The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 21 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Massey: Adjacent NFL draft picks outperform each other only 52% of the time
“Our 52% number is very much an outside view. It says, look, the base rate here is 52%, and that's across a lot of teams over a lot of years, and so I'm sure about that number.”
NFL franchises only realistically compete against eight other competent teams
“Walsh told me in 1984, we are only competing against eight teams. That was when we had 28 teams in the league. He was right. Today they're still only competing against eight teams. Some teams have no chance, in part because they don't have a culture, in part b…”
General managers must operate in background support roles to head coaches
“Most general managers in the league don't have the complete autonomy to do whatever they want to do. It's really a coach-based league, and it should be, because the coach is dealing with the players every single day. If the players think the coach doesn't have…”
Scouts should not waste time chasing outlier talent exceptions
“So there's always exceptions to every rule, and you're going to come across them. There's always a small school guy that dominates something, but my attitude is, let him come to me. I don't need to chase him. If Jeremy Lin's a really good player, he's going to…”
Establishing the run only sets up field goals, not touchdowns
“Everybody talks about establishing the run. It's the most ridiculous statement of all time, because all it does is establish your ability to kick field goals, because you're never going to score a touchdown running the ball. You have to make explosive plays.”
No NFL programs match Bill Belichick and Bill Walsh's preparation systems
“So when you're a young kid in the league, you think everybody does that. And what you find is no one does it other than him, other than Walsh. I mean, I've never been around a program that ever operates that way.”
Ben Reiter: Reports of baseball's business demise are exaggerated
“I'm somebody who thinks that reports of baseball's demise are kind of exaggerated. It is a different sort of business from the NFL and the NBA to which it's always compared. It's a much more local business. It's much more like steady business. You know, it's o…”
Mauboussin: NFL Teams Still Make Suboptimal Fourth-Down Decisions Despite High Stakes
“It's amazing that even like in the NFL, where there are huge stakes, There's still a lot of suboptimal decisions made. You know, the famous one is fourth, going forward on fourth down.”
Massey: NFL teams will soon adopt motion tracking for personnel decisions
“Teams don't yet use a lot of motion tracking in football. Personnel decisions. Yet. I mean, they're gonna. It's just around the corner. They're beginning to build the base of it.”
Schwimer: Proprietary football data gives JAMBOS a much bigger edge than baseball
“In NFL and college football. We have data that nobody else has. And so that's why I think those two sports will have a far better advantage than baseball.”
Schwimer: JAMBOS football and baseball models backtested better than college basketball
“Obviously we don't have any track record in those sports. This will be our first season for it, but the model back tests at a better rate than our college basketball.”
NFL linebackers who cannot defend against the pass are unplayable
“Today, If you play with a middle linebacker that can't play the pass, and it can only play the run, you're done. And so there's a line that I always use, if I can formation you off the field, meaning if I come out in a passing formation and you can't play, you…”
Calling a defensive timeout right before the two-minute warning is bad strategy
“If you have the ball, Ted, and I need the ball back, and you have a third down play, third and four, and I have one timeout left, and it's two oh five to go in the game. If I call timeout, most fans at home would say, well, that's a smart thing. You get the tw…”
One-third of the NFL workforce gets fired every single year
“Well, yeah, I mean, look, one-third of the workforce in the NFL gets fired every single year, so that's a dangerous job.”
Sports media broadcast rights generate essentially 100 percent incremental profit margins
“Let's take the seven billion dollars of media rights for NFL. That's all a hundred percent incremental margins that there's no cost of that, right? The ESPN signs a check, CBS or NBC signed a check and that's it. There's no cost to it. So the scalability of th…”
Hutchinson: Starting as an NFL Rookie Hurt His Long-Term Career
“It was probably the worst thing that ever happened to me was I ended up starting most of my first year in the NFL, which I should have just held the clipboard for three years.”
Hutchinson: Scott Boras obtained an NFL agent license to represent him
“I get a call from Scott Boris. I was like, oh, I guess you're serious. He's like, good thing. You're the one guy that actually got my NFL license for to be your agent.”
Major sports leagues recently locked in media rights for 12 years
“For us, a big part of that risk has been taken out of the system for the next seven to 12 years because Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, and the NFL, and a couple of the European soccer leagues have all repriced their national and internation…”
The average Big Four sports franchise is valued around $2 billion
“I think the average evaluation for one of the teams in Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, NFL, NHL, I think it's about two billion dollars, 2.2 billion dollars, something like that.”