Quote:
Originally Posted by LoneWolf
(Post 10921513)
PFF. :rolleyes: A company started by an Englishman who never played football at any level, had never seen a game live when he started the company, and who "hires" any jackass off the street who has enough time to spend hours looking at game tape.
Tell me something, dipshit. When you go in for your yearly Pap smear, do you get it done at your local porn shop? Because hey, they have seen a sloppy pussy on television.
|
If anyone is playing ChiefsPlanet Bingo, we've got our first "Never played football" of the thread here.
Oh, and by the way, the guy who runs that company is a strategist for the New York Giants.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...99781897959096
In 2009, the site came to the attention of the Giants' Mr. Berger, an executive of the team since the early 1980s. As director of information, Mr. Berger is the team's official wonk, entering every play by every NFL team into a database in search of trends and tendencies that might be useful for Giants coaches.
It was while "messing around on Google" that Mr. Berger came across Pro Football Focus, and one statistic in particular struck him: player participation. The site listed the number of times each player in the NFL participated in a play during a game. That is a statistic the NFL tracks and releases only to teams—never to the public.
Doubtful about the accuracy of Mr. Hornsby's data, Mr. Berger checked it against the NFL data set and found Pro Football Focus was nearly perfect. Impressed, Mr. Berger sent Mr. Hornsby a congratulatory note. Mr. Hornsby was so surprised he thought one of his friends had pulled a prank on him.
Today, the site provides customized data to five NFL teams, Mr. Hornsby says, as well as to sports agents seeking to bolster their players' arguments for fat paychecks. Mr. Hornsby won't say which teams or agents are paying for his data. But he says revenue is now great enough that he employs four analysts to help him study game footage, and 13 others to count how many downs each NFL athlete plays per game. He says he doesn't provide data to the Patriots.
The Giants are a nonpaying user of the site. That relationship deepened last August when Mr. Hornsby requested a visit with Mr. Berger. The timing could hardly have been worse: With the preseason shortened by a labor dispute, August was busier than usual for Mr. Berger. But he agreed to meet with Mr. Hornsby, blocking out a full hour on his calendar.
The meeting lasted seven hours. Stunned at the material Mr. Hornsby produced from his laptop, Mr. Berger says he was especially intrigued by data showing where individual players most often line up on the field, and how they perform against certain formations and opponents.
"It was really impressive," says Mr. Berger, calling Mr. Hornsby the first outsider ever to supply usable data to the Giants.
What most amazes Mr. Berger is that Mr. Hornsby gathers his data using the television footage available to everyone. That footage is highly limited compared with the proprietary film—known as All 22—that the NFL gathers at each game and makes available only to team officials.