Scorecasting (2 page)

Even though sports are treated as a diversion and ignored by highbrow types, they are imbued with tremendous power to explain human behavior more generally. The notion that “sports are a metaphor for life” has hardened into a cliché. We try to “be like Mike,” to “go for the gold,” to “just do it,” to “cross the goal line,” to “hit the home run.”

The inverse is true, too, though. Life, one might say, is a microcosm for sports. Athletes and coaches may perform superhuman feats, but they’re subject to standard rules of human behavior and economics just like the rest of us. We’ll contend that an NFL coach’s decision to punt on fourth down is not unlike a mutual fund manager’s decision to buy or sell a stock or your decision to order meatloaf rather than the special of the day off a diner menu. We’ll try to demonstrate that Tiger Woods assesses his putts the same way effective dieters persuade themselves to lose weight—and makes the same golfing mistakes you and I do. We’ll explain how referees’ decision-making resembles parents deciding whether to vaccinate their kids and why this means that officials don’t always follow the rule book. We’ll find out how we, as fans, view our favorite teams much the same way we look at our retirement portfolios, suffering from the same cognitive biases. As in life, much of what goes on in sports can be explained by incentives, fears, and a desire for approval. You just have to know where to look … and it helps if you have data to prove it.

Many of the issues we explore might seem unrelated and, in many cases, reach far beyond sports, but they are all held together by a common thread of insight that remains hidden from our immediate view. Exploring the hidden side of sports reveals the following:

• That which is
  recognizable or apparent
  is often given too much credit, whereas the real answer often lies concealed
  .
  
• Incentives
  are powerful motivators and predictors of how athletes, coaches, owners, and fans behave—sometimes with undesirable consequences
  .
  
• Human biases and behavior
  play a pivotal role in almost every aspect of life, and sports are no exception
  .
  
• The
  role of luck
  is underappreciated and often misunderstood
  .
  

These themes are present in
every
sport. The hidden influences in the National Football League are equally present in the National Basketball Association, or Major League Baseball, or soccer worldwide. The presence of these factors across many sports highlights how powerful and influential their effects are.

We’re expecting that many of the statements and claims we’ll make in the following chapters will be debated and challenged. If so, we have done our job. The goal of
Scorecasting
is not to tell you
what
to think about sports but rather
how
to think about sports a little differently. Ambitiously, we hope this book will be the equivalent of a 60-inch LCD, enabling you to see the next game a little more clearly than you might have before.

We may even settle a few bar fights. With any luck, we’ll start a few, too.

WHISTLE SWALLOWING
 

If you don’t have at least
some
sympathy for sports officials, consult your cardiologist immediately. It’s not just that refs, umps, and linesmen take heaps of abuse. It’s the myths and misconceptions. Fans are rarely so deluded as to suggest that they could match the throwing arm of Peyton Manning or defend Kobe Bryant or return Roger Federer’s serve, but somehow every fan with a ticket or a flat-screen television is convinced he could call a game as well as the schmo (or worse) wearing the zebra-striped shirt.

This ignores the reality that officials are accurate—uncannily so—in their calls. It ignores the reality that much like the best athletes, they’ve devoted years of training to their craft, developed a vast range of skills and experiences, and made it through a seemingly endless winnowing process to get to the highest level. It also ignores the reality that most referees aren’t lucky sports fans who were handed a whistle; they tend to be driven, and smart, and successful in their other careers as well.

Consider, for instance,
Mike Carey. The son of a San Diego doctor, Carey was a college football player of some distinction until his senior year, when he injured his foot in a game. Any ambitions of playing in the NFL were shot, but that was okay. He
graduated with a degree in biology from Santa Clara University and, an incurable tinkerer, founded a company, Seirus Innovation, that manufactures skiing and snowboarding accessories. Carey even owns a number of patents, including Cat Tracks, a device that slips over a ski boot to increase traction.

In his first year out of college, though, Carey realized that he had a knack for overseeing
football games. Part of it was an ability to make the right call, but he also had a referee’s intuition, a sixth sense for the rhythm and timing of a game. Plus, he cut a naturally authoritative figure. Just as a pro football player would, he showed devotion to the craft, working his way up from local Pop Warner games to high school to Division I college games to the NFL, where his older brother, Don, was already working as a back judge. Carey reached the pinnacle of his officiating career when he was selected as referee for
Super Bowl XLII, the first African-American referee assigned to work the biggest event on the American sports calendar. (Don Carey worked as a back judge for Super Bowl XXXVII.)

Played on February 3, 2008, Super Bowl XLII was a football game that doubled as a four-quarter passion play. Heavily favored and undefeated on the season, the
New England Patriots clung to a 14–10 lead over the
New York Giants late in the fourth quarter. A defensive stop and the Patriots would become the first NFL team since the 1972 Miami Dolphins to go through an entire season undefeated—and the first team to go 19–0.

As the Giants executed their final drive, with barely more than a minute remaining, they were consigned to third down and five from their own 44-yard line.
Eli Manning, the Giants’ quarterback, took the snap and scrambled and slalomed in the face of a fierce Patriots pass rush, as if inventing a new dance step. He ducked, jived, spun, and barely escaped the clutches of New England’s defensive line, displaying the footwork of Arthur Murray and the cool of Arthur Fonzarelli.

Finally, in one fluid motion, Manning adjusted, planted a foot, squared himself, and slung the ball to the middle of the field. His
target was
David Tyree. It was surprising to many that Tyree was even on the field. Usually a special teams player, he had caught only four passes all season and dropped a half dozen balls during the Friday practice before the game. (“Forget about it,” Manning had said to him consolingly. “You’re a gamer.”) Compounding matters, Tyree was defended by
Rodney Harrison, New England’s superb All-Pro strong safety.

As Manning scrambled, Tyree, who had run a post pattern, stopped, and then loitered in the middle of the field, realizing that his quarterback was still looking for an open receiver. As the ball approached, Tyree jumped, reaching back until he was nearly parallel to the field. With one hand, he snatched the ball and pinned it against his helmet. Somehow, he held on to it for a 32-yard gain. Instead of a sack and a fourth down, Tyree and Manning had combined for an impossible “Velcro catch” that put the Giants on the Patriots’ 24-yard line. Tyree would never catch another pass in the NFL, but it was a hell of a curtain call.

Four plays later, Manning would throw a short touchdown pass to
Plaxico Burress and the Giants would pull off one of the great sports upsets, winning Super Bowl XLII, 17–14. It was “the Tyree pass” that everyone remembers. No less than
Steve Sabol, the president of NFL Films and the sport’s preeminent historian, called it “the greatest play in Super Bowl history.”

The play was extraordinary, no doubt about it, but the officiating on it was quite ordinary. That is, the men in the striped uniforms and white caps did what they usually do at a crucial juncture: They declined to make what, to some, seemed like an obvious call. Spark up YouTube and watch “the Tyree play” again, paying close attention to what happens in the backfield. Before Manning makes his great escape, he is all but bear-hugged by a cluster of Patriots defenders—Richard Seymour and Adalius Thomas in particular—who had grasped fistfuls of the right side of his number 10 jersey. Manning’s progress appeared to be stopped. Quarterbacks in far less peril have been determined to be “in the grasp,” a determination made to protect quarterbacks that awards
the defense with a sack when players grab—as opposed to actually tackle—the quarterback.

To that point, Mike Carey was having the game of his life. Everything had broken right. He had worked the Patriots-Giants game in the final week of the regular season (several weeks earlier), and so he had an especially well-honed sense for the two teams. “Just like athletes and teams, we were in the zone that night,” he says, “both individually and as a crew.”

More than two years later, Carey recalls the Tyree play vividly. He remembers being surprised that Manning hadn’t used a hard count in an attempt to draw New England offside—that’s how locked into the game he was. When the ball was snapped, Carey started on the left side of the field but then backpedaled and found an unobstructed view behind Manning. A few feet away from the play, alert and well positioned as usual, eyes lasering on the players, Carey appeared poised to declare that Manning was sacked. And then … nothing. It was a judgment call, and Carey’s judgment was not to judge.

“Half a second longer and I would’ve had to [call him in the grasp],” says Carey. “If I stayed in my original position, I would have whistled it. Fortunately, I was mobile enough to see that he wasn’t completely in the grasp. Yeah, I had a sense of ‘Oh boy, I hope I made the right call.’ And I think I did.… I’m glad I didn’t blow it dead. I’d make the same call again, whether it was the last [drive] of the Super Bowl or the first play of the preseason.”

Others aren’t so sure. Reconsidering the play a year later,
Tony Dungy, the former Indianapolis Colts coach and now an NBC commentator, remarked: “It should’ve been a sack. And, I’d never noticed this before, but if you watch Mike Carey, he almost blows the whistle.… With the game on the line, Mike gives the QB a chance to make a play in a Super Bowl.… I think in a regular season game he probably makes the call.”
^*
In other words, at
least according to Dungy, the most famous play in Super Bowl history might never have happened if the official had followed the rule book to the letter and made the call he would have made during the regular season.

It might have been a correct call. It might have been an incorrect call. But was it the
wrong
call? It sure didn’t come off that way. Carey was not chided for “situational ethics” or “selective officiating” or “swallowing the whistle.” Quite the contrary. He was widely hailed for his restraint, so much so that he was given a grade of A+ by his superiors. In the aftermath of the game, he appeared on talk shows and was even permitted by the NFL to grant interviews—including one to us as well as one to
Playboy
—about the play, a rarity for officials in most major sports leagues. It’s hard to recall the NFL reacting more favorably to a single piece of officiating.

If this is surprising, it shouldn’t be. It conforms to a sort of default mode of human behavior. People view acts of
omission
—the absence of an act—as far less intrusive or harmful than acts of
commission
—the committing of an act—even if the outcomes are the same or worse. Psychologists call this
omission bias
, and it expresses itself in a broad range of contexts.

In a well-known psychological experiment, the subjects were posed the following question: Imagine there have been several epidemics of a certain kind of flu that everyone contracts and that can be fatal to children under three years of age. About 10 out of every 10,000 children with this flu will die from it. A vaccine for the flu, which eliminates the chance of getting it, causes death in 5 out of every 10,000 children. Would you vaccinate your child?