Since the beginning of humankind playing sports, we’ve been able to tell if an athlete is good at their sport just by watching them play – something I like to call the eye test. Statistics, on the other hand, go deeper. With stats, we can see how a player hurts or helps their team win beyond just mere capabilities.
Points per game (PPG), yards after catch (YAC), earned run average (ERA), plus/minus (+/-) and countless other metrics were created by sports nerds, the overseers of all that deal with numbers and (sports)balls, to quantify athletic performance.
However, the eye test seems to have dominated regular media in recent years, giving sports nerds like me less room to flourish. This has caused a divide: sports nerds vs. sports celebrities.
In recent years, people like Stephen A. Smith, Pat McAfee, Shannon Sharpe and Skip Bayless have become celebrities within and outside the sports world. Instead of talking about what makes a player so great statistically, we have to watch sports programs that are just empty arguments on why one player is better than another.
The closest sports nerds have gotten to witnessing the recognition of their importance is “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” a book by Michael Lewis, later adapted into a movie directed by Bennett Miller.
According to Lewis’ website, ”Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball.”
This story was integral in highlighting how stats could shape a team’s success. For example, the 2002 Oakland Athletics were a team built strictly based on stats and a small budget. Despite this, the team gained first place in the American League West division before losing in the American League Divisional Series to the Minnesota Twins.
With this success in media and real-life application, sports nerds were, in the good old days, on every sports television program. Shows like ”Around the Horn,” ”Undisputed,” ”First Take,” ”Get Up!” and “Pardon the Interruption” gave me hope that people like me – who once sat around living rooms talking stats with friends – could build careers talking about the games we love.
The stats aspect of these shows made them fun. We got to watch the athletes do what they do best, then the sports nerds break down the performance – think of it like a recap with all of the jargon. From this, viewers gain knowledge about the game and have better arguments for their favorite players when they sit on the couch the next week.
The recent lack of critical and statistical breakdowns have given sports media personalities a lot of room to make claims and “clip farm” to make their shows go viral. The goal is to get as many entry level people as possible interested in order to increase views on social media.
To these personalities, the best way to do that is to omit the technical jargon that may scare new sports fans away.
Shows and journalists that I watched growing up are steadily being dropped by channels like ESPN and Fox Sports because of the demand for more easily accessible content. For example, “Around the Horn” gives sports journalists a place to have debates that are thoroughly based within stats and gives more insight into why a certain take is better than others. Unfortunately, the show will end in the summer of 2025.
As a society, we have grown accustomed to viewer-generated content that can make unsubstantiated claims and not give any factual information to back it up. On social media, there are certain words that can make a headline or clip go viral within seconds.
Just to show how easy it is, I can make one up on the spot. You just need a great player, a list and either an agenda to bash or praise the player.
Take this headline, for example: “Michael Jordan is Not a Top 10 Player in NBA History.” Sports networks can pull in all of the old and outraged NBA fans who heavily disagree with this statement and then play a video that takes 10 minutes to get to the point with nothing of substance being said.
With the lack of substance in these arguments, I feel that this is where sports nerdom makes a revival. The takes that sports nerds have give the general sports fans a chance to thoroughly go through and fact check every sports debate.
For those of us who live and breathe the numbers, our passion for looking at sports beyond the surface level and quantifying athletic performances will live on. Even if the jargon is intimidating, it is our bread and butter.
