This paper considers a variance decomposition of offensive baseball performance. Estimating the variance components of offensive baseball performance allows one to determine how much of the variability in performance can be accounted for by differences among teams and how much of the variability...

There is a growing literature on the statistical analysis of data from association-football/soccer games, seasons or groups of seasons. In contrast this paper is concerned with a single play, that is a sequence of successful passes. The play studied contained 25 passes and ended in a goal for...

This article describes a new strategy for objectively quantifying the performance exhibited by each and every team as derived from that year's games. When applied to the last sixteen seasons of division I-A college football, one can readily observe a strong correlation between the final rankings...

In this paper we introduce a quantitative measure of the excitement of sports games. This measure can be thought of as the variability of the expectancy of winning as a game progresses. We illustrate the concept of excitement at soccer games for which the theoretical win expectancy can be well...

Despite considerable research into boxing, surprisingly little is known concerning the fundamental physics of forces delivered in a boxing match. Most previous punch force estimates have been obtained from laboratory studies in which an experienced boxer struck an inanimate object. This paper...

The Bowl Championship Series is designed to match the two top teams in college football in a title game. To determine the top ranked teams, polls are combined with a number of quantitative ratings of the teams known collectively as the "computer ranking". The computer ranking serves primarily to...

A current approach to the empirical study of the relationship between affect and the performance of athletes before and during a competition is idiographic in nature. Affect-performance zones are estimated for each athlete based on a sufficient number of paired affect and performance...

When faced with protecting a three-point lead in the waning seconds of a basketball game, which is a preferable strategy: playing defense or fouling the offense before they can attempt a game-tying shot? Gonzaga University head coach, Mark Few, was faced with such a decision against Michigan...

The principal aim of the paper is to present an example of how statistical variable reduction techniques may be used as a method of summarising a large number of test results from a soccer youth development testing battery in a simple coherent manner. This procedure may facilitate a player's...

The quantitative analysis of sports is a growing branch of science and, in many ways one that has developed through non-academic and non-traditionally peer-reviewed work. The aim of this paper is to bring to a peer-reviewed journal the generally accepted basics of the analysis of basketball,...