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Opinion
Disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed by the author are that of an idiot. I have no right to judge elite athletes from my couch with a beer in my hand and holes in my underwear.
The year was 2002, and Australia’s utter disdain for the Winter Olympics was momentarily suspended as Steven Bradbury went down in folklore as the worst Olympic gold medallist and our favourite as he steamed past a quartet of skaters straight into the hearts of a nation.
Lleyton Hewitt won Wimbledon.
Australia won the Ashes.
A man named Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr won his first of six (and counting) Super Bowls.
But all these events – as memorable as they are – are eclipsed by another sporting event, something that would oddly live in our memories for reasons that aren’t why it affected every sport around the globe.
If I mentioned the name Billy Beane in conversation people would likely think I was talking about a Sopranos character. If I mentioned Moneyball there would be a flood of experts on how Brad Pitt and comic relief Jonah Hill won that baseball grand final.
(Photo by Rod Mar/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Billy Beane was the GM of the Oakland Athletics team. He had been pioneering the use of sabermetrics in baseball, an idea that essentially compelled him to recruit a rag-tag group of misfits, ageing stars and oddities. These misfits and castaways were selected based on cold, hard numbers.
Can batter A get on base more than 40 per cent of the time? Does it matter that pitcher B’s action looks like he’s in a blow your shoulder out competition if he is striking people out left and right?
In one of the great sports stories, Billy Beane (that’s right, Brad Pitt not Jonah Hill. In a true Hollywood miscarriage of justice, Jonah Hill’s role – much like his belief he is not just the comedic-relief actor – is greatly exaggerated) took advantage of statistics and the defeatist attitude of other teams not considered the fat cats.
He bet on unwanted players that had cold, hard statistical numbers that he could add up to what would equal a winning team’s stats for a year. It was truly a great sports story – one that took more than stats.
The success of his Moneyball Oakland As sent a ripple effect through sport. It didn’t matter the situation, the stakes or the experience of coaching staff. If the computer chap sitting front and centre said analytics says jump, our coaches started to say how high.
Do not get me wrong, stats are not the enemy. Stats like all things can only be made the enemy by humans.
Exhibit A: this week Mason Cox was ranked as elite by Champion Data, the most trusted stats and analytics company for Australian rules football. I can almost hear the contrarians among the readers start their ‘yeah buts’ and their ‘if you look at the stats’ arguments, well let me retort ‘I have eyeballs’.
Go back and watch any two games in a row of Mason Cox, go to the mirror, stare at yourself and say ‘Mason Cox is an elite player’.
(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Media/Getty Images)
One thing Brad Pitt didn’t tell our elite coaches or the sporting fans is that stats are a tool not a tool box, that all stats are not equal, the weight of stats like on-base percentage in baseball have a far less complicated story than ones like contested marks.
For a baseball player standing on base, the game has one direction. The pitcher is going to throw the ball in a small invisible box and over 40 per cent of the time if thrown in that box a good player will get on base.
If you have a team of these players, chances are you’re going to get enough runs to win matches. In a team sport as multi-directional (both mentally and physically) as AFL, you can’t quantify how the deficiencies of a player like not even making it to a marking contest or getting the ball to ground in a marking contest then laying on the ground fumbling like a baby giraffe while the other team’s players skillfully pick up the ball and kick it to each other all the way down the other side of the field for a goal taint the contested mark stat, or even the goal stat.
All stats are not equal, not across sports, not in the same sport and not even in the same stat line. A goal handballed to a player in the goal square when a team is 60 up to share it around is not the same as an after-the-siren Nic Naitanui specky and goal special to win the game.
A kick across the field to pass on responsibility when there was an open target forward is not the same as Scott Pendlebury weaving through a contest and pin pointing a kick to the right side of a man who has a man open in the direction he had to take the ball, yet these are both the same stat.
(Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Stats like eyeballs can be misleading but if this isn’t a clear sign that we have gone too far, I don’t know what is.
I have no problem with stats companies saying these are the stats areas in which Mason Cox is in the top percentile of the league. But the reporting and digestion of these stats should be nuanced, thoughtful and even argumentative. Bring back the blow-ups with your mates over who’s the best player.
In 2002 the eyeball test began to die but as we look to 2002 it is also one of our greatest evidences that the eyeball, the magic and the intangibles are just as important as the measurables.
With Steven Bradbury, there was not a chance in hell a single stats man would have predicted this magical win. Bradbury is laughably slow compared to his competitors and from a country of 20 million who don’t care about winter sports. Yet here we are.
Lleyton Hewitt come on-ed his way to the pinnacle of tennis. He did not have the best serve, he did not have the best volley nor the best return. Hewitt had ticker. You couldn’t hit Hewitt with a bat and expect him to stop. Hewitt would run back and forth, with forehands and backhands, until his feet were worn off and he was running on bloody stumps. There is no stat for that. There is no stat for how that made his opponents feel before they felt him and how it made them feel.
In 2002 England lost to Australia before they got on the plane, so much was our dominance over them and the rest of the cricket world that it shook them as cricketers to their core. England lost matches in their tour of Australia to the ACB Chairman’s XI, NSW, Australia A, Prime Minister’s XI, Sir Donald Bradman XI and didn’t win a single match on the entire tour until the very last one, down 4-0 with nothing to play for.
There is no stat for confidence.
With Tom Brady, I’ll give you a stat about the GOAT that matters: Tom Brady’s 30 playoff wins are more than 28 other teams in the NFL.
(Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Brady plays in his tenth Super Bowl this Monday. That is 19 years since his first Super Bowl. He has six rings (another stat that matters) and come Monday, ten Super Bowl appearances (and another).
Tom Brady this year at 43 years bet on himself at a new team when no one else was left to bet on him at the Patriots to make it to the summit again. I want you to let that sink in: Tom Brady was drafted number 199 in the 2000 draft. The very next year he won a Super Bowl.
If you ask analysts what stats make Tom Brady great, they will be able to give you some great players that do have great stats, but the sum of those stats does not equal the greatness in that man.
I could go on for hours about intangibles and Tom Brady but if you know sport, you know the look in Tom Brady’s eye when the weight of the world is on his shoulders. You can not measure that.
I like stats. I think they’re great. I love poring over stats before I lose all my bets for a night.
But given that Cox was named elite and Brady was the unwanted based on measurables and is about to enter into his tenth Super Bowl, it is a good time for us sports fans to sit back and give a bit more credit to the eyeball test and perhaps even up the scales between measurables and immeasurables.
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