state income taxes (Florida has no state income tax). You've been the face of the NY Yankees franchise since 1996, yet you have the audacity to call Florida your home. This is a classic example of the rich finding ways to skirt around the laws, getting away with things only the rich can do, like having an off-season home in an income tax free state. I understand that the article says that the NY tax officials and Jeter reached a settlement, but that just means that they made a secret deal to smooth things over; they can't tell us the terms of the settlement because they say it's a privacy issue. I feel the public has a right to know.

As the article points out, Jeter makes well over $11-14 million dollars per year, strictly in pay from the Yankees, and not including his various endorsements. Jeter spends the bulk of his season in NY, taking advantage of infrastructure, sanitation services, and many more things that New Yorkers pay for with their taxes. Considering that New York, which has the country's biggest media presence, has played a major role in Jeter's national popularity, doesn't he owe it to the city and state to pay his taxes there? I hope that whatever settlement was reached, Jeter is paying up for his missing NY taxes. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if Florida taxes him either; I'm sure a lot of other people are getting away with the same thing. Maybe they can just make a state income tax on anyone making over $1 million per year. That ought to slow down such undercutting of the law in other states, give Florida some extra income, and not irritate too many Florida tax payers.

Recommendations for Reading This Blog

One important recommendation I have to anyone who would like to keep up with updates to this blog is that you use a feed reader. Please just hear me out and read through this entire entry; don't panic. Using a feed reader can change the way you read blogs, web comics, news, and other internet media.

A feed reader (also called an aggregator) is used to subscribe to the news feed (technically called an RSS feed) of a blog. These feed readers are typically websites (but some are full-fledged computer programs) that allow you to create an account and then begin subscribing to blogs that interest you. In this way, you can create your own personalized newspaper. The feed reader will maintain a list of blogs to which you are subscribed, and will check to see when those blogs are updated. When those blogs are updated with new entries, your feed reader homepage will update automatically; next time you log in to your homepage, you will see which blogs have been updated, and then may decide if you'd like to read them or not. You will not be inundated with emails or bombarded with notifications.

This is a very convenient way to follow blogs, web comics, and news sources, especially ones that are updated irregularly. Almost all blogs and many columnists have RSS feeds on their sites, allowing you to subscribe to them. You can subscribe to hundreds (maybe thousands?) of blogs with a feedreader. Rather than surfing around to your favorite news sources and blogs to see if they've been updated, you can go to one convenient page and check to see where the updates are. This saves a lot of time if you normally check multiple websites or have friends that blog irregularly (as I probably will here). It's sort of like email; you can read it when you want, or never even have to open it if you don't feel like it.

If you're on board with trying this out, then here are a couple of feed readers. You only need one. I'd recommend one of these web-based reader so that you can access it on any computer with internet access.
- Bloglines
- Google Reader

Both of those websites have instructions explaining how you subscribe to different websites and such. If you still have questions, here are two more sites with help:
One
Two

The State of Television News

You don't have to look too far to see people bemoaning the state of television news. In particular, I noticed this amazing chart on my dad's blog:

clipped from www.flickr.com

Click here for big, readable version

This pretty much says it all: Tons of commercials, lots of fluff reporting, and not much important news. Interestingly enough, shortly afterward, my dad applied the parental control setting to block the CNN Headline News. I think that the only other channels he blocks are FoxNews and the TV Guide channel.

This graph got me thinking: maybe what we need, in order to improve the quality of television news is some quantitative analysis like this chart. Then we can find out which channels report the most important news most consistently, and hand out some recognition for the highest performers. Once you start keeping score (aka measuring performance, as Gawande would say), people start caring about how well they're doing.

What sort of quantitative analysis of the television news is out there? I've spent some time searching, but haven't found much. I checked some of the electronic journalism awards, like the prestigeous Peabody Award or the Emmy Award. Here's what I found:

Peabody:
"The Award is determined by one criterion – "Excellence.'"
That's pretty ambiguous and doesn't rely on any sort of objective data. Many valuable programs have received them, but it focuses on individual programs rather than networks. What I really care about here is evaluating the networks as a whole.

Emmy Awards:
Again, these awards emphasize individual programs instead of overall network quality. "News and Documentary" Emmy Awards are not considered "Prime Time" Emmy awards, but instead have their own ceremony, the "Annual News & Documentary Awards," and they are broadcast on C-Span, so obviously the whole world is watching.

The website does offer, however, a breakdown of which networks receive the most awards:

clipped from www.emmyonline.org

The numerical breakdown by award recipients, by broadcast, cable and broadband entities, as compiled by the independent accountancy firm of Lutz & Carr LLP, follows:

PBS	9		freep.com (Detroit Free Press)	1
CBS	5		mediastorm.org	1
Discovery Channel	3		National Geographic	1
NBC	3		pbs.org/frontlineworld	1
HBO/Cinemax	2		sfgate.com (San Francisco Chronicle)	1
ABC	1		VH1	1
CNN	1		WE tv	1
Documentary Channel	1

As you can see, PBS won the most in 2007, a non-commercial network. I have been unable to find much other quantitative information about television news, at least from casual internet searches, though I have not yet looked in scholarly journals. Clearly, from most networks' point of view, what defines success for them is Nielson ratings. High ratings mean more advertising revenue. This means that it is in the networks' interest to put out attention-grabbing programs and news rather than important news. So what is attention grabbing? Often news about Britney Spears and other celebrities, also known as "fluff."

As long as we continue to consume the fluff voraciously, they will keep serving it to us. Given human nature, I'm pretty our interests in celebrities and such isn't going to disappear.

So what can we do to make networks be more useful, educating Americans on important topics? Well, one option is to grade the networks, particularly using quantitative measures. If you could give awards for "Most focus on news," "The Least Fluff," and "The Fewest Commercials," you might be able affect viewership to some degree, which would affect ratings. Even if you can't effect any real change right away, I think that simply having information out there about the quality of different networks would be of interest to consumers. Right now, for instance, I have no idea which networks have the most news, least fluff, and fewest commercials, but I'd be more likely to watch one that fit those criteria.

Part of the problem now is that no one really knows these things, so every network claims to be the best, most trusted, etc. No one can really argue since, apparently, nobody knows the truth.

I'll write more about this topic and media accountability in the future, in particular, comparing this grading system idea to what other watchdog groups do, such as Media Matters and Crooks and Liars, and even the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Summary of Superbowl XLII

"Mike Tyson would say everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face" - Michael Strahan

Pretty much sums up what the Giants did to Tom Brady and the Patriots.

About this Blog

My dad encouraged me to read Atul Gawande's "Better," which is a great book. The book focuses on improving performance in medicine and shows how this can be incredibly valuable, yet it is often overlooked. At the end, he has several recommendations for becoming a "positive deviant." One of them is to write. So that's what I'm doing. Actually, I'm basically completely copying my dad, who also started a blog after reading the book. Naturally, part of Gawande's point is to get people to write about how to improve performance, so I plan on doing that too; however, I plan to write about whatever topics happen to interest me, like the Superbowl, UNC basketball, and politics too.

clipped from www.chron.com

Thoughts on Superbowl XLII (42)

This game reminded me very much of the XXXVI (36) game with the Patriots and Rams. The Rams were huge favorites, but the Patriots outplayed them and won, much to my surprise. It basically served as the Patriots debut as a dynasty, and no one ever heard much from the Rams again. Could the Giants be beginning a dynasty as the Patriots crumble?

Well, it's difficult to say, but I don't really think so. Just because history happened once doesn't mean it will repeat itself, though it might. Eli Manning played the best football of his young career during these playoffs. He seems to have earned the respect of his teammates and perhaps his regular season numbers will begin to rise next year. It appears that they'll be pretty good for the next few years at least, but winning the Superbowl requires beating a lot of great teams.

It's hard to see the Patriots losing too much though. The Rams were decimated by injuries in seasons after their last Superbowl, and their defense fell apart. I suppose it's possible here, but the Patriots, assuming they keep their key players, could find themselves at 18-0 next year too. I doubt it will happen in such pretty fashion, but I think they'll be pretty good.

2/5/08 Update: I suppose that one other issue I meant to touch on was that of the Patriot's demeanor. As Randy Moss said, "I think their intensity, from the beginning snap of the game until the end, was really higher than ours." If you can't get excited about being in the Superbowl, that's a bad sign (obviously very insightful). As Bill Simmons pointed out, in Superbowl XXXVI, Tom Brady started head-butting Drew Bledsoe in the tunnel before the game because he was so psyched to be there. After they won the game, he had this look of "I can't believe this." This year, it would have been weird for the Patriots to be so elated and surprised about winning; after all, it was expected since the beginning of the season. Certainly can't imagine Tom Brady screaming and jumping for joy had he won this one. Fighting for those moments of pure joy is what keeps people going when the going gets tough. If you aren't going to experience that elation or vindication, you might not work as hard to get there.

clipped from bp1.blogger.com

Wonder if we'll see this "I can't believe it" face again

Roads to Glory: Hardest Path to the Superbowl (recently)

It was an impressive performance by the entire Giants team, taking out the 18-0 Patriots. The Giants playoff run was incredible.

Complete records of the teams the Giants beat (all road games except Superbowl):
9-7 @Tampa Bay
13-3 @Dallas
14-3 @Green Bay
18-0 Patriots

That's a combined record of 54-13 (.806). I did a little bit of research of recent years and found out that the 2005 Steelers played teams (all on the road too) with the combined record of 54-13 also. The Steelers were a slightly better team in the regular season, going 11-5 compared to the Giants 10-6. So what the Giants did wasn't unprecedented, but still very hard. Also, I give the Giants a slight edge in level of difficulty for defeating the 18-0 Patriots because the Steelers were actually 4 point favorites in their Superbowl against the 15-3 Seahawks.

Record of playoff competition in en route to winning Superbowl:
2007 Giants: 54-13 (.806)
2006 Colts: 51-17 (.750)
2005 Steelers: 54-13 (.806)
2004 Patriots: 44-8 (.846)
2003 Patriots: 41-13 (.759)
2002 Buccaneers: 37-15 (.712)
2001: Patriots: 41-11 (.788)

After that point, I stopped researching. However, it is worth noting that the 2004 Patriots faced the competition with the best record, though they only played 3 games, one at home, one away, and the Superbowl.
Competition faced by the Patriots, who were a 14-2 team in the regular season:
13-4 Colts
16-1 @Steelers
15-3 Eagles

To compare the 2007 Giants with the 2004 Patriots, we'll throw out NY's wildcard road game against Tampa Bay so that they have three games a piece: the division playoff, league championship, and Superbowl. Then the record of NY's competition is 45-6 (.882), with two of those games on the road. Since NY had to play four playoff games instead of 3 like the Patriots, it becomes abundantly clear that NY faced a much more difficult path to winning the Superbowl than any team in recent years.