Behind the Laptop Week 9
Counterintuitive ideas
If you’re interested in watching any of our matches, all of them are on ESPN+
Wednesday 10/23
In the last week, I’ve been thinking about some interesting and counterintuitive ways of approaching team offensive and defensive decision making. But I’ve come to realize that the hardest part of discussing ideas like these is that they’re counterintuitive. Let me explain. First, let me tell you one of my two favorite coaching-related jokes.
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
Just one, but the light bulb has to want to change.
One of the freedoms of being a performance analyst is that the buck almost never stops on your desk. Your job is to gather and analyze data at the direction of people who will make decisions. One of the difficult aspects of being a performance analyst is that the buck almost never stops on your desk. You very rarely have the freedom to make decisions about if, when, and how to implement any changes your data may suggest. It cuts both ways because you can get caught up in where your data leads, which is exciting, but you might not get to try the stuff you get excited about.
This is especially true when your data exploration points in counterintuitive directions. If you follow college or pro football, you can see teams going for it on fourth down much more than they used to but it still happens far less than “data-driven” people would like. That’s what happens with counterintuitive data. Coaches’ intuitions have been trained over years of experience and/or by influence from other coaches to see certain things as just right. It’s hard to go against such orthodoxy unless you are talking to someone who wants to change.
Counterintuitive ideas are scary to implement because, if they don’t work out, they’re very difficult to explain afterwards. If you had to walk into a press conference after every match and account for your choices, you’d be much more likely to stick to choices that you could quickly convince people of. I once heard an NCAA Division I coach explain to a club coach why they don’t try novel things in their program, “because I have a mortgage.” That need to have others (particularly administrators) understand your choices can make you set the bar really high for what it takes to change the current state of affairs. The cost of being wrong on those choices can be too high.
I’m not saying that the stuff I was working on this week is brilliant or useless. Honestly, I’m nowhere near figuring that out yet. But I am saying that whatever I’m working on may never see the light of day, even if it is positive, because I’d have to convince someone to want to change and there’s so much at stake for decision makers that I can understand why they don’t want to change.
If you are the kind of person that likes counterintuitive, counter-establishment change in sport, I recommend the book The Only Rule Is It Has to Work by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller.
I talk about some aspects of how to change your mind when using data in my 2021 AVCA convention presentation and I’ll be back at convention this year, maybe I’ll talk a little about those tables above.
