Your Gut Instinct Might Be Wrong

(This is a repost of something that I wrote earlier, but slightly edited, for another blog. It seems especially appropriate now.)

You’re down by 14 in a football game with 3 minutes left in a football game. You just scored a touchdown. Your team sucks and only converts 2pt. conversions 40% of the time (most teams average around 45-55%) You should kick an extra point, right? Nope.

It’s mathematically more sound to go for 2. Don’t worry, my gut instincts told me to kick the extra point too.

Why is this relevant? Because fans often call for things that are detrimental to the team that they love as their first instinct. And likewise, everybody has been calling for Ben Howland’s head.

I HATED Howland’s stubbornness in refusing to switch to a zone defense since my first year here at UCLA (I’m now a 4th year). I’ve been saying he’s overpaid since my first year too. At the college level, our players currently don’t have the talent to keep up with such a taxing man to man defense scheme. But now I’m defending him, because the math is on his side.Don’t get me wrong. I REALLY REALLY want to see Howland gone. But I just can’t think of replacements at the moment, and I doubt DG has the ability to find somebody better than Howland.

I’ve posted before detailing why firing Howland is a bad idea. tl;dr -> Not firing him now will save 7 million dollars (not chump change, considering even Kentucky’s highest paid coach in the nation makes $4 million. The legendary Coach K of Duke “only” makes 2.2) and this will help us HIRE A MUCH BETTER coach, or if the best case scenario occurs, Howland redeems himself. In addition, I have no faith in Dan Guerrero. Howland needs all the support he can get, which will help with recruiting if we can put on a united front. IFF DG is gone would I trust the AD to make another basketball hire.

You’d be naive to think otherwise. Money talks. Everything else walks. You can’t find $7 million dollars on the ground. I guess the take-away message is to stop bashing Howland, because he needs all of our support for recruiting. BUT KEEP UP THE PRESSURE ON Dan Guerrero, WE NEED A BETTER AD.

Finally, football math is just interesting, and there’s nothing better than smart fans, right?

Math below:

Most teams have around a 40-55% chance at succeeding. No matter what happens, you’re hoping for another defensive stop and then another touchdown.

Let’s assume the worst case scenario — your team only gets a 40% conversion rate! Two 1 pt. conversions = a tie, so we’ll use that as a baseline. Now if you fail the first 2pt. conversion and succeed at the second, you’ll end up with 14pts., which is exactly the same result. Since that would be the exact same result, we can ignore it, because it’s the same as kicking two PATs.

Now lets compare the chances of losing versus the chances of winning, if one outweighs the other then we can figure out if the 2 pt. conversion is a better choice.

Now what are the odds of losing? 60% (failing the first 2pt. conv.) x 60% (failing the second 2pt. conv.) = 36% of losing.

Now if you make the first conversion, you win the game, because your second attempt is just a 1pt. attempt (so you’ll get 15pt. total, winning the game versus the 14 pt. deficit). What are the odds of making the 2pt. conversion? It’s a given- 40%.

Now 40% is a greater percentage than 36%, so your odds of winning outright outweigh your odds of losing outright.

Basically, you should go for the 2pt. attempt EVEN if your team is below 50% at 2pt. attempts! (As long as your team is above around 39% or so at 2pt. conversions.)