I’m going to leave the statistical artillery at home for this one, if you don’t mind….There has been a revolution in football fandom over the last few years that is quite different than the one that hit baseball in the first decade of the 21st century and the one that hit basketball in earnest about 10 years later.
Thank you for your kind words and for investing in the piece. I will probably share more thoughts later to your response when I have more time to write (and I will also benefit from having some time to process it), but for starters 1) I guess there are different ways of liking in addition to different ways of knowing, and 2) it is affirming to know that a sense of wonder is not something where one starts life with a full tank, and it just slowly oozes out of you. I think some people need kids for that rebirth.
Whenever I see David Harris has written a new longform, I know I'm going to have something juicy to chew on.
Reading this piece reminded me of a passage in Soccernomics, which only puts words to two things that everybody in their hearts already knows anyway. First, the fundamental rule of sports analysis: don't trust your eyes.
If you're looking to discuss a sport strictly with the maximum amount of correctness, the correct course of action is not to watch any game at all. The numbers paint a much clearer picture of what a player is good at and what they are not. Actually watching a game will only throw you off the scent. For instance, when we spoke about Joey Votto under your line drive piece. Watching Joey Votto for years gave me the general impression of him being the supreme line drive hitter, when in fact he hardly ever hit more doubles than HRs. Secondary example, somebody like Brett Kollman can present CJ Stroud making some fantastic read and fitting the ball into a tight window for a clutch first down, but this obfuscates the fact that, on the whole, CJ Stroud is extremely inaccurate as a passer.
There are some shortcomings the human brain is not capable of overcoming. In sports, this primarily manifests when looking at a sheet of numbers, and contrasting the results to what we have in our heads from having watched the player play. Humans almost always default to the visual perception, despite the fact that numbers see everything, but the human brain only remembers what it wants to. Humans are not built to cognise that they just don't know everything in the way that a sheet of numbers does. Therefore, they will allow their biased visual perception to take precedence over the unbiased interpretation of the meaning of statistics. This leads their analyses of what they're watching to oftentimes be worse than analyses of things they have not watched, in a sports context.
However, the contrast to this is when you have no interest in being correct, and only have interest in enjoying the game, the best course of action is to not look at any scoresheet at all. No statistics whatsoever. I have actually made a rule for myself this season that rbsdm.com MUST stay closed when I'm watching the games, because if I were to actually open it, I may discover that by estimated WP this game is I'm watching is already quite close to being over, or perhaps a player who I thought had been having a good performance has actually been quite bad (Sam Darnold has often been a particular offender in this regard).
This is why I quite dislike the fancy Amazon Prime broadcasts which incorporate actually useful statistics (like EPA and Win Probability). I prefer the mostly meaningless passing yards, passing TDs, etc., because they're so easy to ignore. In my experience, statistics during the game have never enhanced my enjoyment of any game. Leave the statistics for at least a few days afterwards. Allow your interpretation of what you've just watched to gestate, in the absence of any proof to the contrary, at least for a little while. This is my opinion anyways.
I'd like to make clear that I have no understanding of the inner workings of any sport. None whatsoever. I'm not a tape grinder. I've never played any sport at a high level. I'm much more a stat junkie, with a lifetime of training (as an economist) in interpreting the true meaning of numbers on a page, but even in this aspect I'm far behind the curve of the true cutting edge of analytical thought. In general, I elect for the same balance of everybody else. A balance between knowledge of the game (which, in my opinion, comes exclusively from statistical analysis), and enjoying the game (which, in my opinion, comes exclusively from watching the game).
That searching tone was catnip tonight. I didn’t have the intellectual energy to work my outline into prose, so I read yours. I finish it broadly thoughtful about what knowledgeable fandom really is. I love the think aloud style of this piece, and that it leaves me with questions both personal and societal, both psychological and sociological.
Thus might only be tangentially related, but I thought about it several times while reading. I was in Denver last month, and my friend and I caught an Avalanche game. I can name all the NHL teams and rattle off several big and obscure players’ names, but I’m a novice to the NHL and the sport in the way I’m not at an NFL, NBA, or MLB game. I thought my strategic unawareness and unfamiliarity would put a ceiling on the night, but I had a blast. We watched with a sense of wonder; we let the crowd teach us the customs and lingo. I could take in the full experience of the game, never fixating on one guy or one play because…I couldn’t. It was the most fun I’d had watching sports…maybe ever? The company didn’t hurt—something that elevated many an Oakland A’s beating—but we legitimately watched the sport the entire time. It was a thrill.
This is different than grinding tape or combing StatCast data, which were your focus, but my point is that watching that game was fundamentally different than any other sport’s. I know too much about the others after decades of fandom to let myself just watch the game. I’ve always believed that my joy over baseball comes from the depth of knowledge that lets me be pretty good at Immaculate Grid many days, but maybe amnesia would make the other sports more thrilling to me.
This is a long way of saying I won’t be grinding tape. I do enjoy reading about the game and even watching the breakdowns of those who do (Brett Kollman, Solak last year).
In hindsight, this feels even further from your piece. I apologize. Relevant or not, I definitely appreciate what you’ve got me thinking about.
Thank you for your kind words and for investing in the piece. I will probably share more thoughts later to your response when I have more time to write (and I will also benefit from having some time to process it), but for starters 1) I guess there are different ways of liking in addition to different ways of knowing, and 2) it is affirming to know that a sense of wonder is not something where one starts life with a full tank, and it just slowly oozes out of you. I think some people need kids for that rebirth.
Whenever I see David Harris has written a new longform, I know I'm going to have something juicy to chew on.
Reading this piece reminded me of a passage in Soccernomics, which only puts words to two things that everybody in their hearts already knows anyway. First, the fundamental rule of sports analysis: don't trust your eyes.
If you're looking to discuss a sport strictly with the maximum amount of correctness, the correct course of action is not to watch any game at all. The numbers paint a much clearer picture of what a player is good at and what they are not. Actually watching a game will only throw you off the scent. For instance, when we spoke about Joey Votto under your line drive piece. Watching Joey Votto for years gave me the general impression of him being the supreme line drive hitter, when in fact he hardly ever hit more doubles than HRs. Secondary example, somebody like Brett Kollman can present CJ Stroud making some fantastic read and fitting the ball into a tight window for a clutch first down, but this obfuscates the fact that, on the whole, CJ Stroud is extremely inaccurate as a passer.
There are some shortcomings the human brain is not capable of overcoming. In sports, this primarily manifests when looking at a sheet of numbers, and contrasting the results to what we have in our heads from having watched the player play. Humans almost always default to the visual perception, despite the fact that numbers see everything, but the human brain only remembers what it wants to. Humans are not built to cognise that they just don't know everything in the way that a sheet of numbers does. Therefore, they will allow their biased visual perception to take precedence over the unbiased interpretation of the meaning of statistics. This leads their analyses of what they're watching to oftentimes be worse than analyses of things they have not watched, in a sports context.
However, the contrast to this is when you have no interest in being correct, and only have interest in enjoying the game, the best course of action is to not look at any scoresheet at all. No statistics whatsoever. I have actually made a rule for myself this season that rbsdm.com MUST stay closed when I'm watching the games, because if I were to actually open it, I may discover that by estimated WP this game is I'm watching is already quite close to being over, or perhaps a player who I thought had been having a good performance has actually been quite bad (Sam Darnold has often been a particular offender in this regard).
This is why I quite dislike the fancy Amazon Prime broadcasts which incorporate actually useful statistics (like EPA and Win Probability). I prefer the mostly meaningless passing yards, passing TDs, etc., because they're so easy to ignore. In my experience, statistics during the game have never enhanced my enjoyment of any game. Leave the statistics for at least a few days afterwards. Allow your interpretation of what you've just watched to gestate, in the absence of any proof to the contrary, at least for a little while. This is my opinion anyways.
I'd like to make clear that I have no understanding of the inner workings of any sport. None whatsoever. I'm not a tape grinder. I've never played any sport at a high level. I'm much more a stat junkie, with a lifetime of training (as an economist) in interpreting the true meaning of numbers on a page, but even in this aspect I'm far behind the curve of the true cutting edge of analytical thought. In general, I elect for the same balance of everybody else. A balance between knowledge of the game (which, in my opinion, comes exclusively from statistical analysis), and enjoying the game (which, in my opinion, comes exclusively from watching the game).
That searching tone was catnip tonight. I didn’t have the intellectual energy to work my outline into prose, so I read yours. I finish it broadly thoughtful about what knowledgeable fandom really is. I love the think aloud style of this piece, and that it leaves me with questions both personal and societal, both psychological and sociological.
Thus might only be tangentially related, but I thought about it several times while reading. I was in Denver last month, and my friend and I caught an Avalanche game. I can name all the NHL teams and rattle off several big and obscure players’ names, but I’m a novice to the NHL and the sport in the way I’m not at an NFL, NBA, or MLB game. I thought my strategic unawareness and unfamiliarity would put a ceiling on the night, but I had a blast. We watched with a sense of wonder; we let the crowd teach us the customs and lingo. I could take in the full experience of the game, never fixating on one guy or one play because…I couldn’t. It was the most fun I’d had watching sports…maybe ever? The company didn’t hurt—something that elevated many an Oakland A’s beating—but we legitimately watched the sport the entire time. It was a thrill.
This is different than grinding tape or combing StatCast data, which were your focus, but my point is that watching that game was fundamentally different than any other sport’s. I know too much about the others after decades of fandom to let myself just watch the game. I’ve always believed that my joy over baseball comes from the depth of knowledge that lets me be pretty good at Immaculate Grid many days, but maybe amnesia would make the other sports more thrilling to me.
This is a long way of saying I won’t be grinding tape. I do enjoy reading about the game and even watching the breakdowns of those who do (Brett Kollman, Solak last year).
In hindsight, this feels even further from your piece. I apologize. Relevant or not, I definitely appreciate what you’ve got me thinking about.