Mike Tannenbaum’s journey from general manager of the New York Jets to the Dolphins’ executive vice president of football operations took an overseas detour.
Looking for a way to get back in the game after the Jets fired him following the 2012 season, Tannenbaum traveled to England, Germany and Italy to study sports analytics and science.
Think “Moneyball” — the book and movie about Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane and his innovative use of advanced statistics to evaluate talent.
Beane helped popularize the concept more than a decade ago, and the technology available to sports teams has exploded since then.
Those analytics are used extensively by European soccer teams because, much like Major League Baseball, there’s no salary cap. Smaller teams need creative ways to find talent and compete with richer clubs.
Analytics also are more important than ever in salary-cap leagues like the NBA and NFL as every team looks for an edge. So Tannenbaum, 45, attended a sports analytics summit in London last year and then visited soccer teams in Germany and Italy to learn what he could bring to the NFL.
“Just because we used to do things one way, if there’s a better way to do things, let’s pursue it,” Tannenbaum told the Palm Beach Post. “Let’s not be indiscriminately beholden to how we’ve done things if there’s a more nuanced, more sophisticated, more productive way of getting something done.”
http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news...pbpstubtomypbp_launch#aa5c92c7.2549987.735615
Looking for a way to get back in the game after the Jets fired him following the 2012 season, Tannenbaum traveled to England, Germany and Italy to study sports analytics and science.
Think “Moneyball” — the book and movie about Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane and his innovative use of advanced statistics to evaluate talent.
Beane helped popularize the concept more than a decade ago, and the technology available to sports teams has exploded since then.
Those analytics are used extensively by European soccer teams because, much like Major League Baseball, there’s no salary cap. Smaller teams need creative ways to find talent and compete with richer clubs.
Analytics also are more important than ever in salary-cap leagues like the NBA and NFL as every team looks for an edge. So Tannenbaum, 45, attended a sports analytics summit in London last year and then visited soccer teams in Germany and Italy to learn what he could bring to the NFL.
“Just because we used to do things one way, if there’s a better way to do things, let’s pursue it,” Tannenbaum told the Palm Beach Post. “Let’s not be indiscriminately beholden to how we’ve done things if there’s a more nuanced, more sophisticated, more productive way of getting something done.”
http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news...pbpstubtomypbp_launch#aa5c92c7.2549987.735615
