Remember the professor who said that football teams should go for it on forth-down more often? The
New York Times discusses him and others who study sports decision-making today.
The professors say that coaches and managers often go awry when faced with a decision involving an obvious, yet ultimately sensible, risk. They seem to focus too much on the worst-case scenario: the Bonds home run, the game-ending brick, the failed fourth down. Travelers who drive hundreds of miles because they are afraid of a plane crash make the same mistake.
In the most recent Super Bowl, the Oakland Raiders' coaching staff sent in the punting unit when faced with fourth-and-4 on the Buccaneers' 45-yard line during the first quarter. Going for the first down, after all, would have risked giving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers excellent field position.
That decision may indeed have been the correct one, given the strength of Tampa Bay's defense, but punting on fourth-and-4 from just past midfield, which teams do, is usually a mistake, according to Romer's research. The chance to keep a drive going when a team is so close to field-goal territory is usually more valuable than the 30 or so yards of field position the team gains by punting.
Or imagine a basketball player who makes about 50 percent of his 2-point shots and 40 percent of his 3-pointers. If his team is down by 2 in the final seconds and he takes the 3-pointer, the team has a 40 percent chance of winning. If the coach instead designs a play that gives him a 2-point shot, the team has only about a 25 percent chance of winning: the 50 percent chance that he will tie the score multiplied by the roughly 50 percent chance that the team will win in overtime.
