

The Genius of MIT's Football Team - anishkothari
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-genius-of-mits-football-team-1415663452

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barisser
The team is in a great superposition to collapse into a winning eigenstate.
Its interference pattern is constructive. The phase they're in is totally
coherent. Their offense has got this great duality going, that you simply
can't measure without screwing up. They've got this non-classical strategy
that I don't understand. However I'm not going to comment on their position at
this time; I don't want to alter the team's momentum going into the game.

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andrewtbham
I was expecting to read about a "genius" plan they had for winning games, like
moneyball or something.

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ape4
Me too. Maybe they try sqrt(-1) percent.

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Mithaldu
Maybe it's because i'm not american, but that article is completely and
utterly nonsensical to me. Is there some kind of injoke going on i don't
understand?

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TillE
It's not nonsensical, but it is a random collection of facts with no
explanation. The article doesn't even attempt to answer the obvious question:
what changed? _Why_ are they successful now?

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KMag
Unless something changed with regard to the crew (rowing) program (which
historically had more mindshare amongst MIT students), it's likely largely
random. In Division III sports, you tend to have high variance in performance,
since athletics are seldom the top priority of any of the students. It's
probably a combination of solid coaching with luck off the field (which
athletes the team was able to recruit) and luck on the field.

Next year, the football team will have a recruiting advantage over the crew
(rowing) team, and you may see a long-term shift in football performance
relative to crew performance. On the other hand, most US high schools have
football teams but no crew teams. Incoming MIT students who didn't play on
their HS football teams (most of them) perceive they're at less of a
disadvantage competing in crew vs. competing in football. At least, these were
my perceptions as an MIT freshman almost 2 decades ago.

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jweese
School: Chicago; year: 1939; achievement: eliminated program.

We do take it as a point of pride. We also had the first Heisman winner ever.

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leroy_masochist
Is it just me or does it seem like there's an outlier in the table that
accompanies the article?

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mikeryan
Just a note for those who don't know;

 _The NACDA Learfield Sports Directors ' Cup is an award given annually by the
National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics to the colleges and
universities in the United States with the most success in collegiate
athletics._

So Stanford has been the successful collegiate sports program across all
sports. Its also held that title for 20 years.

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jessaustin
Just what college athletics needs, more fake awards designed to only be
winnable by a few parties.

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corbinpage
From the chart, Stanford and Duke looks like they're in a class of their own..

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leoc
A bit of an ominous sign, isn't it?

