Friday, January 8, 2010

Random Thought: Football Injuries, bowls, BCS and layoff

Except to the most fervent Alabama fan, the injury to Colt McCoy was a serious blow. I had expected Alabama to be the better team and once the most important player for Texas was knocked out the game, I figured the chances for a good game dropped precipitously. Even though there was some excitement in the second half, this was the case.


As chemical engineer, a couple thoughts came to my mind. The first was did the 30+ day layoff contribute to this particular injury? One of the arguments against a playoff is that the longer season will cause more wear and tear on players and this, along with more exposure, will lead to more injuries (for a small subset of teams). This might be true, but the long layoff between games probably also contributes to injuries -- for quite a few teams. It would be interesting to see some quantitative (statistical) analysis of these questions. If both of these factors contribute, then one could certainly pose an optimization problem for bowl and play-off scheduling that reduces injuries for a given level of revenue (##!!) -- which (of course) must be considered if any changes are to be made.


The injury analysis would be two fold. To get an idea of injuries caused by layoffs, the bowl data would provide a rich source of comparison, say, to a similar temperature profile in the early to middle part of the season. Likewise, wear and tear could be determined, with some weather corrections, by watching the injuries week by week and taking note of byes. In contrast to some of my previous posts, where I note the need for determinism in the analysis, this can be best done simply statistically. Even for the case of a very specific collision involving two or more particular players, slight variations in the turf could mean the difference between a slight strain and complete rupture of a knee ligament.


If such analysis is done, with the follow-on revenue optimization, perhaps we could then decide on logical and scientifically valid grounds if a playoff is a good idea. (If yes, then maybe we could stop using FBS and FCS as sub-designations!)


As a historical note, while I often watch the post Jan 1 bowls, the current system is just not as exciting as the pre-BCS days. In the days when all of the major bowls were on Jan 1 and the AP was going to vote for a champ at the end of the day, all of the bowls mattered. This was because owing to conference alignments, #1 seldom played #2. If your team was ranked 3rd, 4th or maybe even 5th, you were seriously cheering against certain teams either earlier in the day or at the end of the day after your team had won. Often the #1 team did not win and someone else won the title. This was good for Joe Montana's Notre Dame team, but did not work out for our 1993 team -- which I though was one of the all time great College teams. Yes, there were controversies, but it was still more fun than the present!




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