Author | Bob Carroll, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer |
---|---|
Original title | The Hidden Game of Football: A Revolutionary Approach to the Game and Its Statistics |
Language | English |
Publisher | Grand Central Publishing, Total Sports Publishing |
Publication date | January 1, 1988 |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | 415 |
ISBN | 0446514144 |
The Hidden Game of Football: A Revolutionary Approach to the Game and Its Statistics is a book on American football statistics published in 1988 and written by Bob Carroll, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer. It was the first systematic statistical approach to analyzing American football in a book. [1]
The original was published in 1988. [2] The purpose of the book is to look at the statistics of football and how they change the game based on coaching decision and player selection.
In 1998, a new version title The Hidden Game Of Football: The Next Edition was published by the authors. The new version is updated and includes more commentary on past statistics. A 2023 edition, with a foreword by Aaron Schatz, is being published by University of Chicago Press. [3]
The book received mixed reviews at the time of its original publication, but has been assessed more positively by retrospective reviews. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in a 1988 review for The New York Times, found the application of statistics to football "cumbersome." [4] By contrast, Shane Richmond of Pigskin Books wrote that "it’s likely that the book changed the way teams themselves think about the game; it certainly changed how the smarter sportswriters and analysts looked at it." [1] Rustin Dodd, in a retrospective article in The Athletic, described the book as "a seminal work of football analytics" in 2022. [5]
The book inspired Aaron Schatz to found Football Outsiders, and develop the Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) statistic. [5] [6]
Author | Bob Carroll, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer |
---|---|
Original title | The Hidden Game of Football: A Revolutionary Approach to the Game and Its Statistics |
Language | English |
Publisher | Grand Central Publishing, Total Sports Publishing |
Publication date | January 1, 1988 |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | 415 |
ISBN | 0446514144 |
The Hidden Game of Football: A Revolutionary Approach to the Game and Its Statistics is a book on American football statistics published in 1988 and written by Bob Carroll, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer. It was the first systematic statistical approach to analyzing American football in a book. [1]
The original was published in 1988. [2] The purpose of the book is to look at the statistics of football and how they change the game based on coaching decision and player selection.
In 1998, a new version title The Hidden Game Of Football: The Next Edition was published by the authors. The new version is updated and includes more commentary on past statistics. A 2023 edition, with a foreword by Aaron Schatz, is being published by University of Chicago Press. [3]
The book received mixed reviews at the time of its original publication, but has been assessed more positively by retrospective reviews. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in a 1988 review for The New York Times, found the application of statistics to football "cumbersome." [4] By contrast, Shane Richmond of Pigskin Books wrote that "it’s likely that the book changed the way teams themselves think about the game; it certainly changed how the smarter sportswriters and analysts looked at it." [1] Rustin Dodd, in a retrospective article in The Athletic, described the book as "a seminal work of football analytics" in 2022. [5]
The book inspired Aaron Schatz to found Football Outsiders, and develop the Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) statistic. [5] [6]