Now Calling The Plays -- Alan Greenspan: Last month, it was a mathematician who said that major league managers had it all wrong when they placed their weakest hitter in the lineup batting ninth. Now, an economics professor from Berkeley is telling NFL coaches that they should all make more like Bill Parcells and go for it on fourth down:
[David] Romer's working paper, "It's Fourth Down and What Does the Bellman Equation Say?" pulls off a dramatic turnover of this conventional wisdom.
"The results are striking," he said. "The analysis implies that teams should be quite aggressive...In practice, however, teams almost always kick on fourth down early in the game."
Teams would often fare better if they went for a first down or touchdown on fourth down, Romer said in his research, presented this summer to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization is dedicated to promoting greater understanding of how the economy works.
You can find a copy of the study here, while Sportsfilter has started a discussion string here.
Just a few thoughts. It was only two weeks ago that I caught an interview with John Madden. The topic was his popular video/PC game, Madden NFL 2003. Apparently, during the early years of the game's development, Madden had a short conversation with his son about some independent play testing he and a pal had done. Madden was shocked that the game simulating a match between the Vikings and the Bears ended with both teams scoring more than 100 points.
What was the problem? Both players had discovered that their chance of success on fourth down was as good as it was on any other down -- something which Madden made sure his programmers corrected in the next version of the game.
What does this tell us? Well, for one thing, mathematical and economic modelling aside, the proof for theories like these comes in real world testing. And when an NFL coach decides whether or not to go for it on fourth down, he's acessing a lifetime of experience and information that can't be boiled down into an equation. In fact, you could even posit that the almost automatic decision to punt on fourth down is based on decades of real-life field testing dating back to the first football game ever played.
As for this new intersection between sports and scientific research, I have to site a passage from Don DeLillo's excellent Underworld. In it, a radio producer is talking to his engineer during the famous "Shot Heard Round The World" game in 1951 between the Giants and Dodgers.
For you sports novices, that year the Giants trailed the Dodgers by as many as 13 1/2 games, yet still came back to tie them and force a three game playoff to determine the winner of the National League Pennant. The teams split the first two games, with the deciding game three to be played on the Giants' home field of the Polo Grounds:
Over on the radio side the producer is saying, "See that thing in the paper last week about Einstein?"
Engineer says, "What Einstein?"
"Albert, with the hair. Some reporter asked him to figure out the mathematics of the pennant race. You know, one team wins so many of their remaining games, the other team wins this number or that number. What are the myriad possibilities? Who's got the edge?"
"The hell does he know?'
"Apparently, not much. He picked the Dodgers to eliminate the Giants last Friday."
That same human factor in sports that humbled Einstein in 1951 is the same factor that keeps us coming back to sports for more. Let's hope it's always with us.
POSTSCRIPT: Then again, Einstein didn't know that the Giants were stealing signs down the stretch.
