Numbers do lie

There is a hilarious article on hand size and its importance to predicting the success or failure of college quarterbacks turning pro floating around on ESPN.  

Here is a link to the article.

I know that I've written about this before, about outdated, wholly inaccurate "analytics" when it comes to predicting the success or failure of an athlete.  I would argue that across the entire sporting world, well over 85 percent of the accepted measurements are wrong or inaccurate outright, and of the remaining 15 percent, at least 10 percent is wrong or inaccurate a majority of the time.  

And yet people stick to them.  Religiously.  I love this segment from the article.  

"It matters because we play in a division where all of a sudden there's rain, there's snow and it's different," then-Cleveland Browns coach Hue Jackson said at the time, echoing the hand-size myth's oft-repeated origin story. "Guys that have big hands can grip the ball better in those environmental situations, and so we'll look for a guy that fits what we're looking for in a quarterback. Is hand size important? Yes it is."

Two years later, Goff had led the Rams to the Super Bowl and Jackson was looking for work.

I'm a believer in analytics.  I believe that analytics are the future of success in sports, though I also believe that you cannot remove the human element or in this case, experience, from the formula entirely.  I would argue that your decision making needs to be around 90/10 analytical to the human element, and would be willing to go 85/15.  

So let's leave football behind and stay in rowing, something I generally understand.  

These are known measurables in rowing:

- Height

- Weight

- Years of experience

- 2K score

- 6K score

- 10K score (if you really care)

That is what is generally posted on any recruiting form.  One simply needs to run a Google search on collegiate rowing and you're going to find them.  

Those numbers are what you're sorted by.  Either you hit all or a majority of the checkmarks, or you don't, and based on the numbers of "pros/cons" you're either getting recruited by major teams, recruited by minor teams, or not recruited at all.  Even then, you're occasionally told that you can walkon.  

But here's the deal.  Coaches fall in love with numbers, yet numbers don't tell the story.  Or even part of the story.  

The coach I've worked with whom I respect the most once told me that the erg measures two things:

- How fit you are.

- How mentally tough you are.

But it doesn't measure boat speed.  I know a lot of eggheads out there have tried to figure out a formula that equates erg speed and boat speed, but I've yet to see one that works.  Last year at O State we had a guy who hadn't broken 6:20 in our V8, and a guy who was sub 6:20 in our 3V8.  That over 6:20 guy has never lost a seat race.  The other individual has hardly ever won a seat race.  

Everyone has formulas that they like and use to sort through data.  I considered writing a post on the myths of rowing that I've encountered such as data collection, small boats, etc.  One of these days I will.  

Generally, numbers and statistics make people feel better or worse depending on how they interpret the numbers.  And those numbers and statistics can be manipulated in any number of ways to generate a result that you're comfortable with.  They say that numbers don't lie, but I've found that numbers do because the number can be altered to fit the narrative.  

So numbers do lie.  

There is a great scene out of "Moneyball," my favorite movie of all time where Jonah Hill's character says to Brad Pitt, "Your goal shouldn't be to buy players, your should be to buy wins.  And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs."  

It's a great scene.  And in my opinion, it sums things up rather neatly, and rather well.  There was a documentary on YouTube for a bit covering the legendary high school football coach Mike Pettine Sr. who said, "Our offense is fairly simple.  We get more guys at the point of attack than they have defenders."  I'm paraphrasing that a bit, but his offensive philosophy was straightforward.  In both examples, the way to win isn't complicated.  Score more runs than the other team, get more guys moving forward than the other team can defend.  

I realize that this sounds a bit archaic, and perhaps runs in the face of analytics, but remember I said that analytics shouldn't be your entire approach.  However, I don't see this as old school, but as a simplistic version of an analytical approach.  

In order to win races in rowing, you need to find boat speed, and your boat speed needs to be greater than your opponents.  In order to generate boat speed, then you need to find people who can move boats.  How they move boats will depend on many factors including fitness, training, technique, etc. but at the end of the day I believe it comes down to a physics equation and efficiency.  

I believe that we can get caught up in numbers that look shiny, or look bad, and overlook the simplistic goal of moving faster than the other team.  

We get caught up in these measurables that don't need to be measured.  We can get stuck on hull length, blade type, work numbers, rigging numbers, erg numbers, all sort of numbers.  Rowing is mathematically based when you strip away the fluff.  

But what matters isn't the numbers created, but what those numbers actually mean.  

If Patrick Mahomes can win a Super Bowl with smaller hands, if Brett Farve can be a fumble machine with large hands, then perhaps the hand measurement isn't what some think it is.  Perhaps we can look at this with a more analytical eye and understand that a number is a number is a number, but it's not a magic tell all.