The Hidden Game of Football

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The Hidden Game of Football: A Revolutionary Approach to the Game and Its Statistics is a book on American football statistics published in 1988 and written by Bob Carroll, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer. It was the first systematic statistical approach to analyzing American football in a book.[1]

Original publication

The original was published in 1988.[2] The purpose of the book is to look at the statistics of football and how they change the game based on coaching decision and player selection.

Updated edition

In 1998, a new version title The Hidden Game Of Football: The Next Edition was published by the authors. The new version is updated and includes more commentary on past statistics. A 2023 edition, with a foreword by Aaron Schatz, is being published by University of Chicago Press.[3]

Reception

The book received mixed reviews at the time of its original publication, but has been assessed more positively by retrospective reviews. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in a 1988 review for The New York Times, found the application of statistics to football "cumbersome."[4] By contrast, Shane Richmond of Pigskin Books wrote that "it’s likely that the book changed the way teams themselves think about the game; it certainly changed how the smarter sportswriters and analysts looked at it."[1] Rustin Dodd, in a retrospective article in The Athletic, described the book as "a seminal work of football analytics" in 2022.[5]

The book inspired Aaron Schatz to found Football Outsiders, and develop the Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) statistic.[5][6]

See also

  • Advanced statistics in basketball, statistical analysis of basketball.
  • Analytics (ice hockey), statistical analysis of ice hockey.
  • Advanced Football Analytics, website dedicated to the statistical analysis of the NFL.
  • Ernie Adams, a Phillips Academy classmate of Bill Belichick whose role with the New England Patriots is compared to Bill James's role with the Boston Red Sox.
  • Football Outsiders, a website dedicated to the statistical analysis of football based on some of the concepts from The Hidden Game of Football.
  • Sabermetrics, statistical analysis of baseball.
  • Sean Lahman, creator of the Pro Football Prospectus series, author of The Pro Football Historical Abstract, and editor of ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia.
  • Sports rating system
  • Win probability

References

  1. ^ a b Richmond, Shane (2019-02-14). "Review: The Hidden Game of Football by Bob Carroll, Pete Palmer & John Thorn". PIGSKIN BOOKS. Retrieved 2022-11-30.
  2. ^ "Pigskin Pythagoras". Boston.com. Retrieved 2022-11-30.
  3. ^ The Hidden Game of Football. University of Chicago Press.
  4. ^ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (October 6, 1988). "Books of The Times; Football as Show Business, Football as Statistics". The New York Times.
  5. ^ a b Dodd, Rustin. "'Hidden Game': How a cult book from the 1980s foretold the future of football and the fourth down debate". The Athletic. Retrieved 2022-11-23.
  6. ^ Carlton, Stuart (11 December 2010). "An Interview with Football Outsiders' Aaron Schatz". Canalstreetchronicles.com.