A Stats Column Without Any Stats
by Keith Bowden
30/4/2008
 
When were you born?
 
So I am reading Ed Smith's fascinating new book What Sport Tells Us About Life.
 
Amongst his many interesting thoughts I came across some research he has quoted by physicist John Wesson (in The Science of Soccer) "which shows the probability of becoming a Premiership football player is twice as high for boys born in the autumn as for those born in the summer. His explanation is that kids born in the first half of the academic year are favoured for school teams over their weaker, less-developed classmates. This early kick-start to their progress as footballers proves to be an enduring one."
 
A-ha, I think, there is a topic I could mine for this bi-weekly look at stats in the NFL. And what with it being draft time - why not use the players taken in this year's first round as my small cross section to see if the theory holds true for the American version of the game called football. (I also think - shucks, in my old life as a primary school teacher who ran the sports teams, have I stopped a potential future superstar's career by not picking him because he was born at the wrong time of year ... I hope not).
 
Anyway - problem number one. Does the American school intake correlate to the start of an academic year being September? My research results in the answer - apparently not in all states.
 
Problem number two - I thought I could split college juniors and seniors, but of course redshirting means some juniors are older than some seniors.
 
Then the major problem - their actual date of births....
 
I would have thought that when looking at a potential player their age would be a factor - but apparently it is not thought to be that important. A scan of five or six of my favourite websites finds that they do not list all prospects' date of births. And when they do - they cannot always agree.
 
When is Gosder Cherilus' birthday? Maybe June or maybe December. According to one place Jake Long and Sedrick Ellis were born on the same day, elsewhere they think Long is a month older.
 
So after three hours I decided to stop before completing my originally clever task.
 
I shall return to the original premise another time with another subset - but when I am less disheartened after looking for the unfindable - unagreeable - and apparently unattainable.
 
Although - maybe I can help Draft Gurus next year with another angle to throw into the mix...