Should Harbaugh use this strange trick to recruit?
Only recruit kids born in these months per this study and Michigan will Have a better shot of winning more games by having better players. Easy Peasy.
https://www.studyfinds.org/football-players-born-first-quarter-year-more-likely-play-nfl/
That's the "relative age effect" at work. Youth leagues need to set their age cutoff date somewhere - no matter where you put it, some young kids will be a few months older than the peers in their league and thus tend to be slightly better and thus participate in the league more. Which can snowball over time.
Same thing is seen in academia and leadership positions.
The effect for football is a bit less than it is for other sports (most infamously, ice hockey). I'd guess that's because many football players don't even start playing football until junior high, or even high school.
The full paper is here, for those who are interested: https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/jqas.ahead-of-print/jqas-2018-0030/jqas-2018-0030.pdf
I was born 2 days before the cut off. I remember the difference was me being about 60% tile compared to about 90% tile if I could have held off a few days.
One of my HS classmates at De La Salle (Warren, MI) - he was born right before the cutoff.
He was a pretty smart guy, but his Dad deliberately had him repeat 6th Grade so that he would gain an athletic advantage down the road.
Still seems kind of weird in retrospect (as I said, he wasn't dumb). But it did work. He was a starting QB for Penn (Ivy League) for a couple years, and he's doing pretty well now.
I never get that though, I doubt the correlation is anything more than the kids who have more early success stick with it more often. I had a friend do the same thing and now he’s working construction because he didn’t get any scholarship offers when the time came. Admittedly he didn’t have the academics because he sacrificed that as well but still, not a smart idea IMO.
I think it's more than correlation. Kids who are slightly better than everyone get slightly more attention and encouragement from coaches, which makes them slightly less likely to quit. Over time this compounds assuming that they are actually talented (unlike your friend).
I've seen this many times with my daughter. She's always been the best gymnast on her team and she always gets a little extra help here and there. Interestingly, she was born in Febuary.
It’s because success breeds confidence, and confidence breeds success. If you’re a parent you find a way to foster any talent that your child has and put them in a position to be one of the best at that one thing, no matter what it is. Success in anything has a positive carry over impact to other parts of one’s life.
This effect was discussed in the first chapter of Outliers (in relation to Canadian hockey players).
I was going to say that. What months were all of Beilein's recruits born in?
Almost all of Beileins draft picks/early entrees were born in different months spread throughout the year.
title reads like one of those cheesy ads at the bottom of internet articles:
'what harbaugh did next will blow your mind!'
'these 3 simple tricks will win it all for the maize and blue!'
'one OP would change this mgoblogger's life forever!'
You'll never believe it!
Wut???
"see the top four reasons this mgoboard post is.a waste of bandwidth!"
(kidding)
Read this list. You won't believe number 11!
And by "list" we mean shitty slideshow full of ads!
Is it profitable to put up slideshows and lace them with ads? It must be, since people still do it, right? Maybe I should start making some lists, I desperately need a side hustle without the hustle
"Harbaugh uses this clever trick to land recruits. Other coaches HATE HIM for it!"
Wait, that one's true
"farm living is the life for me!"
Oh. Wait....
cutting hay today, smart aleck. that can be a lot like work.
....while the sun shines!
exactly. we've had tons of rain up here but this looks about as good as could be asked for this week. cut it today and bail on friday or saturday. at least, that's the plan...
Isolated showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 55. Calm wind. Chance of precipitation is 20%.
Wednesday
A chance of showers, with thunderstorms also possible after 2pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 69. Calm wind becoming north around 5 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Wednesday Night
Mostly cloudy, with a low around 52. Northeast wind around 5 mph.
Thursday
Partly sunny, with a high near 72. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph.
Thursday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 52.
Friday
Mostly sunny, with a high near 72.
Friday Night
A chance of showers after 2am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 55.
Saturday
A chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 73.
Saturday Night
Showers likely, mainly before 2am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 58.
Try this simple trick if your hay is limp and wet.
hay envy.....
What is bail set at for a bale of hay?
This simple trick will make you 30% better
"Wife opens new husband's closet, immediately calls the cops".
I was disappointed there weren't 20 more pages for me, with increasing disgust, to keep giving mgoblog clicks.
Just this once, the comments should be a slideshow.
Two thumbs up for all the posters with hypothetical internet ads. This post was a huge waste of time but was saved by some pretty clever stuff that actually got me laughing at one point. Why I read mgoblog: even when there is no news, the posters can be pretty damn funny.
downvoted him for the shitty title
"Harbaugh won't recruit players who prefer canned gravy!"
Strategy would be a better word.
....or a WolverinesWire headline
Edit to add I like Isaiah and forgive the occasional Buzzfeed circa 2010 titles and mostly forgive the endless next page clicking (10 players to watch = hitting next page nine times).
"Click here to see Harbaugh's newest crazy thing. You won't believe your eyes!"
Someone call the Patriots! That Brady fella is useless because he was born in August!!
That just means Brady was 18 before he started his high school senior year. I used to live in Texas and holding back boys for sports is a cancer. It’s not as prevalent in Michigan but when I lived in Texas most boys born after March are held back.
yep, these days the age cut offs are Jan 1 so your age for 12-U ball is age 12 or under on 1/1 for that year.
My daughter is Jan 15 so she turned 13 two weeks after the cut and has been 13 for 5 months playing 12u softball. She's literally the oldest player on the field in every game by 3-4 months in many cases.
My son is the opposite - he's a thanksgiving Bday so turns age 10 5 weeks before 1/1 making him the youngest kid in his age group in his 1st year and probably 18months younger than many/most of the best players. even in his 2nd year of 10u this year, he's only older than at best half the kids.
It's a combination of maturity (meaning coachability - can listen, synthesize and do what the coaches tell them - ie, dont repeat mistakes/ is mindful) and physically having the time to a) take the extra reps and b) grow stronger.
Aug-Dec Bdays have a pretty big disadvantage- I know Beilein would look at under the radar prosspects and their Bdays - if they were young for their class, they've been playing against older kids their whole life - so if they RS and/or get coached up, by the time they are JRs, SRs in college they explode playinga aginst younger players for the 1st time in their lives
Your explanation in the fourth paragraph is correct as far as the initial reason for the older kids being better, but I think Outliers posits that the effect gets snowballed as the better kids are sorted into more and more advanced leagues, leaving the younger athletes behind.
Lesson I learned is start your kid a year later if born after May/June. Even if not an athlete, it helps with confidence in the classroom.
our thoughts with a Nov boy were to put him in as a younger kids b/c 1) his preschool teachers said he was ready academically (had we waited he could be bored and thus more distractable), 2) we could always hold him back in Kgarden or 1st grade (too hard to push him ahead has we waited).
Down side is definitely confidence, maturity and ability to get involved in sports. Unless you are a die hard 10,000 hr/outlier person who is training in a single sport from day one or have a top 1-3% athlete, the late Bdays are rough to deal with at a young age.
Wut?
Hail no!
Lemon squeezy, of course.
Or, in the words of our favorite old timer at Shawshank, Brooks: “ easy peasy, Japan-easy”
I want Harbaugh to do the trick where he beats Ohio State and wins a Big Ten title. Is that in there somewhere?
That would be a neat trick
Do they teach writing Click Bait titles in schools now? This is ridiculous. You're not generating ad revenue off clicks on your thread. And out of pure revulsion for the title, I didn't bother to read the content of the OP or click on your likely malware-infested link.
Maybe he should just skip right to this trick:
well that might be the most buzzfeed/linkbaity title I've seen around here in a while. I am curious to know your one simple trick to reduce belly fat, if you've got that kicking around as well
My two oldest are going to be in the NFL! Just kidding, they play hockey and baseball.