I've always been fascinated by human capital and its evaluation, measurement, and best disposition - not in the eye-roll inducing corporate talking points Human Resources sense - but in the real world "let's-get-something done, now how do we best do it?" way. Sports are a great testing ground for that debate.
I propose a game that's a very small subset to that discussion, primarily dealing with the measurement and allocation piece, using something near and dear to our hearts - football defense.
The premise is simple:
I want you to field a college defense. You're playing in the Big 12. Your goal is to win the league and a national championship.
You need only do three things to play:
1). Pick your base defense
2). Allocate 70 player personnel points over 11 positions
- All allocations must add up to 70
- minimum allocation of 1, maximum of 10
- You cannot decimalize (I'm looking at you, engineers)
- Assume that a player value describes the player's efficacy against run and pass equally
- A player value represents their baseline of natural ability vis a vis peers at their position, not necessarily production
Here's your scale, so we're all using the same value vocabulary. Remember, we're discussing ability:
10 All-American
8-9 All-Conference
6-7 Quality
5 Average
3-4 Below average/Weak
1-2 Awful
3). Now, justify all of your decisions
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Here's a Dummy Example by Skippy-O-Tex (I'll post my real one later):
I'm running a 3-4. Wrecking Crew, boi!
OLB 10
DE 5
NT 10
DE 5
OLB 10
ILB 7
ILB 7
SS 5
FS 3
CB 3
CB 5
I have three All-Americans: at NT and both OLB spots! We will sack the QB before he even thinks of getting rid of the ball. Very solid ILBs backing up my stud NT as well. Yeah, we may give up some plays in the secondary, but they won't need to cover very long with my pass rush up front and my ability to shut down the run.
Have at it. This will be fun.
