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The Hidden Game of Football
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| italic title | The Hidden Game of Football |
| name | The Hidden Game of Football |
| image | The Hidden Game of Football.jpg |
| author | Bob Carroll, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer |
| title_orig | The Hidden Game of Football: A Revolutionary Approach to the Game and Its Statistics |
| country | United States |
| language | English |
| publisher | Grand Central Publishing |
| publisher2 | Total Sports Publishing |
| pub_date | January 1, 1988 |
| pages | 415 |
| isbn | 0446514144 |
| preceded_by | |
| followed_by |
The Hidden Game of Football: A Revolutionary Approach to the Game and Its Statistics is a book on American football statistics published in 1988 and written by Bob Carroll, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer. It was the first systematic statistical approach to analyzing American football in a book.
Original publication
The original was published in 1988. The purpose of the book is to look at the statistics of football and how they change the game based on coaching decision and player selection.
Updated edition
In 1998, a new version title The Hidden Game Of Football: The Next Edition was published by the authors. The new version is updated and includes more commentary on past statistics. A 2023 edition, with a foreword by Aaron Schatz, is being published by University of Chicago Press.
Reception
The book received mixed reviews at the time of its original publication, but has been assessed more positively by retrospective reviews. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in a 1988 review for The New York Times, found the application of statistics to football "cumbersome." By contrast, Shane Richmond of Pigskin Books wrote that "it’s likely that the book changed the way teams themselves think about the game; it certainly changed how the smarter sportswriters and analysts looked at it." Rustin Dodd, in a retrospective article in The Athletic, described the book as "a seminal work of football analytics" in 2022.
The book inspired Aaron Schatz to found Football Outsiders, and develop the Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) statistic.
References
References
- Richmond, Shane. (2019-02-14). "Review: The Hidden Game of Football by Bob Carroll, Pete Palmer & John Thorn".
- "Pigskin Pythagoras".
- "The Hidden Game of Football". University of Chicago Press.
- Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. (October 6, 1988). "Books of The Times; Football as Show Business, Football as Statistics". [[The New York Times]].
- Dodd, Rustin. "'Hidden Game': How a cult book from the 1980s foretold the future of football and the fourth down debate".
- Carlton, Stuart. (11 December 2010). "An Interview with Football Outsiders' Aaron Schatz".
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