Dave talks with Jeff Sagarin and Wayne Winston about their four decades of work in the field of sports statistics. Wayne and Jeff met while studying together at MIT and have been friends ever since. In the early 80's, they had their first collaboration on a football play-calling project for Indiana University's head football coach, Sam Wyche. Since then, Jeff has been publishing his team ratings in USA Today while Wayne published his book, "Mathletics", and currently teaches at Indiana's Kelly School of Business.
During the show Jeff and Wayne discuss the history of their friendship, from playing dice based football board games in their dorm rooms to their current work as professional statisticians. Jeff gives his thoughts on how the BCS computer rankings have changed in recent years while Wayne shares his ideas on how to best evaluate football teams and individual players. Questions from Twitter are also answered during the episode, so make sure to keep the ideas coming!
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Podcast Episode 8 - Wayne Winston and Jeff Sagarin
By
Dave Collins
published on 11/08/2013
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Another great podcast.
"the computer doesn't understand the nuances of a blowout". I love that quote from the random NCAAF official. it seems to imply that not only is there nuance in a blowout but that people can understand the nuance of every game that happens and weight those nuances appropriately.
regarding the dice based football games- I played in an online strat o matic league for grown ups several years ago and found it to be a great proving ground for some of the strategies Brian has discussed in this site and Sagarin mentioned in the podcast:
1. my offenses were much more successful when I had a running back with a high success rate rather than boom and bust, given the same average yards per cary.
2. I used a random number generator to aid in play calling and my opponents often commented on how unpredictable I was, in a good way.
3. going for almost all 4th and shorts, per the David Romer article was beneficial and usually dispiriting to my opponents.