This past Saturday I attended a sports business conference at MIT in which several panel discussions were held throughout the day on topics ranging from the use of analytics (stats) in sports to brand and revenue management to facility management to the future of the sports. Many luminaries of the sports world were in attendance as panelists. It's pretty amazing to see in person a collection of people that you only know through the media, interacting with each other in bizarre combinations, and generally just as interested in being there as outsiders like me.
Highlight: Panel Discussion on how to approach the year after winning a championship.
Panelists:
R.C. Buford, GM San Antonio Spurs
Bill Polian, President/CEO Indianapolis Colts
Brian Burke, GM Anaheim Ducks
Jed Hoyer, Assistant GM Boston Red Sox
Moderator:
Peter Gammons
This was the best panel by far. Every single one of the panelists was incredibly bright and had nothing but useful things to say, and no other moderator on the day could hold a candle to Gammons. Every other moderator could have been juiced up with the maximum dosage of moderating steroids, and they still wouldn't have collectively been able to match the pure talent of Gammons. So smooth, so effortless, so sublime. And the real treat...Gammons ending the discussion with a story in which he cursed three times. Amazing.
Other Highlights:
Bill James. Phenomonally smart, incisively witty, one of the biggest dorks you'll ever see. Physically he's a giant, but he's very awkwardly shaped with hunched shoulders and a huge belly. He doesn't look like he walks very comfortably, and I think it's this physical awkwardness that requires him to wear velcro shoes. But still, he was just awesome to listen to.
Bill James sitting next to Rick Carlisle on a panel. Rick's grandfather was apparently an MIT grad, and invented the first fax machine. While Rick seems like a smart enough guy, the intelligence gene has clearly been diluted through the generations. He was just kind of spewing generic ESPN analyst garbage, and Bill James was trying as hard as possible not to make the guy look like a complete idiot.
Bill Polian talking to Ben Watson.
Chris Wallace. Current GM of the Memphis Grizzlies and former tragically incompetent GM of the Boston Celtics. Listening to him tell hilarious story after hilarious story was very illuminating in understanding how this guy ever got another job after what he did to the Celtics.
The experience. I don't know how much I actually learned from attending this conference, but from listening to all those people speak, I realized 1) I'm exactly where I need to be, and 2) I can totally handle myself in this industry.
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Joe,
ReplyDeleteBill James is the man. I have his Historical Baseball Abstract here on my shelf at work...next to all my tech books. Pick it up if you don't already have it. I believe he works as a consultant for the Red Sox. Got to give Theo credit. He knows what he is doing.
-Sol
Not only does Bill James work for the Red Sox, but so does a guy named Tom Tippett, another stats guy that runs Diamond Mind and was also at the conference. Almost all baseball teams now have stat guys, but judging from what I saw at the Mets, most of those guys are just guys that know how to USE stats. The Sox actually have two guys that CREATE stats and MODEL simulations. The Sox are way ahead of most teams.
ReplyDeleteThis wins the award for most life-affirming blog post of the year. We need to get the narrator from the Wonder Years to read the last paragraph aloud while With a Little Help from My Friends plays in the background.
ReplyDeleteWell considering the state of Daniel Stern's career, I bet he'd do it for $20.
ReplyDeleteJoe, did you happen to go to the Rob Neyer-moderated panel? I love that guy, even though he seems like he could be a dick in real life.
ReplyDeleteI did go to that panel. I used to love Neyer too, but then stopped reading him when they made his column an insider. As the moderator, he didn't get the chance to express too many opinions, but at the same time, he was the one moderator that seemed like he had a bit of an agenda that he was trying to push. It's not that he's a dick exactly, just that he has less patience for entrenched ideas that he doesn't think are analytically defensable.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's why I like Neyer; like me, he's right about most things and lacks tolerance for idiots who would dare to disagree.
ReplyDelete