On Processes and Outcomes (1 Viewer)

[ConstruxBoy]

Not to speak for SSOG, but he's not saying to blindly follow NFL draft order in a fantasy draft. Rather break guys in tiers based on draft position (ie "late 1st / early 2nd round RBs" or whatever works for you), then adjust for opportunity and situation within those tiers. I'd love to hear what type of "homework" a fantasy owner is doing that can identify either overdrafted or underdrafted players better than the NFL franchises that invest millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours into the process.

That said, I think that a guy falling down the board is much stronger evidence than a guy taken way earlier than the pre-draft consensus. A guy taken really high can be the result of one franchise making a mistake and reaching (ie Al Davis with DHB). When a guy that was projected to be drafted high falls way down the board (ie Jonathan Dwyer) it means that every NFL franchise is saying "no thanks" multiple times -- it seems pretty unlikely that 32 teams are all missing the boat simultaneously on a single player.

IMO it's definitely bad process to believe that a fantasy geek can look at a few YouTube highlights and see things that NFL teams miss.

CoughcoughLamarMillercoughcough

 

[ducktales]

this is crazy to say you need a full staff and millions of dollars to do quality scouting.

http://www.fannation.com/truth_and_rumors/view/171150-want-attention-from-nfl-scouts-try-youtube

it takes 0 dollars to watch youtube videos

If you guys are going to become cheerleaders for Mr Adam -- Adam, can't speak for yourself?--, at least bring up valid points.

Adam himself said it wasn't a matter of time, it was a matter of intelligence; he said scouts are smarter than him and its silly to try do anything but follow them. Then when he realized how useless that made him look he changed it and said he could do it but it would be a waste of time because he could spend it on more productive things.

Whats more productive than helping subscribers get the best player available in drafts? I guess writing non football articles?

You realize highlight youtube videos are not the end all be all of scouting right?

Have you ever scouted or interacted with scouts? Do you have any idea all the other effort that goes into this?

I've built the recruiting clips that OU uses to scout for who we'll recruit, and the amount of work that I alone put into scouting JUST WIDE RECEIVERS is huge. And I don't get to make a recommendation or influence the process at all! I just watch and build the video montages for the real scouts and recruiters.

Now think about it at an NFL level. Every major college in the country. 100 or more players on every team. Quite a few are prospects at almost every D1, BCS school.

You think that all NFL scouts do is look at the youtube highlight videos? You may need a bit of a reality check, my friend. You're missing all the fundamentals that scouts look for, all the little things, the off ball plays, the habits, the techniques, the character interviews, the work ethic, the family medical history...

I'll put you, with 10 hours a day to look at youtube videos only - no other resources - against any single NFL scout. And I'd bet my entire IRA on the scout to outperform you as a talent evaluator more than 80% of the time. Hands down. I'd even give you nice odds as the underdog on top of that.

No offense, man, but you should really re-think just what you believe it takes to scout players, because the suggestion that youtube highlight vides and time is all it takes is absolutely ludicrous.

You may need to step outside the stone age you are living in and realize the internet is a vast source of information --it isn't like the old days where scouts HAD to travel around the country--, be it a players youtube video --to see their skill in action-- or their twitter account --to see if there is character issues potentially-- etc

My main statement stands, regardless of how amazing the Internet is (and I agree, the info you can find is fantastic), there are a lot of things that aren't on it. Like all of the off-ball, non-highlight plays. All the practices a player goes through to see how he carries himself. Determining work ethic, family situation, who a guy spends his time with, etc...

And if you're going to invest millions of dollars in someone, and you think "I'll just check his twitter" is the best route, feel free. But you're missing a lot of things about the way the world works. I've got a twitter and a facebook, and they are pretty much representative only of my good side. A large portion of us college students are recognizing the value of manipulating social media to benefit you in employment searches.

I'm a 21 year old (who has lurked on this site since 07, and posted avidly since 09 (for example). I think I understand the value of the Internet...). I've grown up in this Internet and media age. Let's not pretend like I'm in the "stone age," but maybe recognize instead that while the Internet is an INCREDIBLE tool, it is not the end all be all. Like I said, even at the amateur level (admittedly, the very top tier of the amateur level) here at OU, every single step of scouting for recruiting takes hours of work and tons of information NOT available on the Internet. Do you think we're stupid? One of the best football colleges in the country, and we wouldn't just pull these things off the Internet if we could? Come on, man. Use your head.

false, http://youtu.be/HpghR18SaKo?t=1m10s

this is a common fallacy people have, they think what they view important --in your case, privacy-- other people will find important as well. A lot of twitters out there give out way too much information, but their dumb kids --what do you expect--

I don't care if you have grown up on the internet or in sesame street, you are acting like you don't understand the internet at all.

No one said it was, but it's definitely gives you enough resources where you can have an edge in your rookie rankings compared to people that just blindly follow the NFL draft.

Oh you are saying HS information isn't widely available on the internet? well, no --you know what--..., anyways, reality check, college sports are more popular than HS sports so of course there is going to be more information available regarding college players than HS players.

One last point, NFL scouts have until the draft to give out reports non NFL scouts usually have up until August -- where the majority of rookie drafts are held--

 

[Adam Harstad]

Matt Waldman might not be a nfl scout but calling him an armchair scout is derogatory

Being able to evaluate talent isn't your thing?

you are comparing scouting --at a non nfl level-- to throwing darts at a draft board and arbitrarily saying bust or underrated? Lol?

No offense is meant by the phrase "armchair scout". For what it's worth, it's a term I've used to describe several long-time friends around here. I don't really feel like it's appropriate to call Waldman an "amateur scout", because he actually gets compensated for the time and effort he puts in- and rightfully so. I think that fantasy football owners are "armchair GMs", so it only seems appropriate that the college scouts among us are "armchair scouts".

I'm not comparing scouting to throwing darts. I think even the worst armchair scout could watch highlight films and separate the future 1st rounders from the future UDFAs. I'm comparing the odds of beating an actual NFL scouting department to throwing darts. I think if the armchair scout considers a player a "reach", he's got about a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong. If an armchair scout considers a player a "steal", he's got a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong.

I also don't think it's that crazy of an idea. Again, getting back to the financial analogy, we have an entire investor class that pours limitless time and resources into beating the market, and the best they're able to produce is a coin flip. If a hedge fund manager thinks a particular stock is undervalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. If he thinks it's overvalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. These are highly educated, really brilliant guys with limitless resources, and they're not able to outperform random chance when compared to the market. That's because the market is efficient- that's the whole point of the efficient market hypothesis.

 

[Coeur de Lion]

Not to speak for SSOG, but he's not saying to blindly follow NFL draft order in a fantasy draft. Rather break guys in tiers based on draft position (ie "late 1st / early 2nd round RBs" or whatever works for you), then adjust for opportunity and situation within those tiers. I'd love to hear what type of "homework" a fantasy owner is doing that can identify either overdrafted or underdrafted players better than the NFL franchises that invest millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours into the process. That said, I think that a guy falling down the board is much stronger evidence than a guy taken way earlier than the pre-draft consensus. A guy taken really high can be the result of one franchise making a mistake and reaching (ie Al Davis with DHB). When a guy that was projected to be drafted high falls way down the board (ie Jonathan Dwyer) it means that every NFL franchise is saying "no thanks" multiple times -- it seems pretty unlikely that 32 teams are all missing the boat simultaneously on a single player. IMO it's definitely bad process to believe that a fantasy geek can look at a few YouTube highlights and see things that NFL teams miss.

CoughcoughLamarMillercoughcough

LOL. I originally was thinking of Miller specifically and avoided using him so as not to fire up a pretty played out argument again. But yeah, a ton of people are gulping the Lamar Miller kool aid.

 

[ConstruxBoy]

Not to speak for SSOG, but he's not saying toblindly follow NFL draft order in a fantasy draft. Rather break guys in tiers based on draft position (ie "late 1st / early 2nd round RBs" or whatever works for you), then adjust for opportunity and situation within those tiers. I'd love to hear what type of "homework" a fantasy owner is doing that can identify either overdrafted or underdrafted players better than the NFL franchises that invest millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours into the process. That said, I think that a guy falling down the board is much stronger evidence than a guy taken way earlier than the pre-draft consensus. A guy taken really high can be the result of one franchise making a mistake and reaching (ie Al Davis with DHB). When a guy that was projected to be drafted high falls way down the board (ie Jonathan Dwyer) it means that every NFL franchise is saying "no thanks" multiple times -- it seems pretty unlikely that 32 teams are all missing the boat simultaneously on a single player. IMO it's definitely bad process to believe that a fantasy geek can look at a few YouTube highlights and see things that NFL teams miss.

CoughcoughLamarMillercoughcough

LOL. I originally was thinking of Miller specifically and avoided using him so as not to fire up a pretty played out argument again. But yeah, a ton of people are gulping the Lamar Miller kool aid.

Was actually considering Chris Polk as well

 

[ducktales]

Matt Waldman might not be a nfl scout but calling him an armchair scout is derogatory

Being able to evaluate talent isn't your thing?

you are comparing scouting --at a non nfl level-- to throwing darts at a draft board and arbitrarily saying bust or underrated? Lol?

No offense is meant by the phrase "armchair scout". For what it's worth, it's a term I've used to describe several long-time friends around here. I don't really feel like it's appropriate to call Waldman an "amateur scout", because he actually gets compensated for the time and effort he puts in- and rightfully so. I think that fantasy football owners are "armchair GMs", so it only seems appropriate that the college scouts among us are "armchair scouts".

I'm not comparing scouting to throwing darts. I think even the worst armchair scout could watch highlight films and separate the future 1st rounders from the future UDFAs. I'm comparing the odds of beating an actual NFL scouting department to throwing darts. I think if the armchair scout considers a player a "reach", he's got about a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong. If an armchair scout considers a player a "steal", he's got a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong.

I also don't think it's that crazy of an idea. Again, getting back to the financial analogy, we have an entire investor class that pours limitless time and resources into beating the market, and the best they're able to produce is a coin flip. If a hedge fund manager thinks a particular stock is undervalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. If he thinks it's overvalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. These are highly educated, really brilliant guys with limitless resources, and they're not able to outperform random chance when compared to the market. That's because the market is efficient- that's the whole point of the efficient market hypothesis.

That may or may not be true, in a general sense --could you back up this data-- but once again, this is footballguys the mecca of all fantasy sports, so in my opinion, the #s should be higher than the general public being "armchair scouts"

I can tell you this, I have read a lot from Waldman and he personally helped me win some leagues with superior rookie drafting that I wouldn't of had If I just followed nfl draft ranking blindly

 

[Instinctive]

this is crazy to say you need a full staff and millions of dollars to do quality scouting.

http://www.fannation.com/truth_and_rumors/view/171150-want-attention-from-nfl-scouts-try-youtube

it takes 0 dollars to watch youtube videos

If you guys are going to become cheerleaders for Mr Adam -- Adam, can't speak for yourself?--, at least bring up valid points.

Adam himself said it wasn't a matter of time, it was a matter of intelligence; he said scouts are smarter than him and its silly to try do anything but follow them. Then when he realized how useless that made him look he changed it and said he could do it but it would be a waste of time because he could spend it on more productive things.

Whats more productive than helping subscribers get the best player available in drafts? I guess writing non football articles?

You realize highlight youtube videos are not the end all be all of scouting right?

Have you ever scouted or interacted with scouts? Do you have any idea all the other effort that goes into this?

I've built the recruiting clips that OU uses to scout for who we'll recruit, and the amount of work that I alone put into scouting JUST WIDE RECEIVERS is huge. And I don't get to make a recommendation or influence the process at all! I just watch and build the video montages for the real scouts and recruiters.

Now think about it at an NFL level. Every major college in the country. 100 or more players on every team. Quite a few are prospects at almost every D1, BCS school.

You think that all NFL scouts do is look at the youtube highlight videos? You may need a bit of a reality check, my friend. You're missing all the fundamentals that scouts look for, all the little things, the off ball plays, the habits, the techniques, the character interviews, the work ethic, the family medical history...

I'll put you, with 10 hours a day to look at youtube videos only - no other resources - against any single NFL scout. And I'd bet my entire IRA on the scout to outperform you as a talent evaluator more than 80% of the time. Hands down. I'd even give you nice odds as the underdog on top of that.

No offense, man, but you should really re-think just what you believe it takes to scout players, because the suggestion that youtube highlight vides and time is all it takes is absolutely ludicrous.

You may need to step outside the stone age you are living in and realize the internet is a vast source of information --it isn't like the old days where scouts HAD to travel around the country--, be it a players youtube video --to see their skill in action-- or their twitter account --to see if there is character issues potentially-- etc

My main statement stands, regardless of how amazing the Internet is (and I agree, the info you can find is fantastic), there are a lot of things that aren't on it. Like all of the off-ball, non-highlight plays. All the practices a player goes through to see how he carries himself. Determining work ethic, family situation, who a guy spends his time with, etc...

And if you're going to invest millions of dollars in someone, and you think "I'll just check his twitter" is the best route, feel free. But you're missing a lot of things about the way the world works. I've got a twitter and a facebook, and they are pretty much representative only of my good side. A large portion of us college students are recognizing the value of manipulating social media to benefit you in employment searches.

I'm a 21 year old (who has lurked on this site since 07, and posted avidly since 09 (for example). I think I understand the value of the Internet...). I've grown up in this Internet and media age. Let's not pretend like I'm in the "stone age," but maybe recognize instead that while the Internet is an INCREDIBLE tool, it is not the end all be all. Like I said, even at the amateur level (admittedly, the very top tier of the amateur level) here at OU, every single step of scouting for recruiting takes hours of work and tons of information NOT available on the Internet. Do you think we're stupid? One of the best football colleges in the country, and we wouldn't just pull these things off the Internet if we could? Come on, man. Use your head.

false, http://youtu.be/HpghR18SaKo?t=1m10s

this is a common fallacy people have, they think what they view important --in your case, privacy-- other people will find important as well. A lot of twitters out there give out way too much information, but their dumb kids --what do you expect--

I don't care if you have grown up on the internet or in sesame street, you are acting like you don't understand the internet at all.

No one said it was, but it's definitely gives you enough resources where you can have an edge in your rookie rankings compared to people that just blindly follow the NFL draft.

Oh you are saying HS information isn't widely available on the internet? well, no --you know what--..., anyways, reality check, college sports are more popular than HS sports so of course there is going to be more information available regarding college players than HS players.

One last point, NFL scouts have until the draft to give out reports non NFL scouts usually have up until August -- where the majority of rookie drafts are held--

Again, you're missing the point. No matter what I value, nobody's twitter tells me enough to be comfortable investing millions of dollars (or a full scholarship) in a guy I've never met.



As someone who has been accused of being a #### often in the past, I feel obligated to try and help you out here - you're coming off like a gigantic #######. What do you do for a living? Have you worked in scouting before? One of my best friends' father is a scout for the 49ers...trust me, they do a lot more than look at youtube videos, and they do in fact travel across the country.

"you are acting like you don't understand the internet [sic] at all."

No I'm not. I think you might be - you are ascribing a lot of absolute qualities of power to something that is a tool - a very useful tool, especially for obtaining information, but certainly not a tool with all of the possible information you might want on a player. By all means, correct me if I'm wrong (and I do not mean this to sound like an insult, so please don't take it as such), but you sound like a teenage version of myself with the Internet-worship. When I was in high school, I also viewed the Internet as the ultimate in everything. What could I possibly need that wasn't available there?

You'll learn, and it's ok if you don't get it now - but you will.

I think I'm done with this chain, unless a stance changes, because I've made most of the points I want, and it feels a bit like now. I appreciate the time you've taken to try and convey some contrarian thoughts here - at the very least, it has helped us to ward off groupthink in this area.

 

[ducktales]

this is crazy to say you need a full staff and millions of dollars to do quality scouting.

http://www.fannation.com/truth_and_rumors/view/171150-want-attention-from-nfl-scouts-try-youtube

it takes 0 dollars to watch youtube videos

If you guys are going to become cheerleaders for Mr Adam -- Adam, can't speak for yourself?--, at least bring up valid points.

Adam himself said it wasn't a matter of time, it was a matter of intelligence; he said scouts are smarter than him and its silly to try do anything but follow them. Then when he realized how useless that made him look he changed it and said he could do it but it would be a waste of time because he could spend it on more productive things.

Whats more productive than helping subscribers get the best player available in drafts? I guess writing non football articles?

You realize highlight youtube videos are not the end all be all of scouting right?

Have you ever scouted or interacted with scouts? Do you have any idea all the other effort that goes into this?

I've built the recruiting clips that OU uses to scout for who we'll recruit, and the amount of work that I alone put into scouting JUST WIDE RECEIVERS is huge. And I don't get to make a recommendation or influence the process at all! I just watch and build the video montages for the real scouts and recruiters.

Now think about it at an NFL level. Every major college in the country. 100 or more players on every team. Quite a few are prospects at almost every D1, BCS school.

You think that all NFL scouts do is look at the youtube highlight videos? You may need a bit of a reality check, my friend. You're missing all the fundamentals that scouts look for, all the little things, the off ball plays, the habits, the techniques, the character interviews, the work ethic, the family medical history...

I'll put you, with 10 hours a day to look at youtube videos only - no other resources - against any single NFL scout. And I'd bet my entire IRA on the scout to outperform you as a talent evaluator more than 80% of the time. Hands down. I'd even give you nice odds as the underdog on top of that.

No offense, man, but you should really re-think just what you believe it takes to scout players, because the suggestion that youtube highlight vides and time is all it takes is absolutely ludicrous.

You may need to step outside the stone age you are living in and realize the internet is a vast source of information --it isn't like the old days where scouts HAD to travel around the country--, be it a players youtube video --to see their skill in action-- or their twitter account --to see if there is character issues potentially-- etc

My main statement stands, regardless of how amazing the Internet is (and I agree, the info you can find is fantastic), there are a lot of things that aren't on it. Like all of the off-ball, non-highlight plays. All the practices a player goes through to see how he carries himself. Determining work ethic, family situation, who a guy spends his time with, etc...

And if you're going to invest millions of dollars in someone, and you think "I'll just check his twitter" is the best route, feel free. But you're missing a lot of things about the way the world works. I've got a twitter and a facebook, and they are pretty much representative only of my good side. A large portion of us college students are recognizing the value of manipulating social media to benefit you in employment searches.

I'm a 21 year old (who has lurked on this site since 07, and posted avidly since 09 (for example). I think I understand the value of the Internet...). I've grown up in this Internet and media age. Let's not pretend like I'm in the "stone age," but maybe recognize instead that while the Internet is an INCREDIBLE tool, it is not the end all be all. Like I said, even at the amateur level (admittedly, the very top tier of the amateur level) here at OU, every single step of scouting for recruiting takes hours of work and tons of information NOT available on the Internet. Do you think we're stupid? One of the best football colleges in the country, and we wouldn't just pull these things off the Internet if we could? Come on, man. Use your head.

false, http://youtu.be/HpghR18SaKo?t=1m10s

this is a common fallacy people have, they think what they view important --in your case, privacy-- other people will find important as well. A lot of twitters out there give out way too much information, but their dumb kids --what do you expect--

I don't care if you have grown up on the internet or in sesame street, you are acting like you don't understand the internet at all.

No one said it was, but it's definitely gives you enough resources where you can have an edge in your rookie rankings compared to people that just blindly follow the NFL draft.

Oh you are saying HS information isn't widely available on the internet? well, no --you know what--..., anyways, reality check, college sports are more popular than HS sports so of course there is going to be more information available regarding college players than HS players.

One last point, NFL scouts have until the draft to give out reports non NFL scouts usually have up until August -- where the majority of rookie drafts are held--

Again, you're missing the point. No matter what I value, nobody's twitter tells me enough to be comfortable investing millions of dollars (or a full scholarship) in a guy I've never met.



As someone who has been accused of being a #### often in the past, I feel obligated to try and help you out here - you're coming off like a gigantic #######. What do you do for a living? Have you worked in scouting before? One of my best friends' father is a scout for the 49ers...trust me, they do a lot more than look at youtube videos, and they do in fact travel across the country.

"you are acting like you don't understand the internet [sic] at all."

No I'm not. I think you might be - you are ascribing a lot of absolute qualities of power to something that is a tool - a very useful tool, especially for obtaining information, but certainly not a tool with all of the possible information you might want on a player. By all means, correct me if I'm wrong (and I do not mean this to sound like an insult, so please don't take it as such), but you sound like a teenage version of myself with the Internet-worship. When I was in high school, I also viewed the Internet as the ultimate in everything. What could I possibly need that wasn't available there?

You'll learn, and it's ok if you don't get it now - but you will.

I think I'm done with this chain, unless a stance changes, because I've made most of the points I want, and it feels a bit like now. I appreciate the time you've taken to try and convey some contrarian thoughts here - at the very least, it has helped us to ward of groupthink in this area.

guys trust his opinion, his friends dad works for the NFL

 

[Coeur de Lion]

Not to speak for SSOG, but he's not saying to blindly follow NFL draft order in a fantasy draft. Rather break guys in tiers based on draft position (ie "late 1st / early 2nd round RBs" or whatever works for you), then adjust for opportunity and situation within those tiers. I'd love to hear what type of "homework" a fantasy owner is doing that can identify either overdrafted or underdrafted players better than the NFL franchises that invest millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours into the process. That said, I think that a guy falling down the board is much stronger evidence than a guy taken way earlier than the pre-draft consensus. A guy taken really high can be the result of one franchise making a mistake and reaching (ie Al Davis with DHB). When a guy that was projected to be drafted high falls way down the board (ie Jonathan Dwyer) it means that every NFL franchise is saying "no thanks" multiple times -- it seems pretty unlikely that 32 teams are all missing the boat simultaneously on a single player. IMO it's definitely bad process to believe that a fantasy geek can look at a few YouTube highlights and see things that NFL teams miss.

CoughcoughLamarMillercoughcough

LOL. I originally was thinking of Miller specifically and avoided using him so as not to fire up a pretty played out argument again. But yeah, a ton of people are gulping the Lamar Miller kool aid.

Was actually considering Chris Polk as well

Zac Stacy is being argued as a viable 1st rounder too. Not that he had any hype behind him prior to the draft, but still...

 

[Instinctive]

guys trust his opinion, his friends dad works for the NFL

I think you missed the main point there again - If you look at the sentence structure you'll see that my opinion isn't linked there at all, but rather you should trust that NFL scouts do a lot more than look at youtube. I think interacting with somebody who does any job tends to give you a basic understanding of the extent of their work, but I could be wrong.It seems as though what you're adding to the discussion has begun to wane in value, perhaps you could stop trolling and let the discussion take its course now. TIA.

 

[Adam Harstad]

Matt Waldman might not be a nfl scout but calling him an armchair scout is derogatory

Being able to evaluate talent isn't your thing?

you are comparing scouting --at a non nfl level-- to throwing darts at a draft board and arbitrarily saying bust or underrated? Lol?

No offense is meant by the phrase "armchair scout". For what it's worth, it's a term I've used to describe several long-time friends around here. I don't really feel like it's appropriate to call Waldman an "amateur scout", because he actually gets compensated for the time and effort he puts in- and rightfully so. I think that fantasy football owners are "armchair GMs", so it only seems appropriate that the college scouts among us are "armchair scouts".

I'm not comparing scouting to throwing darts. I think even the worst armchair scout could watch highlight films and separate the future 1st rounders from the future UDFAs. I'm comparing the odds of beating an actual NFL scouting department to throwing darts. I think if the armchair scout considers a player a "reach", he's got about a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong. If an armchair scout considers a player a "steal", he's got a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong.

I also don't think it's that crazy of an idea. Again, getting back to the financial analogy, we have an entire investor class that pours limitless time and resources into beating the market, and the best they're able to produce is a coin flip. If a hedge fund manager thinks a particular stock is undervalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. If he thinks it's overvalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. These are highly educated, really brilliant guys with limitless resources, and they're not able to outperform random chance when compared to the market. That's because the market is efficient- that's the whole point of the efficient market hypothesis.

That may or may not be true, in a general sense --could you back up this data-- but once again, this is footballguys the mecca of all fantasy sports, so in my opinion, the #s should be higher than the general public being "armchair scouts"

I can tell you this, I have read a lot from Waldman and he personally helped me win some leagues with superior rookie drafting that I wouldn't of had If I just followed nfl draft ranking blindly

Sure. And hedge fund managers with 7-figure salaries SHOULD be better than the general public at picking stocks. But they're not. That's the consequence of an efficient market.

To stray from the financial analogy to a more football related one... let's talk about picking winners in NFL games. I think the casual fan could easily pick the winner of an NFL game 60% of the time. Maybe 70% of the time. I think that's totally achievable. Introduce a spread, though, and that figure plummets. I don't know of anybody who can consistently beat the spread when picking games. You get NFL "experts" who post their weekly picks, and they all finish about .500 against the spread. I'd say I'm actually really good at picking games, and I have a track record to back it up- I've finished 1st or 2nd in my office pick-em pool (participation ranging from a low of 23 to a high of 42) in each of the last 3 years. I've probably made $1,000 off of it over that span. And yet there's no way I'd ever take my talents to Vegas, because I'll be the first to admit I've got no shot at beating the vig. Vegas is way smarter than I am. If I have success, it's because I'm clever enough to exploit loopholes (Yahoo locks the lines on Thursday, which means I can make my picks based on the line's movement prior to Sunday and basically run a form of arbitrage to goose my percentages). Vegas is an efficient market, and I think my odds against that market are basically a coinflip. My work pools were not an efficient market, and my odds there were much, much better.

Same thing. The NFL draft is an efficient market, and my odds of outscouting actual NFL franchises are pretty much nil. My own fantasy leagues are NOT an efficient market, and I can leverage those particular inefficiencies to dominate my league mates. It's all a matter of who the competition is- saying I can't outcompete the NFL doesn't mean I can't outcompete 11 armchair GMs.

 

[ducktales]

guys trust his opinion, his friends dad works for the NFL

I think you missed the main point there again - If you look at the sentence structure you'll see that my opinion isn't linked there at all, but rather you should trust that NFL scouts do a lot more than look at youtube. I think interacting with somebody who does any job tends to give you a basic understanding of the extent of their work, but I could be wrong.It seems as though what you're adding to the discussion has begun to wane in value, perhaps you could stop trolling and let the discussion take its course now. TIA.

"one of my best friends' father is a scout for the 49ers...trust me [they do a lot more than look at youtube videos] --your opinion (until showing actual evidence, not your friends daddy thats all it is)--, and they do in fact travel across the country. "

It's funny you mentioned High School because the last time I heard "well my dad" or "well his dad" in an argument was in the 3rd grade

 

[ducktales]

Matt Waldman might not be a nfl scout but calling him an armchair scout is derogatory

Being able to evaluate talent isn't your thing?

you are comparing scouting --at a non nfl level-- to throwing darts at a draft board and arbitrarily saying bust or underrated? Lol?

No offense is meant by the phrase "armchair scout". For what it's worth, it's a term I've used to describe several long-time friends around here. I don't really feel like it's appropriate to call Waldman an "amateur scout", because he actually gets compensated for the time and effort he puts in- and rightfully so. I think that fantasy football owners are "armchair GMs", so it only seems appropriate that the college scouts among us are "armchair scouts".

I'm not comparing scouting to throwing darts. I think even the worst armchair scout could watch highlight films and separate the future 1st rounders from the future UDFAs. I'm comparing the odds of beating an actual NFL scouting department to throwing darts. I think if the armchair scout considers a player a "reach", he's got about a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong. If an armchair scout considers a player a "steal", he's got a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong.

I also don't think it's that crazy of an idea. Again, getting back to the financial analogy, we have an entire investor class that pours limitless time and resources into beating the market, and the best they're able to produce is a coin flip. If a hedge fund manager thinks a particular stock is undervalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. If he thinks it's overvalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. These are highly educated, really brilliant guys with limitless resources, and they're not able to outperform random chance when compared to the market. That's because the market is efficient- that's the whole point of the efficient market hypothesis.

That may or may not be true, in a general sense --could you back up this data-- but once again, this is footballguys the mecca of all fantasy sports, so in my opinion, the #s should be higher than the general public being "armchair scouts"

I can tell you this, I have read a lot from Waldman and he personally helped me win some leagues with superior rookie drafting that I wouldn't of had If I just followed nfl draft ranking blindly

Sure. And hedge fund managers with 7-figure salaries SHOULD be better than the general public at picking stocks. But they're not. That's the consequence of an efficient market.

Without realizing it you just agreed with me, doing your own research could be vastly superior than just listening to the expert aka NFL draft scouts.

Since you love the stock analogy so much, anyone with sense doesn't just google search "experts who are the best companies to invest in" if they did they would probably do no where near as well as the person that did that combined with actual research on their own into each option and thinking whether they agree with them or not + looking for companies the experts didn't even mention --since they aren't nor NFL scouts aren't perfect--

 

[Hey Nostradamus!]

Hey Adam, just wanted to post a thumbs up on the article. Remember reading your old dynasty rankings, glad to see you on the FGB staff now.

For me personally, the importance of being outcome-oriented versus process-oriented was driven home learning poker back in the day (+EV is +EV, outcome be damned!). It's also one that, once people grasp it, can and should be applied to many many areas of life, including fantasy football.

 

[Rhythmdoctor]

I just read the whole article and it's spot on and exactly how I approach any type of game. As a former trader, this is the type of mental approach you need to have to have a chance of success. It can definitely be adopted but it seems most people who understand and believe this approach develop it through their own awareness.

Either way, I thought you did an excellent job at explaining the concept in clear and concise way.

 

[ZWK]

Adam - I mostly agree with what you're saying about efficient markets (I am the guy who publishes generic rookie rankings based only on NFL draft position). But since disagreement is more fun, here are some reasons for thinking that the NFL draft is a little bit farther from being an efficient market than you say, and that fantasy ADP is a little bit closer.

One important feature of a market which allows it to be efficient is that people can play both sides. If you think a stock is undervalued then you can buy it, and if you think that it's overvalued than you can sell or short it. People who have information that a stock will do better than its current price suggests buy and push the price up, and people who have info that it will do worse sell/short and push the price down. If 5% of people trading stocks are idiots who buy bad stocks, they push the price of those stocks up. If no one could play the other side, then the stocks would be stuck at an overpriced price, but in the actual stockmarket the idiots just created an opportunity for savvy people to sell/short those stocks and make money. In an active market, they will quickly push the price back down to where it should be. The price reflects the combined information of everyone who is trading in the market, so it isn't thrown off too much by a few overenthuastic traders.

The NFL draft is missing that feature. It's just buy-buy-buy, with essentially no selling. If one team thinks that speedy Johnny Stonehands is a first round talent at WR, then they're liable to draft him in the first (or second). There is no way for other teams to "sell" and push his value back down to the consensus of the 32 front offices (except very slightly, by passing on him when it's their pick) - his value is determined by the team that values him most.

If we could look at the other 31 teams' draft boards and see that none of them had Stonehands graded any higher than the 4th, then I think it would be a safe bet that he will do worse than most other first round WRs. Since we can't see their draft boards, the best we can do is listen to the Waldmans, the leaks, the conventional wisdom about "reaches", and so on. It's not a lot of information, but it's something. (Note that this only works in one direction - if a player drops to the 6th round then that does basically tell you the consensus among front offices.)

Fantasy football doesn't have the same incentives (although there are some incentives - pride, small amounts of money, etc.), but ADP does have the feature of letting errors on both sides (partially) cancel out. One league may have a guy who is in love with Jason Witten and drafts him too early, and another league may be full of people who don't appreciate Witten and let him fall too far; in ADP those will cancel out. Any one particular league may be wildly inefficient (since you don't have millions of people are bidding against each other and getting bid-ask spreads down near zero), but ADP will be pretty efficient at capturing the information from lots of leagues and condensing it into a single number for each player.

Unlike the NFL draft, ADP has the weakness of relying on the judgments of lots of moderately-informed people, many of whom are using the same heuristics. That does lead to some systematic errors, including (I think) a tendency to overweight injuries (in dynasty), to overweight the importance of recent performance, and (combining the previous 2) to overly penalize players whose performance recently suffered while playing through an injury. But if you don't have one of these sort of plausible systematic reasons for why a player would be mis-valued, you should be careful about valuing a player very differently from his ADP.

(And I actually use a similar sort of reasoning with the NFL draft. If I like a player and then he gets drafted in the 6th round, I'll consider if there is a systematic reason why NFL teams might undervalue him relative to his fantasy value - e.g. character risk, injuries, limited amount of tape against good competition, etc. If there isn't - if it just turns out that none of the 32 teams liked him very much - that is a bad sign.)

 

[moleculo]

If you ignore the outcome, how can you discern between a good process and a bad process?

This seems to be a much more important point to discuss than beating the scouts.

 

[Drop]

As for how the idea would stand up to peer review... I'd guess probably pretty well. Cade Massey presented findings at the MIT Sports Analytics conference which largely reached the same conclusions. Teams just don't outperform the market average in talent evaluation over an extended timeline.

I watched the talk and he used a similar method of considering teams and not staffs. What does the Bengals 1995 staff have to do with the Bengals 2011 staff? Is the old Browns staff carried over to the Ravens in the data? Teams are irrelevant, it's all about the people who evaluate the competitive landscape and make the pick, and that is further complicated by player development, competition, injuries, opportunity, and luck. There are many questions I have about the logic of the methodology used. The guys on the 1995 Bengals staff may be picking for another team now and competing against the Bengals 2011 staff. I don't think the study is thorough enough, but it's something to think about and probably just means I have to learn a lot more stuff. Seems like the process is bad, regardless of the outcome. Thanks for all the responses, it's appreciated.

Well, it's not comparing the 1995 Bengals to the 2011 Bengals, it's only comparing Year N to Year N+1 (so the 2010 Bengals to the 2011 Bengals). It's like the "hot hand" studies in basketball- you don't need to compare each shot to all other shots that player has taken, you just need to compare it to the shot immediately preceding. If there's some sort of sequential dependency- if the "hot hand" exists, and a player is more likely to make his next shot if he's made several in a row- then you'd expect the data to be "streakier" than pure randomness would dictate (i.e. instead of a random distribution of shots, you'd expect a tendency for a lot of longer-than-expected hot streaks and cold streaks). The streakier the data, the higher the correlation would be between each shot and the shot immediately preceding it. Same concept here- if some teams were consistently better at scouting and some were consistently worse, you'd expect to see a lot of "hot streaks" (runs of a lot of good drafts in a row) and "cold streaks" (runs of a lot of bad drafts in a row). If that were the case, the correlation coefficient would be higher. If the data was perfectly random, the correlation coefficient would be zero. In this case, the correlation coefficient is very close to zero, which suggests that a team's draft performance in year N holds practically no predictive power for their draft performance in year N+1.

This isn't to say that everyone is equally good drafters. Surely some people are atrocious drafters. This just says that those atrocious drafters get replaced quickly, and the team regresses back to average. Over the long run, you wouldn't expect any particular team to outperform or underperform the league average in drafting.

When the numbers put on a player indicate the league wide championship equity he brings to a team I'll start believing it. That's really what the competition is about, this study is based on starts. Regime change in N+1 years many times have nothing to do with the previous year "success". Starts are not wins, starts are not an accurate measure of team success because they are not the goal of the game, and the draft is not the only way to acquire players with championship equity. The application of math here is not logical in that sense. It's a bad process, the outcome is whatever. It could be done so much better. I didn't see the thread going in this direction, but now many of us have plenty of our own statements that we can work to disprove as we try to get better. I am reminded of this quote, although now I have to figure out who it applies to:

"There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about." - John von Neumann

 

[Lash]

One process i have subscribed to is to devalue slot WR types no matter their draft pedigree

They are more valuable in real but not fantasy football IMO

And i will bump value of the size/speed guys who also have red zone skills

IMO even when they lose a step they still keep the TD skills

I need to go back and fully check outcomes but I'm pretty confident that this one is close to spot on

 

[msommer]

Matt Waldman might not be a nfl scout but calling him an armchair scout is derogatory

Being able to evaluate talent isn't your thing?

you are comparing scouting --at a non nfl level-- to throwing darts at a draft board and arbitrarily saying bust or underrated? Lol?

No offense is meant by the phrase "armchair scout". For what it's worth, it's a term I've used to describe several long-time friends around here. I don't really feel like it's appropriate to call Waldman an "amateur scout", because he actually gets compensated for the time and effort he puts in- and rightfully so. I think that fantasy football owners are "armchair GMs", so it only seems appropriate that the college scouts among us are "armchair scouts".

I'm not comparing scouting to throwing darts. I think even the worst armchair scout could watch highlight films and separate the future 1st rounders from the future UDFAs. I'm comparing the odds of beating an actual NFL scouting department to throwing darts. I think if the armchair scout considers a player a "reach", he's got about a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong. If an armchair scout considers a player a "steal", he's got a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong.

I also don't think it's that crazy of an idea. Again, getting back to the financial analogy, we have an entire investor class that pours limitless time and resources into beating the market, and the best they're able to produce is a coin flip. If a hedge fund manager thinks a particular stock is undervalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. If he thinks it's overvalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. These are highly educated, really brilliant guys with limitless resources, and they're not able to outperform random chance when compared to the market. That's because the market is efficient- that's the whole point of the efficient market hypothesis.

Hege fund managers do not exist only to beat the market. In the reality of things, the allure of beating the market is merely marketing. The real reason for the existence of hedge funds is to generate money to the OWNER/creator of the hedge fund in fees. Now, a bunch of people seem to think the coin flip is good enough to bet millions and to pay hefty fees so the hedge fund managers can have a job and a (very) comfortable life. Peace on that. It does not change the fact that hedge funds are not about altruism for selected millionaires.

 

[Instinctive]

Matt Waldman might not be a nfl scout but calling him an armchair scout is derogatory

Being able to evaluate talent isn't your thing?

you are comparing scouting --at a non nfl level-- to throwing darts at a draft board and arbitrarily saying bust or underrated? Lol?

No offense is meant by the phrase "armchair scout". For what it's worth, it's a term I've used to describe several long-time friends around here. I don't really feel like it's appropriate to call Waldman an "amateur scout", because he actually gets compensated for the time and effort he puts in- and rightfully so. I think that fantasy football owners are "armchair GMs", so it only seems appropriate that the college scouts among us are "armchair scouts".

I'm not comparing scouting to throwing darts. I think even the worst armchair scout could watch highlight films and separate the future 1st rounders from the future UDFAs. I'm comparing the odds of beating an actual NFL scouting department to throwing darts. I think if the armchair scout considers a player a "reach", he's got about a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong. If an armchair scout considers a player a "steal", he's got a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong.

I also don't think it's that crazy of an idea. Again, getting back to the financial analogy, we have an entire investor class that pours limitless time and resources into beating the market, and the best they're able to produce is a coin flip. If a hedge fund manager thinks a particular stock is undervalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. If he thinks it's overvalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. These are highly educated, really brilliant guys with limitless resources, and they're not able to outperform random chance when compared to the market. That's because the market is efficient- that's the whole point of the efficient market hypothesis.

Hege fund managers do not exist only to beat the market. In the reality of things, the allure of beating the market is merely marketing. The real reason for the existence of hedge funds is to generate money to the OWNER/creator of the hedge fund in fees. Now, a bunch of people seem to think the coin flip is good enough to bet millions and to pay hefty fees so the hedge fund managers can have a job and a (very) comfortable life. Peace on that. It does not change the fact that hedge funds are not about altruism for selected millionaires.

The true value in a hedge fund lies in the fact that they can take such actions as speculating on derivatives while remaining unregulated.

 

[Bamac]

Quoting this because it is the best response to Adam I've seen and no one has mentioned it.

Adam - I mostly agree with what you're saying about efficient markets (I am the guy who publishes generic rookie rankings based only on NFL draft position). But since disagreement is more fun, here are some reasons for thinking that the NFL draft is a little bit farther from being an efficient market than you say, and that fantasy ADP is a little bit closer. One important feature of a market which allows it to be efficient is that people can play both sides. If you think a stock is undervalued then you can buy it, and if you think that it's overvalued than you can sell or short it. People who have information that a stock will do better than its current price suggests buy and push the price up, and people who have info that it will do worse sell/short and push the price down. If 5% of people trading stocks are idiots who buy bad stocks, they push the price of those stocks up. If no one could play the other side, then the stocks would be stuck at an overpriced price, but in the actual stockmarket the idiots just created an opportunity for savvy people to sell/short those stocks and make money. In an active market, they will quickly push the price back down to where it should be. The price reflects the combined information of everyone who is trading in the market, so it isn't thrown off too much by a few overenthuastic traders. The NFL draft is missing that feature. It's just buy-buy-buy, with essentially no selling. If one team thinks that speedy Johnny Stonehands is a first round talent at WR, then they're liable to draft him in the first (or second). There is no way for other teams to "sell" and push his value back down to the consensus of the 32 front offices (except very slightly, by passing on him when it's their pick) - his value is determined by the team that values him most. If we could look at the other 31 teams' draft boards and see that none of them had Stonehands graded any higher than the 4th, then I think it would be a safe bet that he will do worse than most other first round WRs. Since we can't see their draft boards, the best we can do is listen to the Waldmans, the leaks, the conventional wisdom about "reaches", and so on. It's not a lot of information, but it's something. (Note that this only works in one direction - if a player drops to the 6th round then that does basically tell you the consensus among front offices.) Fantasy football doesn't have the same incentives (although there are some incentives - pride, small amounts of money, etc.), but ADP does have the feature of letting errors on both sides (partially) cancel out. One league may have a guy who is in love with Jason Witten and drafts him too early, and another league may be full of people who don't appreciate Witten and let him fall too far; in ADP those will cancel out. Any one particular league may be wildly inefficient (since you don't have millions of people are bidding against each other and getting bid-ask spreads down near zero), but ADP will be pretty efficient at capturing the information from lots of leagues and condensing it into a single number for each player. Unlike the NFL draft, ADP has the weakness of relying on the judgments of lots of moderately-informed people, many of whom are using the same heuristics. That does lead to some systematic errors, including (I think) a tendency to overweight injuries (in dynasty), to overweight the importance of recent performance, and (combining the previous 2) to overly penalize players whose performance recently suffered while playing through an injury. But if you don't have one of these sort of plausible systematic reasons for why a player would be mis-valued, you should be careful about valuing a player very differently from his ADP. (And I actually use a similar sort of reasoning with the NFL draft. If I like a player and then he gets drafted in the 6th round, I'll consider if there is a systematic reason why NFL teams might undervalue him relative to his fantasy value - e.g. character risk, injuries, limited amount of tape against good competition, etc. If there isn't - if it just turns out that none of the 32 teams liked him very much - that is a bad sign.)

 

[Adam Harstad]

Adam - I mostly agree with what you're saying about efficient markets (I am the guy who publishes generic rookie rankings based only on NFL draft position). But since disagreement is more fun, here are some reasons for thinking that the NFL draft is a little bit farther from being an efficient market than you say, and that fantasy ADP is a little bit closer.

One important feature of a market which allows it to be efficient is that people can play both sides. If you think a stock is undervalued then you can buy it, and if you think that it's overvalued than you can sell or short it. People who have information that a stock will do better than its current price suggests buy and push the price up, and people who have info that it will do worse sell/short and push the price down. If 5% of people trading stocks are idiots who buy bad stocks, they push the price of those stocks up. If no one could play the other side, then the stocks would be stuck at an overpriced price, but in the actual stockmarket the idiots just created an opportunity for savvy people to sell/short those stocks and make money. In an active market, they will quickly push the price back down to where it should be. The price reflects the combined information of everyone who is trading in the market, so it isn't thrown off too much by a few overenthuastic traders.

The NFL draft is missing that feature. It's just buy-buy-buy, with essentially no selling. If one team thinks that speedy Johnny Stonehands is a first round talent at WR, then they're liable to draft him in the first (or second). There is no way for other teams to "sell" and push his value back down to the consensus of the 32 front offices (except very slightly, by passing on him when it's their pick) - his value is determined by the team that values him most.

If we could look at the other 31 teams' draft boards and see that none of them had Stonehands graded any higher than the 4th, then I think it would be a safe bet that he will do worse than most other first round WRs. Since we can't see their draft boards, the best we can do is listen to the Waldmans, the leaks, the conventional wisdom about "reaches", and so on. It's not a lot of information, but it's something. (Note that this only works in one direction - if a player drops to the 6th round then that does basically tell you the consensus among front offices.)

Fantasy football doesn't have the same incentives (although there are some incentives - pride, small amounts of money, etc.), but ADP does have the feature of letting errors on both sides (partially) cancel out. One league may have a guy who is in love with Jason Witten and drafts him too early, and another league may be full of people who don't appreciate Witten and let him fall too far; in ADP those will cancel out. Any one particular league may be wildly inefficient (since you don't have millions of people are bidding against each other and getting bid-ask spreads down near zero), but ADP will be pretty efficient at capturing the information from lots of leagues and condensing it into a single number for each player.

Unlike the NFL draft, ADP has the weakness of relying on the judgments of lots of moderately-informed people, many of whom are using the same heuristics. That does lead to some systematic errors, including (I think) a tendency to overweight injuries (in dynasty), to overweight the importance of recent performance, and (combining the previous 2) to overly penalize players whose performance recently suffered while playing through an injury. But if you don't have one of these sort of plausible systematic reasons for why a player would be mis-valued, you should be careful about valuing a player very differently from his ADP.

(And I actually use a similar sort of reasoning with the NFL draft. If I like a player and then he gets drafted in the 6th round, I'll consider if there is a systematic reason why NFL teams might undervalue him relative to his fantasy value - e.g. character risk, injuries, limited amount of tape against good competition, etc. If there isn't - if it just turns out that none of the 32 teams liked him very much - that is a bad sign.)

I actually agree with a lot of that, and it's possible to have a "weak" EMH regarding the draft- it's more meaningful when a player falls than when he rises, because it takes 32 teams working in concert for a player to fall while it only takes one overeager team for a player to rise. I waver between the "weak" EMH and a "strong" EMH (which suggests that even players taken far above expectations should be valued at their draft position). In an ideal world where I had unlimited time and resources, I'd really like to go back through 10-20 years of draft history and chart the career outcomes of consensus "reaches" (compared to the inferior pre-draft pundit consensus, since it's impossible to know the NFL consensus). I'd be curious to see whether the outcomes tracked more closely with the players they were drafted near, or the players they were rated near in the pre-draft consensus. Barring that massive undertaking, I tend to lean more toward the "strong" version, simply because of Stuart and Massey's conclusion that draft quality is essentially random from year to year. If "bad" teams were consistently "reaching" for players, and those players were consistently underperforming their actual draft position, you'd expect to see that reflected more in the correlation between year N and year N+1 draft quality. It's not ironclad evidence, but it's suggestive enough for me to lean in one direction. I obviously see the relative merits of both positions, though, and cannot fault anyone who leans the other way.

 

[msommer]

Matt Waldman might not be a nfl scout but calling him an armchair scout is derogatory

Being able to evaluate talent isn't your thing?

you are comparing scouting --at a non nfl level-- to throwing darts at a draft board and arbitrarily saying bust or underrated? Lol?

No offense is meant by the phrase "armchair scout". For what it's worth, it's a term I've used to describe several long-time friends around here. I don't really feel like it's appropriate to call Waldman an "amateur scout", because he actually gets compensated for the time and effort he puts in- and rightfully so. I think that fantasy football owners are "armchair GMs", so it only seems appropriate that the college scouts among us are "armchair scouts".

I'm not comparing scouting to throwing darts. I think even the worst armchair scout could watch highlight films and separate the future 1st rounders from the future UDFAs. I'm comparing the odds of beating an actual NFL scouting department to throwing darts. I think if the armchair scout considers a player a "reach", he's got about a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong. If an armchair scout considers a player a "steal", he's got a 50% chance of being right and a 50% chance of being wrong.

I also don't think it's that crazy of an idea. Again, getting back to the financial analogy, we have an entire investor class that pours limitless time and resources into beating the market, and the best they're able to produce is a coin flip. If a hedge fund manager thinks a particular stock is undervalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. If he thinks it's overvalued, there's about a 50% chance he's right, and a 50% chance he's wrong. These are highly educated, really brilliant guys with limitless resources, and they're not able to outperform random chance when compared to the market. That's because the market is efficient- that's the whole point of the efficient market hypothesis.

Hege fund managers do not exist only to beat the market. In the reality of things, the allure of beating the market is merely marketing. The real reason for the existence of hedge funds is to generate money to the OWNER/creator of the hedge fund in fees. Now, a bunch of people seem to think the coin flip is good enough to bet millions and to pay hefty fees so the hedge fund managers can have a job and a (very) comfortable life. Peace on that. It does not change the fact that hedge funds are not about altruism for selected millionaires.

The true value in a hedge fund lies in the fact that they can take such actions as speculating on derivatives while remaining unregulated.

Hedge funds exist outside the us too

 

[msommer]

Adam - I mostly agree with what you're saying about efficient markets (I am the guy who publishes generic rookie rankings based only on NFL draft position). But since disagreement is more fun, here are some reasons for thinking that the NFL draft is a little bit farther from being an efficient market than you say, and that fantasy ADP is a little bit closer.

One important feature of a market which allows it to be efficient is that people can play both sides. If you think a stock is undervalued then you can buy it, and if you think that it's overvalued than you can sell or short it. People who have information that a stock will do better than its current price suggests buy and push the price up, and people who have info that it will do worse sell/short and push the price down. If 5% of people trading stocks are idiots who buy bad stocks, they push the price of those stocks up. If no one could play the other side, then the stocks would be stuck at an overpriced price, but in the actual stockmarket the idiots just created an opportunity for savvy people to sell/short those stocks and make money. In an active market, they will quickly push the price back down to where it should be. The price reflects the combined information of everyone who is trading in the market, so it isn't thrown off too much by a few overenthuastic traders.

The NFL draft is missing that feature. It's just buy-buy-buy, with essentially no selling. If one team thinks that speedy Johnny Stonehands is a first round talent at WR, then they're liable to draft him in the first (or second). There is no way for other teams to "sell" and push his value back down to the consensus of the 32 front offices (except very slightly, by passing on him when it's their pick) - his value is determined by the team that values him most.

If we could look at the other 31 teams' draft boards and see that none of them had Stonehands graded any higher than the 4th, then I think it would be a safe bet that he will do worse than most other first round WRs. Since we can't see their draft boards, the best we can do is listen to the Waldmans, the leaks, the conventional wisdom about "reaches", and so on. It's not a lot of information, but it's something. (Note that this only works in one direction - if a player drops to the 6th round then that does basically tell you the consensus among front offices.)

Fantasy football doesn't have the same incentives (although there are some incentives - pride, small amounts of money, etc.), but ADP does have the feature of letting errors on both sides (partially) cancel out. One league may have a guy who is in love with Jason Witten and drafts him too early, and another league may be full of people who don't appreciate Witten and let him fall too far; in ADP those will cancel out. Any one particular league may be wildly inefficient (since you don't have millions of people are bidding against each other and getting bid-ask spreads down near zero), but ADP will be pretty efficient at capturing the information from lots of leagues and condensing it into a single number for each player.

Unlike the NFL draft, ADP has the weakness of relying on the judgments of lots of moderately-informed people, many of whom are using the same heuristics. That does lead to some systematic errors, including (I think) a tendency to overweight injuries (in dynasty), to overweight the importance of recent performance, and (combining the previous 2) to overly penalize players whose performance recently suffered while playing through an injury. But if you don't have one of these sort of plausible systematic reasons for why a player would be mis-valued, you should be careful about valuing a player very differently from his ADP.

(And I actually use a similar sort of reasoning with the NFL draft. If I like a player and then he gets drafted in the 6th round, I'll consider if there is a systematic reason why NFL teams might undervalue him relative to his fantasy value - e.g. character risk, injuries, limited amount of tape against good competition, etc. If there isn't - if it just turns out that none of the 32 teams liked him very much - that is a bad sign.)

I actually agree with a lot of that, and it's possible to have a "weak" EMH regarding the draft- it's more meaningful when a player falls than when he rises, because it takes 32 teams working in concert for a player to fall while it only takes one overeager team for a player to rise. I waver behind the "weak" EMH and a "strong" EMH (which suggests that even players taken far above expectations should be valued at their draft position). In an ideal world where I had unlimited time and resources, I'd really like to go back through 10-20 years of draft history and chart the career outcomes of consensus "reaches" (compared to the inferior pre-draft pundit consensus, since it's impossible to know the NFL consensus). I'd be curious to see whether the outcomes tracked more closely with the players they were drafted near, or the players they were rated near in the pre-draft consensus. Barring that massive undertaking, I tend to lean more toward the "strong" version, simply because of Stuart and Massey's conclusion that draft quality is essentially random from year to year. If "bad" teams were consistently "reaching" for players, and those players were consistently underperforming their actual draft position, you'd expect to see that reflected more in the correlation between year N and year N+1 draft quality. It's not ironclad evidence, but it's suggestive enough for me to lean in one direction. I obviously see the relative merits of both positions, though, and cannot fault anyone who leans the other way.

You'd probably run into small sample size issues in earlier years. Remember when Mel Kiper was THE guru?

 

[Adam Harstad]

If you ignore the outcome, how can you discern between a good process and a bad process?This seems to be a much more important point to discuss than beating the scouts.

Look at a broader range of outcomes. For instance, using my "follow camp buzz" example from the article, you can't determine whether doing so is good process or bad process based solely on Willie Parker or Kareem Huggins. Instead, you need to look systematically at as many examples as possible and determine whether the entire range of outcomes was, on the whole, positive or negative. It's true that you can never know for sure whether a particular process is "good" or "bad", but increasing the number of outcomes under consideration greatly increases the chances that those outcomes are indicative of the quality of the process and not a result of random chance.

Getting a second opinion is one of the most valuable steps you can take. Each of us has our own peculiar set of biases, and one of those biases is the "bias blind spot", which suggests we're biased towards ignoring our own biases. A neutral observer will have his own biases, surely, but areas of disagreement will serve to call attention to both sets of biases. I'm not suggesting you should always follow the neutral observer's advice, but it certainly serves to focus your attention more productively.

Finally, I mentioned this earlier, but thinking more like a scientist is always a good start. Most of us form theories and then search for evidence to prove those theories. This creates a massive confirmation bias loop. Instead, we should form a theory, and then search for evidence to disprove it. Theories that can withstand a search for disconfirming evidence are, as a class, more robust than theories which can produce some confirming evidence. Most of the time when I have discarded failed processes (such as my "knucklehead factor"), it has resulted from a conscious decision to question my own beliefs.

I'm also a believer in keeping real-time notes on my thought processes. Memory is an unreliable thing, and it strives always to paint yourself in the most favorable light. If I look back and try to remember what led me to make certain decisions, I find that I usually attribute it to some piercing insight. If I instead read a note I wrote on my actual reasoning on the time, I find that a lot of my piercing insights were actually dumb luck. This helps prevent processes that I never actually followed from getting entrenched in my subconscious. Get a journal and track your thoughts. Just don't call it a "Fantasy Journal", or people will look at you funny.

 

[Adam Harstad]

Adam - I mostly agree with what you're saying about efficient markets (I am the guy who publishes generic rookie rankings based only on NFL draft position). But since disagreement is more fun, here are some reasons for thinking that the NFL draft is a little bit farther from being an efficient market than you say, and that fantasy ADP is a little bit closer.

One important feature of a market which allows it to be efficient is that people can play both sides. If you think a stock is undervalued then you can buy it, and if you think that it's overvalued than you can sell or short it. People who have information that a stock will do better than its current price suggests buy and push the price up, and people who have info that it will do worse sell/short and push the price down. If 5% of people trading stocks are idiots who buy bad stocks, they push the price of those stocks up. If no one could play the other side, then the stocks would be stuck at an overpriced price, but in the actual stockmarket the idiots just created an opportunity for savvy people to sell/short those stocks and make money. In an active market, they will quickly push the price back down to where it should be. The price reflects the combined information of everyone who is trading in the market, so it isn't thrown off too much by a few overenthuastic traders.

The NFL draft is missing that feature. It's just buy-buy-buy, with essentially no selling. If one team thinks that speedy Johnny Stonehands is a first round talent at WR, then they're liable to draft him in the first (or second). There is no way for other teams to "sell" and push his value back down to the consensus of the 32 front offices (except very slightly, by passing on him when it's their pick) - his value is determined by the team that values him most.

If we could look at the other 31 teams' draft boards and see that none of them had Stonehands graded any higher than the 4th, then I think it would be a safe bet that he will do worse than most other first round WRs. Since we can't see their draft boards, the best we can do is listen to the Waldmans, the leaks, the conventional wisdom about "reaches", and so on. It's not a lot of information, but it's something. (Note that this only works in one direction - if a player drops to the 6th round then that does basically tell you the consensus among front offices.)

Fantasy football doesn't have the same incentives (although there are some incentives - pride, small amounts of money, etc.), but ADP does have the feature of letting errors on both sides (partially) cancel out. One league may have a guy who is in love with Jason Witten and drafts him too early, and another league may be full of people who don't appreciate Witten and let him fall too far; in ADP those will cancel out. Any one particular league may be wildly inefficient (since you don't have millions of people are bidding against each other and getting bid-ask spreads down near zero), but ADP will be pretty efficient at capturing the information from lots of leagues and condensing it into a single number for each player.

Unlike the NFL draft, ADP has the weakness of relying on the judgments of lots of moderately-informed people, many of whom are using the same heuristics. That does lead to some systematic errors, including (I think) a tendency to overweight injuries (in dynasty), to overweight the importance of recent performance, and (combining the previous 2) to overly penalize players whose performance recently suffered while playing through an injury. But if you don't have one of these sort of plausible systematic reasons for why a player would be mis-valued, you should be careful about valuing a player very differently from his ADP.

(And I actually use a similar sort of reasoning with the NFL draft. If I like a player and then he gets drafted in the 6th round, I'll consider if there is a systematic reason why NFL teams might undervalue him relative to his fantasy value - e.g. character risk, injuries, limited amount of tape against good competition, etc. If there isn't - if it just turns out that none of the 32 teams liked him very much - that is a bad sign.)

I actually agree with a lot of that, and it's possible to have a "weak" EMH regarding the draft- it's more meaningful when a player falls than when he rises, because it takes 32 teams working in concert for a player to fall while it only takes one overeager team for a player to rise. I waver behind the "weak" EMH and a "strong" EMH (which suggests that even players taken far above expectations should be valued at their draft position). In an ideal world where I had unlimited time and resources, I'd really like to go back through 10-20 years of draft history and chart the career outcomes of consensus "reaches" (compared to the inferior pre-draft pundit consensus, since it's impossible to know the NFL consensus). I'd be curious to see whether the outcomes tracked more closely with the players they were drafted near, or the players they were rated near in the pre-draft consensus. Barring that massive undertaking, I tend to lean more toward the "strong" version, simply because of Stuart and Massey's conclusion that draft quality is essentially random from year to year. If "bad" teams were consistently "reaching" for players, and those players were consistently underperforming their actual draft position, you'd expect to see that reflected more in the correlation between year N and year N+1 draft quality. It's not ironclad evidence, but it's suggestive enough for me to lean in one direction. I obviously see the relative merits of both positions, though, and cannot fault anyone who leans the other way.

You'd probably run into small sample size issues in earlier years. Remember when Mel Kiper was THE guru?

Agreed. I question the feasibility. It's more one of those pie-in-the-sky, "Gee I sure wish I could find this out" things. I default to the stronger version of the EMH, but I do so in the absence of direct evidence, and I'd love to make a more informed decision on the matter. I just don't know how I would go about informing such a decision.

That's why I say I have no qualms with people who prefer the weaker version of the EMH (that when a player falls it's more meaningful than when a player rises). The theory behind it seems solid, and I don't have any disconfirming evidence on hand to dispute it.

 

[Drop]

Hey guys, my first article for the site has gone live (link available here), and I wanted to get some discussion going on it. For those who are familiar with my posting history, there won't be anything earthshaking in there- I've posted before on the idea of separating our processes from their outcomes and evaluating both independently- but I thought it would be good to get the entire thought process spelled out a little bit more formally and get it gather it all in one place for future reference.

So, anyone have any particular thoughts on the idea of evaluating processes independent of outcomes? Some real-world examples from their own experiences? Does anyone have some examples of good processes or bad processes? I'm also interested in suggestions or feedback on the piece itself; I want to write about what you guys want to read about, so feel free to bring the criticism (constructive or otherwise). TIA.

How much NFL Coaches Film do you watch?

 

[Adam Harstad]

Hey guys, my first article for the site has gone live (link available here), and I wanted to get some discussion going on it. For those who are familiar with my posting history, there won't be anything earthshaking in there- I've posted before on the idea of separating our processes from their outcomes and evaluating both independently- but I thought it would be good to get the entire thought process spelled out a little bit more formally and get it gather it all in one place for future reference.

So, anyone have any particular thoughts on the idea of evaluating processes independent of outcomes? Some real-world examples from their own experiences? Does anyone have some examples of good processes or bad processes? I'm also interested in suggestions or feedback on the piece itself; I want to write about what you guys want to read about, so feel free to bring the criticism (constructive or otherwise). TIA.

How much NFL Coaches Film do you watch?

Zilch. My typical week involves watching Red Zone and the nationally televised games live, recording every team's Shortcut, and then watching every game from start to finish at least once, sometimes twice. I don't bother with coaches film because, like I said, I'm not a scout. Diagnosing scheme, evaluating technique... these things are beyond me. I've always approached fantasy football from a more meta standpoint- identifying market inefficiencies, finding arbitrage opportunities, exploiting cognitive biases, making sure my theory is really sound.

 

[NateDawg]

this is crazy to say you need a full staff and millions of dollars to do quality scouting. http://www.fannation.com/truth_and_rumors/view/171150-want-attention-from-nfl-scouts-try-youtube it takes 0 dollars to watch youtube videos If you guys are going to become cheerleaders for Mr Adam -- Adam, can't speak for yourself?--, at least bring up valid points. Adam himself said it wasn't a matter of time, it was a matter of intelligence; he said scouts are smarter than him and its silly to try do anything but follow them. Then when he realized how useless that made him look he changed it and said he could do it but it would be a waste of time because he could spend it on more productive things. Whats more productive than helping subscribers get the best player available in drafts? I guess writing non football articles?

You realize highlight youtube videos are not the end all be all of scouting right? Have you ever scouted or interacted with scouts? Do you have any idea all the other effort that goes into this? I've built the recruiting clips that OU uses to scout for who we'll recruit, and the amount of work that I alone put into scouting JUST WIDE RECEIVERS is huge. And I don't get to make a recommendation or influence the process at all! I just watch and build the video montages for the real scouts and recruiters. Now think about it at an NFL level. Every major college in the country. 100 or more players on every team. Quite a few are prospects at almost every D1, BCS school. You think that all NFL scouts do is look at the youtube highlight videos? You may need a bit of a reality check, my friend. You're missing all the fundamentals that scouts look for, all the little things, the off ball plays, the habits, the techniques, the character interviews, the work ethic, the family medical history... I'll put you, with 10 hours a day to look at youtube videos only - no other resources - against any single NFL scout. And I'd bet my entire IRA on the scout to outperform you as a talent evaluator more than 80% of the time. Hands down. I'd even give you nice odds as the underdog on top of that. No offense, man, but you should really re-think just what you believe it takes to scout players, because the suggestion that youtube highlight vides and time is all it takes is absolutely ludicrous.

You may need to step outside the stone age you are living in and realize the internet is a vast source of information --it isn't like the old days where scouts HAD to travel around the country--, be it a players youtube video --to see their skill in action-- or their twitter account --to see if there is character issues potentially-- etc

My main statement stands, regardless of how amazing the Internet is (and I agree, the info you can find is fantastic), there are a lot of things that aren't on it. Like all of the off-ball, non-highlight plays. All the practices a player goes through to see how he carries himself. Determining work ethic, family situation, who a guy spends his time with, etc... And if you're going to invest millions of dollars in someone, and you think "I'll just check his twitter" is the best route, feel free. But you're missing a lot of things about the way the world works. I've got a twitter and a facebook, and they are pretty much representative only of my good side. A large portion of us college students are recognizing the value of manipulating social media to benefit you in employment searches. I'm a 21 year old (who has lurked on this site since 07, and posted avidly since 09 (for example). I think I understand the value of the Internet...). I've grown up in this Internet and media age. Let's not pretend like I'm in the "stone age," but maybe recognize instead that while the Internet is an INCREDIBLE tool, it is not the end all be all. Like I said, even at the amateur level (admittedly, the very top tier of the amateur level) here at OU, every single step of scouting for recruiting takes hours of work and tons of information NOT available on the Internet. Do you think we're stupid? One of the best football colleges in the country, and we wouldn't just pull these things off the Internet if we could? Come on, man. Use your head.

false, http://youtu.be/HpghR18SaKo?t=1m10s this is a common fallacy people have, they think what they view important --in your case, privacy-- other people will find important as well. A lot of twitters out there give out way too much information, but their dumb kids --what do you expect-- I don't care if you have grown up on the internet or in sesame street, you are acting like you don't understand the internet at all. No one said it was, but it's definitely gives you enough resources where you can have an edge in your rookie rankings compared to people that just blindly follow the NFL draft. Oh you are saying HS information isn't widely available on the internet? well, no --you know what--..., anyways, reality check, college sports are more popular than HS sports so of course there is going to be more information available regarding college players than HS players. One last point, NFL scouts have until the draft to give out reports non NFL scouts usually have up until August -- where the majority of rookie drafts are held--

Interesting discussion here. My issue with your argument is that it seems based on the fact that the Internet provides information that is not taken into consideration by the NFL teams, which is just not true. NFL teams use the Internet resources that a dynasty owner would use plus much more in making their decisions. With this said, NFL teams SHOULD consistently be able to make a more informed decision on players than a dynasty owner. At the same time, we are dealing with human beings, and there is variance, so there could be instances where a differing opinion is valid. The Internet provides a great deal of information that we can use to determine who we like and dislike based on our own views of whatis important, but it cannot provide more information than what NFL teams get.With that said, I love what Waldman does in a very specific area of player skill evaluation. He provides information to the football enthusiast that is not available through any other avenue. He has a passion for what he does and has developed his skill and talent through hard-work, dedication, and process.