Going into the first weekend of the NFL playoffs, a few of my favorite books by Michael Lewis mixed with some news from the week make me wonder about the role of randomness in football.
Written by randomfool on January 6th, 2007 with
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I have been fascinated for a long time with the idea that answers to certain questions are sometimes hidden in plain sight. Or that ideas that are accepted as such common knowledge are so obviously incorrect or mistaken despite clear evidence that nobody seems to see or want to acknowledge. Two books by one of my favorite authors, Michael Lewis, offer interesting insight to this idea by using sports, another favorite topic of mine.
A former bond trader at Solomon Brothers, Lewis started his writing career with Liar’s Poker, a book that gave a behind-the-scenes look at some of the stuff that goes on on Wall Street, including a particularly nasty bond trading scandal that negatively affected a number of Wall Street big shots. (One of my other top all-time favorite books is When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein, essentially a follow-up to Liar’s Poker because it picks up the story of the same central character John Meriwether, the former Solomon trader that almost blew up the entire banking system after leaving Solomon starting a company called Long Term Capital Management only to be completely fooled by randomness!)
So, among other books after Liar’s Poker, Lewsi wrote and amazing book, Moneyball, which follows Oakland A’s General Manager, Billy Beane and tells the story of Beane’s use of statistics that are overlooked by most baseball experts to identify players that, while not fitting the traditional mold, managed to generate a lot of wins for the A’s for a lot less money than average teams. (A Beane prodigy later used the strategy with money to win the World Series for the Boston Red Sox which another prodigy tried and failed to implement the strategy for the Dodgers).
Lewis’ most recent book, The Blind Side (the Wikipedia link includes a link to an NPR interview with Michael Lewis), did the same thing for professional football that Moneyball did for baseball. Specifically, The Blind Side points out something that should have been very obvious but which isn’t always so obvious: the fact that the left tackle position is probably the second-most important position in professional footbal after the quarterback. I actually saw this in action earlier this year. I was at Qwest Field for a Seattle Seahawks home game against the St. Louis Rams. At one point in the game, Orlando Pace (who is mentioned in The Blind Side), St. Louis’ left takle was injured. And, almost immediately, the Seahawks attacked the left side and consistently were able to pressure Marc Bulger in the second half of the game after not being able to get to him much in the first half when Pace was still in the game. I was floored and probably would never have noticed that detail prior to reading The Blind Side.
A couple of items in the news and blogosphere this week made me think about this idea of things that are hidden in plain sight and their relationship to randomness. The first is an article in Slate Magazine by Robert Weintraub about the hidden role of centers in the NFL. Taking The Blind Side as a starting point Weintraub argues that centers actually put the other members of the offense, including the left takle, into position to make plays. Given that they start each play and are responsible for calling out assignments and making as many as three different takles during the lightning quick pace of an NFL play, I can’t argue with him. I do know, from watching Jay Cutler’s first few games where there were a number of fumbled snaps, that if the center and the quarterback are not in sync, the play can never evolve as planned. This is interesting to me because as much footbal as I watch, until I read The Blind Side, I just paid attention to the headline grabbing “skill position” players. With the playoffs starting today, I plan to spend more time watching this part of the game.
The other article that came to my attention and which touches on these topics was feature in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about a guy in Northern California who has a crazy good record of predicting sports outcomes to the point where it is upsetting the odds in Las Vegas and causing some online casinos to take their sites down while they adjust the odds. Since 1999, Bob Stoll has only had one year with a college football wagering record of less than the 52.4% rate against the spread needed to make money on sports wagering. Can he keep it going forever or will mean reversion eventually catch up to him? How much randomness is involved in his success?
Sports, and professional football in particular, involves a tremendous amount of randomness but I like being fooled by it. Close, high-stakes games are much more fun and interesting to watch than sitcoms, or any kind of TV really, or most movies. There is a reason why the NFL can make billions selling their product. While I don’t want to ruin the experience for myself, I still wonder often about the role of randomness in it.
Written by randomfool on January 6th, 2007 with
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Read more articles on General Folly and Randomness and Books.
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