This makes perfect sense to me.

When a team of coaches, professional or college, say

decides to get down and dirty in terms of preparation for a critical oponent
( A BIG GAME, if you will)

what they do is analyze, to exhaustion, the stats of their oponent.
For example, in BBALL, this would be: #of freethrows, shooting percentage, fastbreak points, points off turnovers, etc.

This is where all the different colored pens come into play : a different color for each stat. Thus, the team scoring more points than it gives up, playing an oponent that scores less and gives up more, for example, WOULD BE A LOCK.

Even though they have scouts out there watching every game, and coaches whose job is solely to break down film, they don't bother with any of this superflous information and STRICTLY rely on the Daily Racing Forum of BBALL (whatever that might be)

Let's face it, once you develop intuitions about your data and can creatively utilize it (better than your competitors), why in the world would you want to actually analyze the thing itself?

Oh, and all the BS about the best coaches being the hardest workers - in particlular, those that watch THE MOST FILM - is just that: BS


Yeah, and the stats guys, not the hands on types, usually make the best coaches.

yeah