About GridIronMine.com
The GridIronMine was founded by two avid football fans who in their day jobs are computer science professors. Their training has taught them to be objective and to trust the data. Too much of the commentary about football is subjective. The GridIronMine is dedicated to creating a deeper, objective understanding of the game of football.
Football is fascinatingly complex. Throughout the game a coach makes series of play calls, much like a game of chess. No other sport has this dynamic. Basketball, hockey, and soccer (i.e., metric football) are games that flow, they do not have well defined plays. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.) In baseball, game-time decisions are subtle and indirect, which may be the reason a head coach in baseball is called a "manager."
We understand that football is a game of emotion; that there are intangibles that statistics cannot capture. Therefore, our goal is not to build robo-coach but to give coaches and fans a deeper and richer understanding of the game.
When evaluating statistics, it is easy to get lost in the details and lose sight of the forest because of the trees. The team's primary goal on gameday is to win. It is not to get a 100-yard rusher or a 300-yard passer. Thus, the first tools we have rolled out are built using our Victory Forecast (VF) model. This model determines the probability of a team's victory given a game situation (point differential, time, down, distance, etc.)
The VF model is very useful in evaluating whether or not a coach made the correct call. Our Whether Station is an interactive tool that lets you evaluate any game situation. Additionally, our Whether Reports show the VF for games that have been played. With the interactive graph, you can see at glance the ebb and flow of a game. The GridIronMine archives have every NFL game since 2002 and most major college games since 2004.
While a team's primary gameday goal is to win, its primary season goal is to make the playoffs. Later in the season, the GridIronMine will be rolling out a new set of interactive tools that evaluate the postseason chances for each team: pro and college.
This only the start: We have barely scratched the surface. There is much more to mine. Stick around because GridIronMine will roll out several more tools during the course of the season.
People
Vince Freeh (co-founder)
Vince is currently an associate professor of computer science at North Carolina State University. His primary research area (not counting football) is distributed systems. He received his PhD from the University of Arizona in 1996. He is co-founder and president of Sports Mining, Inc---parent company of GridIronMine.com. Vince was a life-long Browns fan. But when they moved to Baltimore and changed their name he was left without a team. The new version of the Browns has failed to capture his heart---no matter how many times he hears otherwise, he knows that the franchise of Jim Brown, Otto Graham, Brian Sipe, and Ozzie Newsome is now in Baltimore doing business as the Ravens.
Dave Lowenthal (co-founder)
Dave is currently a professor of computer science at the University of Georgia. His primary research area is football, but his day job finds him researching high-performance computing. He received his PhD from the University of Arizona in 1996. He is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of GridIronMine. Dave is a long suffering Bengals fan and still plays back the 1988 Super Bowl in the hope that David Fulcher will intercept Joe Montana's winning TD pass (he really was close!).
Jon Lathem
Jon is an expert javascript/html programmer who has had the unfortunate experience of running into two guys drunk with football love. More seriously, Jon holds the B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from the University of Georgia. During the day Jon gets paid for doing SOA architecture and prototyping.
Jim Armstrong
Jim advises GridIronMine.com on technical matters. He holds a B.S. degree in computer science from UW-Madison and an M.S. degree in computer science from the University of Arizona. He currently works in Boston and is a Packers fan. He has written extensively about football, including articles in Football Outsiders and ESPN The Magazine. He has also studied Victory Forecast in depth.
Scott Watterson
Scott also advises GridIronMine.com on technical matters. He holds a B.S. degree from the University of New Hampshire, and the M.S. degree from the University of Arizona, both in computer science. He currently works at Scientific Games, Inc. in Atlanta, after spending a few years at the University of Georgia as a faculty member. He is a diehard Patriots fan.