Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="TheCusian, post: 1139181, member: 2585"] The Freakonomics story and research are flawed in just the way that I've pointed out - as the comments show: [I]"Surely this argument fails to take into account the fact that sport involves humans. A coin toss is a random event, a sporting sequence is not. If a team has pulled off a spectacular play three times, the fourth may well be “sprinkled with fairy dust” in that this team will be disproportionately confident of repeating the feat, while their opponent will be fearful of a repeat occurrence and possibly demoralised. I would have thought this would make a repeat far more likely, but please correct me if I’m wrong." [/I] Plus their hypothesis was that "it's given too much credit" - that's a far cry from "it doesn't matter" or "it doesn't exist". Which is exactly the same point the Barnwell (I listen to both his NFL podcast and the Freakonomics podcast every week) raises at the end of his article: [I]"For whatever these studies are worth, none of them definitively proves that momentum doesn’t exist. What they each suggest is that, in a place where it seems obvious that there would be some record of momentum, little or no record of momentum exists. That can be up to a fault in the study’s methodology or the circumstances of the sample, among other things. In any case, if momentum were quite as obvious as the sports world makes it out to be in these situations, it would appear in one of the studies above." [/I] I'd also ad that with younger athletes, given less time to prepare and hone their craft and still swayed more heavily by their peers and emotion (rather than reason) - are more prone to swings in emotion and the crowd (you know - momentum) - than their older NFL counterparts. It's part of what makes the games more fun and upsets more likely. Nice try, though. I'm familiar with the data. My reading - and comprehension - are fine. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?