There is an unhealthy contingent of putative mavens who view college basketball through the myopic, exclusive lens of numbers. Several of these number ruminants have even “invented” their own proprietary statistical models which they claim to be the most accurate, the most predictive, the best reduction of the game and its teams and players to their essential value. Number of possessions, tempo, efficiency, pace, effective percentage, these are but a few of their buzzwords, their junctions of obsession.
Using their statistical models, these experts tell you who is the most efficient team, the most effective player, the most likely to win tonight’s game, this year’s tournament. Their involvement in the game, their analysis of the game begins and ends with an arid review of their numbers. A sample citation is provided here.
Everything beyond the stats–coaching, effort, atmosphere, rivalry, quality and intelligence of play, historical context, personalities, backstory to name a few–are barely worthy of their purview. These things are of little interest to the number chewers. They are already folded into the statistics, why bother with them?
The problem is that many who have played or coached the game, most who truly love the game fail to find much succor or even relevance in an exclusive engagement with statistics, however novel or predictive they purport to be. To such a participant or fan the metrics of the game are incidental, they occur as a superficial layer of a richer, more nuanced story about the personalities and behaviors of the game as conducted by coaches, players, teams.
To put it another way, to most, certainly to Hoopraker, the persuasive stories of the game are psychological, sociological, and aesthetic/stylistic. The stats are certainly not the reason for our obsession. Efficiency ratings, tempo-free statistical models, player and team value equations and the like mean little to those hooked by the game as youngsters, those that spend a greater part of a lifetime playing, coaching, or obsessing the game from living rooms and bleachers.
In Gambling They Trust
There are, however, those who hang on the number gang’s every decimal point. They are the ones feverishly scanning their spreadsheets and the latest lines in anticipation of their nightly call to their sports book of choice. Indeed, the ones who do find succor from the stats’ crowd are the gamblers. And this is the humpbacked wizard behind the curtain of the tempo-free Oz.
These statheads are, first and foremost, in the business of enabling gamblers. And it is far from revolutionary to surmise that the authors of these predictive models are one with their customer base. What else would motivate such exhaustive attempts to “game” the game?
And while those whose love of the wager far exceeds their interest in the game have found potential rainmakers in the tempo-free folks, it is in the interests of those who care about the game to both point out and resist the gambling influence’s troubling and increasing appearance in mainstream media coverage of the sport. No one is quixotic enough to think gambling on college basketball is going away anytime soon, but the pernicious creep of Vegas into the college basketball media is disturbing and preventable.
While ESPN and Sports Illustrated are already well on their way to becoming journalistically challenged repositories of puff and dross, that they are also giving prominent voice to folks who are transparently, almost exclusively, providing gambling analysis represents a serious breach. When one considers the journalists’ access to the athletes, it isn’t hard to imagine scenarios where the impartial observers of the game become partial, indeed influential.
As the NBA seems to be surrendering the sport to the gambling wolves, it is time for fans, watchdogs, media owners and editors to stand up and protect college basketball from becoming equally compromised by elements who seek to reduce the game to its numbers, namely its dollars and cents.
