Do professional sports teams utilize people who are trained in the natural sciences to aid them in developing and implementing strategies? I would imagine that they might benefit from the services of professional statisticians, game theorists, mathematicians, computer scientists (to run simulations of games), physicists, and maybe even psychologists (to disrupt the opponent).
Do they do this, or do they just let a bunch of former athletes make the decisions based on their ‘intuition’??
Thanks.
Psychologists - yes…for their own team’s good…not to confuse the opponent.
Teams take on consultants, from dance instructors for football, to power skaters in hockey.
“Scienctists” is an abstract description. Sure, when building a stadium, wind specialists, and others are brought in. Are they 'scientists"?
And didn’t Tony Larussa get a mathemitician or comp programmer to help him become a stat guru in the dugout? Is that is a scientist?
And mathemeticians helped football coaches come up with charts on when to go for an extra point versus the two-point conversion.
And of course there are doctors, physiotherapists, dieticians and other practitioners of medical science.
Not to mention those who design sports equipment. They’re not employed by the teams, but the teams certainly make use of their work product.
I don’t think this is what you’re looking for, but what about the scientists that developed gatorade at the University of Florida.
While other people were out there curing diseases these guys were developing a sports drink to aid their football team.
Woohoo, now thats science put to work.
I’ve never heard of teams doing it, but some of them really could use a expert in gaming theory. There are a lot of decisions in games like football that can have complex answers. And I know of a number of cases where teams have made gross tactical errors because they didn’t understand things like game theory.
Baseball is really a sport where statisticians and game theorists could be of use. Check out baseballprospectus.com or read something by Bill James and you’ll see how detailed sabermetricians can be in their analysis of baseball, and sadly, how little of their research is employed by baseball teams. It’s worth noting that one of the few baseball execs who understands the importance of even a simple stat like OPS is Billy Bean, who has turned one of the lowest payroll teams in baseball into a perennial playoff contender. It will be interesting to see how well his protege, J.P. Richardi, does in his new digs in Toronto. If he’s learned anything, I predict playoff contention for the Blue Jays within 4 season.s
To pick nits, but it’s Billy Beane. There was another player called Billy Bean.
Not a team, but a league. Robert K. Adair, the author of The Physics of Baseball, was once the offical “Physicist to the National League”.