Case study: the power of research
A few weeks ago, a college basketball coach was fired and went on a rant about the mid-season termination providing no benefit. I had a hunch he was right and wanted to go about proving it in an article.
The first thing I did was contact Gary K. Johnson at the N.C.A.A.–the organization’s stats expert–who sent me a list of all the coaching changes over the last 15 years, including those that happened during the season.
Then I needed to find out the circumstances behind those changes. I was only interested in the ones where coaches were fired, or effectively fired by being forced to resign. So I did a Nexis search on every one and discovered that of the dozen coaches who had been dismissed during the season over the past six years, not one of the immediate replacements succeeded and got the job permanently at the end of the season.
So I compiled a chart and here was the end result.
God bless experts! God bless Nexis!
February 20th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Execellent job of thinking about the issue, following up with research to support the hypothesis, and articulating the conclusion and opinion.
February 24th, 2010 at 11:47 am
You, sir, could never work as a broadcaster sitting next to Tim McCarver who once proclaimed that “a walk is as good as a home run right now” during a post-season game. Huh?!!?
How about a researcher in the booth?