“Crosby blows NHL's golden chance - New York Post” plus 3 more |
- Crosby blows NHL's golden chance - New York Post
- Elk Camp news, notes from Day Four - ESPN.com
- Huge film, small film: Big stakes - Houma Courier
- Where do sports stats end? - ESPN.com
| Crosby blows NHL's golden chance - New York Post Posted: 07 Mar 2010 03:36 PM PST SLAP SHOTS WASHINGTON -- Maybe Sidney Crosby is a fan of Jay's or maybe he was upset at not being invited to Dave's Super Bowl bash with Oprah, but folks around the NHL sure would be interested in learning even one of No. 87's reasons for rejecting David Letterman's invitation to host his Top Ten while the Golden Boy was in New York this week. Upon learning of the snub, Slap Shots was told that this wasn't the first time Crosby, who last year declined to appear on NBC's "Today" show following Pittsburgh's Stanley Cup victory, had rejected a request from Letterman's "Late Show." We only can imagine the demands on Crosby's time. Yet, in the days that hockey was front-page and back- page material after Canada gold, U.S. silver in overtime attracted more television viewers in the States than any game since the Lake Placid Miracle in 1980, it's difficult to understand why the NHL's most recognizable player and ambassador refused to spread the gospel. Rest assured that league personnel who have been ridiculed for not having the imagination or wherewithal to capitalize on hockey's Olympic exposure, are miffed. Maybe Crosby thinks that World Wide Pants belong to Alex Ovechkin. * The NHLPA executive committee consisting of the 30 player reps has begun discussions about the importance of notifying the NHL of its intention to extend the collective bargaining agreement through 2011-12 -- as it surely will -- so that the 7.5-percent bonus cushion for entry-level and over-35 contracts is in effect next season The matter was part of the agenda of last Sunday's union conference call, Slap Shots has been told. According to deputy commissioner Bill Daly, the deadline to trigger the cushion is Sept. 15, 2010. The union, which did not submit notification on a timely basis for 2008-09, has until May 15, 2011 to extend the CBA. As well, after initially committing $1 million to investigate the shenanigans surrounding Paul Kelly's dismissal last August as executive director, the union last week cut the budget to $300,000 -- and it was that much only because the Players' Association had entered into a contract with a third party to aid the investigation. * Ryan Miller, America's goalie, is what Rick DiPietro was supposed to be when Mike Milbury traded Roberto Luongo, Olli Jokinen and either Marian Gaborik or Dany Heatley for him 10 years ago. Seems like a good topic for an intermission show on NBC, doesn't it? Speaking of which. The NHL truly does serve as professional sports' melting pot. The league's unique multi-national and multi-cultural workplace environment is perhaps its greatest asset. Czech in that corner of the room, Slovak beside him, American across the way, Canadian over there, Finns and Swedes and Russians side by side by up to nine months working toward a common goal. So why on earth would the NHL present two national television spokespeople -- Don Cherry north of the border and Milbury on our side -- to spout North American-trash talk out of the dark ages? We're not big on suspending people who are hired to give their opinions for expressing those opinions, no matter how ignorant they might sound. We just wouldn't hire them in the first place. * Look, if the NHL is going to subsidize the Coyotes, of course the league was correct in allowing GM Don Maloney to attempt to improve the team -- and, therefore, its viability -- at the deadline even if his acquisitions increased the payroll. When Major League Baseball owned the Expos in 2002, then-GM Omar Minaya was allowed to increase payroll at the deadline when Montreal was in contention. Minaya acquired veteran pitcher Bartolo Colon from Cleveland for youngsters Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore and Brandon Phillips, one of the primary reasons the GM has never been heard from again. Oh, uh, oops. * The Flyers, we're told, were rejected by the NHL when they attempted to place Bernie Parent on retroactive Long Term Injury back to 1979 in order to clear cap space at the deadline in order to acquire Tomas Vokoun. Yes, we know. Baltimore won a Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer at quarterbck. But the Ravens needed to win just three games to take the championship in 2002 while Flyer goaltenders Michael Leighton and Brian Boucher will be required to win 16 to get Philadelphia its first Cup since 1975. Hockey's all-time goals: 1. Yes! Mike Eruzione, USA 4, USSR 3, 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid; 2. Henderson scores for Canada! Paul Henderson at 19:26 of the third, Canada 6, USSR 5, Game 8, 1972 Summit Series in Moscow; 3. Crosby's Golden Goal, Canada 3, USA 2 in OT, 2010 Olympics; 4. Mario Lemieux from Wayne Gretzky at 18:34 of the third, Canada 6, USSR 5, 1987 Canada Cup in Hamilton, Ontario; 5. Peter Forsberg's postage stamp shootout goal for the Gold against Corey Hirsch, Sweden 3, Canada 2, 1994 Olympics at Lillehammer. This just in. Heatley enjoyed himself in Vancouver, but he wants to be traded from Canada before 2014. Norway and Belarus are believed on his no-trade list. News: Ottawa scoreboard operator shows images of Canadian gold medal winners during playing of U.S. national anthem beforeRangers-Senators. Views: Canada owned the video screen. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Elk Camp news, notes from Day Four - ESPN.com Posted: 07 Mar 2010 02:31 PM PST '); document.write(''); } else if ( show_gigya ) { document.write('  Special to ESPNOutdoors.com Archive RENO, Nev. — Just like breaking a real elk camp in the high country, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation today ended its annual convention, affectionately called Elk Camp, feeling fulfilled and reenergized for another year. In the coming months, the organization will use the good mood, tone — and especially fundraising totals — set here to drive its habitat conservation work for elk and other wildlife in 2010.Preliminary attendance figures appear headed above the 20,000 mark, far outpacing 2009 figures. New member enlistments are on pace to set a new Elk Camp record, thanks to a show special encouraging attendees to purchase RMEF memberships for those serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. Best of all, the big-event fund-raisers — daily auctions — raised more than $1.3 million to benefit conservation. "Elk Camp is, in many ways, the kickoff to our year. From what I've seen over the past four days, I'd say we're off to a great start," said David Allen, RMEF president and CEO. Russ Kipp of Montana High Country outfitters reported booking 17 elk and deer hunts on the first day alone. "Traffic has been great," Kipp said. "We talked to more people on the opening day of this show than we have in the entire span of other shows, so we're very pleased." But while commerce was brisk for many exhibitors, much of the buzz centered on the auctions. Top auction items included hunting permits, excursions, art, firearms, collectors items, many unique handmade items and other merchandise. Here's a sample of the big-dollar items auctioned at Elk Camp: $150,000 New Mexico Big Game Enhancement Package (deer, elk, oryx, ibex, pronghorn) $95,000 Arizona Special Elk Permit $86,000 Arizona White Mountain Apache Chairman's Special Elk Permit $52,000 California tule elk permit at Fort Hunter Liggett $51,000 Another California tule elk permit at Fort Hunter Liggett $50,000 Washington Special Eastside Elk Permit $48,000 Wyoming Governor's Big Game Package (1 moose, 2 other big game) $45,000 Oregon elk and deer combo permit $30,000 A sociable mule named Rosetta $7,200 Pendleton gun safe $7,000 A cute Labrador retriever puppy 2011 Elk Camp details announced The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the 27th Annual Elk Camp will return to the Reno-Sparks Convention Center in 2011. Elk Camp 2011 will run March 3-6 and will mark the 13th time for Reno to host the event. "We'll be counting on Reno in 2011 to help charge our batteries for another year of wildlife habitat conservation projects across elk country," said Allen. Cherished chompers Thousands of years ago, elk actually grew tusks like elephants. Over time, those tusks evolved and shrank to become the only two teeth in the front of an elk's upper jaw the ivories. These smooth, round teeth, also called buglers or whistlers, were used for adornment by many Native American tribes and that tradition continues among elk hunters today. Ron Proctor of the Elk Ivory Center in Livermore, Colo., is one of several Elk Camp exhibitors offering jewelry custom-made with your elk ivories. "If antlers are the trophy part of an elk, and the meat and hide are the utility parts of an elk, then the ivories are the spiritual part of an elk," said Proctor, whose company offers hundreds of designs for rings, earrings, pendants, bracelets, watchbands and more. Typical prices range from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars. Tale of the tape The total amount of land conserved by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation for elk habitat and elk hunting (currently 5.7 million acres) gets thrown around a little casually from time to time. Equal in size to the state of New Jersey and the equivalent of 4,318,181.81 American football fields, there's yet another staggering unit of measure to help quantify the amount of land now protected by the organization. The average Wal-Mart Supercenter (of which there were 2,737 in the United States as of December 2009) is 197,000 square feet. That means it would take 1,260,365.48 Wal-Mart Supercenters to equal the amount of land conserved by RMEF. As an added bonus, enhancing land for elk doesn't require installing extra stoplights.In 2009, RMEF gave grants totaling more than $2 million for projects in 20 states to benefit conservation and set its all-time record for acres conserved (585,000) in a single calendar year. "In spite of a rough year for the economy and many other distractions, our volunteers continued to lean into the harness, accomplishing great things for elk, other wildlife and hunters, and setting the stage for continued success," said Allen. "I'm proud that our organization provided some of the best news of 2009 and is continuing that trend this year." Picture perfect props Montana Decoys, makers of two-dimensional, photo-realistic decoys that are rapidly catching on with big-game and predator hunters alike, is releasing a feeding cow and feeding doe decoy to help round out its product offerings for North America's two most popular quarries. Started in 1996 by elk-hunting enthusiast Jerry McPherson, the bodies of the Montana Decoy are high-quality photos printed on a cotton/polyester fabric. The picture is printed on both sides to ensure that the bull or buck will always see the decoy no matter the angle of approach. To keep the material steady when in use, a steel band is sewn in between the two pieces of printed material and makes the decoy portable by allowing it to be twisted and folded to a third of its deployed size. Small, easy to pack and very lightweight, Montana Decoys are quick to set up and take down — a must for spot-and-stalk hunters always on the move. Five reasons to take a cow elk Your crosshairs shift undecidedly between a raghorn bull and a big cow, both standing broadside at 60 yards. The elk tag in your pocket makes both animals legal. Which one do you shoot? The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation offers five reasons to consider taking the cow: • 1. Reducing a herd to fit the carrying capacity of its winter range is a form of habitat conservation. Culling a calf-producer is more effective population control. Wildlife agencies issue either-sex tags specifically to encourage hunter harvest of cows. • 2. Letting young bulls walk improves your odds for a big, mature bull next year. • 3. A more abundant bull population tends to be older which can improve efficiency of the rut. Result: more bulls surviving winter, higher pregnancy rates in cows, fewer late calves and better overall herd health. • 4. A less abundant cow population tends to be younger, more vigorous and resistant to diseases. • 5. As tablefare, cows and calves are generally better. Hunting remains the primary wildlife management tool today, vital for balancing elk populations within biological and cultural tolerances, according to Allen. "Habitat conservation, sound management, good hunting, healthy wildlife — they're all tied together. And, more and more, — adequate harvest of cow elk is becoming a factor," Allen said. "If you have an either-sex elk tag this fall, consider letting young bulls go and filling your freezer with a fat cow." Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Huge film, small film: Big stakes - Houma Courier Posted: 07 Mar 2010 02:31 PM PST That question is the one that most preoccupies the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, which administers the awards, and ABC, which broadcasts them. No effort has been spared to secure your attention, whoever and wherever you are. There are two funnyman hosts, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, to appeal to baby boomers and "30 Rock" fans; a slew of attractive presenters, including some of the "Twilight" pack to pander to the teenagers and tweens; shorter speeches, no embarrassing performances of nominated songs, and 10 nominees for best picture. Anything you want! Everything you could wish for! Or, at least, that's the hope — something that might reverse the erosion of ratings that has plagued the Oscar show in recent years. Always a step or two behind the times, the broadcast has lately seemed to wobble on the edge of obsolescence. Really, who watches television like that anymore? It is an axiom nowadays that the broadcast networks, with their traditional ability to manufacture cultural events with the power to corral public attention and advertising money, are dinosaurs unaware of their own impending extinction. And like old-fashioned real-time, living-room television viewing, theatrical distribution (what most of us call moviegoing) has been on the cultural endangered-species list for some time. Thanks to our wall-mounted flat screens and their portable analogues, we can stream and download at our own convenience, make our own snacks, program our own repertory and pause when the need arises. So why would any of us need to buy a ticket and fight with a stranger for access to a cup holder? But these weary beasts, rather than slipping quietly into extinction, are still roaring loudly and trampling a lot of real estate, even as the swift new creatures that are supposed to kill them off evolve and proliferate with startling rapidity. The Oscars this year are interesting precisely because they crystallize this paradox. They arrive during a season when large-scale, unique television events are attracting enormous audiences. The Super Bowl was the most widely watched broadcast ever, and this years' Winter Olympics and even the Grammy Awards drew larger audiences than their predecessors. Apparently people will still watch television. And also go to the movies, which is not exactly news; 2009 was a hard recessionary year all around, but it was a flush time at the box office, as grosses broke the record set a few years earlier. Throughout these years of digitally inspired anxiety, in fact, audiences have kept on buying tickets. The pattern thrown into relief even before the coming of "Avatar" involves the concentration of more and more revenue in a small number of hugely remunerative releases. Which is to say, the big movies keep getting bigger. And for the moment "Avatar" is the biggest of all, a juggernaut that makes the word blockbuster sound quaint. While the film's success does not necessarily set a template for the future — or represent a break with the past — its combination of technological innovation and global reach reveals the scale on which Hollywood can now operate. By the time it opened in December, "Avatar" was the movie that everyone in the world had to see, as soon as possible, and it held on to that status week after week. The replication of that enormous, international and sustained impact will be the job of the major studios in the near future, which in itself is nothing new. An "Avatar"-derived set of expectations is already taking shape. From now on more and more movies — starting with animation but quickly expanding to action — will be in 3-D, which in principle enhances the moviegoing experience and in practice allows exhibitors to charge a premium for tickets. And the devising of fantasy realms that welcome not only children and gamers but also everyone else as well will continue to be where the most of the money is spent. This consolidation of resources has already begun to affect the supply of medium-budget movies with serious themes and respected actors in the leading roles, the kind of pictures that have dominated most of the Oscar races this past decade. One frequently offered explanation for the loss of audience has been the Academy's habit of overlooking big commercial hits and nominating these relatively low-grossing "art house" movies. An apotheosis of sorts came two years ago, when the big Oscar duel was between "There Will Be Blood" and "No Country for Old Men," standouts in a best picture field that had, by most estimates, the lowest aggregate box office gross ever. The ratings followed suit. The studio subsidiaries that released those two pictures, Paramount Vantage and Miramax (owned, for now, by Disney), have all but ceased to exist, following Warner Independent Pictures and Picturehouse (Warner Brothers' short-lived specialty labels) into oblivion. And the occasional forays of the parent studios into nonblockbuster, grown-up entertainment — earnest, sophisticated genre fare like "Michael Clayton," which 40 years ago would have been a safely commercial play rather than an awards-season gamble — are likely to grow rarer. Some of this is the fault of the Oscars themselves, which have represented the best chance these films had to find an audience beyond the art houses. Capitalizing on that chance, however, proved ferociously competitive and often ruinously expensive. Contenders flooded into theaters in October and November, hoping for critical support and decent numbers in major markets. Quite a few fell by the wayside, while the survivors spent more and more on publicity campaigns that pushed their break-even point further and further down the road. And a curious economic reality emerged, wherein a $20 million drama seemed like a greater risk than a $100 million action spectacle. But big movies will never be the whole story. The 10-film best picture list, while it was created in part to ensure the presence of hits, also makes room for more smaller-scale, artistically ambitious movies than before. And one of these, "The Hurt Locker," has emerged as the main rival to "Avatar" — and even, in the view of some handicappers, the favorite. That two movies each earned nine nominations is their only mathematical parity. "The Hurt Locker," independently financed and slow to secure a distributor, had a production budget less than one-tenth that of the nearly $250 million "Avatar," which has so far earned roughly 50 times as much at the domestic box office. Were it to take the best picture prize, "The Hurt Locker" would be the lowest-grossing winner ever, just as "Avatar" would be the highest. Those numbers are really just a kind of shorthand indicating the radically different paths the two films have taken in reaching Sunday night's ceremony and also, more important, in attaining currency and visibility among moviegoers. "Avatar," preceded by waves of hype, landed on thousands of screens around the world and started vacuuming up money and attention from its very first day. "The Hurt Locker" started out almost 18 months ago on the festival circuit, generating great excitement among critics and journalists at the Venice and Toronto festivals. When no studio wanted to take a chance on a tough, violent, demanding drama about the Iraq war (never mind that it was also a mind-blowing action picture), Summit Entertainment picked up the movie and released it, to great acclaim but not much business, in the middle of the summer popcorn season. But somehow the movie hung around in the minds of those who had seen it. Critics kept writing about it, and, when the time came, started giving it prizes. And whether or not it wins the best picture Oscar, the likelihood that it will win a bunch of other awards — including best director for Kathryn Bigelow, which is taking on the appearance of a foregone conclusion — will bring it to a larger audience on DVD and video on demand than it found in theaters. The "Hurt Locker"-"Avatar" showdown is being characterized as a David-versus-Goliath battle, but melodrama and rooting interests aside, it is really a contest, within the artificial arena of the Oscar campaign, between the mega-blockbuster and the long tail. That last phrase, the title of a 2006 book by Chris Anderson, already has a bit of an anachronistic sound, but Anderson's idea, shorn of some of its revolutionary overstatement, is still compelling. As digital culture makes more and more stuff available and spills it faster and faster into an already swollen marketplace, some works will establish themselves slowly, by word or mouth, social networking and serendipitous rediscovery. That hypothesis is likely to be tested more strenuously than before in the movie world. The money to produce and publicize the kind of middle-size movie that has dominated the Oscar slates in recent years is drying up. Cheap acquisitions can be turned into hits — last year's best picture winner, "Slumdog Millionaire," being the most recent long-shot example — but there are likely to be fewer luxury goods for the prestige market. Only one of the current crop of best picture candidates, "Up in the Air," fits that description: It has a polished look, an established star, a literary pedigree and a medium-size budget. And it looks — all of a sudden, after a strong start in Toronto and in spite of perfectly good box office numbers — like an outlier, a throwback. Which is to say nothing about its quality. The Oscars are never about that anyway. They are about how the American film industry thinks about itself, its future, its desires and ideals. Right now it is thinking big and small, trying to figure out how to split the difference, and hoping we will keep watching. Wherever and however we do watch. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Where do sports stats end? - ESPN.com Posted: 07 Mar 2010 12:51 PM PST '); document.write(''); } else if ( show_gigya ) { document.write(' Special to ESPNBoston.com Archive BOSTON -- Don't count St. Louis Cardinals assistant general manager John Abbamondi among those excited about the new developments in baseball teams' ability to chart defense -- but it's not for the reason you might think. The advent of Hit f/x and Field f/x technology has a chance to change the way teams evaluate defense. Batted balls can be measured by speed and direction. Player positioning and field factors can be taken into consideration. Aspects of baseball once considered beyond measurement might be on the verge of joining on-base percentage and slugging percentage as easily measured and easily turned into statistical comparison. If Abbamondi had his way, that type of data wouldn't be quite as accessible, he said, referring to a pine tar problem that has nothing to do with Kenny Rogers. "If you are the only club that has pine tar, you have a pretty big advantage," Abbamondi said Saturday at a sports analytics conference hosted by MIT's Sloan School of Management. "But because everyone has pine tar and it's become a cost of doing business, you're no different competitively if all of us have it or none of us have it. "I worry that Field f/x will make defensive evaluation too easy. I'd rather have a harder problem to solve and solve it slightly less well than to have everybody solve it. There's a difference between the search for the truth and the search for a competitive advantage." A panel focused on baseball analytics was only one of more than a dozen topics covered at a conference that featured, among others, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, "Moneyball" author Michael Lewis, Indianapolis Colts president Bill Polian and ESPN executive editor John Walsh. More than 1,000 people gathered for the keynote panel discussion, a devil's-advocate conversation moderated by Lewis entitled "What Geeks Don't Get: The Limits of Moneyball." Words such as "covariance," "granular data" and "recency bias" were thrown around as if it were a high-level economics or statistics convention having nothing to do with sports. With sports growing into big business, though, an understanding of statistics is as important to building a team as an understanding of the pick-and-roll. "We are constantly looking for the next undervalued asset," Polian said during the keynote discussion. "Geekdom, if you will, provides us with wonderful tools to do that. I would add this caveat: Speak English, please. I have a very hard time understanding all the mathematics of it. I have a lot of work to do and a lot of decisions to make, and if you can't make it understandable for me, I have no use for it." Two of the most pertinent discussions -- particularly in Boston, where the Red Sox have unveiled a radically overhauled roster and the Patriots have started the process of revamping theirs -- involved the way data analysis has become commonplace both in baseball and in several other sports that don't easily lend themselves to the type of statistics upon which decisions can be based. Context matters. Sample size matters. Much can be gleaned from watching a quarterback take 10 seasons' worth of snaps out of the same formation and throw 10 seasons' worth of passes to the same receivers, but that sort of data simply is impossible to compile. Adjustments have to be made to compensate. "We don't get the continuity to work on our models," said Simon Wilson, the head of performance analysis for the Manchester City soccer team in England. "Players change. Managers change." Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury unwittingly became a flash point this winter for the validity of emerging defensive statistics. Ellsbury ranked among the worst defensive center fielders last season, something many find hard to believe given his sensational raw speed and the numerous highlight-reel catches he made in the outfield. Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein recently disputed the validity of those statistics, asserting that the team's internal evaluations peg Ellsbury as an above-average defensive outfielder. Even the creators of some of those statistics have tried, often futilely, to make the point that it takes more than one season's worth of defensive plays to form an accurate conclusion about a player. Defensive ability also requires a certain context: An outstanding center fielder can take some of the onus off a subpar right fielder, and a lousy shortstop can make an average third baseman look bad. Even then, it's hard to know how much is instinct and coaching and how much is actual athletic ability -- and Ellsbury isn't the only one who raises questions. "With Chase Utley, we found he was so good because he was ultrapositioning," said panelist John Dewan, whose baseball Fielding Bible measures defensive players on a plus-minus basis. "Against left-handed hitters, he was moving way over toward first. Against right-handed hitters, he was moving way over toward second. That made a big difference for him." Football, of course, provides much more of a challenge when it comes to statistical analysis. Unlike baseball, a sport with one-on-one battles between pitchers and hitters not influenced much by outside factors, almost everything about football must be evaluated in context. A running back can look great with talented blockers in front of him, but blockers can look great with a talented running back behind them. Vince Wilfork, Polian said, would hold an entirely different value in the Colts' system than in the Patriots' system because what the Patriots do is "antithetical to ours." "Ninety to 95 percent of the action in the NFL is equivalent to what they're doing with defense in baseball," said panelist Aaron Schatz, the creator and president of FootballOutsiders.com. "You have to couch it in a team context. When we say that Peyton Manning was 40 percent better than the average quarterback last season, we mean in that system with those blockers. You've got to look at it in context." In football -- as well as in sports such as basketball, hockey or soccer -- understanding context is a crucial step toward finding players who can succeed in that context. "You have to respect the fit with the culture and with the city," said Wilson, who faces the added challenge in the Premier League of assimilating international players onto his team far more often than any of the major sports in the United States. "The challenge for the organization is to know what its fit is. If you can identify that, you're halfway there." Although baseball has embraced the statistical revolution -- in part because it doesn't take hours of film breakdown to develop its statistics -- the NFL has lagged behind. Schatz lamented the lack of publicly available information about defensive statistics beyond sacks and tackles -- hurries, for example -- or player participation logs that can affect bonus payouts. Even during games, the NFL's ban on technology in coaches' boxes lends something of a Stone Age flavor to strategy development. "You have a guy writing down players with a pen and paper, what play was run, how many yards were gained," said Paraag Marathe, the executive vice president for football and business operations of the San Francisco 49ers. "At halftime, a coordinator will ask, 'How successful were we on sweeps to the right?' He has to add it all up: 'Well, we had 13 runs that averaged out to 2.2 -- no, wait, 2.6 yards." Polian emphasized the point with a detailed breakdown of the much-discussed fourth-and-2 that Patriots coach Bill Belichick attempted against Indianapolis last season. Polian broke down all the different aspects of that play -- the Colts' hot offense, the Patriots' banged-up defense, the tendency of the Patriots to run quarterback sneaks in short-yardage situations rather than throwing the type of pass that was called -- and backed up the decision. Here's the funny thing: Polian agreed with the decision not because he believed the statistical data that supported it, he said, but because it made sense in that specific moment with those specific players on the field. "Was it the right call? In my opinion, it was 100 percent the right decision," Polian said. "All of the statistical analysis that's done over the course of the season means nothing. The situation on the field at the time dictates the decision." Statisticians still can find common ground with Polian: All the data in the world work only if they are put into the hands of coaches and players who are able to apply it correctly in a given situation. A trade or a free-agent signing can work only if a player is motivated to keep putting in the same work he has before the trade or free-agent signing. The will to get better, the will to work and the will to win still have value, intangible as they are. "Just because we have trouble measuring it doesn't mean it doesn't exist," said Shiraz Rehman, director of baseball operations for the Arizona Diamondbacks. "That might be the most important factor. Make, personality, things along those lines -- clubs are searching for those answers." Brian MacPherson is a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. His e-mail address is brianrmacpherson@gmail.com. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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