The Hidden Reason For The Lost Decade

[BuffaloBill]

Thank you for wasting 3 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

 

 

well said

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

Ok. So thinking out of the box means pulling in one bit of random data (character players) and applying it to anything (football success)? Not quite.

 

First, find a reasonable way to measure character and inlcude the metric for how to do it.

 

Next, apply the metric to all players on all 32 teams over the past 20 years (you can even simplify and apply it to the 30 player players that played the most plays).

 

Finally, compare the records from 20 years of data and see what you have.

 

When you do that, right or wrong, I will give you huge props.

 

Until then you are spouting a baseless theory.

 

Good luck.

I can respect a demand that proof reach this level of rigor if you consistently demand that it be applied to all fields of scientific inquiry. I might prefer a different level of proof, but if you consistently demand that level of rigor at least you are being intellectually honest.

 

In the real world, however, demanding such a high level of rigor before taking action involves risk. For example, there are many substances that scientists know will cause harm to human health in high concentrations, because they have repeatedly tested how even short term exposure affects lots of people. Let's say that 20 years of data shows that serious harm was repeatedly and immediately suffered after short term exposure to concentrated encomium by each of 30 people. In that scenario, I suspect that you and I would agree that there was sufficient "proof" to justify action to protect public health by preventing concentrated encomium exposure.

 

But what if you had less than 20 years worth of data? After collecting 10 years worth of data showing serious harm to each of 30 people, would you still do nothing to protect public health, because you believed that harm from encomium exposure was a "baseless theory" without a full 20 years worth of data? How about after 19 years of data collection?

 

And even if you had the full 20 years of data showing that short term exposure to concentrated encomium caused serious harm, would you do nothing to prevent long term public exposure to lower levels of encomium? In the real world, people sometimes have to make that type of decision without any data, and therefore no level of "proof," about the health effects caused by long term exposure to low levels of a substance like encomium.

 

Nix, Gailey and others in the Bills' war room are actually in a pretty similar situation. There is well-documented, reputable scientific research showing that men in committed relationships have lowered testosterone levels, and the effect is even more pronounced if they are involved in child raising. You may not like that, or you may find it disturbing on any number of levels, but that is what the research shows.

 

As the New York Times article shows, professors from Syracuse and Penn State Universities believe that higher testosterone levels may provide an athlete with a competitive advantage.

 

Do we have 20 years' worth of data yet? Of course not - - the Bills' lost decade was well under way before the PNAS article was even published. Could additional research be done that might give some future Bills GM, 20 years from now, the level of proof that you personally require in order consider the theory something other than "baseless?" Sure - - but I don't want to suffer through 20 more years of losing - - I want Nix and Gailey to make decisions based on the best available scientific research available today, not 20 years from now.

 

Let's get ahead of the curve for a change, instead of behind it. Everybody laughed at Dick Fosbury, the high jumper who first used the Fosbury Flop technique, but he revolutionized the event and won an Olympic gold medal. If Buddy Nix relies on this recent scientific testosterone research, people may laugh at him now. But future generations of Bills fans might be able to look back with pride and say - - we won our first Super Bowl because the Nix Flop technique for drafting and signing players gave us a real competitive advantage!

 

We've just lost 7 games in a row (and counting). Last year it was 8. If the Bills draft and sign players the way they always have, the Bills will get what they have always got. And that's not a pretty picture. What do we have to lose by trying a more scientific approach to filling the roster?

[BillsBackersChicago]

Peer-reviewed article published in the Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Sciences of the United States of America ("PNAS") good enough for you?

 

http://www.pnas.org/...9/02/1105403108

 

How about a scientific article published in the Journal of Endocrinology?

 

http://joe.endocrino...0/1/27.full.pdf

 

As for Brady, well, Kim Kardashian and that NBA player were "married," too. Besides, if you're suggesting that Brady is gay and not really married, then aren't you making MY point if you think he's a good player? If he's not really married, then his testosterone levels wouldn't decline, even if he publicly claims he's in a truly committed relationship with a woman.

 

Glad you learned how to use pubmed, now you have to learn how to interpret data and actually use it to prove your point.

"among single nonfathers at baseline (2005) (21.5 ± 0.3 y), men with high waking T were more likely to become partnered fathers by the time of follow-up 4.5 y later (P < 0.05)."

Draft high testosterone players all you want, but the ladies seem to dig them and will end up making them daddies one way or another.

Also you , completely ignored the previous poster's point, demonstrate that the bills have more dad's than other time, AND prove that those dad's spend time with their kids as the article clearly argues that the more time you spend with your kids, the lower your testosterone.

Finally, to prove your fatherhood point, you provide one study that is a non-controlled, non-randomized cohort analysis. There is no telling what other factors played into those subjects' testosterone drops. Also, this was in a filipino population, with a very different genetic background than the predominantly white and african american population. In fact, testosterone levels are known to vary between different racial backgrounds (I will let you look that one up to confirm it).

Its nice that we all have access to scientific data in this day and age, but its important that we interpret the way that the scientists that publish that data do, with a fine tooth analytic comb. People get themselves into all kinds of trouble when they try and extrapolate scientific data that they don't carefully analyze and interpret first to prove points (you see it in the media everyday); When they extrapolate that data to try and provide a unified theory to explain the reason behind the Bills decade of futility, nothing good ensues.

Sorry to get all nerdy, but it drives me nuts when people do this stuff.

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

Hey BBC! Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but holiday obligations and some travel intervened. Hope you had a nice holiday.

 

You made several points, but there are some holes in your logic . . . I'll try to address the points individually.

 

Glad you learned how to use pubmed, now you have to learn how to interpret data and actually use it to prove your point.

"among single nonfathers at baseline (2005) (21.5 ± 0.3 y), men with high waking T were more likely to become partnered fathers by the time of follow-up 4.5 y later (P < 0.05)."

Draft high testosterone players all you want, but the ladies seem to dig them and will end up making them daddies one way or another.

 

This is an example of the pot saying that the kettle absorbs all wavelengths of visible light. This is a Buffalo Bills message board, so the appropriate frame of reference for making any point about the PNAS study is our beloved Bills. So from the standpoint of how it affects Bills' players, the likelihood that single nonfathers will be partnered fathers 4.5 years into the future is totally irrelevant. The 2011 CBA standardizes the length of rookie contracts at four years or less, with a team option for a 5th year for only those players drafted in the first round.

 

http://images.nflplayers.com/mediaResources/files/2011CBA.pdf [in particular, see Section 3(a) concerning contract length on page 24]

 

The team has publicly stated that it is committed to building through the draft, even though the majority of players drafted by the Bills don't get a second contract here. Who cares if they wind up being fathers in committed relationships when they join some other team in the future? That's actually good for us, because it makes our competition weaker. Even if you make the debatable assumption that the Bills will exercise their fifth year option for somebody like Dareus, we still get 4.5 years of aggressive, high testosterone play from him before his pharaoh moans do him in. What's wrong with that?

 

Also you completely ignored the previous poster's point, demonstrate that the bills have more dad's than other time, AND prove that those dad's spend time with their kids as the article clearly argues that the more time you spend with your kids, the lower your testosterone.

 

Rather than merely relying on the definition of the word, you went so far as to capitalize the word "AND" in the above statement. But the PNAS study does NOT say that lower testosterone levels are experienced ONLY by partnered fathers who also help raise their kids.

 

To illustrate my point, consider this hypothetical. Assume there is a study showing that (i) men with only one leg can't move from point A to point B as fast as men with two legs, and (ii) men with no legs take even longer to move from point A to point B than men with one leg. By your logic, such a study has no predictive value for how fast men can move with only one leg as compared to two, because the study "clearly argues" that if you have no legs, you move even slower than if you have one leg.

 

And you accuse ME of needing to learn how to interpret data and use it to prove my point?

 

Finally, to prove your fatherhood point, you provide one study that is a non-controlled, non-randomized cohort analysis. There is no telling what other factors played into those subjects' testosterone drops. Also, this was in a filipino population, with a very different genetic background than the predominantly white and african american population. In fact, testosterone levels are known to vary between different racial backgrounds (I will let you look that one up to confirm it).

 

Your point about the differences in genetic background between filipinos on the one hand, and whites and African Americans on the other, might have some merit if you consider the data from the cited PNAS study in isolation. But the PNAs study is one of many involving testosterone. The drop in testosterone levels by pairbonded fathers involved in raising offspring has been observed not only in humans, but in other species. The very FIRST sentence of the PNAS study makes this pretty clear:

 

http://anpron.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Longitudinal-evidence-that-fatherhood-decreases-testosterone-in-human-males.pdf

 

In species in which males care for young, testosterone (T) is often high during mating periods but then declines to allow for caregiving of resulting offspring.

 

Is it within the realm of possibility that changes in testosterone levels of filipino males are affected by behavior in ways similar to what has been widely observed in the animal kingdom, while the testosterone levels of white and African American males are not? I suppose, but why would you expect to find such a difference? Male birds and male filipino humans have different base-line testosterone levels, yet they both show decreased testosterone levels when they are pairbonded and involved in raising offspring.

 

Its nice that we all have access to scientific data in this day and age, but its important that we interpret the way that the scientists that publish that data do, with a fine tooth analytic comb. People get themselves into all kinds of trouble when they try and extrapolate scientific data that they don't carefully analyze and interpret first to prove points (you see it in the media everyday); When they extrapolate that data to try and provide a unified theory to explain the reason behind the Bills decade of futility, nothing good ensues.

 

Your analytic comb appears to have coarser teeth than you think. And who's talking about a "unified theory?" I never said that testosterone levels were the "only" reason for the lost decade, just that they were the "hidden" reason. There's lots of reasons why the Bills have been losing for a decade. If it makes you happy, we could change the thread title to "A Hidden Reason For the Lost Decade."

 

If you want to discuss unified theories, we can discuss whether string theory reconciles Einstein's theory of general relativity with quantum physics, but that's probably a topic best left for some egghead colloquial on another day.

 

Sorry to get all nerdy, but it drives me nuts when people do this stuff.

 

No need to apologize for getting "all nerdy." Leaves more women for the rest of us.

[Beerball]

Is this the Ralph has already agreed to sell the team to Toronto thread?

[Buffalo Barbarian]

Is this the Ralph has already agreed to sell the team to Toronto thread?

I was hoping you were shutting it down.

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

OK, this has to be the most bizarre thread ever at TBW.

 

And worst of all, I just sat here and read the whole thing.

 

Moreover, I'm left wondering: Just what is my testosterone level? And whatever it is, is it good or bad?

http://www.isitlowt.com/

 

But keep in mind that Abbott Labs created the above website because they want to sell you something and make a profit.

[Bob in STL]

I can respect a demand that proof reach this level of rigor if you consistently demand that it be applied to all fields of scientific inquiry. I might prefer a different level of proof, but if you consistently demand that level of rigor at least you are being intellectually honest.

 

In the real world, however, demanding such a high level of rigor before taking action involves risk. For example, there are many substances that scientists know will cause harm to human health in high concentrations, because they have repeatedly tested how even short term exposure affects lots of people. Let's say that 20 years of data shows that serious harm was repeatedly and immediately suffered after short term exposure to concentrated encomium by each of 30 people. In that scenario, I suspect that you and I would agree that there was sufficient "proof" to justify action to protect public health by preventing concentrated encomium exposure.

 

But what if you had less than 20 years worth of data? After collecting 10 years worth of data showing serious harm to each of 30 people, would you still do nothing to protect public health, because you believed that harm from encomium exposure was a "baseless theory" without a full 20 years worth of data? How about after 19 years of data collection?

 

And even if you had the full 20 years of data showing that short term exposure to concentrated encomium caused serious harm, would you do nothing to prevent long term public exposure to lower levels of encomium? In the real world, people sometimes have to make that type of decision without any data, and therefore no level of "proof," about the health effects caused by long term exposure to low levels of a substance like encomium.

 

Nix, Gailey and others in the Bills' war room are actually in a pretty similar situation. There is well-documented, reputable scientific research showing that men in committed relationships have lowered testosterone levels, and the effect is even more pronounced if they are involved in child raising. You may not like that, or you may find it disturbing on any number of levels, but that is what the research shows.

 

As the New York Times article shows, professors from Syracuse and Penn State Universities believe that higher testosterone levels may provide an athlete with a competitive advantage.

 

Do we have 20 years' worth of data yet? Of course not - - the Bills' lost decade was well under way before the PNAS article was even published. Could additional research be done that might give some future Bills GM, 20 years from now, the level of proof that you personally require in order consider the theory something other than "baseless?" Sure - - but I don't want to suffer through 20 more years of losing - - I want Nix and Gailey to make decisions based on the best available scientific research available today, not 20 years from now.

 

Let's get ahead of the curve for a change, instead of behind it. Everybody laughed at Dick Fosbury, the high jumper who first used the Fosbury Flop technique, but he revolutionized the event and won an Olympic gold medal. If Buddy Nix relies on this recent scientific testosterone research, people may laugh at him now. But future generations of Bills fans might be able to look back with pride and say - - we won our first Super Bowl because the Nix Flop technique for drafting and signing players gave us a real competitive advantage!

 

We've just lost 7 games in a row (and counting). Last year it was 8. If the Bills draft and sign players the way they always have, the Bills will get what they have always got. And that's not a pretty picture. What do we have to lose by trying a more scientific approach to filling the roster?

 

 

So after two days you have come back with no new information? You have provided marginal excuses as to why you do not need twenty years of data. Ok then, so what data do you have to measure the character of college atheletes? I am now ready to draft new players. How do I take your theory and apply it? Do I look for criminals? Do I look for the players with the worst police records?

I am a NFL GM, what exactly are you talking about? What am i looking for?

 

I do not disagree with your assertion on what marriage and child rearing does to testosterone levels in men. I have seen that data before.

 

Tell me how to measure "character". That was the premise for your initial post. Your initial thought was to not concentrate on character when drafting players, instead find guys with the highest agression levels and therefore the highest testosterone levels. I still call that bunk!

 

A simple test will tell you what a persons testosterone level is (I don't recall if it is blood or urine test). When did agression equate to successfully making big plays on the field? Can this even be correlated?

 

Where we disagree is that I think you still need to strongly consider the actual atheletic ability and skills of the player along with the character of the person. Will this person listen to his coaches? Will he be a team player? Is he intelligent? Is he reliable? Can we as an organization, trust this person? Never, ever, ever sell trust short. NEVER hire someone you do not trust.

 

Will you trust a man of known low character because his testosterone score is high? That answer is NO.

[Estelle Getty]

go die

 

Don't be such a douche bag

[The Dog]

Wow, talk about too much time on your hands. you probably did this 'research' at work?

[Lenigmusx]

Hadn't thought about it. At first push it seemed like it might be a good idea, because we'd have exact measurements, just like we already do for the 40 yard dash, 3 cone drill, etc, etc.

 

But then I tried to put myself in Buddy's gloves, and got to thinkin' about how he says all the teams are tryin' to rob the same train in the draft. If we asked the folks in Indianapolis to test for testosterone, Belicheat's spy cameras would probably see it somehow, and then he'd start asking questions. When he eventually found the scientific research, we would no longer have a competitive advantage.

 

I think we should keep the science under our hat for now, and draft based on relationship and child-rearing status. Sure we might still miss on a few picks - - there could always be some guy who was secretly in a committed relationship or secretly helping raise his kids but lieing about it to his buddies to be "cool." But it would let us keep our strategy a secret. The Japs didn't tell us they were coming before they bombed Pearl Harbor.

 

Odd looking draft picks might be a dead give away that teams like the Ravens or Cowboys were onto something, but in our case everybody would just laugh and say "same old Bills - - can't draft worth a s**t." When we started winning based on the scientific research, other NFL GMs would eventually figure it out, but at least we'd have a head start.

 

It's a lot like the "Moneyball" situation in baseball. When the Texas Rangers started acquiring players who hit with power, nobody realized the method to their madness, until they started winning more games. Now all the baseball teams do it.

Willis has enough children in Buffalo alone to have his own family football team but I bet it hasn't effected his "T" levels! Think he has as many kids in B-More and Denver? If so, wow dude is prolific! Maybe his child support checks piss him off so much that his "T" level are high. Thus the good season! I don't know maybe we can just get our team on some Floyd Landis "T" patches that go under the NFL radar. Those "T" patches defintely can produce superhuman athletic results and agression anyone who watched that event knows that his performance was not human on a broken hip no less. Yeah get the team on "T" patches during the games that will fix everything! 19-0 in 2012-2013 baby!

Edited December 29, 2011 by Lenigmusx

[Hapless Bills Fan]

The best current thinking in the anemic community is that it's a lepidoptera and flame thing. There's an unproven theory that your coefficient of resistance would rise if you only posted while wearing clothing that had been stored overnight in a cedar-lined closet. Try it. If you don't post in this thread again, we'll know it worked!

 

Crayonz! It's you! Or your one-eyed nekkid luv babby!

 

Try the lemon yellow.