Applied Sports Science newsletter – April 14, 2021

Kevin De Bruyne employed the services of data analytics company Analytics FC as part of the negotiations over his new four-year contract with Manchester City.

The 29-year-old midfielder agreed the £83m deal without using an agent, but was advised by Brussels-based legal firm Atfield and his management company Roc Nation, founded by Jay-Z.

Via Atfield, De Bruyne commissioned Analytics FC to produce a report analysing the player’s past, present and projected future performances and importance to the team – as well as benchmarking his salary against those of other world-leading attacking midfielders. TGG understands this showed he was significantly underpaid in comparison.

The Cardinal women played just six of their 33 games on their campus due to local COVID-19 restrictions. Those weeks of travel and bonding while living out of hotels define the program’s first title in 29 years.

… Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, studies the application of cognitive psychology in education. He recently spoke at a Learning and the Brain conference about the science behind study techniques.

“Kids are more on their own now than they typically are,” Willingham told MindShift. Students need to independently log in to class on time and maintain focus in their home environments. By explicitly teaching how to avoid distraction, combat procrastination and study effectively, educators entrust students with the necessary skills for educational challenges faced both virtually and in person.

But a new study seems to poke a hole in that long-standing theory.

… Appealing as it may be to view science as occupying a privileged epistemic position, scientific communication has fallen victim to the ill effects of an attention economy. This is not to say that science is broken. Far from it. Science is the greatest of human inventions for understanding our world, and it functions remarkably well despite these challenges. Still, scientists compete for eyeballs just as journalists do. They face incentives to hype their work and to publish selectively those findings that are surprising and “clickable.” Like other information consumers and producers, researchers rely on search engines, recommendation systems, and social media to find relevant information. In turn, scientists can be susceptible to filter bubbles, predatory publishers, and undue deference to the authority of numbers, P values, and black box algorithms.

… Competing late at night causes an influx of sympathetic hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline, while suppressing the secretion of parasympathetic hormones like melatonin.

In an optimal sleep pattern and circadian rhythm, melatonin rises in the evenings as we prepare for bed and cortisol sinks to its lowest point. When athletes train in the evening, it elevates sympathetic hormones and suppresses parasympathetic hormones at exactly the time when we want it to be at its lowest—near the onset of sleep.

And so “people systematically overlook opportunities to change things through subtraction.”

… A team of scientists led by Associate Professor Isao Shitanda from Tokyo University of Science, Japan, are exploring efficient ways of using sweat as the sole source of power for wearable electronics. In their most recent study, published in the Journal of Power Sources, they present a novel design for a biofuel cell array that uses a chemical in sweat, lactate, to generate enough power to drive a biosensor and wireless communication devices for a short time. The study was carried out in collaboration with Dr. Seiya Tsujimura from University of Tsukuba, Dr. Tsutomu Mikawa from RIKEN, and Dr. Hiroyuki Matsui from Yamagata University, all in Japan.

With spring baseball season underway, Eric Makhni, M.D., a Henry Ford Health System sports medicine orthopedic surgeon, warns about how overuse can contribute to the high rate of arm injuries among youth players.

Players between the ages of 15 and 19 account for nearly 57% of all Tommy John surgeries, according to a 2015 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.

“Young pitchers that throw all year long and don’t give their arms a rest between seasons risk increased elbow and arm injuries,” said Dr. Makhni. “Their bodies haven’t developed enough to handle the workload and physical stress.”

The NFL on Tuesday issued a memo to all team personnel that announced the league’s plans to move forward with COVID-19 vaccination education and accessibility and encouraged all players and staff to get vaccinated.

ESPN broke news of the memo, which came from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, John Mara, chair of the league’s executive committee, and John York, chair of NFL’s health and safety committee. It was addressed to all team chief executives, presidents, general managers and head coaches.

“In light of expanded vaccine eligibility, it is appropriate now to take further steps to educate about and promote vaccine availability and acceptance within the NFL,” said the statement, which outlined a five-point plan for teams to implement the new league guidelines.

Sarah Morris of Datalys presents “Injury Surveillance in Collegiate and High SchoolHockey Athletes” at the 2021 Ottawa Hockey Analytics Conference. [video, 31:24]

… And while the majority of parents give their child’s sports organization high marks for communication about safety protocols, one in four rate their sports league as fair or poor for consistent enforcement of COVID-19 precautions.

“As kids return to playing sports, it’s critical that teams and facilities enforce COVID guidelines to keep players, coaches and families as safe as possible and to reduce community spread,” says poll co-director Sarah Clark, M.P.H.

“This is especially important as we have seen recent COVID-19 outbreaks among youth sports teams. While most families seem confident in their local organization’s safety measures, our report suggests that ensuring compliance with COVID-19 protocols has also been challenging.”

… The irony of the youth sports movement, as detailed in the current Let Them Play Michigan lawsuit, is the unsportsmanlike intention to cut corners on the evidenced-based safety measures in order for the kids to play. Adults filing the lawsuit on kids’ behalf are suggesting that weekly testing is too much, or that quarantining if an infection is found is too onerous. This parental response may be because kids are complaining.

Adults cannot let kids make these decisions. Despite the best of intentions, adolescents are poor judges of health risks. Sure, they may not want to accept weekly COVID-19 testing, but adults need to make sure they follow the rules. The NBA’s experience shows that testing should be an essential part of the rules.

With polar-opposite payrolls, the Athletics’ Billy Beane and the Yankees’ Brian Cashman have helped reinvent baseball and defied the short shelf life of MLB GMs. And their historic careers and close friendship began with one 1997 trade. The two executives and people close to them reflect on their legacies, longevity, and what has and hasn’t changed since that first transaction.

… Though he is completely healthy and says he is in the best shape of his career, [Walker] Little only had his team Pro Day last month to show that to scouts. Little was pleased with his performance and yet, he has no idea where teams have him pegged. He could still be a first-round pick, or he could drop much further down.

“Everybody I’ve talked to has little doubt that Walker is an NFL player, have little doubt that he’s got a chance to be very good,” Shaw said. “It’s now, ‘OK, how, how do I put down a defensible grade for a guy who hasn’t played in a year?’ And the last time he’s on the field a year ago, he wasn’t healthy. That’s the crux of it. I do believe in my heart that he’s an NFL starter. I do believe that it will happen relatively early in his career. I think whoever takes him is going to be very glad that they have him.”