Bill Polian vs. Mark Cuban: Which One Do You Think Likes Stats?

Only two clubs don’t have an analytic department, so it’s well accepted in exactly the way you described – just another useful tool in a club’s arsenal to gain a competitive advantage with player evaluation.

The raging debate is just a fan/cranky sports writer-driven thing.

I don’t even like to use the term infancy when describing advanced stats in a football context.

Infancy makes it seems there is plenty of room to grow but I’m not sure we have the mathematics. Baseball plays can be measured one event at a time. Football plays have many moving parts and variables that effect one another. There is an ocean of things to examine but capability might only allow us to dip our toes in the water.

…I see one guy who understands what he’s talking about responding to comments by people who clearly don’t.

But I’ve never heard that saying before.

To take that reasoning to it’s extreme, playing and executing plays correctly doesn’t win championships. Winning championships wins championships.

Aside from the fact that this sentiment isn’t actually a “saying,” it’s also deeply, deeply flawed.

Building a championship-level team means finding the right players; stats are certainly helpful in that regard. Maybe it’s not quite so important in football as it is in baseball, but I’d still say it doesn’t hurt to look at a running back’s yards per carry before signing him to a deal.

Or maybe football is just too much of a man’s game to be pussied up by numbers and other Eastern witchery.

…that should be Only_A_Lad’s comments.