Holden, thanks for posting what is easily the best college football article I've read in years. I've always marveled at the Red Raider offense from afar -- now I have the mental eyepatch through which to view it properly.
I heard an argument today that Billy Beane's system worked particularly well because of steroids. Essentially, Beane argued that one should look at a young player in terms of how well they make contact with the ball, walks vs. strikeouts, and batting average/on base percentage. He argued that those were the fundamentals to follow and that a player could always learn power on their way up. Of course, during that time period, Beane's ideology was particularly well timed. Picking the hitters with good fundamentals resulted in a good hitter with power once they got into the bigs and started juicing. The argument isn't saying that Beane's system is bad, just that it was aided by the fact that his thinking corresponded with the steroid era.
Well, that argument ignores the fact OBP and SLG have always correlated better to production than AVG, HR and RBI. I suppose steroids could have provided some extra oomph to the Moenyball formula, but I don't think last year's A's team looked particularly juiced.
Thanks for this link.
That was a cool article, and fuels my indignance at the general unimaginativeness of NFL coaches.
Last year, after a loss to Texas A.&M. in overtime, Leach hauled the team into the conference room on Sunday morning and delivered a three-hour lecture on the history of pirates. Leach read from his favorite pirate history, "Under the Black Flag," by David Cordingly (the passages about homosexuality on pirate ships had been crossed out).
As his team raced onto the field, he gazed into the stands filled with screaming fans and wondered about the several thousand "cadets" from Texas A.&M. clustered in one end zone. They wear military uniforms and buzz cuts, holler in unison and stand at attention the entire game. "How come they get to pretend they are soldiers?" he asked. "The thing is, they aren't actually in the military. I ought to have Mike's Pirate School. The freshmen, all they get is the bandanna. When you're a senior, you get the sword and skull and crossbones. For homework, we'll work pirate maneuvers and stuff like that." I like this guy.
Pirate School, I love it. Can I be an instructor? I'll wear an eye patch and everything.
The Freakonomics authors say there's "a touch of not letting the facts get in the way of having a great story." The quarterbacks love him, though.
