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2018 Buffs Advanced Statistics Thread
- Thread starter J.R. Ewing
- Start date
I know none of you want to hear this, but as an analytics guy who is also an asshole I am going to tell you. There has been a lot of work done studying the outcomes of coach changes in all sports. Particularly, for college football, Adler, Berry and Doherty presented work in the Sports Economist on the typical outcomes of changing coaches after a bad season(s). They found that if your team sucks, changing coaches typically makes no difference. If your football team is OK or better, then changing coaches occasionally helps, but makes things worse on average. Of course fans always believe their old coach was to blame and the AD is going to hire a good one, but the data suggests that is a form of confirmation bias.
The study was even in freakonomics a while back and it is corroborated by similar findings in other sports.Why is this? They say it is because ADs and GMs pick from coaching pools that are, on average, about the same - they come from the same stock, are trained by roughly the same people and were all good enough to rise up through a competitive system.
What do we have in store with a new coach? Now is the time that we can really dream big, now and every few years.
The study was even in freakonomics a while back and it is corroborated by similar findings in other sports.Why is this? They say it is because ADs and GMs pick from coaching pools that are, on average, about the same - they come from the same stock, are trained by roughly the same people and were all good enough to rise up through a competitive system.
What do we have in store with a new coach? Now is the time that we can really dream big, now and every few years.
What if 83% of your former coach’s seasons were bad seasons?
Most schools change coaches because the guy they have is not making the program better. Maybe performing to your historical averages as a program shouldn't cause a school to change coaches based on the data rates of success, but not doing so would mean you've stopped trying to get better. And if a coach is performing below your program norms, I'd assume that this is where the data would say that the change worked.
But why shouldn't a pre-Snyder KSU type program try to land its Snyder instead of accepting life in the basement?
Why shouldn't a CU chase its next McCartney (or at least a Barnett or Mallory level performance)?
What you are is probably what you are, but not necessarily. That's why we stay fans. Hope is a powerful drug.
So getting Hawkins back is a good idea!
Yeah, Washington shouldn’t have hired Peterson, Bama Saban, Texas Herman, Michigan Harbaugh, Purdue Brohm, Iowa State Campbell, Cal Wilcox, Wash State Leach, Florida Mullen, Syracuse Babers, UCF Frost, ND Kelly, etc etc,
Emotionally I get where you guys are coming from...but it's from an emotional place. I'm just a data cruncher pointing out that the data says otherwise.
Thats mostly confirmation bias. You are cherry picking the coaches who had success. What the data says is that there are many many coaches that it didn't work out for, and you just don't remember those names.
I get what you are saying about changing things up, but my point is that a shakeup moves things in a bad direction just as often as it moves things in a good direction. We've seen plenty of that.
If you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got.
Sure. But it shouldn't influence a change unless the coach you have is performing above the program norms. Those impatient changes based on inflated/ delusional expectations are the problem. (e.g., Iowa may be the smartest administration in the country to have stuck with Ferentz & to commit to him financially.) Otherwise, go for it.
There is also the adage: If you keep changing course you might just go in circles.
The main point of the data is the coach is probably not the problem, so changing him doesn't get you to a better place and if it does get you to a better place its probably just luck. Colorado has had four coaches, two ADs and a facilities upgrade in the past 15 years and still has one of the worst records in P5 over that time. It is reasonable to consider that the problem is nowhere within the Athletic Department.
Sure. But your data is a big set that gives you a generality. Generally, hiring a new coach is throwing a Hail Mary because you haven't made other fundamental changes. In CU's case with the leadership of Rick and Lance, the new facilities, and the personnel & protocol infrastructure expansions that all occurred since hiring the last coach it is reasonable to conclude that when that coach is not achieving to the historical averages of the program that a new coach is likely to do better. The hope and our Hail Mary is that he will achieve at a championship level that has happened at CU but is above our historical averages.
Edit: Moved to Viska thread
We lionize people who are at the head of successful organizations (Elon Musk 2016, Mike MacIntyre 2016, ...). When organizations under perform we call for their heads (Elon Musk 2018, Mike MacIntyre 2016, ...). There usually is very little middle ground. Over the past century, psychologists have explained the irrational thinking that is behind this behavior and we all have it....especially the sports fan.
Lee Ross first described the fundamental attribution error (or attribution bias) in the 1970s. He recognized competing large and complex organizations (eg college football programs) usually face very different situations and environmental pressures. When one succeeds and another fails, outside observers demonstrate a very reliable innate bias in attributing this success and failure to the leader of the organizations...regardless of situational factors. Deep down we are wired to believe good and bad outcomes are the result of a conscious actor who is in control; whether man, god or devil. This is well known by people behind the scenes in the stock market and in sports betting...two groups of folks that are always ready to jump on the irrational. If you can find a way to short all stocks that have just fired and replaced their leadership; data says you will make some money. Boys - I tell you that you can do even better with this approach in sports betting.
The worst thing that attribution bias does is that it causes those under its spell to look inwardly for a cause instead of outwardly. Folks may continue to replace leadership in circumstances when they should be looking at environmental, structural reasons for all the losing.
There are reasons to change coaches (complete suck, scandal, losing the locker room,...), but if its a losing record that makes you call for a head, then I think you have to ask yourself what structural factors could be leading to that performance? The pool of P5 coaches know attribution error well - the 'good' ones aren't as good as you think, they just have had the opportunity to put themselves in a good situation before they take a job.
We've done the internal facing things: fixed our facilities, brought in a new coach,etc... but the same structural problems are still here: A state that largely doesn't care about CU football, relatively low alumni giving, fans that only show when we win, comparatively low AD budgets. not a great state for football recruiting, a conference with unparalleled parity,... How can we be sure these won't bite the new staff the same as it did the past four staffs?
Lee Ross first described the fundamental attribution error (or attribution bias) in the 1970s. He recognized competing large and complex organizations (eg college football programs) usually face very different situations and environmental pressures. When one succeeds and another fails, outside observers demonstrate a very reliable innate bias in attributing this success and failure to the leader of the organizations...regardless of situational factors. Deep down we are wired to believe good and bad outcomes are the result of a conscious actor who is in control; whether man, god or devil. This is well known by people behind the scenes in the stock market and in sports betting...two groups of folks that are always ready to jump on the irrational. If you can find a way to short all stocks that have just fired and replaced their leadership; data says you will make some money. Boys - I tell you that you can do even better with this approach in sports betting.
The worst thing that attribution bias does is that it causes those under its spell to look inwardly for a cause instead of outwardly. Folks may continue to replace leadership in circumstances when they should be looking at environmental, structural reasons for all the losing.
There are reasons to change coaches (complete suck, scandal, losing the locker room,...), but if its a losing record that makes you call for a head, then I think you have to ask yourself what structural factors could be leading to that performance? The pool of P5 coaches know attribution error well - the 'good' ones aren't as good as you think, they just have had the opportunity to put themselves in a good situation before they take a job.
We've done the internal facing things: fixed our facilities, brought in a new coach,etc... but the same structural problems are still here: A state that largely doesn't care about CU football, relatively low alumni giving, fans that only show when we win, comparatively low AD budgets. not a great state for football recruiting, a conference with unparalleled parity,... How can we be sure these won't bite the new staff the same as it did the past four staffs?
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So....
Of the things you listed that are supposedly making a difference, please explain why they are different now than they were in 1998, or 88, or 78...
Colorado has pretty much always had more people who grew up outside the state than who grew up in the state. The Broncos have a been the dominant sports ticket since the 70s. Colorado has never been a hotbed of recruiting, and in fact, it's arguably better now than it has ever been. Alumni giving has always been pretty lax.
Yet somehow, some way, despite all those things that according to you mean that CU should only rarely have a winning season, the historic norm for CU football has been a top 25 team.
Basically, if you have 125 data points, and 85 of them look one way, and 40 of them look another way, I don't understand why you would conclude that the 40 are "typical."
Also, are you sure you're not Matt Wells' agent?
We are the 33rd most winning team in NCAA history - but that is a biased stat. Yale is in the top ten and Boise State is near the bottom of the list. A lot of wins from the first hundred years of football when it was largely a game between elite white kids. No racial offense intended. Its a new era and anything before the 80s just doesn't count.
Nonetheless, as you know we have been a good football team and can be again. In the last 80s our recruiting benefited from the implosion of the SW conference and also a few down years in the Pac10. Coach Mac did what a competent coach does in exploiting that situation. We rode that momentum for over a decade before it came crashing down. We did good externally facing things like fabricating a rival in NU. During the good years we were able to overcome our instate recruiting disadvantages, alumni and corporate donations were way up -relatively speaking- and people in the state paid attention to CU football. Not saying people in Colorado dont like football. but as a state of transplants, CU has to build and continually rebuild the tradition.
Even though the rest of the country could hardly care, the Barnett scandals, whether they were true or not, did a lot of damage to the perception of the program with CU alumni and the fanbase. The state of Colorado, and especially Northern Colorado where all the population is, is very sensitive to allegations of sexual assault and rape associated with University athletics. Whereas some places like Waco and Tallahassee are surprisingly insensitive to those same types of allegations. There were signs that momentum was slowing anyway due to increased competition for revenue and recruits in the Big12. The Barnett scandal was the negative momentum that started reversing things. Hawkins faced a strengthening headwind of decreasing fan interest and alumni support. It was-an era of exploding AD spending and we were falling way behind. Not to mention that the Big12 had major structural flaws for us.
I'm sure on a board like this all this stuff has been repeated ad nauseum. My point is that you can look back and find the structural problems that we are biased to think are head coach problems. We keep firing the HCs, but there isn't much progress in the win column. Show me almost any place where you have a winning program year in and year out and you can find the environmental and situational factors that make being a head coach there so much easier.
Then find a new team I guess. Or give up. Doesn't sound like you like this one.
I think CU could be a top program again. I think there are things you can do.
Like, if you have a decent coach you should stick with him. If you can't clearly articulate very concrete reasons why the coach is failing, he probably isn't doing anything wrong. Constantly rebuilding just sets you back. If Tucker is decent we should keep him for a while; rain or shine.
I think you have to play to momentum. The law of averages says that all teams will have a decent season now and then. Rising programs leverage the good years by improving recruiting classes and marketing to alumni and the community. They bootstrap themselves up.
Don't know what to suggest about p12-it is structurally hard to get ahead in the p12 right now.
1. the staff was doing things wrong and those of us that watch religiously can point you to concrete reasons they were failing.
2. you posit that average teams can often improve. i would argue that, without some really ****ty coaching decisions, our Buffs the last couple of years have been average.
3. we haven't constantly rebuilt. hawkins was given a lot of rope. embree was a special case of unique failure. mm got more rope than any sec team would have given him. we aren't rebuilding now. we have elements in place to be successful that were not in place before (for hawkins or embree).
4. you obliterated your own position with the momentum comment-- we won 10 games and the p12 south 2 years ago. we didn't capitalize by meaningfully improving recruiting or assistant coaches. that inability to recruit against elite programs is the biggest reason we had to move on.
5. coaches may average out when you are pulling from a data set of similar coaches. mm brought his entire junior league staff with him. then, he failed to adjust quickly enough; and when he did, he usually made a bad hire. that's coaching.
6. the p12 can be had. statistically, you are incorrect. there are 2, count them, 2, programs arguably well ahead of us-- usc and uw. and neither is even in the same universe as ou and the fusker were in big 8 back in the day.
2. you posit that average teams can often improve. i would argue that, without some really ****ty coaching decisions, our Buffs the last couple of years have been average.
3. we haven't constantly rebuilt. hawkins was given a lot of rope. embree was a special case of unique failure. mm got more rope than any sec team would have given him. we aren't rebuilding now. we have elements in place to be successful that were not in place before (for hawkins or embree).
4. you obliterated your own position with the momentum comment-- we won 10 games and the p12 south 2 years ago. we didn't capitalize by meaningfully improving recruiting or assistant coaches. that inability to recruit against elite programs is the biggest reason we had to move on.
5. coaches may average out when you are pulling from a data set of similar coaches. mm brought his entire junior league staff with him. then, he failed to adjust quickly enough; and when he did, he usually made a bad hire. that's coaching.
6. the p12 can be had. statistically, you are incorrect. there are 2, count them, 2, programs arguably well ahead of us-- usc and uw. and neither is even in the same universe as ou and the fusker were in big 8 back in the day.
And don't forget that UW was at 0-12 not too long ago.
The P12 is not a "difficult league" in which to get yourself into the top 3.
Nope. History of the Pac seems to be that it's hard to stay there. Every program seems to yo-yo except for USC, but they've been ridiculously uneven the past 30 years themselves.