ESPN: Moneyball and Iowa Recruiting (totally not Moneyball)

Submitted by Bodogblog on

ESPN NCAAF front page, posts what looks to be an interesting story re. Iowa's recruiting tactics.  Moneyball, from Ferentz?  Really?  That's worth reading.

It is not worth reading.  Their recruiting approach has absolutely nothing - not even a tangential relationship - with the concepts put forth in Moneyball.  It is in fact quite the opposite.  They do not use advanced statistics, instead foregoing them ilo guiding principles such as noticing "there was "something different" about how Midwest players reacted in games when compared to players from outside of the region."  And, ""You need to at least be thorough in your state and the surrounding states because those kids bleed that school's colors."

The most interesting items of note is that they look for overlooked kids with good frames, and look to switch their positions from high school.  Which is what a lot of mid-tier schools do.  And they like taking QBs and moving them.  And the story quotes their former recruiting coordinator who's now opening a Culvers, who likely not coincidentally believes Ohio Stadium is the Taj Mahal of college football.  And that in addition to OSU and Michigan, MSU (the finder of all hidden recruiting gems) also passed on Micah Hyde despite his brother playing there. 

Iowa's approach has worked, I'm not slighting it.  I am directing my ire at the leader.  This is silly.

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/recruiting/football/story/_/id/11128382/kirk-ferentz-iowa-hawkeyes-take-moneyball-approach-recruiting

 

LSAClassOf2000

June 25th, 2014 at 1:24 PM ^

I see where they seem to be drawing the analogy - a team like Iowa, being "recruiting disadvantaged", if you will, at least with respect to other schools, has to find some different ways to fill slots and stay competitive. 

There was this:

Johnson said playing quarterback in high school requires football intelligence that few other positions need, and that IQ can often be easily translated to other positions. The Hawkeyes also believe that playing quarterback at a smaller school shows you're the best athlete on the field.

This I can see a bit, I think. Playing QB requires some understanding of what everyone on that offense does as well as how they do it, so theoretically you have just enough knowledge from which to build the foundations of switching positions (with the help of tons of practice and coaching). 

Avon Barksdale

June 25th, 2014 at 1:27 PM ^

Yeah, I saw this on ESPN this morning and thought it was worth a read. I was a little disappointed that it had very little to do with Moneyball tactics. I actually think quite a few teams in the B1G take the "Iowa approach." (Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, Sparty, and Rutgers) all try to solidify their foundation through the midwest.

In regards to the article, I somewhat think it makes the B1G look bad. The article praises "Iowa's solid results" with how they recruit, yet I know most people on the Atlantic Coast and in the deep south think Iowa is slow, unathletic, and never a serious threat in the grand scheme of things.

 

Space Coyote

June 25th, 2014 at 1:53 PM ^

But your last line I find interesting. Sure, I can believe that those teams don't find Iowa to be a long term threat, but they should consider them a threat every time they see them in a bowl game, something apparently not enough of them do, because Iowa is 5-4 in their last 9 bowl games, and they've beaten Mizzou, Georgia Tech, South Carolina, LSU, and Florida in that time. They've also lost by a TD or less to LSU, Texas, and Florida. So... yeah.

Avon Barksdale

June 25th, 2014 at 2:59 PM ^

I totally agree with the both of you. I think Iowa is a sturdy program in the B1G. I just know, living in Nashville, that anytime I've ever brought up Iowa as a "sturdy" B1G team, I've been laughed at by fans of all teams (Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, ect. ect.)

No one outside the midwest, in my opinion, respects Iowa to a great extent. That's why I somewhat think the article makes the B1G look bad when discussing Iowa's results compared to their recruiting rankings.

 

bronxblue

June 25th, 2014 at 1:40 PM ^

Yeah, "Moneyball" != "non-major recruiting".  But it's lazy headline-writing that will drive clicks, so I guess it worked.  But yeah, Iowa has done well recognizing kids that can be pushed into their system even if means switching positions while, it seems, the more established programs just try to get the best kids ready to slot into positions on the team.  That said, this is still the same Iowa program that needed Ferentz to get them to above .500 in their history, and has finished ranked only three times in the past 10 years.  So I'm sure their approach has good merits, but it hasn't been producing stud teams by taking advantage of market inefficiencies in the way Moneyball teams are portrayed as.

CRISPed in the DIAG

June 25th, 2014 at 2:10 PM ^

Moneyball wasn't restricted to the use of metrics like WARP or OBP. It also involved breaking from scouting traditions like judging a player by his athletic appearence. For example, Kevin Youklis had amazing on-base skills but he didn't look like Joe Dimaggio - he was undervalued in the market. There was also the example of moving a player from his traditional and known position to an unfamiliar one in order to maximize your roster.  Scott Hatteberg was out of baseball because, as a catcher, his bad shoulder or arm didn't allow him to make throws to 2B.  During the offseason Oakland GM Billy Beane pushed the idea to move him to 1B, thereby creating value from a previously unusable asset.   

So, it kinda sounds like what Iowa tries to do with their recruiting.

Bodogblog

June 25th, 2014 at 2:27 PM ^

Was every other mid- or lower-tier MLB team using basically the same tactics as the A's?  Moneyball was taking a significantly different approach than has been used before, and Iowa isn't doing that.  They're doing essentially what every mid-tier NCAAF team needs to do: 1) find undervalued guys, 2) hopefully those guys have frames they can grow into, 3) see something in them that no one else has, often because you see them at a different position.

And I think you're discounting the importance of using advanced statistics as a primary concept of Moneyball.  

CRISPed in the DIAG

June 25th, 2014 at 5:40 PM ^

No, I'm definitely not discounting the use of 'advanced statistics' but they definitely weren't the 'primary concept' in the book or reality.  And, no, the mid/small market teams were not taking the Moneyball approach during the that era.  It was pretty much the A's.  Hell, the first next team to take on Moneyball was the big-market Red Sox.  

You make the critical point - teams of limited means have to take advantage of undervalued assets and exploit market inefficiencies to their advantage. 

I'm not sure whether Iowa is successful in this approach or not, I'm just saying that Moneyball is much more than numbers. 

93Grad

June 25th, 2014 at 2:12 PM ^

that out performs its collective recruiting rankings then it seems like they should have chosen Wisconsin or Sparty for thier story and not Iowa.

I Like Burgers

June 25th, 2014 at 2:27 PM ^

You could pick a lot of schools to do this story on.  The two you mentioned, as well as Oklahoma State, Oregon, Missouri, and Baylor to name a few.  But I don't mind Iowa as the focus.  Due to their cakewalk schedule, they'll have a lot of eyes on them this fall.  They should be undefeated heading into their last two games, and will be a popular "how good are they really?" team.

I Like Burgers

June 25th, 2014 at 2:23 PM ^

They don't say Iowa uses a Moneyball approach with advanced stats, only that Iowa is using a different approach -- like the A's did with Moneyball -- when it comes to recruiting.  There's even a paragraph that address it:

"Where Beane, whom Pitt played in the 2011 film adaptation of Michael Lewis' book "Moneyball," used advanced metrics and statistical analysis to better scout players and help the Oakland A's compete with large-market baseball teams, Iowa's evaluation process is a bit different from its peers."

They find guys that fit their formula (much like Michigan State), plug them into the system and rely on depth and coaching to turn them into good players.  Are they every going to seriously compete with the rest of the CFB world?  No.  Talent tends to win out in the end.  But is it good enough for 8, 9, 10 wins a year in the Big Ten?  Sure.  And that's a little tough to do recruiting from the places they recruit from.

 

Bodogblog

June 25th, 2014 at 2:34 PM ^

You're being too generous.  If you define Moneyball as doing something with a different approach, well then hell a lot of things are Moneyball.  I think you're better served using a different term.  You may as well just say "Iowa recruits using a different approach."  But that doesn't induce clicks.

And really, there's nothing novel about what they're doing... they do what they have to do, and what most mid-tier schools do.  They just do a pretty good job of it.

I Like Burgers

June 25th, 2014 at 2:43 PM ^

CRISPed in the DIAG above me put the Moneyball comparision better than I did with the Hatteberg references.

And who cares if there's nothing novel about it?  It was kind of interesting and a change of pace.  Furthermore, people bitch non-goddamn-stop about ESPN's SEC bias and all of this other nonsense, and then ESPN has the audacity to post a CFB front page article on the Big Ten doing something well, and everyone shits on it.  It the long, dark, college football offseason.  There's lots of nothing to write about.  Is it really so bad that they wrote an article about Iowa recruiting?

And the Moneyball thing is a headline with a goal of making you click on the story.  This is how the internet, newspapers, movies, and every other form of media work. It will never, ever change.

Bodogblog

June 25th, 2014 at 3:24 PM ^

It bothers me because taking a generic mid-tier recruiting approach and calling it Moneyball is misleading.  It intimates that Ferentz is doing something unique and Moneyball-like in his recruiting approach, which he is not.  News providers simply can't make up weak correlations and put them into a headline, get a click and repeat.  Eventually people will catch on and stop clicking.  ESPN is moving more and more over that line, which is why I posted this. 

massblue

June 25th, 2014 at 2:33 PM ^

in particular:

Johnson added: "You need to at least be thorough in your state and the surrounding states because those kids bleed that school's colors. They're grown up following those teams. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, those kids are going to fight a little bit harder to be successful for that local school.

I think this works really well in rivalry games.

JamieH

June 25th, 2014 at 5:07 PM ^

is very often misunderstood.  It really doesn't have anything to do with advanced metrics.  All moneyball is is identifying market inefficiencies and exploiting them.  Beane happened to use advanced metrics to do this, but that was only his tool.  The actual concept is, figure out what is overvalued and undervalued, and then don't waste your time chasing after the overvalued stuff (or maybe even the fairly valued stuff) because you don't have deep pockets.  Instead, stock up on the undervalued stuff you CAN afford and figure out how to best put it to use. 

So, yeah, that IS kind of what Iowa is doing.  They can't "afford" 5-star recruits, so they are finding recruits that aren't valued properly and figuring out how to make them valuable.  That isn't a new concept, but maybe they are doing it better than most?

CRISPed in the DIAG

June 25th, 2014 at 6:03 PM ^

Well said.  And I tried to make a similar point upthread.  But wouldn't say that it doesn't have anything to do with advanced metrics - becuase it did at the time.  Teams were overly focused on relatively ineffectual metrics and overpaying players for doing things that didn't help their club win games.  Now, pretty much everyone has a room full of ivy leaguers with proprietary projection systems. 

JamieH

June 25th, 2014 at 11:40 PM ^

Well, the biggest deal was that no one actually had a good way to quantify what was valuable and what wasn't.  People thought they know what was valuable because BA, HR, RBI had been tracked and awards had been given for them for basically a century.  But Oakland started using advanced metrics to calculate what was ACTUALLY valuable, not what was PERCEIVED to be valuable.   (For example OBP vs BA).



So, advanced metrics were the tool that Oakland used to determine value, I would still argue that the concept of Moneyball is completely separate from advanced metrics.  The Moneyball concept is, figure out what is valuable that everyone else isn't paying for and go buy that.  How you figure out the value of something is somewhat irrelevant to the concept.  Oakland initially used advanced metrics because everyone else was using flawed concepts to evaluate players, and advanced metrics gave them a huge advantage.  Now, as you pointed out, EVERYONE uses advanced metrics, so you have to look for other ways to find value.  The Dodgers, for example, are finding it by going after Cuban players (as the Red Wings did in the 90's with Russian players and the 00's with Swedish players).  Beane himself said that he felt that with all the metrics now, people had started to undervalue high school pitchers (I think) because they didn't like taking players without lots of stats on them, so Oakland was actually putting more money back into their high school scouting programs.  So finding the undervalued player really has nothing to do with advanced metrics--that was just the light-bulb tool that gave Oakland (and then Boston) a big advantage for a while until everyone else wised up.

Apologies for TL;DR