… “He tries to forget that stuff,” Smith said. “But he’ll remember the homer.”
Smith was Trout’s teammate for most of three seasons, during which they competed in a number of competitive physical activities — among them h-o-r-s-e, darts, ping-pong and video games. Eight years apart in age, their battles often took on a familial feel, with Trout the younger brother begging for another round.
“If he loses, it’s on to the next game,” Smith said. “He’s the most competitive person in the world.”
With their second pick in the 2017 draft the Eagles chose cornerback Sidney Jones. Jones was originally projected as a high first round pick with a lot of potential but then he ruptured his left Achilles tendon during his pro day workout in early March. Howie Roseman has stated that the Eagles medical staff are confident that Jones will make a full recovery from his surgery. But what does the research say on returning to the NFL following an Achilles tendon rupture? Will the Eagles’ 43rd pick be a steal or a bust?
The risk of Achilles tendon rupture is low — around 18 per 100,000 people. Ruptures typically occur in males between 30 and 50 years old and account for around 40 percent of all operative tendon repairs. Approximately 75-80 percent of cases can be attributed to participation in athletic activities, including ball and racquet sports. Re-rupture rates for surgical repair is low at 3-4 percent.
However, returning to sports following Achilles tendon rupture can be difficult. A 2009 study by Parekh et al showed that 30 percent of NFL players did not return to play following this injury.
… “We believe setting screens leads to winning plays,” Milwaukee Bucks coach Jason Kidd said during the first-round of the NBA playoffs. “It doesn’t show up on the stat sheet, but we take pride in setting screens.”
… I made the decision to see a psychiatrist to learn how best to cope and some of the suggestions he made served me well in adapting to a new life outside of United.
He suggested that I keep busy in the immediate aftermath, and I did that going to the European Championship in France last summer as a pundit and then to India for a futsal tournament I had been invited to play in.
There were little things too. I joined a gym for the first time in my life, and his simple suggestion that I join one half an hour from my home forced me to make a routine.
… A cautious timetable for return from a second ACL tear would be mid-season, if not taking off an entire year. However, Butt has some awesome technology at the University of Michigan that’s been helping him heal and prepare for the NFL.
Whistle Sports put together a very cool video documenting some of the tech that Butt believes will have him ready to play by September. (He also jokes about his last name, and shares a hilarious non-sequitor from Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh.)
The influence of musculotendinous tissue stiffness on contractile rate of torque development (RTD) remains opaque. In this study, we examined the relationships between both patellar tendon (PT) and vastus lateralis muscle–tendon unit (MTU) stiffness and the voluntary and evoked knee-extension RTD. Fifty-two healthy untrained men completed duplicate laboratory sessions. Absolute and relative RTD were measured at 50 N m or 25% maximal voluntary torque (MVT) increments from onset and sequentially during explosive voluntary and evoked octet isometric contractions (supramaximal stimulation; eight pulses at 300 Hz). Isometric MVT was also assessed. Patellar tendon and MTU stiffness were derived from simultaneous force and ultrasound recordings of the PT and vastus lateralis aponeurosis during constant RTD ramp contractions. Absolute and relative (to MVT and resting tissue length) stiffness (k) was measured over identical torque increments as RTD. Pearson’s correlations tested relationships between stiffness and RTD measurements over matching absolute/relative torque increments. Absolute and relative PT k were unrelated to equivalent voluntary/evoked (r = 0.020–0.255, P = 0.069–0.891). Absolute MTU k was unrelated to voluntary or evoked RTD (r ≤ 0.191, P ≥ 0.184), but some measures of relative MTU k were related to relative voluntary/evoked RTD (e.g. RTD for 25–50% MVT, r = 0.374/0.353, P = 0.007/0.014). In conclusion, relative MTU k explained a small proportion of the variance in relative voluntary and evoked RTD (both ≤19%), despite no association of absolute MTU k or absolute/relative PT k with equivalent RTD measures. Therefore, the muscle-aponeurosis component but not free tendon was associated with relative RTD, although it seems that an overriding influence of MVT negated any relationship of absolute MTU k and absolute RTD.
Over the past 15 years, surfing has become a kind of obsession for me. I surf eight months a year. I travel to surf destinations for family vacations and seek (forgiving) waves in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. I have spent thousands of dollars on boards of all sizes and shapes.
And yet — I suck at it. In the sport of (Hawaiian) kings, I’m a jester. In surfing parlance, a “kook.” I fall and flail. I get hit on the head by my own board. I run out of breath when held down by a four-foot wave. I wimp out when the waves get overhead and I paddle back to shore. When I do catch a wave, I’m rarely graceful. On those rare occasions when I manage a decent drop, turn and trim, I usually blow it by celebrating with a fist pump or a hoot.
Once, I actually cried tears of joy over what any observer would have thought a so-so performance on a so-so wave. Yes, I was moved to tears by mediocrity.
So why continue? Why pursue something I’ll never be good at?
Runner's World, Sweat Science blog, Alex Hutchinson from
When you’re starting on the start line, your muscles aren’t burning much energy. Then the gun fires, and suddenly they’re burning a whole lot.
Your heart, lungs, and muscles respond—but they can’t ramp up to full capacity instantly. It takes two or three minutes for the heart and lungs to speed up, blood vessels to dilate, and perhaps most importantly, for the oxygen-processing enzymes in the muscles themselves to get fully activated.
In the meantime, you’re running on borrowed energy, powering your muscles with quick but unsustainable anaerobic metabolism, which produces byproducts that ultimately lead to muscle fatigue. So the faster you can ramp up to full aerobic energy production, the better.
To become an expert at something — especially in sports — conventional wisdom suggests that you dedicate yourself wholly to that sport. But while practice can make perfect, it’s important for young athletes to recognize the many advantages of branching out from their comfort zones and trying multiple sports.
Early sport specialization can have its advantages, but diversifying athletic opportunities at a young age can have significant long-term benefits, including limiting injury risk and allowing the athlete to explore their passion.
… The league announced it awarded the Buffalo Sabres a two-year extension to continue hosting the combine at its downtown arena and neighboring HarborCenter hotel/rink complex. The Sabres began hosting the annual late-spring event in 2015 after the combine had previously been held at a suburban-Toronto convention center.
Professional Baseball Strength & Conditioning Coaches Society, Tim Rodmaker from
There are a number of things that each organization in MLB could do to help improve the health, fitness, athleticism and performance of their most important commodity, the players. First, there should be a full-time, certified strength and conditioning coach at every level of professional baseball. As part an agreement with the MLB Players’ Association, every organization currently employs at least four full-time strength and conditioning coaches. Each organization has a certified strength and conditioning coach at the Major League level, a minor league coordinator and a coach at the AA and AAA levels. While several organizations have more than four coaches, every organization could benefit from adding coaches at all levels.
Teams have hitting coaches, pitching coaches, position coaches and trainers at every level. Why not strength and conditioning coaches? Minor league baseball coaches are responsible for developing future Major League players. They teach teamwork and game strategy, improve stroke mechanics, teach pitch selection, situational hitting and base running and develop proper fielding and throwing skills. They enhance pitching performance by improving fielding skills, refining mechanics, developing consistent release points and teaching the importance of changing speed and pitch location. While each of these is essential for player development, wouldn’t it be advantageous to have a staff member who could enhance the skills being taught by the position coaches by making players bigger, faster, stronger, more power powerful and more athletic?
The Football Federation of Australia (FFA) has announced that it will be closing its Centre of Excellence (originally AIS Men’s Football) at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra at the end of the year. It is worth reflecting on the contribution of the AIS men’s program to football in Australia.
Men’s football was one of the original eight residential sports when the AIS was established in 1981 in Canberra.
Two Englishmen were given responsibility of developing young players – former Socceroos coach Jimmy Shoulder as Head Coach and Ron Smith as his assistant.
Many of the ideas that have become popular in education today like the power of projects and collaboration — not to mention the way technology could change learning — are rooted in ideas put forward by Seymour Papert, who died in 2016. His legacy lives on at the MIT Media Lab, where Mitch Resnick, a key figure behind the development of the kids programming language Scratch, tries to carry Papert’s ideas forward.
Papert had a vision of children learning with technology in ways that were revolutionary. He believed that kids learn better when they are solving problems in context. He also knew that caring passionately about the problem helps children fall in love with learning. He thought educating kids shouldn’t be about explanation, but rather should be about falling in love with ideas.
Bonnie St. John overcame poverty and losing a limb to become the first African American to win a medal in skiing at the Winter Paralympics. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, the Rhodes Scholar talks about developing resilience in her new book co-authored with Allen P. Haines, Micro-Resilience: Minor Shifts for Major Boosts in Focus, Drive, and Energy. She says resilience does not result only after major efforts, like rebuilding after a hurricane, but also in the practice of tiny moments of resilience — small adjustments in daily routines, thought patterns, nutrition, activity and others. [audio, 21:09]
… Studies show that the most ambitious and talented athletes run the greatest risk of burnout and may even consider quitting their sport without realizing the options they have to stay in the game and become re-energized. While there is a physical component to athlete burnout, the mental stress involved is more problematic since mental health concerns may be subtle or the athlete may attempt to hide them for fear of being stigmatized. Since May is Mental Health Month, this is a good time for parents and coaches to learn about the signs and symptoms of burnout, identify how athletes can help themselves and seek information on risk factors to identify burnout early and prevent its debilitating effects.
Burnout is a result of prolonged response to chronic stress – physical and/or mental – and may be brought on by others (coaches, parents) or by the athlete. Burnout may also result from exercise addiction.
Runner's World, Races & Places, Alex Hutchinson from
… In the hours leading up to the start, Brad Wilkins, Ph.D., director of Next Generation Research in the Nike Sport Research Laboratory and the lead on the project’s scientific strategy, was sweating the details. Striding down Monza’s imposing, storied finishing straight, he pointed out the pancake-flat timing mats that were being laid down at intervals of exactly 400 meters, in order to provide hyperaccurate pace feedback to the runners every 68 seconds (if they’re on pace). His team had set up two weather stations to gather track-level data on temperature, humidity, and wind speed for the full marathon attempt, slated for May 6th, 7th, or 8th, depending on weather conditions. The wind, he acknowledged, was bad—bad enough to merit postponing the attempt, if this were the real thing rather than a dress rehearsal. He paused and looked up at the sky, which was that intense shade of azure, artfully dotted with a few fluffy white clouds, that reassures you that spring is coming and the universe is basically a good place. “As a physiologist,” he added, “another thing I don’t like is the sun. Too much radiant heat.”
Finally, with the bleat of an asthmatic-sounding air-horn, the runners set off, following a sleek (and exhaust-free) black Tesla pace car driven by a Formula One test driver whose skills are necessary to maintain a steady pace while attempting to stay consistently at least five meters in front of the pack. The first six pacemakers quickly coalesce into an arrowhead formation in rows of one, two, and three—think Flying V, if you’re a fan of The Mighty Ducks—with Kipchoge, Tadese, and Desisa tucked tightly behind them. A pair of digital clocks mounted on the Tesla display real-time updates: elapsed time, current pace, projected finishing time. With languid strides and impassive visages, the three men make the superhuman pace of just under four minutes and 35 seconds per mile look deceptively human—for now.
… Today, our lives play out in a digital world. We are surrounded by lots of hyper-connected systems, smart devices and advanced AI (artificial intelligence) systems. In other words, lots of IQ, but no EQ. That’s a problem, especially as our interactions with technology are becoming more conversational and relational. Just look at how we use our mobile devices and interact with intelligent agents such as Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. These technologies that are designed to interact with humans need emotional intelligence to be effective. Specifically, they need to be able to sense human emotions and then adapt their operation accordingly. My company, Affectiva, is on a mission to humanize technology with artificial emotional intelligence, or as I like to call it: Emotion AI.
… The HeadHealthTECH Challenge is one aspect of a $60-million program funded by the NFL and managed on behalf of FRI by Duke University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute. The Play Smart. Play Safe. Engineering Roadmap, as the plan is being called, comes on the heels of a four-year collaboration between the NFL and GE also designed to improve treatment for traumatic brain injury.
Last month, the league announced two winners from HeadHealthTECH Challenge I in VyaTek Sports and Guardian Innovations. The former received $190,000 in grants for developing and testing its technology that includes energy-absorbing modules added to a helmet and can be removed and replaced after a significant hit. Additionally, Guardian Innovations received $20,000 for biomechanical testing of its soft helmet cover (Guardian Cap) that reduces the severity of impacts.
The first so-called artificial pancreas systems – wearable devices that take charge of the crucial process of measuring glucose levels and delivering precise doses of insulin – are now beginning to come to market.
That’s welcome news for the nation’s 30 million diabetics, who stand not only to get some relief from the seemingly incessant stream of lancets, test strips and syringes, but also to stay healthier. That’s because an artificial pancreas can keep the disease on a tighter leash than they can, by testing more frequently and delivering more precise insulin doses.
What started as a mixture of water, salt, sugar, and lemon juice to aid the Florida Gators’ performance on the gridiron grew into a multinational brand that is a staple in all levels of sport. At PSFK 2016, and returning again at PSFK 2017, Gatorade’s Xavi Cortadellas came to speak on realizing the future of sport through data-centric personalization along with Tucker Fort of Smart Design who helped make it happen.
There might be a lot of companies out there coming up with some great wearable tech ideas, but the problem is, it’s not always so easy to make them a reality.
One of the barriers to getting those concepts made is that transforming them into actual products often involves developing your own hardware, a part of the process that takes time – and often a lot of money. Also, not everyone is an expert at making hardware.
That’s where the likes of Suunto, Sensoria and Lumo Bodytech are hoping to make a difference. The trio have all recently made the decision to open up the tools and tech they’ve already created for their own devices to interested startups, big brands and institutions. They’re hoping to speed up the process of building innovative wearables and getting them into the hands of people who need them the most.
Stress fractures in sport are becoming increasing more common, comprising up to 10% of all of sporting injuries. Around 90% of such injuries are located in the lower limb. This articles aims to define the optimal management of lower limb stress fractures in the athlete, with a view to maximise return rates and minimise return times to sport. Treatment planning of this condition is specific to the location of the injury. However, there remains a clear division of stress fractures by “high” and “low” risk. “Low risk” stress fractures are those with a low probability of fracture propagation, delayed union, or non-union, and so can be managed reliably with rest and exercise limitation. These include stress fractures of the Postero-Medial Tibial Diaphysis, Metatarsal Shafts, Distal Fibula, Medial Femoral Neck, Femoral Shaft and Calcaneus. “High risk” stress fractures, in contrast, have increased rates of fracture propagation, displacement, delayed and non-union, and so require immediate cessation of activity, with orthopaedic referral, to assess the need for surgical intervention. These include stress fractures of the Anterior Tibial Diaphysis, Fifth Metatarsal Base, Medial Malleolus, Lateral Femoral Neck, Tarsal Navicular and Great Toe Sesamoids. In order to establish the optimal methods for managing these injuries, we present and review the current evidence which guides the treatment of stress fractures in athletes. From this, we note an increased role for surgical management of certain high risk stress fractures to improve return times and rates to sport. Following this, key recommendations are provided for the management of the common stress fracture types seen in the athlete. Five case reports are also presented to illustrate the application of sport-focussed lower limb stress fracture treatment in the clinical setting. [full text]
… “This consensus was built on the latest scientific evidence and will have a profound impact diagnosing and treating sport-related concussions,” says Dr. Willem Meeuwisse, a sport medicine physician and epidemiologist who co-chaired the consensus conference. “While most people recover in the initial 10- to 14-day time period following injury, in some cases individuals may have symptoms that may persist.”
This consensus statement builds on the previous 4th Conference in Zurich and updates the assessment tools in light of the new evidence.
The Morrisonville High School baseball team is the first Montgomery County casualty of the new pitch count guidelines.
“It is hard to admit, and greatly embarrassing, but a coaching decision I made last Wednesday has cost the Mohawks a game,” Coach Bob Montgomery said on the Mohawk Baseball Facebook page.
… Michael Bennett, the PFA’s head of welfare, said: “We put a player welfare department in place in 2012 because I felt a lot of onus was being placed on the physical aspect of players playing football and not enough on their emotional side, and I think the two go hand in hand. Last year we had 160 [requesting help], of which 62 were current players and 98 were former players, and that is growing year on year. Key for me is making our members aware of what is in place and the more we raise awareness, the more people will use the service.
“I think it is a male mindset that it is seen as a weakness, so for people like Clarke Carlisle, Rio Ferdinand – even Prince Harry – to talk about their experience brings the taboo down and you become more comfortable being able to talk about it. We are trying to change that mindset because if you were to twist an ankle or pull a hamstring – because you can physically see it – you can treat it, but because mental illness is something you can’t see it is not viewed the same as something you can see.”
A little spit may help predict whether a child’s concussion symptoms will subside in days or persist for weeks.
A test that measures fragments of genetic material in saliva was nearly 90 percent accurate in identifying children and adolescents whose symptoms persisted for at least a month, a Penn State team told the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting in San Francisco, Calif. In contrast, a concussion survey commonly used by doctors was right less than 70 percent of the time.
BMC Series blog, Trevor Barker & Gaytri Barker from
Sports and recreation related traumatic brain injuries are a serious public health concern. Here, co-authors Trevor Barker and Gaytri Barker tell us more about their research, recently published in BMC Psychology, which examines neurocognitive changes following concussion
… There are more than a million high schoolers playing football in the United States in a given year. We can’t know how all of them feel about head injuries, but we can guess that they feel differently from older players who are now leaving the game.
SB Nation interviewed dozens of players who are just embarking on their football careers at camps this spring, in the hope that we could get a sense of the range of opinions among them. Here’s what we learned.
After putting together a breakout season in 2016, Pirates outfielder Starling Marte eight days ago was suspended for using performance-enhancing drugs.
When one of the game’s emerging stars tries to cheat the system, it’s a blow to that player and his team. But it does not shake commissioner Rob Manfred’s faith in MLB’s drug-testing program.
“I do not see it as a program failure that we have positive tests,” Manfred said Tuesday. “I doubt we will ever get to the point where any sport can say with 100 percent certainty that no athlete is using a performance-enhancing drug. Occasionally, athletes are going to make a bad decision. We have a program in place that is the best at catching them if they make that decision.”
In this 3-part series, Kyle Turley takes us on his journey to to deal with the damaging effects of football through the use of marijuana. After an NFL career that saw him take home NFL All-Pro honors, Kyle was diagnosed with pre-CTE. After taking a laundry list of pharmaceutical drugs in order to deal with the associated issues, Kyle found marijuana to be the best available treatment for the problems that he was facing. In this episode, we follow the science to a conference at Harvard University, where top scientists discuss the breakthroughs being made in the field. Additionally, we meet up with Todd and Marv Marinovich, as Todd has begun managing Marv’s dementia with CBD oil.
One by one, they entered a nondescript building on the eastern edge of town, 18,000 square feet with no signage out front. They came looking for relief. These nine former professional football players are part of the Denver Broncos Alumni Association. They played in nearly 700 NFL games combined and have enough aches and pains to keep an entire hospital staff busy.
“Every day, I wake up in pain, from my ankles to my neck,” said Ebenezer Ekuban, 40, who played defensive end for nine NFL seasons. “It’s part of the territory. I know what I signed up for.”
Retirement is a daily exercise in managing pain, which is what brought the men to the unmarked CW Hemp offices on a recent Friday for a tour and a firsthand lesson on the potential benefits of the marijuana plant.
International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism from
While effects of the two classes of proteins found in milk (i.e. soluble proteins, including whey, and casein) on muscle protein synthesis have been well investigated after a single bout of resistance exercise (RE), the combined effects of these two proteins on the muscle responses to resistance training (RT) have not yet been investigated. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the effects of protein supplementation varying by the ratio between milk soluble proteins (fast-digested protein) and casein (slow-digested protein) on the muscle to a 9-week RT program. In a double-blind protocol, 31 resistance-trained men, were assigned to 3 groups receiving a drink containing 20g of protein comprising either 100% of fast protein (FP(100), n=10), 50% of fast and 50% of slow proteins (FP(50), n=11) or 20% of fast protein and 80% of casein (FP(20), n=10) at the end of training bouts. Body composition (DXA), and maximal strength in dynamic and isometric were analyzed before and after RT. Moreover, blood plasma aminoacidemia kinetic after RE was measured. The results showed a higher leucine bioavailability after ingestion of FP(100) and FP(50) drinks, when compared with FP(20) (p<0.05). However, the RT-induced changes in lean body mass (p<0.01), dynamic (p<0.01), and isometric muscle strength (p<0.05) increased similarly in all experimental groups. To conclude, compared to the FP(20) group, the higher rise in plasma amino acids following the ingestion of FP(100) and FP(50) did not lead to higher muscle long-term adaptations.
In a league designed to legislate parity, 2017 would be the Cleveland Browns’ 15th consecutive season without a playoff berth. Should the team’s new regime make a big bet or keep compiling assets?
… Visualization is a means to an end. A means to insight. A way to think, to understand, to discover, and to communicate something about the world. If we consider only the task of assigning visual encodings, of constructing visualizations, we ignore myriad other challenges: finding relevant data, cleaning it, transforming it into efficient structures, analyzing it with statistics, modeling, explaining our discoveries…
These tasks are often performed in code. Alas, coding is famously difficult! Even its name suggests impenetrability. Code originally referred to machine code: low-level instructions to be executed by a processor. Code has become more human-friendly since then, but it’s got a long way to go.
… Uses of behavioral science become far more troublesome when they are hidden from their targets, or when their users are exploiting people’s unconscious biases for their own profit.
If companies default customers into expensive services they don’t need, and use jargon or fine print to obscure what they’re doing, there’s a big problem. The same is true if employers enlist behavioral science to trick employees into working longer hours, without giving them a fair opportunity to make that decision on their own.
We are sorely in need of an ethics of nudging. We should start by insisting that in this era of behavioral science, it is more, not less, important for private institutions to treat people with respect.
As the draft wraps up each year, one of the most underreported stories arises from the rampant negotiations conducted and wink-nod agreements reached between players who may not be drafted and teams that want to sign them as free agents. It’s a blatant violation of the rules that goes unenforced and essentially ignored by the league, with every team rushing to strike deals with undrafted free agents while they still may be drafted by another team.
One league source estimated that 90 percent of all UDFA deals were unofficially finalized before the 2017 draft ended. The frenzy puts extra pressure on players and agents to accept the terms or risk having teams move on to other candidates.
Although Chelsea may well win the league this season, Pochettino has turned Spurs into genuine title challengers, resulting in the league’s best coach and team.
When Mauricio Pochettino took the reigns at Spurs it was seen as a step up for the coach from Southampton, a club which perhaps had a glass ceiling of 8th. Moving to Spurs appeared to raise that ceiling, yet only a few places up the table. Surely 4th would be seen as an achievement? In the space of three seasons the Argentinian has propelled Spurs to genuine title challengers, a feat of exceptional management and coaching.
… Something that a lot of people may not realize about the Coaches Site is that our team is made up of fellow coaches who are just as passionate about the game as YOU are! One member of our team, Ben Cooper, is the video coach of the Vancouver Cancuks. Recently the Canucks did profile on Ben and the work he puts into making sure both the players and other coaches are prepared for each game.
… The official two-a-days ban was going to happen sooner or later, as football on all levels has seen full-contact practices reduced. The NFL banned them in 2012. And in 2014, 15 organizations including the NCAA’s concussion task force recommended that if teams were to have two-a-days in preseason, they should only have contact in one of the sessions.
In January, 16 medical organizations came back to the organization with another proposal that included doing away with full-contact two-a-days completely and made it clear that if teams do have second sessions, they should be walk-throughs or meetings. There are no helmets, pads or conditioning activities allowed in walk-throughs. The key is reducing exertion and promoting recovery.
Football as we know it is done, because the lawyers are here. When the lawyers arrive, things as you know them are over. After making an initial beachhead with concussion lawsuits in the NFL, The Lawyers (capital letters necessary) are pushing inland and making great, great gains. There are lawsuits against helmet manufacturers, against the NFL, the NCAA … anyone with a finger on the game at this point, in the year 2017, will be liable for the game’s excesses, violences, and lasting damage.
Do not for one second read that as “blame The Lawyers.” You can if you like. It’s fun, and no one wants to stand in the way of fun as long as you don’t actually mean blame The Lawyers. Like foot soldiers in a war, lawyers are merely rubber ducks on a great tidal swell of football-related backlash, doing what they are told, and being pushed by currents sweeping back from a century of American football’s flailing about with no regard for itself or fellow swimmers.
Football is not under attack from anything other than football. Football declared war on itself long ago, and advanced the campaign in a thousand small steps.
… In order for sports organizations to have success, information must be passed and understood by all different types of people with all different roles, backgrounds, and biases. Owners communicate with athletes, sports medicine practitioners communicate with sport coaches, strength and conditioning coaches communicate with player development directors, and the list goes on and on.
A general manager, sport coach, or scout can simply look at an athletes stat line or watch film to get a good idea of what type of player they are looking at. What are his or her strengths and weaknesses from a skill perspective. Today a data analyst may also be a part of that team, to understand what is significant and identify different correlations and trends (Moneyball). Though a completely obvious fact, it is often forgotten that the best way to predict an athletes ability to play a sport, is look at their previous ability of playing that sport.
As Thursday night crept toward Friday morning, a black Chevrolet Suburban SUV idled in the quiet Philadelphia night. Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly stood outside after the first round of the NFL draft, reflecting on LSU’s Leonard Fournette and Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey getting picked in the top 10 after not playing in their bowl games.
Both McCaffrey and Fournette were healthy enough to play but ultimately didn’t participate. A flurry of debate and some doomsday predictions followed their choice. But ultimately, their high picks on Thursday—Fournette went No. 4, McCaffrey No. 8—showed it had no bearing on their NFL futures.
Before Kelly jetted from Philadelphia, he and other college football coaches tap danced around a new reality in the football landscape. The topic of skipping bowl games has become a Rorschach Test for the perspective of your football seat. While NFL officials brushed off Fournette and McCaffrey’s decisions as obvious, college coaches like Kelly are carefully confronting a new reality that elite NFL prospects skipping non-College Football Playoff bowl games will become an annual occurrence.
… The current Ajax backroom staff is almost a ‘who’s who’ of 1990s legends. Among them, Marc Overmars is the sporting director, Dennis Bergkamp is assistant manager and Edwin van der Sar is the CEO.
Of the three it is probably Overmars who has had the biggest role in the club’s transition over the last couple of years. The former Arsenal winger runs the club’s famed scouting network and is in charge of a transfer policy that has become increasingly effective.
Overmars’ purchases have by no means all been successes since he took up the role in 2012, but bringing in the Cameroon under-20 goalkeeper Andre Onana from Barcelona for a nominal fee and the winger Amin Younes from Borussia Monchengladbach in 2015 have been two very shrewd purchases. Onana, now 20, has since become a full international and established himself as the club’s first-choice goalkeeper.