Reddit mentions: The best sports & entertainment industry books

(1) Read, bruh. I can't vouch for it personally, but I've heard the book Watching Baseball Smarter recommended with high regard. And it's almost literally the exact thing you asked for. Here are some other good book recommendations:

• Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Hard to believe that the book is sort of old hat at this point, but it still serves as a very readable introduction to advanced statistics.
  
  
• The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James (mostly). This book is good toilet reading, if you have a massive toilet on which to perch it, and your bowel movements are glacially paced. James ranks the best players at each position, and goes on a witty, decade-by-decade jog through the history of the game.
  
  
• The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom Tango. Are you a "math person"? Read this book, you'll like it. It's an introduction to sabermetrics that explains the important first principles of statistical analysis, builds an important statistic (wOBA) from the ground up, and then applies all of that knowledge to answer specific questions about baseball strategies and to debunk, verify, or qualify some of baseball's hoary "conventional wisdom."
  
  
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. This book is not about baseball, but it's still great and you should read it.
  
  (2) You'll want to start watching the game more, if you can. Find a method (like MLB.tv or, you know, your television) to do so. Massive exposure does help you learn, and it's a fun, if inefficient, method. Osmosis. That's just science.
  
  (2b) Depending on the broadcast crew, it's sometimes addition-by-subtraction to mute the television.
  
  (2c) If you have MLB.tv Premium and intend to follow your favorite team, I recommend watching the other team's broadcast. You know enough about [TEAM X] already. Learn something new about [TEAM Y], instead. Unless, of course, (2b) applies, in which case maybe your best bet is MLB.tv's option to overlay the radio broadcast on the TV video. Barring that, the liberal application of the DOWN VOLUME button is always an option, and then, like, listen to Chopin's Preludes. Don't be That Guy and lean too heavily on No. 15, though. There are 23 others. Expand your horizons.
  
  (3) When you go to games, keep score. Sure, there's a guy a few seats over in a striped button-down and pre-faded jeans (Chad or something) who will mock you mercilessly for it. Sad for you, you've lost Chad's respect. But, oh, the things you'll gain. A free souvenir. A better grasp on the flow of the game. The priceless power to answer the "what did I miss" and "what the fuck just happened" questions that litter the air at ballgames, tragically disregarded and forgotten like the syllabi from Chad's last semester at Bromaha State. You can learn how to score ballgames here. Fuck Chad.
  
  (3b) Go to games alone now and then. Did I mention that, in some company, it's rightly considered rude to score a ballgame like a trainspotting anorak? Not in all company, mind you. But I like going to some games alone to avoid the messy politics of divided attention altogether.
  
  (4) Bookmark a few websites. Quick stat references include FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, and Brooks Baseball. Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, and the Hardball Times are all good. FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference both have subscription options that allow you to access enhanced content for a small fee, which is worth it if only to support the yeoman's work that they do compiling and sorting our beloved numbers.
  
  (5) German chess great Emanuel Lasker is believed (incorrectly) to have said that "if you see a good move, look for a better one." Good advice. Too much of the history of baseball analysis is the history of people getting stuck in comfortable places and refusing to interrogate their own ideas about the game. Sabermetricians have made careers out of just pointing this out, and even some of them do it from time to time. Also, on the level of pure self-interest, baseball ignorance and bad teeth have this much in common: Keeping your mouth shut hides them both. If you have a good opinion about a baseball topic, look for a better one.
  
  (6) Watch a some decent movies about baseball. Sugar is excellent and disturbing. Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns is available on Netflix and worth watching. You drink his nostalgic Flavor-Aid at your own peril: At times, Baseball is about as edifying as having a good, 19-hour stare at a Norman Rockwell painting. It's still in a class all its own as a baseball documentary. You should also watch Ed, starring Matt LeBlanc, because it'll teach you not to take strangers on the internet seriously when they give you advice.
  
  (7) When you go to games, wear whatever the hell you want. This has nothing to do with understanding baseball, but it annoys me when people make a big deal out of policing the clothing that others wear to sporting events. Sitting front-row at a Yankees-Tigers game in your best Steelers jersey and a pink Houston Astros BP cap? Whatever. You be you. You be you. I once watched as a perfectly innocent college student was denied a free t-shirt from a Nats Park employee because he (the student) was wearing a Red Sox shirt with his Washington cap. That was pretty fucked.
  
  (8) Take the EdX Sabermetrics course. Others have recommended this, with good reason. It's a wonderful introduction to advanced analytics, and you get a taste of programming in R and MySQL as well. You don't need a CompSci background. I sure didn't.
  
  Hope this helped.
  
  Footnote: Chad-hating is actually too easy. Truth is, I've never really been mocked for scoring games. Once, I even bonded with a Chad-esque guy sitting next to me at a Braves-Nats game here in Washington. He was pretty drunk, but we talked Braves baseball while he drank and I drank and I scored the game and he drank more. He seemed utterly engaged by the scoring process in that guileless, doe-eyed way that only the drunk have mastered. That's the Chad I loved.

From across the pond, welcome to pretty much the best sport ever! We're glad you're here :) I'm gonna try to keep it general, cuz I think once you've got the basics down you can just watch some games and refine it from there. Also, I learned a lot of stuff about the game by playing video games like The Show, so if you can get a copy of that and wanna get more in-depth that's actually not a bad way to come at it from a different angle.

Let's start with the overall structure of the game. One of the things that's different from most sports is how many games there are in a season, and to accommodate that two teams will play several games in a row against each other. That's only really important if you don't want to look silly when talking to another baseball fan. As far as actual game structure, there are nine innings a game. Each inning has a "top" and a "bottom;" in Major League Baseball the away team gets to hit in the top of an inning and the home team defends ("fields").

Arguably the main competition happening within a game is between the pitcher and the batter. Whenever a batter steps up to take his swings, that's called an at bat or AB for short. During an AB, the batter will try to swing at pitches in what's called the strike zone. The strike zone (and correct me if I'm wrong on this guys cuz it has changed some) is the width of home plate and the height is between a batter's belt and his knees. It's important to understand the strike zone because then you can understand balls and strikes. A ball is whenever a pitcher throws outside the strike zone and the batter doesn't swing at it. However, if a batter does swing and either misses the ball or fouls it off, it counts as a strike. A foul is when the batter puts the bat on the ball but it goes out of bounds. This can be into the seats, behind the batter's box, outside the foul lines (those little white lines that go straight out from home plate, cross third and first base, and extend all the way to the edge of the outfield), etc.

The total number of balls and strikes in an AB is called the count. The count's important because once a batter gets 4 balls, he takes first base on a walk, which is also called a "base on balls" in ye olde lingoe and why the stat is abbreviated BB. But if the pitcher throws him 3 strikes, he's out! That's called a strikeout. However, a foul ball never counts as a third strike, it's only a strike out if the batter doesn't make contact (either swinging and missing or not swinging at a pitch in the strike zone).

There are other ways to record an out too; strikeouts are by far the least common. First let's talk fly outs. That's when a batter gets the ball in the air but it's caught by one of the fielders. There are two "special" fly outs, one being a pop fly. That's just a fly ball that doesn't leave the infield (i.e. usually it's caught by the pitcher or a baseman rather than an outfielder). There are also foul outs. Like I said before, fouls are balls that aren't in the normal playing field. But pretty much all stadiums have what's called "foul territory," which is space between the foul lines and the seats. If a fielder catches a fly ball that stays out of the seats, that's a foul out! Second, though, there are ground outs. A ball is considered "live" as soon as it touches fair ground. All that really means is that the batter-cum-runner isn't out yet. Anyway, if the batter hits the ball on the ground, one of the fielders can pick it up and throw it to first base. If the ball gets to the base before the runner does, he's out!

Obviously if every batter got out all the time the game wouldn't really have a point, so there are also hits! There are really only four flavors of hits: Singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. As the names imply, it's just what base the runner can manage to get to safely. If there's a runner on second or third base, we say he's in scoring position, which means that any hit has a pretty good chance of getting him home. Incidentally, that's how points or runs are scored: having a runner cross home plate.

A batter is credited with a run batted in (RBI for short) when he gets a hit and a runner makes it home. There are other ways to get an RBI, too: If there's a runner in scoring position (usually third base but sometimes second if the guy is REALLY fast) and the batter hits a fly ball far enough into the outfield, the runner can still score if he tags up and runs home. Since the ball hasn't hit the ground, it's not live yet. Once it hits the fielder's glove, though, we're off to the races! The runner first has to tag the bag he's on, then when the ball comes alive he can score. If he does, then the batter is out but he still gets an RBI. However, the fielders have a chance to throw the ball home and try to tag the runner out before he touches the base.

There are other sacrifice plays besides the sac fly. Batters can also hit sacrifice ground balls, but these aren't always to score runs like the sac fly is. Explaining this part requires a lot of strategy talk so I'll steer clear of a lot of it since I'm just trying to go through the basics, but a lot of the time it's just to move a runner into scoring position.

I'll finish out by just talking about a couple of the stats you'll hear a lot about. Ima start with hitting stats! The most common one you'll hear is batting average or just "average." This stat is just what percent of the time a batter will get a hit. Also, even though a lot of these stats are shown as decimals, they're really percentages. So like if a batter has a .250 average, chances are he'll get a hit every fourth AB. If he's got a .333 average, it'll be a third of the time. So on and so forth. If a player is batting over .300 that's generally considered really good. Jose Reyes right now has a .350 average and that's the highest in all of MLB, so that's really good. As an historical note, batting .400 is kind of a mythical achievement that not too many guys have managed.

I've already explained RBIs, but just FYI that's the other big stat that most media outlets highlight as the most important one. Home runs are usually the third stat that rounds out what they show you on TV when a guy steps up to bat. It's becoming more common, though, that a player's on base percentage or OBP is displayed. That's the average number of times a guy gets on base either by hits, walks, or being hit by a pitch (if a pitcher hits a batter with the ball the batter automatically gets to take first base no matter what the count is). Some people consider OBP to be the most important stat, but that's something you can read more about if you want.

And now here are some pitching stats! Probably the two biggest stats commentators highlight are earned run average or ERA and wins. The ERA is the average number of runs that pitcher would allow in nine innings. Say, for example, his ERA is 3.00. That means, were he to throw all nine innings of a game, he'd give up 3 runs on average. Anything lower than that is usually considered pretty elite. Wins are becoming more widely regarded as kind of a meaningless stat but, nonetheless, can be a big impressive number we like to ooo and ahhh at. The stat itself is just if one pitcher gave up fewer runs than the other. That's kind of a gross oversimplification, but I'm not sure I can really articulate the nuances much better than that. The pitching equivalent of OBP is the WHIP, or walks plus hits per inning pitched. I say "equivalent" because both are stats that are really important but only just starting to be talked about during an average broadcast. WHIP is a really crucial stat because it reflects how many baserunners the pitcher allows during an inning. A WHIP of less than 1.00 is suuuuper good, but becoming more common in the post-steroid era.

And with that, I think you should more or less have the tools you need to start watching and loving baseball! Welcome again!

EDIT: Wow thank you guys so much for the great feedback!!! This is my last day at my tearing-my-hair-out internship so I'll come back and change the things I got wrong later tonight. If you know of somewhere else where people might find this helpful, feel free to repost it wherever (though I'd really appreciate it if you tack my name on it)!

> Do you know why Korean players are so good compared to western players? Because they tell them self all the time that they are bad and that they could do better. It's a western thing to say " ayy I'm top 49% of all league players, I'm so good!" (Exaggerated but kinda true)

No.

Roland Li's Good Luck, Have Fun is a great read to further understand what I'm about to attempt to explain here, as it provides examples thereof. Simply put, there's a level of truth to what you're attempting to say, but it's not the same as players believing that they are bad. Culturally, there's a reduced stigma to playing online games, resulting from most online games being social activities. You literally need to leave the house and go to social gathering places, internet cafe's and the like, to play online games. To them, going out to game is the same as hitting the bar here in North America. Furthermore, there's a much greater emphasis placed on practice rather than raw talent. Here in NA, we're encouraged to be talented. We expect there to be something inherently good about our natural ability to do something. Korea is not the same, and instead constantly pushes ideologies of hard work and practice. This can be mistaken as internalizing the concept that one is "bad" and working to get better, but it's not the same thing. It's an ingrained cultural belief that one can always do better, not that they are inherently bad.

Lastly, telling people they're bad isn't "just the truth" because "good" and "bad" are subjective. I'm bad when I sit down to play with my Diamond friend, but when I queue with my handful of silver and gold friends, I am viewed as one of the best members of the team. Meanwhile, my girlfriend who has been playing PC games for all of two years, and League for all of one, sees me as incredible at the game, as she struggles to play beyond a bronze level. So who's right? Am I bad, ok, or amazing? The answer will depend on which one of these people you ask, because "bad" is subjective, and convincing people that they are "bad" and they are playing against "bad" players isn't helpful to everyone. To a lot of people it's demoralizing.

I'm mostly a basketball guy so...


You don't need to have ever seen a basketball game to appreciate these first two books.

Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam which it probably the best NBA book. It follows the 1978 Portland Trail Blazers and gets way more access than anyone could get now. Plus Halberstam was a great writer so he gets the most out of excellent material.

The Last Shot by Darcy Frey this is probably my favorite basketball book. It follows high school basketball players and it works as biography as well as an exploration of sports culture, race, class, and youth. The Hoop Dreams of books. Great journalism on a great subject.

Freedarko's The Undisputed Guide to Basketball History Captures the visceral and intellectual thrill of watching basketball better than any other book. Manages to capture big picture and little picture.

Seven Seconds or Less Lifelong basketball writer follows one of the funnest teams in NBA history for a year


Pistol Biography of Pistol Pete and his insanely driven father. Manages the rare feat for a sports biography of not slipping into hagiography.


Baseball

Moneyball How baseball teams were run a decade ago. Really well written and somehow manages to make baseball and business really entertaining. Great for fans and non-fans.

1.)We have the History. We have 9 World Series titles, which is a lot, (3rd all time) but not to a point where we are spoiled.

2.)We are one of the two teams in the AL that hasn't changed our names.

3.)We are on the West Coast, and for 10 years had a minor league team in Vancouver

4.)We are invented, and are Moneyball

5.)Nerdpower

6.)We have a great young bunch of players coming up that thanks to brilliant people, will continue for years to come.

7.)You can't beat us, everyone loves the underdog, and our uniforms are some of the best.

8.) We won 3 straight WS in the 1970's with one of the craziest teams of all time. The only other team to win 3 straight WS titles? The Yankees. Trust me, you don't want to root for the Yankees.

I hope now you have enough info to make a decision!

Edit-Spacing

I know this is days later but I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

The Best Team Money Can Buy was great.

I also enjoyed The Arm.

The Big Chair by former Dodger GM Ned Colletti was a really interesting look from the perspective of the front office. It's more of a memoir so it starts about Ned's early life as a kid in Chicago. It gave me newfound respect for Colletti.

Currently reading The MVP Machine, which is a great look at player development.

Smart Baseball is a few years old but is a good book about newer stats and why things like RBI, pitcher wins, and stolen bases are pretty bad ways of evaluating players.

If you want more Dodger history from their Brooklyn days, Bums was a fascinating read.

• Went to a wedding over Memorial Day weeekend in Missoula, Montana. Absolutely fell in love with the town; farmers markets, dog parks, beer, and hiking. I know I have plenty of access to those things here in SD, but damn Missoula just does those things in an awesome way.
  
  
• Girlfriend won't let us move to Missoula, however. As it has "winter;" a concept foreign to this SoCal native.
  
  
• We may have found a roommate to move in with us! Looking for one is quite stressful; but we skyped with a young woman from Seattle who we really really liked! Now we just have to get her approved! No word yet on whether she is a Seahawks fan, which might doom this all anyway.
  
  
• I want to play softball. Do any of you have any stories for adult softball leagues? How good does one need to be? Can I, as a single player, just join a random team? How does all this work?
  
  
• Anyone have a good idea for a Father's Day present? I was considering this book, but I have always been told to never gift someone a book that you haven't personally read; but I listen to their podcast extensively, so I feel qualified to give it to my old man. Thoughts?
  
  
• uh......Fuck the Dodgers!
  
  
• Do not fuck the DH, of which I am a fan.
  
  
• However, Bum should definitely be in the HR Derby.
  
  
• I love this sub and I love you all

Depends how much effort you want to put into it.

For general baseball knowledge and history:

• Watch all of Ken Burns Baseball (its all on Youtube).
  
• Read Moneyball for an understanding of how modern analytics revolutionized the game and upended the status quo. (Some people are still fighting this fight, but among MLB front offices the nerds have already "won" basically).
  
• Read Baseball Between the Numbers for a good primer on modern analysis (though there has been more progress since that book came out of course)
  
  
  For Dodgers specific history:
  
  
• Watch the ESPN 30 for 30 on Valenzuela (Fernando Nation).
  
• Read Jon Weisman's book about the Dodgers for a great overview of team history.
  
• Read Molly Knight's book for a good narrative look at the current team and ownership group. This is great context for understanding how we got to where we are now.
  
  For current news and analysis:
  
  
• Dodgers Digest is a great blog for level-headed, intelligent Dodgers analysis. The writers there know what they are talking about and aren't overly reactionary, as a general rule.
  
• True Blue LA, the Dodgers SB Nation blog, is run by Eric Stephen who is the most diligent Dodgers beat writer today. In the off season for example, he's writing a season review for every player who appeared for the Dodgers in 2015.

I think one thing to do is not only get your kid into the athletic side of sports, but also to the career or academic side of it. Rather than encourage your kid to be an athlete, you should be promoting the concept of becoming an athlete/coach or athlete/trainer or athlete/manager, etc.

Just having your kid trying to become the best athlete is very short sighted, and you're limiting the potential success of your kid through sports. Let's be honest, your kid isn't going to be the next Pacquiao. But he could become a great trainer with a bunch of gyms in the area he lives in, well connected to the boxing industry. He could become an executive or manager or trainer within the industry. You could have your kid learn math through sports for example. There's plenty of nerdy analysis in all sports, since Moneyball came out.

>Do you know how the NFL and the NFL draft works? This is kinda the crux of it.

You should read my post better. Because that's exactly what I was pointing out. In order to help shitty teams get better, the worst teams get the best draft picks.

>Browns were not exactly given a full deck to play with when they came back

That was 20 years ago. Every single player from back then has long since retired, and the Browns have had enough top draft picks in the ensuing 20 years to have fielded like four SB teams since then.

>Yeah, that is an absolutely terrible analogy. It almost makes me think you don't know how analogies are supposed to work.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you. Let's dive in:

"Handicapping, in sport and games, is the practice of assigning advantage through scoring compensation or other advantage given to different contestants to equalize the chances of winning."

The "bad teams go first" reverse draft order is structured to offer a "handicap" to the bad teams, to give them a better chance of winning. Likewise, giving someone a head start in a race is a way to offer a "handicap" to slower runners, to give them a better chance of winning. And in the same way it would be pretty weak game to talk shit about winning when you only won because you were given a 70 yard head start, it's also pretty weak game to talk shit about how great your team is when it's only good because you were given a "handicap" of top 5 (if not 1st overall) draft picks over and over and over for years and years to help you unshit your team.

You see? That's how analogies work. You should try to get them sometime.

The bottom line is: The Browns didn't repair their shit-hole team themselves, they were helped out by the NFL's draft "welfare" system that gives increased advantage to shit teams. And while other teams may take a year or two of bad records to get themselves right with the draft, the Browns needed two decades of near-constant help. Not sure that's a real brag-worthy thing for Brown's fans to get real cocky about. But I also understand they're... pent up. So here we go.

Here's the thing with the Cubs, there are plenty of reasons for this prolonged title drought.

Chicago was the last team to move over to set up a farm system, ownership never spent a lot of money on payroll until the last decade or so, and they shared a division with one of the most successful teams in baseball; the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Chicago Cubs didn't win a title for over a century because they were doing everything to prevent a championship run for so long. Once they invested in the right people, right players, etc. they won a championship. In fact, stats pointed to the Houston Astros being the most cursed team in Major League Baseball prior to the Cubbies winning it all this year.

Here's a 2011 Chicago Tribune article that goes into greater detail on this. If you want to read further I strongly encourage reading Scorecasting that touches upon this and challenges, investigates other interesting topics in sports.

> What really fucks me off is the insistence on using a metric shitload of acronyms that are literally meaningless to a new spectator. It took me a fortnight to work out that K means strikeout. Why, for fuck's sake?!

It's actually because of Henry Chadwick, an Englishman who pioneered the statistical analysis of baseball. The "K" represents the last letter in "struck" (as in "struck out"). He used it because "S" was already taken up as a designation for "sacrifice" (as in "sacrifice hit"). It is still popular because baseball fans are creatures of habit, and, as others have mentioned, "K" makes it very easy when scorekeeping to differentiate between a swinging strikeout and a looking strikeout.

To address the broader issue: Baseball statistics have developed haphazardly over the last 150 years. Old statistics with old designations are layered under newer statistics with newer designations - all of them carrying little (or big) bits of information about the play on the field which, at one point or another, somebody thought it would be useful to remember - and the abbreviations and acronyms reflect the evolving requirements of newspaper layout editors, analysts, fans, and scorekeepers. There's really no easy way to learn it all, but I can assure you that just trying to do so will immeasurably increase your appreciation for the game.

I would suggest a two-pronged approach. First, take note of the statistics mentioned by broadcasters. These tend to be "caveman" stats - batting average, RBIs, ERA, pitcher wins, etc. - which are really crude measures of performance but are very popular and therefore are important to know. Second, pick up a book or two about sabermetrics - Moneyball and The Book are both good - and read a little bit about the more advanced approaches to stats and analysis that baseball watchers have taken over the past couple of decades. Also, surf Fangraphs and Baseball Reference. Soon, you'll be able to identify all the statistics that broadcasters throw around, and you'll be able to tell which of them are useful and which are useless.

NewZoo does great research into the esports industry, they have a few free articles and data on their site.

I'd also recommend browsing this thread on esports research. The book "Raising the Stakes" is a bit dense and slightly dated, but thorough.

"The Exeutives" series on YouTube is really invaluable, just slighly dated as well. The series really breaks down the scene circa 2012 and provides a great model of the industry and where it is going.

"Good Luck Have Fun: The Rise of eSports" recently came out. I haven't read it, but would like to.

>You put a lot on the table but I'd rather just try to parse the core contention I have with what you're trying to say, which still appears to be "One is good enough to judge what's good"

No, I'm saying that "one should not be interested in the rank of an advice-giver."

>How are people like this, who represent the vast majority of the game, supposed to stress test anything and come to an honest conclusion? How will they interpret the results? My core contention with what you're saying, to use very plain terms, is people are dumb, and you appear to be saying that people aren't dumb and can think for themselves, but then at times you seem to admit people are dumb also.

I saw the first Men In Black movie too; people are dumb. But a person is smart. It's up to them to play through the solo queue grind, it's up to them to overcome obstacles in their path, and it's up to them to acquire the skills to get over those hurdles.

But why are people dumb? It's groupthink; what happens when people put acceptance of ideas over substance of ideas. That comes from fallacies, one of the largest being ad hominem/tu quoque. How'd the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton? They convinced themselves that the biggest scandal magnet in US political history is the "safer" (more likely to win) candidate than Sanders. How'd the Republicans nominate Donald Trump? They convinced themselves that the guy who has talked more about his dick in public than every candidate in US history combined will inspire voters to get behind him.

How do low bronzies stay bronze? They're not thinking or improving, and it's probably because they're letting someone else do their thinking for them. Not certainly, but you see what I'm saying; thinking for yourself will be of help.

>It feels like I should be agreeing with you when I'm reading what you're writing, but i don't know what it is, I just end up confused. I just think you're putting too much stock in the fluidity of what's good and what's bad in this game. I'm super pragmatic about things, I'm not going to crunch the numbers on 4x dagger rush on ADC's. I'm just going to go "Whelp, whatever the standard build is is probably really good and refined, and 4x dagger rush is probably garbage. I just won't run the numbers on that and risk missing out on the epiphany that the playerbase has it all wrong.

You should. You'll be surprised at what you actually can learn.

Here's a piece I wrote with a very clickbaity headline where I theorycrafted an item choice. I believed then and still believe now that it was right at the time, but the items have changed since then which make the article wrong today. For example, it was written before the Refillable Potion existed.

Feel free to read the comments to see people shit all over it. But, pay attention to this comment string. A Diamond player takes me on, makes some very fair points, and has more to say when I rebut. His final point is along the lines of "I agree with your point that if you do these other things that you mentioned in the article, your item build is better. It's just not that clear-cut," and I found that to be a completely reasonable answer.

This is of course in contrast to this diamond player who has a one-word reply, and his follow-up is proven wrong in the article.

>This is just one instance obviously, but this is my general approach to the entirety of the burden of knowledge in League and what I'd advocate to just about anyone.

Yeah, this isn't a simple game. But, it's not chess or go. It's not that hard, nor is i hard to put in the time studying if you're already willing to put in the time playing. Now, if someone is adverse to self-study, that's on them. I just hope they're not surprised when they haven't actually improved several months down the line.

>Your tl;dr appears to be "Think for yourself" mine is "Listen and copy high elo players blindly" Both have their flaws, clearly, but this just appears to be a difference in outlook.

Yeah, your description of my point is accurate enough. And, I seem to be correctly hearing yours. I just disagree with it very strongly. It's come up too often in my own experience to see it any other way. I'll spare you my life story, but I can provide general evidence.

A software developer from India, who has watched cricket and nothing else, has volunteered to coach his daughter's basketball team. He sees a basketball game for the first time. When one team scores, he noticed that they immediately retreat back to their own basket. A basketball court is 94 feet long, and they give the first 60 feet away for free! He thought it was retarded. Here's how it turned out.

A Major League Baseball GM for a low-revenue team is sick and tired of losing to his better financed opponents. Realizing that he can't compete in a bidding war, he looks for odd players that may be underpriced. He hears of a pitcher named Chad Bradford, who is posting amazing numbers in AAA ball, but no team is willing to promote him to the Show. He's a submarine pitcher; he throws funny. The GM wonders...this guy gets people out, but no one's willing to let him do it on the big stage just because he throws funny? He thought that was retarded. Here's how that turned out. I recommend the book instead of the movie.

Now, follow the meta all you like, but unless you've got something special, what makes you think you'll get different and better results than an average player? Hey, to make Platinum in NA, you've got to get past 90% of the entire ranked player base! You think that's gonna happen doing what the rest of the player base does, or by doing something different?

I just recommend starting to look for common things that seem retarded. I can assure you the player base of League of Legends will provide plenty of material for you.

But if you let other people do the looking...do you really think they'll see anything?

I was mostly just giving you a hard time. It's a silly article, but, yeah, Miller is super rad. Would recommend his (and former Effectively Wild co-host Ben Lindbergh's) book to anyone that likes baseball analytics and fun.

Sigh.

Anyone who throws there hands up and says "lolwut, itz too complicated i dunno!" is not a skeptic. Do you honestly think that climate scientists don't study natural phenomena like the ones on this list and try to understand their causes and implications? This post is especially pathetic, but it's literally just a list of natural phenomena; if you think think this stuff is what makes the climate complex, then you literally don't know anything about atmospheric science.

You might want to start with the following textbooks, which any climate scientist will have devoured by the time they have a Masters -

• Global Physical Climatology
  
  
• An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology
  
  
• Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics
  
  
• Atmospheric Science: an Introductory Survey
  
  
• Fundamentals of Large Scale Circulation
  
  
• Dynamics and Ice Sheets of Glaciers
  
  
• Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation
  
  There are, of course, higher level textbooks on my shelf as well. The majority of the stuff on this list is basic stuff that an undergraduate would be exposed to. It doesn't even scratch the surface of what our science is actually about.
  
  EDIT TO ADD -
  For example, geostrophy is this list. Do you know what geostrophic motion is? It's motion where the only forces acting on a parcel are the Coriolis force and the pressure gradient force. How do you get to geostrophic motion? Well, on the first day of your Junior year as a meteorology student, you start taking Atmospheric Dynamics. Your professor throws Navier-Stokes on the board and says "This is what we need to solve to figure out how the atmosphere works." Then he mentions that there is a million dollar prize for working with that equation and says "okay, let's see if we can simplify things." After that, you spend a few lectures deriving atmospheric motion following Holton, Lindzen, or Serreze - talking about the Rossby radius, coordinate transformations, Eulerian vs. Lagrangian and material derivatives, and path integrals through moving reference frames.
  
  Ultimately you re-derive equations of motion from scratch starting with F=ma, and arrive at a 3D set of equations where motion is determined by terms relating to the pressure gradient, accelerations, friction, gravity, and the Coriolis force. Then, you scale analyze the terms of the equations to see what the dominating terms are, given certain assumptions.
  
  Assume you're above the PBL; then, friction is negligible. You'll immediately see that acceleration/velocity-related terms are an order of magnitude smaller than the other terms. Assume hydrostatic balance and there is no acceleration in the vertical, truncating your motion to two dimensions. You're left with a balance of forces in both your basis vectors - pressure gradient and coriolis. Balance these two and you can solve for a balanced flow called geostrophic flow. Geostrophic flow is super-simple and only really works as an approximation for upper-level flows with small curvature (i.e. you need features larger than the Rossby radius of deformation or else the assumptions about 2D velocity are invalid). But it's a great learning tool for meteorology students to get their hands dirty with the math, and derive from first principles why flow is counter-clockwise around Low Pressures in the northern hemisphere.
  
  Relax some assumptions and you can also get gradient flow or cyclostrophic flow.
  
  You can't do any meteorology with these flows, though - you need at least to relax geostrophy and derive quasi-geostrophy with the aid of the circulation and divergence theorems to actually get vertical motion which is diagnosable from thermodynamics and fluid dynamics.
  
  Anything else from the domain of the atmospheric science that the skeptics here want explained? Now's your chance.

Late 2 years ago I had just really gotten back into baseball after having paid less attention to it for like a decde and was basically in the same place - so i went to my local library are they had this massive book The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball. It covers basically everything you'll ever need to know about the dodgers - it even covers teams that aren't "technically" part of brooklyn/Los Angeles dodgers "lineage" like teams which played in brooklyn but left or died or whatever. I'd also recommend True Blue stories(a documentary series on FOX sports about the dodgers), it's not the most unbias history but it's good for what it is. Outside of that wikipedia is your friend, you can find just about anything there.

(EDIT: if you want to be heartbroken read Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers I teared up at the end and hated Walter O'malley even though he brought the dodgers to the best coast.)

Outside of that i'd recommend watching all 10 innings of ken burns' documentary Baseball. It's on netflix and i'm sure you could find it in shadier ways but it'll give you a real appreciation for the sport and it's history as a whole. Moneyball is also really good, but it's not that applicable to us...because we're the second biggest market in baseball.

Your best bet might be to try out a social media analytics platform to see all the different metrics in action.

This is pretty much a textbook for digital marketing, very well regarded: https://www.amazon.ca/Digital-Marketing-Strategy-Integrated-Approach/dp/074947470X/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1482359607&sr=8-19&keywords=marketing

The Whuffie Factor is older, but it's still solid: http://www.thewhuffiefactor.com/ Tons of insight about community building, rather than link selling.

Social Media - The First 2,000 Years is great for understanding social media in-depth. It explains the appeal of different social media platforms, and looks to their origins in history.

The Art of Immersion is another good one on social media and entertainment, from New York University. https://www.amazon.ca/Art-Immersion-Generation-Remaking-Hollywood/dp/0393341259/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JSFGKDE8WQC6FVMZ3G0K

Spoken like someone who doesn't know their history.

> It's like you've all forgotten that the only reason you (might) be relevant this year is because of the absurd amount of top 5 (if not #1 overall) draft picks

Trust me, no one has forgotten how shit the Browns have been since coming back in '99.

>you've been given year after year after year thanks to your constant sucking, until half you team is made of top 5 players.

Do you know how the NFL and the NFL draft works? This is kinda the crux of it. The worst teams get the highest draft picks so they have an opportunity to draft the best players. Seems like you might've been unaware of how that works.

Besides, the Browns were not exactly given a full deck to play with when they came back, so it's not like there was a chance of any kind of stability to help maintain a winning culture.

> It's like losing the 100 yard dash so badly that eventually the competitors give you a 70 yard head start, and then when you come in 5th place you start talking shit like you did it yourself.

Yeah, that is an absolutely terrible analogy. It almost makes me think you don't know how analogies are supposed to work.

If the Browns were being spotted a 2.5 touchdown lead in every game and still finished with the record they had in 2018, then yeah, your analogy would be apt because distance is to a race as points are to a game of football.

As it stands though, your version is terrible because the Browns did not get that head start in all their games, and in fact played with something of a handicap for half of the season with Hue & Haley at the helm, as well as rookies and second year players all over the field.

But it's all good! I'm definitely not going to make fun of a certain horse-faced GM who works for a certain horse-based team that can't evaluate QB talent for shit. That would be rude of me.

[The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football] (http://www.amazon.com/System-Scandal-Big-Time-College-Football-ebook/dp/B00C0AM2XG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419270371&sr=1-1&keywords=the+system) was a really interesting read.

Bruce Feldman's books, [Meat Market] (http://www.amazon.com/Meat-Market-Smash-Mouth-Football-Recruiting-ebook/dp/B00P6KC4GM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419270508&sr=1-1&keywords=meat+market+inside+the+smash-mouth+world+of+college+football+recruiting) and [The QB] (http://www.amazon.com/QB-Making-Modern-Quarterbacks/dp/0553418459/ref=asap_B00NI03SCG?ie=UTF8) were both easy and fun reads.

[Rammer Jammer, Yellow Hammer] (http://www.amazon.com/Rammer-Jammer-Yellow-Hammer-Journey-ebook/dp/B000FC1W5K/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1419270677&sr=1-3&keywords=Dixieland+Delight) I enjoyed as well.

The Missing Ring was already mentioned, that is a good one too.

[The Last Coach: A Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Coach-Life-Bryant/dp/039332897X) is another excellent read on a legend.

Here's some recommended reading:

• The Book - That's literally the name of the book. It's full of one-off chapters covering a variety of topics.
  
• Baseball Between the Numbers - This one is also a bunch of one-off type stuff
  
• Moneyball - Talks about how the 2002 Oakland A's capitalized on some offensive statistics that were being recorded but not heavily utilized to determine player values, and thus built a playoff team from undervalued hitters
  
• Big Data Baseball - Talks about the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates and their use of big data strategies to find defensive value where other teams didn't (primarily in pitch framing, ground-ball pitching, defensive range, and shifting)
  
  The first two of those are heavily focused on the numbers and will probably teach you more about the whys and hows, while the second two are more about the narrative but still give you some insight into hard numbers.
  
  Also, I'd recommend just joining SABR. It's $60/year for most people, but if you're under 30 it drops down to $45/year. There are a lot of local chapters out there that have regular meetings. For example, the Twin Cities have the Halsey Hall chapter. There's a book club meeting on Saturday (to talk about Big Data Baseball), a hot stove breakfast in a few weeks (informal meeting to just hang out and talk baseball), a regular chapter meeting in April for people to actually present research, and the chapter occasionally has organized outings to minor league games.
  
  SABR also has a national conference and a specific national analytics conference, as well. Membership also includes a subscription to Baseball Research Journal, which comes out twice per year and contains a lot of really good stuff that members have been written both from a statistics and a history standpoint.

Yeah, according to pretty much every urban planner and economist, stadiums SEEM to be horrible public investments. But I guess a some kid in college knows best. It's quite well documented:

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/05/139018592/the-nation-stop-the-subsidy-sucking-sports-stadiums

http://www.amazon.com/Field-Schemes-Stadium-Swindle-Expanded/dp/0803260164

If stadiums attracted businesses (as you say) then the area around the Joe would be an awesome neighborhood full of business, which it's pretty much never been. No one moves to a city because of a stadium. They move there because of good transportation, infrastructure, schools, low crime and twenty other reasons before a stadium (which you already have, mind you).

Start with Soccernomics.

Lots of statistics in there, but it's very interesting.

Btw I'm using amazon links for easiness and because it's easy to read reviews of the books there, but i'm sure if you shop around you can maybe purchase them for less.

I'm currently reading through a book called Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Spain, Germany, and Brazil Win, and Why the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey-and Even Iraq-Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport and while I'm not yet halfway through reading it, its brought up some interesting statistics and theories that I didn't know before. Good points regarding sales of players, the most overpriced and underpriced positions, nations to buy from, etc. Its a really good Moneyball style book that I'd love to hear someone else's opinion of who has made it through all of it.

I just read "Good luck have fun. The rise of eSports." I'm 42 years old, male with two daughters. Thought it was great.

Here's the Amazon link https://www.amazon.com/Good-Luck-Have-Fun-eSports/dp/163450657X

If you really enjoyed Moneyball, then The Only Rule Is It Has To Work might be up your alley. In it, two basebal writers run an independent league team, The San Rafael Pacifics, entirely on saebermetrics.

Where Nobody Knows Your Name is a great read about life in the minor leagues.

Smithsonian Baseball is another good choice.

If you don't mind books being team specific, I'd also recommend looking onto Finley Ball, Aces, Holy Toledo! and any of the Brian Murphy/Brad Mangin Giants books (incredible photography in those).

difference is that we are richer than those two countries, with a stronger sporting culture, and lots of opportunity for athletes to forgo a real job to focus on a sport, even if it doesn't pay well. It is explained well in a book I read a while back called soccernomics. A country needs three things to be great at a sport. A population big enough to have enough elite athletes on the team at the same time. Enough wealth to find and train them. And I believe the third is built in knowledge or experience. You can bring in a coach from another country to give some experience, like the US soccer team did but you still have to build up a bit.

I don't know if the bot will let me link to the book on Amazon, but here is a try.

https://www.amazon.com/Soccernomics-England-Germany-Australia-Destined/dp/1568584814/186-1621754-3403460?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

But yes, in 50 years, China and India will probably dominate the Olympics and other sports.

If you want your mind raped

On the other hand the introductory course at my college uses this textbook which I though was very good. Explained weather concepts very nicely and has some good examples.

Why the interest? I read [this fantastic book] (https://www.amazon.com/Soccernomics-England-Germany-Australia-Destined/dp/1568584814) recently, and became interested. Occasionally, I've noticed the table in the Sunday New York Times, and now I've started to become more and more fascinated.

Collision Low Crossers - A reporter is embedded with Rex Ryan's NYJ during their most recent championship runs. Really good inside look written by a football layman. He really breaks things down and gives some awesome glimpses into what the in's and out's of an entire year of football.

False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail - A book that looks specifically looks into why the Browns have been complete shit for so long. Delving into the expansion draft process, how a new owner acquires a team, finding GMs, what GMs do, etc. It honestly does a fair job, and IMO paints a better emotional picture for someone unexposed to Cleveland sports than 30 for 30: Believeland episode did. It ends on a horribly depressing note as it's from 2004 and he says things are finally looking up...

Fumble : The Browns, Modell, & the Move - An interesting look from Art Modell's accountant. But it is written by an accountant, so it gets incredibly dry at times. Fascinating (if somewhat painful) inside look at the life of an owner, how a team makes money, what exactly happened with Modell and why he had "No options left".

The other two answers are excellent. I would recommend that ANYONE interested in questions like this should read Soccernomics.

It answers A LOT of questions like this. Can't recommend it highly enough.

We're pretty excited too. We plan on reading both older and newer books, I'm sure authors will be more likely to join the cause when they're on their initial press tours. We have some ideas for coming months, but we're open to suggestions. This is the book I'm most excited about next year. It's about two writers/editors from baseball prospectus who got to be Co-GM's of an independent ball club last summer. Hopefully we can get them on the pod.

PS if you haven't already, shoot us your email so we can add you to the mailing list.

Hitmakers (https://www.amazon.com/Hit-Makers-Science-Popularity-Distraction/dp/110198032X) was really incredible, and was published in February of 2017 (the more current the better I think when it comes to books about social media). It's so interesting, and has great info for anyone looking to create really great content that resonates with their audiences. Seriously, can't recommend this book enough. I was hooked.

Search through the sub for old Book recommendations for more info.

Ones that immediately come to mind:

• Moneyball - Technically about the 2002 Oakland Athletics but gets into more than that.
  
• Best Team Money Can Buy - About the 2014~ Dodgers.
  
• Tony la Russa's book
  
• Lindbergh and Miller's book
  
  If you look through older posts there are dozens of other recs.
  
  Final personal one isn't about MLB, but about softball in New York. Link Here
  
  Old professor in college wrote it, thought it was pretty unique.

You are correct. Unless its an obvious generational talent (even those don't go in the top 3 - see Randy Moss), the players who end up being the best picks in the draft are usually the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th picks at their position. There is an excellent book called Scorecasting that delves into this subject. http://www.amazon.com/Scorecasting-Hidden-Influences-Behind-Sports/dp/0307591808

Not a story itself but there is a great book by Frank Rose about immersive storytelling which pointed me to some really interesting things, especially those making fiction using non-traditional media.

For anyone who hasn't read the new book by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller, I HIGHLY recommend doing so - it's a very interesting and fun read.

https://www.amazon.com/Only-Rule-Has-Work-Experiment-ebook/dp/B016IBVN6Y?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&ref_=dp-kindle-redirect

Read Soccernomics.

The authors frequently return to Moneyball and how its principles can (and sometimes are) apply to football. It's also a really interesting read in its own right.

To answer your question more directly: Lyon is a great example discussed in Soccernomics. (thanks to /u/5uare2 for pointing this out).

Also, Damien Comolli (previously Director of Football at Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal et al.) is a close friend of Billy Beane and used some of his ideas at the clubs he was working at to influence transfer strategies.

EDIT: words and stuff.

Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski has been an interesting read so far, if you're interested in the business side of the game. Another good one was How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, which was comprised of case studies that looked at all sorts of different trends in the game, not just globalization.

Both of those books are well-written and -researched and offer good insights, and give historical contexts for, trends in the game.

This is a great book and goes into pretty good detail on Leach's saga: https://www.amazon.com/System-Scandal-Big-Time-College-Football-ebook/dp/B00C0AM2XG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543528103&sr=8-1&keywords=the+system+the+glory+and+scandal+of+big-time+college+football

Moneyball is a book. This book.

Moneyball is also the theories espoused in that book. The book basically introduced the idea to the general public, that by truly understanding baseball statistics, teams could get an edge up on their competition and succeed while spending less. The book led to a statistical revolution in baseball, leading to the popularization of new statistics (like WAR, FIP) that were better predictors of future success than the old statistics (Runs, RBI) were.

There's a great book (Soccernomics) - which perfectly describes this scenario in its opening chapter

Book had a couple of dull segments - but overall was excellent

Huge baseball fan..

this looks like a great read!

You should read "Scorecasting." It's a really cool book that is comparable to Freakonomics from a sports standpoint.

Here's a blurb about home field advantage.

Basically, the authors think that Home Field Advantage seems to come from referee bias and not that the crowd makes the players play better. That said, I don't know what happened to the Jets that weekend, but I see it as more of an anomaly and would be comfortable starting Asiata, McKinnon to a lesser degree.

"The Only Rule Is It Has to Work" is a pretty interesting look into the inner workings of the Independent league and a good audiobook for the car.

One of the worst things I've read here in awhile. It cites obscure research (because that's the only kind one can find that even approximates support of this diatribe), misstates the findings of that research, and then concludes we should pass a law that everyone knows full well wouldn't be constitutional.

Banning what just happened with Amazon would literally be illegal. The author - who I'm sure eagerly clings to the Constitution when its useful to do so - doesn't care because he has a super strong opinion on what is fair in US law & economics that he developed while studying for his undergrad in journalism and writing his book on pop culture.

You can buy that book, by the way! He'll use - wait, is that right? Yup, ok - he'll use Amazon to sell it to you for $30.

I wrote a grad paper (MPA student) on this topic a few semesters ago. There were a couple of really good sources I used and I'll post them when I get the chance. One was a book/blog by the author, and the other was a meta-study.

Edit: Here they are:

> Field of Schemes by Neil deMause & Joanna Cagan
>
> "Do Economists Reach a Conclusion on Subsidies
> for Sports Franchises, Stadiums, and
> Mega-Events?" by Dennis Coates & Brad R. Humphreys

John Oliver's piece on stadiums is also a good watch.

https://www.amazon.com/False-Start-Browns-Were-Fail/dp/1886228884/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=false+start+browns&qid=1572028645&sr=8-1

If you can find a free copy it's a quick and good read and a very thorough explanation as to how the NFL screwed us over as an "expansion team". The NFL didn't want an expansion team to come out and dominate year 1 so they hamstringed the Browns hardcore by changing expansion draft rules and only giving the Browns less than like half the time the Titans Jags had to put together a front office and coaching staff for the draft. We have been churning over head coaches and GMs who want their own people ever since.

I haven't read the book in about 5 years so I can't provide a very good synopsis, maybe someone else remembers better.

Edit: Knew there was a summary somewhere out there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Browns/comments/33v830/the_story_of_how_your_cleveland_browns_were_set/

I tried to navigate around openstax but didnt really see a way to search or much that was meteorology related.

in order of simplest to most mathematically challenging

https://www.amazon.com/Weather-Analysis-Dusan-Djuric/dp/0135011493/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473884598&sr=8-1&keywords=meteorology+djuric

a non math oriented person could get through this book, but its an excellent introductory text and you will still be able to make math/fluids connections to it (gradients, laplacians, curl, etc)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0271056436/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1473884505&sr=8-1&keywords=midlatitude+meteorology+carlson

a bit dated, but comprehensively presents the foundations of basic meteorology principles and goes into detail on one of the foundational principles (quasigeostrophic theory). is also written to help with literal forecasting of weather system development, movement, and decay.

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Dynamic-Meteorology-International-Geophysics/dp/0123540151/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1473884739&sr=8-2&keywords=dynamic+meteorology

the bible. this is first semester grad school meteorology material. starts with building blocks of meteorology and rapidly advances. if you understand this book inside and out, youre qualified to start courting russ schumacher for a assistantship at one of those fancy CSU grad school meet n greets.

Sure I mean there is a whole book written on it. And I should really say it wasn't just the draft, but the entire set of circumstances surrounding their return to the league.

The tl;dr is that the confirmation of Al Lerner's purchase of the team was heavily delayed in an attempt to drive up the price of the franchise. The NFL was hoping more bidders would come in last minute with better offers. That didn't happen and the final paperwork was signed less than a year before the first game of the season. To contrast, the Panthers and Jaguars had about 2 years to build their team. The Texans had over 3 years.

This doesn't just mean players, though that's a big part of it. It means front office. It means coaching. It means facilities. All of that was delayed. It was an impossible task. A lot of coaches saw this and didn't want to come to Cleveland. Before the roster had even been built! They just knew it would be the shit show that it was. So let's just call Chris Palmer's (first new HC) tenure a complete wash. It's not like he left things any better than they were when he get there though. How could he? Butch Davis inherited the same mess, and so on and so forth until present day.

The draft was fucked up because the rules in place for the Browns were far more strict than the rules put in place for the Jags and Panthers. The Browns were allowed to select fewer players from each individual team. Players on IR the year before were not excluded from the players made available to them. The Browns were given the scraps of the scraps to work with and it was compounded by the fact that the team was only started a few months before the fucking expansion draft even took place! Try putting together a competent scouting department and then actually scouting players in that amount of time.

I'm not saying the team hasn't been massively incompetent at the same time. Lots of bad draft picks. Trouble attracting free agents. A poor track record of treating injuries. Lots of things. But there are other incompetent organizations out there and they seem to figure it out every once in a while. I mean after 20 years you think would accidentally do a couple of things right! But the Browns have been trying to flip heads and have come up with tails for almost 20 years now. Like I can barely believe it's possible sometimes. They were certainly done no favors from the onset though.

Derek Thompson from The Atlantic writes about this in his book Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction. Might be worth a read, I think its in the first quarter or so of the book.

Short version, it was once new and worked, and it worked for quite a while, however now in very recent times, audiences see it as a gimmick and low class, so its dying out fast. It was once new, good and cool, trends change.

It's pretty well established that home teams and teams that are trailing receive the benefit of the doubt when it comes to foul calls. What I'm saying is it doesn't surprise me that there was a massive disparity based on Nova being the home team and the fact that they were trailing (along with each team's FTR tendencies on off and defense) . That doesn't mean I don't think Nova probably should have been called for some more fouls if the refs were being objective.

If games were always called evenly then HCA would basically not exist However, we know that homecourt advantage does exist based on historical point differentials for home/away teams. The vast majority of HCA can be explained by officials giving more foul calls in favor of the home team according to the book Scorecasting. So stop complaining about a phenomenon that has existed in sports forever.

An interesting book I read tried to figure this out for all major sports. The argument they made was (iirc) the largest impact on home field/ice advantage is how the home team's fans affect the judgement of the referees. And the largest impact is on the calls that are largely subjective (e.g. was that "holding" or not). They also spent considerable time trying to refute other ideas (e.g. travel issues, knowledge of ones own field/rink, fans boosting confidence/energy of players, a few others). Some data the book provides:

• In the NHL, home teams get 20 percent fewer penalties and receive fewer minutes per penalty. "On average, home teams get two and a half more minutes of power play opportunities ... than away teams. That is a huge advantage." If you multiply that by a 20 percent success rate, you get an extra 0.25 goals per game for the home team. Since the average overall differential is only 0.3 goals for the home team, "this alone accounts for more than 80 percent of the home ice advantage in hockey."
  
  
• There is no apparent [home ice advantage] in shootouts, where refereeing makes no difference
  
  I wouldn't go so far as to say the authors figured it all out, but they made some interesting observations.
  
  This website has more info for what the book said about other sports

Main factor, I guess, is time. There's some fantastic reading material on it, but I think the basis was that the Panthers and Jags had around 640 days to get ready for expansion; the Browns? They got 370. Think about how long this LA thing is taking, if, tomorrow, they just said "YEAH, FUCK IT; NEW TEAM IN LA NEXT YEAR, EXPANSION DRAFT, GET STARTED NOW, NEW OWNER WILL BE WHO THE FUCK CARES, GO GET IT." Like that.

False Start by Terry Pluto goes into it more in depth.

Here's also a great explanation from /u/Brokewood.

They can't leave quick enough. I'm not a fan of publicly supporting stadiums and their owner's personal wealth.

worth a read.
http://www.amazon.com/Public-Dollars-Private-Stadiums-Building/dp/0813533430/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

http://www.amazon.com/Field-Schemes-Stadium-Swindle-Expanded/dp/0803260164/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1

There is a section in the book The Only Rule is it Has to Work" that kind of speaks to the homophobia entrenched in baseball. Sean Conroy, first openly gay professional player (If you count indy ball as pro) strikes someone out and batter grumbling to himself says "I can't believe that faggot struck me out". 2nd at bat, guy Ks again doesn't say shit. The sections about Sean and his relationships with his teammates were my favorite parts of that book they kind of make it seem like there is hope for more inclusion in every part of baseball.

Jeff Passan's The Arm was a really interesting read on this subject as well. The Kindle version has been on sale for $1.99 at various points since its release. I'd recommend it.

An Epic Swindle:44 Months with a Pair of Cowboys is worth a read after you've caught up with all the great history. Same author as 44 years With the Same Bird shows lifelong fan's perspective of the Gilette/Hicks years. Not quite what you asked for but interesting nonetheless.

> then what accounts for how much more often teams win at home?

It probably doesn't explain why each team is getting blown out on the road but to answer your question in the general: Officiating bias, influenced by crowds.

In short, particularly when split second decisions are being made, referees do fall prey to a large group of people clamoring for a call at home.

Reference: This book. They even reference a fun study where I believe they ask refs to watch a game and call fouls with and without crowd sound to determine how much of an effect it has.

you gotta give the padres credit though. trying something so radical.

i mean, im probably just saying that cause im currently reading "The only rule is, it has to work"

excellent book.

"Fear and Loathing in La Liga" is essential, a must read.

Non-Barça, but still interesting read (but hey - if anyone writes about futbol - there will be mentioning of FC Barcelona and their players):

"Inverting the Pyramid" - evolution and analysis of game tactics.

"Soccernomics" is more general, but a very interesting read as well.

Didn't see electronic version, but this one is worth mentioning: "Angels with Dirty Faces", history of Argentinian football.

This book is awesome. As general advice, be 1: patient and 2: serious. That doesn't mean no fun, but talk to the captains about what they want out of the team to create clear goals.

The Only Rule Is It Has To Work

From the Effectively Wild podcast, which is a guy from 538 and one from Baseball Prospectus. They ran an independent league team last summer using pretty much exclusively SABR principles.

Calico Joe, and slightly different but an excellent sports book nonetheless, Moneyball.

http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Batman-The-Possibility-Superhero/dp/0801890632 It's not a comic but I found this to be a really fun read and it sort of fits in with what you're looking for.

Nice, thanks for doing the math.

I've seen at least one study (I think in Scorecasting) that showed that there wasn't any identifiable performance hit to individual players' FT% on the road, at least in the NBA.

There is a difference in what fouls are called, though. So I'm wondering now if that ties in with /u/JonShoes' point that who got fouled matters -- maybe the borderline calls that Virginia would be expected to get away with more frequently at home are more likely to come against guards, and the clear-cut fouls are against bigs.

I found this book pretty enlightening regarding bias in sports - https://www.amazon.com/Scorecasting-Hidden-Influences-Behind-Sports/dp/0307591808

There's lots of different topics covered, but the one that I remember most clearly was that research supported the fact that referees/umpires are actually the portion of sports most susceptible to bias. The investigation began trying to identify the source of home field advantage in team sports, and eventually discovered that, while umpires/referees are extremely good at their jobs, they are inevitably human and react to verbal abuse (from either home fans or competitors) resulting in home field advantage being a real statistical anomaly that exists because of the influence home supporters have when abusing a referee/umpire for calls that go against their team.

Additional excerpts from book, though none supporting my memory above unfortunately - https://www.npr.org/2011/01/29/133280133/scorecasting-the-new-freakonomics-of-sports

Why is this being downvoted?


Once the best athletes in the country start choosing football over football, the quality will only go up. It's already started happening.


Also, if you've never read it, the book Soccernomics gives some greats reasons why the US, along with a few other countries, will eventually field world class players.

Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis is the best book on thoughtful approach to sports competition that I know.

There's also a book on coaching ultimate by some pretty big names

An Epic Swindle

I definitely recommend it!

I'm so sorry that you're in this situation. I'd recommend Moneyball for your dad, especially if he's into the statistics behind the game. Your mom might appreciate Pilgrim at Tinker Creek or The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, both of which are about observing nature.

I agree with you on sports programs 100%. An interesting read about that is http://www.amazon.com/Beer-Circus-Crippling-Undergraduate-Education/dp/0805068112

Scorecasting says the Cubs' strategy for years was to offer cheap beer to drive attendance. No need for a winning team when people can go day drinking at Wrigley for a reasonable price.

I wish the Nationals did this :(. $50 for bleacher seats and $10 per beer. As if I needed more reasons to not want to go to a regular season MLB game!

Read this book "Soccernomics" for a great ELI5 on the issue.
http://www.amazon.com/Soccernomics-England-Germany-Australia-Destined/dp/1568584814

His book, The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, about trying to run a minor league team using sabermetrics is good ( and genuinely funny) as well.

I would recommend Here we go gathering cups in may its the stories of cup finals and away days from fans perspectives, it really gives the feel as to what it was like to follow Liverpool in the 70s and 80s. For recent history I would suggest An epic swindle. The inside story of Hicks and Gillette with loads of details about what was happening behind closed doors within the club.

I assume you have Holton? The fourth edition is the one to get, but it gives it a good treatment.

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Dynamic-Meteorology-International-Geophysics/dp/0123540151

This Love is not for Cowards by Richard Andrew Powell, about the Indios of Ciudad Juarez. At the time the book was written (and maybe still), Juarez was considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world. The book does a great job a telling the stories of both life in Juarez and a difficult season from multiple points of view - that of the players, the die-hard fans and the author, a US ex-pat living in Juarez.

Upvotes also to Soccernomics and Inverting the Pyramid.

The Only Rule Is That It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team.

It is about a couple of Baseball stat-head type guys who get control of an independent minor league team in California and run it in a very different way. It is not just about the saber-metric stuff though, you get to see a different side of baseball. Independent league baseball is crazy and interesting, and there are a lot of heart-warming and heart-breaking stories in this book.

Hopefully Amazon ships to you? There's also an ebook. Let me know if it works! http://www.amazon.com/Good-Luck-Have-Fun-eSports/dp/163450657X

Our athletic department is not a source of profit for the school either directly, or indirectly through alumni, see the following for discussion and references:
http://www.amazon.com/Beer-Circus-Crippling-Undergraduate-Education/dp/0805068112
http://www.amazon.com/Intercollegiate-Athletics-American-University-Perspective/dp/0472089439
the latter written by former president of U of M, James Duderstadt. This is an incredibly widespread myth which is extremely pernicious in its ability to confuse and misdirect. Only a handful of athletic departments in the country can occasionally make a profit, and this is only after the significant help with overheads from their University (grounds, maintenance, IT support, various staff) and the often directly shady or illegal bookkeeping going on. None of those schools which make a profit from their athletic department do so consistently.

As to your other points, see Beer and Circus above for a thorough destruction of all of those less measurable points. To simplify grossly: the spirit and "rounding" you refer to are blatantly antithetical to the school's primary missions of education, scholarship, and service.

In true reddit fashion, stop being a fucking sheep and look around occasionally.

Find me a study that suggest otherwise? But for now I will just leave these here....

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

https://www.stlouisfed.org/Publications/Regional-Economist/April-2001/Should-Cities-Pay-for-Sports-Facilities

Stanford department of Economics

http://news.stanford.edu/2015/07/30/stadium-economics-noll-073015/

The Brookings Institute:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new-stadiums-worth-the-cost/

Urban Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design

https://www.amazon.com/Public-Private-Partnerships-Facilities-Routledge-Management/dp/0415806933

Lake Forest department of Economics

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2257.1990.tb00513.x/abstract

It truly is one of the least controversial things in economics.

Here are two books:

https://www.amazon.com/Public-Dollars-Private-Stadiums-Building/dp/0813533430

https://www.amazon.com/Field-Schemes-Stadium-Swindle-Expanded/dp/0803260164/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=28RY3QNDND8H7927BFB2

> You don't see conspiracies growing around the Jags, Browns, or even my Fins and there's a reason for that.

How about the basis of this book?

Basically when the Jags and Panthers joined the NFL and were immediately successful the other NFL owners were annoyed/frustrated that these newly formed teams could just come in and beat their established teams so quickly. When the Browns were re-forming in 99 the NFL owners then postponed the votes on who would be the new owner multiple times pushing the vote back over and over again even though it was almost a given that Lerner was going to be the guy. When the ownership was finally approved, the Browns ended up having the shortest amount of time to prepare a team out of any expansion in the history of the NFL by a pretty wide margin. There was also more about the teams making the expansion draft even harder on the Browns. Terry Pluto makes a pretty damn good case based on interviews and observations from people involved in the process that the '99 Browns were set up to struggle from the start. Everything after that has been the organization's fault of course but those first couple seasons were really hamstrung by the rest of the NFL ownership.

Not bad, if you liked this article, check out the book "Beer and Circus".

Great summary. I can thoroughly recommend An Epic Swindle: 44 Months with a Pair of Cowboys for anyone wanting a bit more insight into this.

Currently reading Soccernomics, which is a look at soccer through a sports economics/sabermetrics viewpoint. Really good so far!

I just ordered it. Here's the amazon link if anyone is interested: http://www.amazon.com/False-Start-Browns-Were-Fail/dp/1886228884 Used copies are available for $4 with shipping.

I enjoyed False Start by terry Pluto about the bungling of the new browns.

https://www.amazon.com/False-Start-Browns-Were-Fail/dp/1886228884

Pretty much.

You should check out Soccernomics.

For those of you that haven't, you need to read this. It gives you a really good insight in to how H&G ran the club

I just finished reading the book, "The Only Rule Is It Has to Work" (Amazon). It's about two baseball writers who get the chance to help run an independent-league baseball team for a summer. It was an interesting read, but was ultimately a little bit of a let down. Of course, the authors couldn't put half of their stat-based ideas into play. They were not the managers- they were basically advisers. They had to get buy-in from the actual manager and the players to implement ideas. Sometimes they worked, and sometimes they were left frustrated when their suggestions were ignored. If you're a fan of baseball, it's worth a read.

And for some added lemon juice on that paper cut, a local beat reporter wrote a great short book: False Start that shows the utter buttfuckery that was our return.

Edit: had to go the long way round to get a link instead of a screen shot: Here you go

If you're really that interested in the possibility of becoming Batman, someone wrote a whole book on it.

A good book with that exact purpose.

I'd start by watching Ken Burns Baseball documentary.

​

As far as books, Moneyball is good, and The Only Rule is it Has to Work for an in depth look at how stats affect the game.

With regard to divestment of athletics and academics I highly recommend [Beer and Circus](Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805068112/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_vPJXBbSJGGGYM)

Analytic Methods in Sports

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won

I am currently reading a book that answers this very question! Its written by a guy with a PhD in Neuroscience, a MS in Kinesiology (the study of movement, think advanced exercise science), and multiple black belts in several martial arts. He asks the question, what would it take, physically, to be Batman?

https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Batman-Possibility-Paul-Zehr/dp/0801890632

I suggest you read Soccernomics. I'd never advise you to download a pirated pdf version online, so don't do that. I'm sorry for the lame reply, it's 03:17am and I'm almost asleep. But you should find interesting answers to your question there.

Basically: people who used stats proved to be more effective (winning more) than those who didn't. Kind of how Moneyball did in American baseball.

If anyone is interested in reading more about this topic I highly suggest reading Beer and Circus. It discusses not only the craziness of college athletics but its effects on the undergraduate educational system.

It's not about more or less insight, it's about the lens through which you interpret the information. MarkZ had an interesting short twitter thread about it.

In general, even people who spend all day watching and analyzing players' performances can be biased and have inaccurate perceptions of players' skill. One of the core motifs of Moneyball was precisely that. The old scouts who had played and scouted the game for decades were biased in particular ways that relative newcomers who weren't indigenous to baseball weren't.

This was a great book on how the NFL screwed the expansion Browns and goes up to the 2004 season I think

It's in the book Becoming Batman (this somehow turned up on my "recommended" list from Amazon a couple of years ago.

He cowrote the book "The Only Rule Is It Has to Work", which I highly, highly recommend. He and the other author got to be gm's of an indy ball team and ran it according to all the craziest sabermetric principles.

It was my vacation book last summer, and my only complaint was that I finished it so fast and the only other thing I had was an LSAT prep book.

I take it you have not been Liverpool FC supporter for long.

Just Google Liverpool FC Bankruptcy. I would also highly recommend reading Liverpool FC An Epic Swindle by Brain Reade

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Epic-Swindle-Months-Pair-Cowboys/dp/085738600X

They absolutely do judge that way, even if its subconscious. There have been studies that prove this.

http://www.amazon.com/Scorecasting-Hidden-Influences-Behind-Sports/dp/0307591808

Sure, he's hit big shots, and it's not that he's awful, it's more that they make him out to be way better than he is. And this gets haters perturbed, who then take it to the other extreme and say he is complete garbage. Sure, he hit some big shots, he also had some epic failures, particularly the Big Ten final where he couldn't even get a shot off.

False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail

That's the Amazon link. You can get it in hard copy or Kindle.

Field of Schemes

https://www.amazon.com/False-Start-Browns-Were-Fail/dp/1886228884

In Becoming Batman the author points out that Batman would at least qualify in nearly every event in the summer Olympics. This one is up in the air for me.

Been wanting to check this book out

http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Batman-Possibility-Paul-Zehr/dp/0801890632/ref=pd_sim_b_3

Also relevant http://store.skydmagazine.com/shop/ebook/raise-your-game/

but https://smile.amazon.com/Essential-Ultimate-Teaching-Coaching-Playing/dp/0736050930 and https://www.riseupultimate.com/ for videos

Inverting the Pyramid

Soccernomics

Fever Pitch

Alex Ferguson

I am the secret footballer

The numbers game

http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Batman-Dr-Paul-Zehr/dp/0801890632

This is a big question that people have tried to answer many times before, and a gigantic question if you ask it about things other than improv.

I don't know, but my latest book to read while commuting is Hit Makers by Derek Thompson - I'll let you know what I find out.

False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail

Check out the book scorecasting. https://www.amazon.com/Scorecasting-Hidden-Influences-Behind-Sports/dp/0307591808

Buy Moneyball.
Non-fiction, about a moment that changed baseball history, by a writer that knows how to tell gripping non-fiction stories (see Flash Boys, The Big Short etc.)

Check out Soccernomics and Bamboo Goalposts.

> Scorecasting

A link for the clicky clicky.

https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Techniques-Tactics-James-Parinella/dp/073605104X

https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Ultimate-Teaching-Coaching-Playing/dp/0736050930

You may find this book interesting.

Probably the most famous book about baseball strategy is Moneyball, which covers the 2002 Oakland Athletics team.

You're welcome

https://www.amazon.com/Only-Rule-Has-Work-Experiment/dp/1250130905

Also try the book Becoming Batman. http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Batman-The-Possibility-Superhero/dp/0801890632

This is a bit late, but this might be up your alley: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801890632/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

I can't defend the last decade, but the first regime had no chance after what the Panthers and Jags did with their new franchises. That immediate success caused the Texans and Browns to get completely shafted in the expansion process.

I'm not going to go into all the details since they are well documented all over the internet and in Terry Pluto's* book. Many Browns fans hate they guy because he is perceived as eternally pessimistic, but he has been dead on for the most part (most recently Manziel from the start), and deserves some level of respect regarding his editorial opinion.

If you aren't interested in the book, here is a decent recap of the whole expansion. Credit to /u/Brokewood.

/* I was 10 beers deep when I wrote this. I still think Grossi is a solid reporter.

It's almost as if the rest of the league is not valuing these assets correctly. Oh wait, where have we seen this before?

No, fantasy sports are nerdy. If you've ever read things like The Numbers Game, Baseball Between the Numbers, or Moneyball, you'll know that baseball statistics are extremely nerdy. This applies to other sports too, but baseball is by far the most nerdy.

That is not to say that all people into fantasy sports are nerds, but a lot of people into fantasy sports are nerds.

The NFL made the agreement with the Browns because the city of Cleveland had a lease for the Browns to play in memorial stadium for a few more years. The NFL didn't want to go through the headache of of a team playing in an empty stadium without advertisers and an absolutely hostile market so they gave in and agreed to give Cleveland a new team (either expansion or relocation) upon building of a new stadium.

The NFL then fucked over the expansion Browns as punishment and yeah. There is a book about the process, I've never read, but it's quite detailed called False Start.

https://www.amazon.com/False-Start-Browns-Were-Fail/dp/1886228884

Well if you want to feel really depressed you could always read Terry Pluto’s False Start: How the New Browns were set up to fail

To steal from a book "The closer's the closer because he's the closer."

I don't usually buy new release books, but $18 seems high? Is that the case or am I just an idiot?

Your list is great, so I'm just going to tack on some suggestions to what you've already got rather than start my own.

Numbers-y, science-y books
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First by Jonah Keri

Memoirs
Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit by Matt McCarthy

Veeck as in Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck by Bill Veeck

Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big

and Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball by Jose Canseco

Fiction
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Non-fiction

Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball by George F. Will

The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-Stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds

and The Good Stuff: Columns about the Magic of Sports

and The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski

3 Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager by Buzz Bissinger

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

The Pitch That Killed: The Story of Carl Mays, Ray Chapman, and the Pennant Race of 1920 by Mike Sowell

Yes, I understand the irony of Joe Posnanski and Jose Canseco being the only author with multiple books. Just read Canseco's books. They're actually not bad.

There are more I'm forgetting. I must have read 50 books about baseball in my short life. I'll add them if I remember.

Anything that lasts this long is systemic.

• Browns were screwed in 1999. The Expansion draft was rigged so we didn't get any quality players (Ex: There were a number of retired players on the list of eligible draftees) The Owners didn't give a shit about Cleveland and didn't even want the city to have a team, but had to because the city won a lawsuit against the NFL. We were doomed from the get-go (read False Start: How The Browns Were Setup To Fail for more). Couch was arguably our best QB since '99 and he was ruined when he was drafted. This accounts for the first 4-5 years of shitty QBs.
  
  
• Our first owner Al Lerner, actually gave somewhat of a shit about the team (though he helped Modell move the team so fuck him). After he died in 2002 he left the team to his son Randy Lerner who didn't give a shit about the team. He only cared about his soccer team Aston Villa. However, he promised his father he wouldn't sell the team for 10 years. This promise sunk us into 10 years of bad ownership and therefore bad Front Offices, and thus bad QBs.
  
  
• Finally, he sold the team to Jimmy Haslam who does give a fuck about the Browns. Hopefully this means we'll actually get some competent people in management. This is the true first year of the Jimmy Haslem era as Banner/Chud were not his choices.
  
  TL;DR: Nobody cared enough about the Browns over the last 15 years to see them succeed. Hopefully with new ownership this will change.

The NFL set up the (new) Browns to fail. They had the bids for the new ownership in for years, but they sat on awarding an ownership group. Part of this was pure greed - they wanted to extort public money for stadiums by threatning other cities that their team would be moved to Cleveland instead of having an expansion team there.

The delay of awarding the ownership group (that they knew they were going to pick years earlier) meant that the team barely had any time to put together a front office, coaching staff, scouting staff, facilities, etc. The NFL helpfully suggested some of the worst FO staff in the history of the game to get them started. They also changed the expansion rules to be much less favorable to the new team than they were for Jacksonville or Carolina, putting the team way behind them in terms of assets.

I think a lot of that was also spite. The city of Cleveland embarassed them by mass protests, all sorts of bad press, dragging them in front of Congressional hearings and getting the word out about how the NFL fucked over a city because their incompetant crony needed one last bribe and cashout from the public coffer. Never has such a well-supported team with a good fanbase left their home.

The Browns fans were passionate enough that they were the first team in sports history to earn the right to retain their name and history after a move, and they forced the NFL's hand to get them back.

So the NFL got us back by fucking us over with expansion rules, waiting until the last possible second to award ownership, and "suggesting" some of the worst FO staff in the history of the game (since ownership didn't really have time to find their own).

Edit: More info http://www.amazon.com/False-Start-Browns-Were-Fail/dp/1886228884/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463795124

How many of the orgs you're thinking about have Cleveland's history? After the team was stolen by Art (may he rot in Hell) Modell, the sorry excuse for a team that was dropped on us was set up in the very worst ways imaginable: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1886228884 (False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail by Terry Pluto -- I highly recommend it).

We're talking about gross mismanagement of this team since the freaking return. How do you turn things around after more than a decade and a half of stupid? This is probably the first time in the history of the NFL that an organization with zero roots, whose set-up was a cautionary tale (and certain aspects of which I believe were deliberately not repeated for the team that followed), that was managed into the dirt for 16 years by some of the biggest headcases in sports, actually gets turned around (if it ever happens).

[Edited for the expansion team reference.]