Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
If you want to hit it big in Vegas—maximize your potential payout and increase your chances of an early retirement—do the following: take your life savings and make one bet. Put all your money on red, or black for that matter. But the key is to make just one bet. And then walk away. Never come back.
That's exactly what Vegas doesn't want you to do. They want people to play over and over and over again. In the long run, they win. In the short run, stuff happens. For this reason a statistician might say that the "Go fast" portion of the new motto is the exact opposite of what BYU should do.
When one side has superior talent, knowledge, expertise, etc.—it wants to increase the number of repetitions in competition. Vegas wants you to play as much as possible; the superior basketball team wants to get "up and down." It hates the stall. In the long run, the better team wins. In the short run, it might not.
By speeding the game up, BYU is increasing the number of repetitions. This is an especially good strategy against inferior talent—the more reps the better. But when BYU plays teams that have more talent, (which will likely happen more often now that BYU is independent), game theory says BYU should slow it down—decrease the number of reps.
So is Coach Anae using the wrong strategy? First of all, no coach wants to admit that his team has inferior talent. That's not exactly good for morale. And by stalling, a coach is often admitting as much.
Second, offensive coaches are paid to score points. It's hard to fire a coach whose offense scores 30-plus points per game each week—even if all those points come at the cost of field position, time of possession, etc.
Third, fans want to see offense. Sometimes I wonder whether I would rather watch a 55-47 shoot-out loss to Tulsa than a 6-3 grind-it-out win versus Utah State (my defensive teammates would never understand).
Fourth, elevation. BYU's stadium sits at 4500 feet. "Going fast" magnifies the "elevation advantage," especially against the Longhorns who play their home games at 500 feet.
Fifth, and most important in my view is "competitive advantage." It's all about doing similar activities differently than competitors. As much as the Notre Dame scout team tries to replicate the speed of the BYU offense, they will come nowhere close to the real thing.
The scout team can't hope to replicate in one week what BYU perfects over months and years.
So is Coach Anae using the wrong strategy?
Maybe.
But maybe not.
In the short run, the offense will have a difficult time capturing the benefits of the hurry up, as we witnessed in Virginia. They simply aren't good enough at it yet. In the long run, the competitive advantage gained through "Go fast" could be the perfect underdog-antidote.
Interestingly enough, the one team that seems to have the most talent of all—-Alabama—-actually slows it down. Game theory says Saban is wrong; he is Vegas and should be increasing the repetitions.
Saban would tell game theory to kiss his rings.
But could have Saban won even more championships with game theory on his side?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
*Special thanks to BYU statistics professor Gil Fellingham for our lunch conversation, which turned into this article.
*******
Photo: Courtesy Mark Philbrick, BYU Photo
*******
