Blatant Homerism: Moneyball myths in college football
Since author Michael Lewis published Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game about the 2002 Oakland Athletics, the term “moneyball” has been incorporated into our everyday lexicon well past the point of overuse.
Like much of Lewis’ other work, Moneyball tells the story of a maverick defying conventional wisdom to gain a competitive advantage. In this case, Lewis’ protagonist was Billy Beane, the A’s general manager who built a division-winning Major League Baseball team on a tiny budget. Similar to value-oriented investors, Beane and the A’s tried to stretch their dollars by acquiring players they deemed to be mis-priced by the market. The book documents Beane’s uniquely data-driven approach to roster construction over the objections of the organization’s professional talent scouts.
The landscape of college football resembles pro baseball in that teams are working with dramatically different pools of resources – a reality that forced Beane and the Oakland front office to get creative with their spending back in the day. Now that college football teams are allowed to compensate players, the principles that animated the moneyball revolution in baseball could seem appealing in personnel departments around college football. But is it even possible for a college team to replicate it?
In building the 2002 A’s squad, Beane relied on the statistical analysis of his lieutenant Paul DePodesta, who used data from previous seasons to determine that: a) Oakland needed to win at least 95 games to make the playoffs; and b) the A’s needed to outscore opponents by a total of 135 runs in the course of the season to achieve that record. From there, DePodesta did a regression analysis of historical data that found the two metrics with the strongest correlation to runs scored were slugging percentage (total bases divided by at-bats) and on-base percentage (how frequently a batter reaches base per plate appearance). The A’s anchored their player evaluations around those statistics as a result, with the goal of accumulating the right mix of players to achieve the needed run differential for the season.
Importantly, DePodesta’s analysis gave the A’s a novel way to assess productivity that eschewed standard measures such as batting average and runs batted in. While competitors continued structuring their rosters around classic lineup formulations, Beane and DePodesta translated the results of their research into a mandate to load up on players who had a knack for getting on base. (Note: The actionable information revealed by DePodesta’s analysis is the difference between “analytics” and “statistics.”)
A cash-strapped team like Oakland benefited from this insight because it enabled the team to identify players who were available at bargain prices and productive under the front office’s rubric. If organizations with bigger payrolls evaluated talent the same way, where do you think the players targeted by Oakland would end up?
Not surprisingly, as other teams have had decades to study, adapt and implement Oakland’s philosophy, the A’s have reverted to one of the most moribund franchises in baseball.
The nature of the two sports differ in such fundamental ways that applying Oakland’s baseball version of moneyball to football doesn’t seem to work. For example, DePodesta’s exercise in formulating a specific number of wins in a baseball season has no equivalent in college football.
Perhaps college football programs could find edges on a more granular level, instead. For instance, are there specific physical attributes that correlate strongly with success for football players and their development? Do we have a body of evidence that proves the superiority of roster building via high school recruits or transfers? Are there different answers for different positions?
But what sounds like moneyball in college football may not be so revolutionary. Let Oklahoma general manager Jim Nagy bend your ear:
Essentially, Nagy is saying the star system propagated by recruiting services tends to play a large role in setting the market value of prospects, which creates opportunities to snag undervalued players. Three-star Linebacker A will probably come at a discount relative to five-star Linebacker B, in other words. But if the members of OU’s front office give both linebackers the same grade, why try to outbid big spenders like Ohio State and Oregon for B when an equivalent player in A is being pursued by Arizona and Baylor?
Nagy is describing a matter of competence, not frugality, and it’s far from a groundbreaking insight. In fact, he is actually stating the obvious: Programs that excel at evaluating players can get outsized returns from underappreciated prospects – as has always been the case. The only change from the old world of college football is that we’re now talking about how much it costs to sign them.
Picks and Recs: A Goose concert
The jam-band scene has coalesced around Goose in recent years as the new generation’s version of The Grateful Dead or Phish. My more musically inclined friends have been nagging me to see the Connecticut quartet in concert for a while. After finally catching them last weekend at Madison Square Garden, I can honestly say Goose delivered.
All told, the band played for more than four hours when you factor in a 30-minute break between sets. They did not let up for one second while they were on stage. It will easily go down as one of the best performances I’ve attended.
I’m kicking myself that it took me this long to get into Goose. Don’t make the same mistake I did.