A Simpler Football Simulation

About the Book

The book takes the concept of computer-based simulations for predicting American football games—like the Madden video games for example—and attempts to devise a simpler method. With just a word processor, some spreadsheets, a fundamental understanding of percentages and probabilities, and a few hours of work, anyone can achieve results that are remarkably similar to those of the more sophisticated computer models. Chapters 1 to 5 outline the method and its rationale. Chapters 6 to 9 detail an actual simulated contest play-by-play. Chapters 10 to 11 and the appendices utilize the method described to determine which professional football team of the past fifty years was truly the best.

About the Author

Andrew R. Crawford has been a football fan since watching his first Super Bowl in January, 1977, but he has been a consumer of sports statistics since buying his first pack of baseball cards several months before that. His love of both watching and writing about sports, as well as an aptitude for mathematics, have been a mutually beneficial symbiosis for over four decades. He and his wife of 23 years live in Athens, Ohio, where he works as a sportswriter and as a high school track and field coach.