Debunking Sports Myths: A Review of Scorecasting

758 Words2 Pages

The book that I’ve read was scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won. Scorecasting was created by two people, one of the creators is a University Of Chicago professor Tobias Moskowitz. The other creator is a Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim. In this book they’re both answering the questions about the well established myths that go on in sports. The myths Moskowitz and Wertheim covered were on page 3 “Is it really preferable to punt on fourth down rather than go for it? To keep feeding the teammate with the hot hand? To try to achieve the highest available spot in the drafts? Is there an I in team? Does defense truly win championships?” The two also looked at the problems for why the Chicago …show more content…

The well detailed information i’ve gotten from this book made me look at the world of sports much differently. Moskowitz and Wertheim always had some kind of mathematical statistics to back up their hypothesis, they made it easy to understand when they’re answering the different sports myths. They were very successful in being detailed when giving statistic and using recent examples that kept my attention. Though, I did have a disagreement in the chapter “Go for It” starting on page 31 . In this chapter it stated on page 36 “Inside the opponent’s 45-yard line, facing anything less than fourth and eight, teams are better off going for it than punting. Inside the opponent’s 33-yard line, they are better off going for it on anything less than fourth and 11. Regardless of field position, on anything less than fourth and five, teams are always better off going for it.” Knowing that I’m a football fanatic, I disagree with them because they are basically saying we are never going to punt the ball. So if we don`t get the first down, we’re going to use the defense win games myth. That put the pressure on defense to stop the opposing team from scoring with short yardage to the end zone. I know for sure this is not the game of football it's all about field positioning. Overall, I did agree with the some of the stuff Wertheim and Moskowitz said. Like when they found and showed statistics that icing the kicker doesn’t freeze a kicker on page 213. I agree with them because, when it’s minutes left in the game. You should let the kicker, kick the ball because he is more nervous. So when you call a time-out you are given that player time to calm down and adjust to the kick. I wouldn’t change anything in this book if I had the power to serve as editor for the author’s book. The reason being is everything must’ve been correctly

More about Debunking Sports Myths: A Review of Scorecasting

Open Document