You knew that with the success of Malcolm Gladwell and the "Freakonomics" series, someone smart would apply the same concept of debunking conventional thinking to sports.
That "someone smart" is the team of Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim, who have written "Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won."
"Scorecasting" won't be released until Jan. 25, but Sports Illustrated has published at least two excerpts. One, apparently published only in the print version of the magazine, exhaustively determines home-field advantage can be traced to only one thing: referee bias. A second excerpt, "The Curse of the No. 1 Draft Pick," is posted at SI.com and confirms what some of us assumed: the top draft pack often comes with more misery than success.
Both excerpts are great reads. As I noted, it's common knowledge No. 1 picks are often busts, but Moskowitz and Wertheim get into the real factors driving that reality.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the Gladwell and Freakonomics books and can't wait to get my hands on "Scorecasting."