Cass Sunstein posted a short opinion bit at Bloomberg View on behavioral economics, using the iPhone to talk about something called “evaluability.” Evaluability speaks to the criteria people to make decisions and that criteria varies in different contexts, but ultimately that criteria boils down to stuff that really matters, and stuff that doesn’t really matter. Often what really matters comes down to personal preference which creates all sorts of opportunities for marketers to make a case for features and uses and attributes that, in the big picture, mostly don’t matter to most people but might matter to some people. The cacophony of bullshit marketing messaging that surrounds us all: This is why.
Evaluability affects professional sports front offices, coaches and player agents. General managers make decisions about the talent to acquire, constrained by budgets and/or salary caps. Coaches make decisions about the offense and defense systems they use, and the lineups they deploy. Agents stand to make millions of dollars for athletes they represent (and themselves) by defining the unique features and attributes of their clients. Using this evaluability lens, the analytics revolution in sports is a noise machine producing all kinds of decision-making criteria. Most of the analytics noise doesn’t matter, but depending on who’s making the decision, it sometimes does.
Given that it’s peak pro sports season with post-season MLB, stretch run MLS, early-season NFL and European soccer, and pre-season NBA and NHL, articles abound that lay out how front office and coaching priorities are changing before our eyes. Among them, Zach Lowe lays out current NBA GM thinking about player contracts at Grantland (and more here), and young un-established players have an enormous incentive to establish themselves and gain guaranteed contracts that will likely lead to at least 8-figures worth of career earnings. Gary Curneen documents the fast-evolving requirements for elite coaches at European soccer clubs at The Original Coach. And Baxter Holmes presents Brad Stevens’ pre-season plan for the Celtics in the Boston Globe.
Applied sports science will either create clarity or add to the chaos. Players are fit, hurt or somewhere in between. Their skills rest, at a fundamental level, on goals or shots or tackles or outs. Teams are good at player development and know how to improve athletes’ athleticism, or they don’t. Coaches use tactics and systems where players match specific roles, or they use tactics and systems that create roles that adapt to players’ strengths. All these inputs lead to decision criteria that are broad or narrow and organizations are going to well informed or poorly informed when it’s time to make their calls.
Sunstein makes the point that consumers can be drawn to new iPhone purchases by its new features, even though those features will be rarely if ever used. At the New Yorker website, Maria Konnikova has an excellent new review of current research on popular misperceptions and false beliefs. The point is that teams that are clear and correct in understanding what matters are the teams that will make the best decisions and will, in all likelihood, reach their goals.