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Notes -
How different does sport look if all the mangers were autist?
I was recently listening to a podcast in which an ex professional football player talked about the politics that go on behind the scenes.
He said a lot of what determines if you are a "good" player beyond the fundamentals is akin to astrology or colloquially known as the eye test.
At one point he said "You could be the most talented midfielder in the country but because of manager bias, your reputation and other external factors you will never reach the higher levels."
This strikes me as highly inefficient and got me to thinking about the types of people that become coaches, scouts and managers.
This is an assumption but the types of people that become football staff are different from the people who become engineers. People who become engineers may have interest in the sport but they often choose jobs more explicitly built for their way of thinking.
What would sports look like if it was run by the STEM type? I'm mainly talking about basketball and football because they seem to have the highest degrees of freedom.
Will these sports look completely different when the STEM guys get to them? How long will it take for the STEM guys to influence sport? 10 years? 20 Years? 50 Years?
I think hyper optimised basketball contains two types of players. Big men and three shooters. The big men try to stop the shooter from shooting threes. There will be no more dunks or two pointers.
I understand this is kinda like the concept of Moneyball. I never watched it tho.
Your question reminds me of this essay on "refinement culture" that starts by describing the changes that have happened in sports as decisions become more data-driven.
https://medium.com/@lindynewsletter/refinement-culture-51d96726c642
Dan Luu touches on this in a couple of his essays
https://danluu.com/talent/ - on the misidentification of talent in baseball (and elsewhere) by talent scouts trusting their 'gut' over the numbers.
https://danluu.com/bad-decisions/ - on bad decision making in baseball
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