02 September 2008

Randomness in football

California high school's offensive scheme adds randomness to football. I know very little about football (I think we've established pretty well here that I'm a baseball fan) but it's an interesting idea. Basically, this team runs a wider variety of plays than many teams, making them less predictable.

I'm not sure if they mean "randomness" in the sense that I would hope, though. First a team would determine a mixed strategy for what plays it should run, based on how they expect the opponents would be able to defend against those plays. Then they should just let a random number generator programmed with that strategy call the plays. If it works for diplomats and terrorists, why not football?

(And why not baseball, for that matter. In fact, there are less plays possible at any given juncture of a baseball game than at any given juncture of a football game, I think, so it would probably be easier to do this in baseball.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are terrorist attacks really "random" The means and targets seem to have repetition...

CarlBrannen said...

I've always thought that good pitchers selected their pitches with a random element.