Statistically Significant

You may have heard of the “Moneyball” phenomenon. It’s the new trend that began in baseball and is slowly spreading to other sports. Basically, instead of traditional scouting, trying to judge intangibles like a guy’s heart or effort, you take hard numbers. If you play fantasy baseball you’ve seen new numbers like PECOTA and OPS show up. In basketball, John Hollinger has developed PERS, and in hockey there’s always been Plus/Minus.

Numbers are a great way to evaluate a guy’s production on the field, but everyone knows there’s more to sports than on-field performance. If numbers were all fans cared about, than every Denver Broncos running back for the past 6 years should be a top jersey seller. I can guarantee I’ve never seen the “MIKE ANDERSON” jersey in my local Foot Locker.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying numbers are a bad thing. They’re great, all we need are new numbers to evaluate a player’s value to the team. With this, I unveil my PEVS (Player Entertainment Valuation System) numbers.

Now for a basic breakdown of how it works. Basically it is a ratio of the player’s conduct to his major media outlet exposure. Also included are a number of other popularity measures such as relevant Google hits, jersey sales, number of major signature products. These are all assigned point modifiers since things like Google hits aren’t quite as important as a signature shoe. Going over the exact mathematical formula would be quite boring, so let’s just look at some examples.

In basketball, Stephon Marbury would score pretty high. Even though Marbury hasn’t had a signature shoe in years, his very public feud with Larry Brown was worth far more than a shoe. Beyond that, he’s still the #4 jersey mover. He is also helped by his lack of appearances in “Read to Achieve commercials” which are assigned a negative value because they are anything but entertaining.

Johnny Damon would be another PEVS star. Insulting his old team by calling them ‘idiots’, priceless in a MasterCard commercial maybe, but worth a ton in PEVS. Combined with his complete transformation into a Yankee with his shorn locks and beard and thus thrusting the dagger into the backs of Red Sox fans everywhere with maximum twist is just pure PEVS fodder. There’s even a secondary effect with gems such as these being left in blogs: Screw Steinbrenner, Screw Cashman, Screw the Chokees, and finally Screw that traitorous rat-bastard Johnny Unfrozen Caveman Damon. May the lord guide those double AA's thrown from the Fenway Bleachers next year directly to your sizeable useless melon.

Of course, PEVS isn’t always necessary. In the NFL, one player would dominate this stat. We all know the answer… T.O. If I calculated his score, it’d probably be somewhere around a million, that’s even before giving bonus points for trying to pick a fight with Hugh Douglas AND Donovan McNabb, along with signing with a hated division rival.

You’re probably thinking, “well, doesn’t PEVS punish character guys?” You know what? You’re completely right, it does. A goody two-shoes type like Carlos Delgado with ‘beliefs’ and ‘morals’, who also gives toys to children would score very low. You know what else though? No one is paying for that. People want to see car accidents, not someone helping an old lady across the street.