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February 19, 2016Indians agree to terms with 3B Juan Uribe
February 19, 2016The Cleveland Browns limped through another dismal season in 2015-16, finishing with a ghastly 3-13 record “good” enough to “earn” them the second overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft. After their season terminated on January 3 with a loss to the hated Pittsburgh Steelers, it took only a few hours for owner Jimmy Haslam press the detonate button and blow the whole thing up to start over again. Haslam had fired coach Mike Pettine and general manager Ray Farmer by the evening.
Despite the wishes of Northeast Ohioans, creating a functional franchise isn’t as easy as hitting the “RESET” button, blowing on a cartridge, and flipping a switch1 — this isn’t a game of Mario Kart, it’s an aspiring football team. For the Browns, this is a rebuild, a rebrand, a reboot. I joked after the dismissal of Pettine and Farmer that they should hire J.J. Abrams to fix the Browns. If the man could restore a once-proud franchise dumb enough to cast Jar-Jar Binks, maybe he could restore a once-proud franchise dumb enough to draft Johnny Manziel.
The Browns’ first deviation from “Building a Stable NFL Franchise for Dummies” was the hire of “chief strategy officer” Paul DePodesta — a baseball executive who earned an economics degree from Harvard. Sashi Brown, promoted from within the organization, would assist him and help craft the 53-man roster. Brown, a lawyer, got his law degree from Harvard. Not long after, the Browns hired Andrew Berry, pro scouting coordinator for the Indianapolis Colts, as the closest thing the team has to a general manager. Berry? Graduated from Harvard. Noticing a pattern here? The Cleveland Crimsons (I mean Browns) are now effectively being run by three fellas with a degree from Harvard.
Some fun facts about Harvard University:2 The Massachusetts state legislature established Harvard in 1636, making it the oldest institution of “higher learning” (not the Willie Nelson Variety) in the United States. The Harvard University main campus is in Cambridge, Massachusetts (so named for another institution of some renown), located in Middlesex County, making it the most intentionally pompous-sounding places in America. Its Wikipedia page boasts, “Harvard’s alumni include eight U.S. presidents, several foreign heads of state, 62 living billionaires, 335 Rhodes Scholars, and 242 Marshall Scholars.” Harvard’s also continually considered one of the best universities in the world, if not the best. Virtually the only thing Harvard has in common with Cleveland is that its football team also shares its name with a color.3 DePodesta, Brown, and Berry entered college as likely to win a Nobel prize as they were to run the Cleveland Browns.
It’s easy to see Haslam’s path of logic in assembling Harvard Jr. in Berea. Harvard is one of the best universities in the world; to attend and graduate from Harvard takes great intelligence; intelligent people are adept at analyzing situations, making prudent decisions, and running organizations; the Browns need sound decisions and good management; therefore, the Browns should hire some people from Harvard.
Put another way: get smart people, get more wins. But there are pitfalls and risks to such a strategy — otherwise every job interview would begin and end with the applicant’s SAT score.
The first and most obvious concern is that smart guys, boy geniuses, and outsiders don’t know anything about football. Paul DePodesta has an economics degree, Sashi Brown is a lawyer by trade, and Andrew Berry earned a master’s degree in computer science. It sounds like the start of a bad joke: “So a baseball executive, a lawyer, and a computer scientist walk into an NFL front office… .” Are there enough traditional football minds in the front office who know how the league works, what to look for in young talent, how to assemble a roster, and how to manage a team? These new hires aren’t “football guys!”
Another risk is that Haslam is mistaking intellect for job qualification. Perhaps DePodesta’s talent with data and approach to problem-solving is specially suited to baseball. Conventional wisdom in the NFL (often from the aforementioned “football guys”) has been that football’s too complex and dynamic, defying the type of data analysis that revolutionized baseball. I’ve met my fair share of lawyers who can succinctly explain the Supreme Court’s rationale in International Shoe but don’t know what 2+3 equals without a calculator, and even that requires a spotter.
In addition to the eight presidents who attended Harvard, there have been three Princeton-ites, three Columbia-ns, and five Yalies including Dubya. Nary an ITT Tech grad of the bunch! The highest levels of our government have been infiltrated by Ivy League graduates in both parties, The top three schools in Congress (by the number of bachelor’s degrees earned by members) are Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, and I wouldn’t let Congress run a Chick-fil-A. Similarly, just because an engineer at NASA can put a Roomba on Mars doesn’t mean he knows anything about finding an All-Pro linebacker in the third round.
This hubris of supposedly smart people is at the heart of the documentary about the collapse of Enron, aptly titled, The Smartest Guys in the Room.4 The 2008 financial crisis was precipitated by a large collection of some of the “smartest” people the world has ever seen. Find me an epic blunder in world history, and I’ll find you a smart person who thought he or she was beyond fault, who fucked up tremendously.
Just because an engineer at NASA can put a Roomba on Mars doesn’t mean he knows anything about finding an All-Pro linebacker in the third round.
Just because an engineer at NASA can put a Roomba on Mars doesn’t mean he knows anything about finding an All-Pro linebacker in the third round.
The other risk with people who attended prestigious universities is dogma. The attendees of our nation’s most esteemed institutions are trained to subscribe to certain ideas; to believe that society and business, like the physical universe, are governed by a set of concrete principles. If the Theory of Relativity’s good enough to explain space and time, surely supply and demand can fully explain something as simple as the economy, originalism can be used to interpret laws written two hundred years ago, and a set of staunch principles can help you win at something as simple as pigskin-ball. This mindset is fostered by academia, where a student is expected to adopt and defend a view, and a professor is expected to build a body of scholarship around one. The same criticisms can be said about “system” coaches unable to adapt a style that makes use of unique skills on a roster.
For instance, conventional wisdom in the NFL is that a team can’t compete without an elite (and usually high-drafted) quarterback. Meanwhile, the Denver Broncos just quacked their way to a Super Bowl with Peyton Manning throwing dead ducks right and left. The Broncos scored one offensive touchdown in the Super Bowl, and their starting quarterback threw for 104 pass yards. If given the opportunity to draft the next Peyton Manning (a first overall pick) or the next Von Miller (a second overall pick), the Football Bible says to take Manning ten out of ten times. If Joey Bosa isn’t selected by the Tennessee Titans, how will the Browns confront the Bosa vs. Jared Goff or Paxton Lynch or Christian Hackenburg (just kidding) conundrum? While missing on Bosa (however unlikely) has only the sunk cost of a top-two pick, whiffing on a quarterback plunges the franchise into another five-year cycle of shame.
With dogma comes the problem of ideological diversity. The Supreme Court is currently composed of four Harvard law graduates, three Yale law graduates, and one Columbia law graduate. The recently deceased Antonin Scalia was also a Harvard law grad. The justices may have some serious differences of opinion from time to time, but I doubt anyone’s pitching any radical ideas during their discussions — not like the half-baked ideas of those Berkeley grads!
It’s fair to ask whether that’s an effective way to govern. Who’s in the room to ask, “Hey, why are we doing it this way? Are we sure that’s right?” Similarly, will anyone in Browns organization be a voice of dissent or the unconventional opinion among the brain trust? Or will DePodesta, Berry, Brown, see eye-to-eye on everything? Perhaps coach Hue Jackson can fill that role — or perhaps DePodesta, Brown, and Berry will have drastically different ideas on running a team.
Finally, there’s the perception that intellectuals disregard intangibles and emotion — relying on analytical models or objective facts to make cool and calculated decisions. Both an example of how this can work and fail is the Houston Rockets: a mishmash collection of assets helped the Rockets make the Western Conference Finals last year; but a roster composed with no apparent regard for chemistry is currently puttering along in ninth place of the conference after its two best best players tried to trade each other, and the team disintegrated after an overweight James Harden showed up to camp. The Indians may fit this category as well. Simply put, many fans are unwilling to trust the fate of their team to a spreadsheet.
Plus, smart people are always waffling; being indecisive and waiting for “facts” or “evidence.” I want a man of action and I want it yesterday! Think Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven meets Maverick from Top Gun. “That’s the type of general manager I want!” said the angry fan.
Now that I’ve successfully and lazily profiled all intellectuals, in particular those with an Ivy League education, here’s the part where I gracefully (not so much) and predictably (very much so) pivot and pretend that the Browns will avoid all these hazards of genius. Quotes by and about DePodesta, Berry, and (to a smaller degree) Brown, suggest that Haslam’s Harvard-fication of the Browns avoids the landmines posed by Ivy League matriculation such as a lack of of familiarity with the NFL, arrogance, ideology, and detachment.
Instead, Berry attributes his academic success — he was in the top five percent of his class and a finalist for the “Academic Heisman” — to “starting things early and knowing my priorities.” Sure thing, Berry. I knew my priorities in college too; that didn’t mean I was going to open my chemistry book when there were six episodes of The Wire that needed rewatching. Anyway, Berry earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in computer science in just four years, an affront to slackers all over America.
Berry credits his parents for instilling him the values needed to succeed on and off the field. “Remember that as much as you have been blessed,’” Berry said his parents told him, “if you have that opportunity you should take that opportunity to be a blessing to someone else.” Berry obliged them, volunteering and tutoring at urban and after-school programs. It’s like Berry doesn’t even know he went to Harvard, or that he’s supposed to act like the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network! Damn jerks who aren’t jerks.
One would presume that this econo-computer-scientist-do-gooder would be all “what’s a football and please stop jamming me in this trash can!” Nope. Berry was a two-time All-American cornerback with 125 tackles at only six-feet, 175 pounds.
Berry, who interned at Goldman Sachs and was welcome to return, easily could have pursued a career of villainy and world domination. But instead he stuck with football because that’s where his passion was and he wanted to have a personal effect on people’s lives, rather than follow some empty pursuit like winning a Nobel Prize or being a CEO.5 With the Browns, Berry will have the opportunity to impact a trove of young men and the morale of an entire region.
If Berry didn’t dash all your pre-conceived notions about entitled Harvard elites, then leave it to Paul DePodesta to eliminate the rest. Mike Vorkunov at Vice Sports went into great detail on DePodesta’s professional background and unusual practices. DePodesta, despite having the stereotypical internship on The Hill during college, would bristle at the suggestion that he’s a Harvard ideologue pushing some crackpot theories.
While interning for one of President H.W. Bush’s deputy assistants Jim Pinkerton, DePodesta read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, which argues that “world views are displaced every so often during scientific revolutions, creating new paradigms in their place.” Since then, DePodesta has been fixated on disposing of persistent bad ideas and creating new and improved ones.
DePodesta’s an avid reader and dilettante who learns as much as he can about other industries and applies those lessons to sports, something he and Billy Beane did with the A’s and are fictionally portrayed as doing in Moneyball. The key to DePodesta’s philosophy is “in looking at the status quo through critical eyes and discarding conventional wisdom,” in asking, “If we weren’t already doing it this way, do you think this is the way we would do it?”
Put another way, DePodesta’s core philosophy is having no enduring philosophy. DePodesta’s infatuation with “continuous learning” and desire “‘to get the best ideas and information moving within an organization and then have them flowing freely’”6 suggest that DePodesta would view dissent as an opportunity to learn, not a nuisance to be suppressed or ignored. Instead of drowning all problems with the same “secret sauce,”7 DePodesta is looking for the right condiment to pair with each problem. If he’s an ideologue, it’s of what I would call “aggressive pragmatism,” which defies the reputation of bookish, academic types.
Put another way, DePodesta’s core philosophy is having no enduring philosophy.
Put another way, DePodesta’s core philosophy is having no enduring philosophy.
Like Berry, DePodesta played football at Harvard, so he’s not unfamiliar with the game. Even though he had an unremarkable and stat-less career as a receiver, he wanted to be a coach upon graduating. Now he has a chance to return to his initial love with the lessons he learned from baseball, his inventive worldview perhaps still motivated in part by a “deep-seated fear of getting pancaked by somebody.”
Meanwhile, Sashi Brown is a lawyer who used gets his kicks with “employment matters, insurance and risk management, intellectual property and licensing issues and litigation management,” and who Haslam complimented as “very strategic … [and] good at systems and processes and an outstanding team player.” How many decision-makers the Browns need to improve their decision-making is unclear; but given their recent history it can’t hurt to have a few more than in the past.
Said Haslam: “That’s something that we have to get right and we think this set-up with somebody with a background in systems, processes, analytics and very strategic married up with a football person, if you will, who is very good at talent evaluation will hopefully put us in a position to win a lot more games than we have in the past.” And so the Browns became the grand experiment in (thinking) style over (football) substance and the “highest-profile test case of analytics in the NFL.”
This has all been a roundabout way of pointing out that what the Browns are attempting isn’t without risks, but that a thorough examination of the backgrounds of Berry, DePodesta, and Brown indicate that many of the expected risks don’t apply to them. Berry’s a young, energetic go-getter whose humility appears to be his greatest asset. DePodesta is a creative pragmatist excited to learn and find new ways to reinvent football. Brown’s a lawyer who’s real talent is operations.
The way the Browns have reinvented their front office with intelligent outsiders is different at the least and subversive at the most. There are a lot of folks in the football establishment and the platoons of “football people” who waited in line for a chance to run a team, and who want to see the Browns fail because the Browns picked outside of it.
But you know what’s an even bigger risk than hiring smart outsiders? Continuing to hire stupid insiders.
But you know what’s an even bigger risk than hiring smart outsiders? Continuing to hire stupid insiders.
Even more so, I want Browns fans to brace themselves for the inevitable avalanche of criticism if the team starts 1-3 that a bunch of “nerds” or “Ivy Leaguers” or “douchebags” are running the team. If the experiment progresses slowly,8 the implication from the snark-industrial complex will be that DePodesta, Brown, and Berry don’t know how to run a football team because they don’t strap up their chinstrap or rub some dirt on it or think with their gut or drink cheap whiskey or belch or eat at Red Lobster or act like a blue collar slob like the rest of us. That will be the refrain from Cleveland to Kraków, and it will be endless until the team starts winning consistently.
But you know what’s an even bigger risk than hiring smart outsiders? Continuing to hire stupid insiders. Hiring stupid insiders can’t even be classified as a “risk,” because that would imply that there’s only a probability of failure — when failure is inevitable.
The new Browns are putting the “brain” in “brain trust.” Recruiting a pool of smart outsiders to run the team is one of the most innovative things the Browns have done in some time. Innovative doesn’t always mean successful, but after the Browns have long been on the cutting edge of losing for so long, I’m happy to embrace innovation in the face of uncertainty.
- That reference made absolutely no sense to anyone under the age of 20. [↩]
- Most of which are from Wikipedia because, you know, laziness. [↩]
- Crimson. [↩]
- A line from the trailer: “The fatal flaw[s] at Enron [were] pride, arrogance, intolerance.” [↩]
- “Quite honestly, next year, when I graduate, who’s going to remember Andrew Berry? If not next year, five years down the line. Who can name the last five Nobel Prize winners? Or even five CEOs of companies? It’s the people who have a personal effect on your life, those are the people you’ll remember. … I want to be able to have an impact on where I’m needed. I know that’s very vague, but once again I think that’s something where God will guide me according to his will.” [↩]
- Quote from Josh Byrnes, senior VP of baseball operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who worked with DePodesta with the Dodgers. [↩]
- Credit to Byrnes on the secret sauce analogy, which he used in the Vice article. [↩]
- And, given that the team was 3-13 last season, it most certainly will. [↩]
17 Comments
Well, they’ve consistently been too dumb for their own good, so I’m will to give this shot.
Basically.
I think that a lot of the hesitation surrounding the hiring of “non-football guys,” stems largely from the romanticism with which we all view sports. When we think of scouts, how often to we envision the grizzled old man, wearing a ball cap, and smoking a cigarette, who finds the great undiscovered talent in some backwater town in Alabama? All the time, right?
That, right there, is a lifer! I’ll place my trust in him and his instincts to discover athletic talent.
But what is he doing, really? He’s watching a game and guessing that a guy is pretty good based on a set of criteria he has developed over the years. Literally and figuratively, it isn’t rocket science. We often view it as such because of the inflated way we discuss and remember sports.
This isn’t to suggest that old grizzled scout and fantasy football kid are one in the same. But grizzled vet’s skill set is one that can be learned by nearly anyone who has time and opportunity.
Sashi Brown, et al. are not what we imagine “football guy” should look like. But Brown has been working in the NFL for 11 years. He wasn’t locked in a closet pushing buttons on a calculator that whole time.
I know I keep harping on this, but the ability to say “this guy is good at sports, but that guy not so much” is not some god-given gift. Neither is it a skill that can only be honed over decades of slaving away at high school games in the summer heat.
Civil procedure was miserable. I hated International Shoe.
“Football guys” are overrated. It sucks that smart people are often the subject of scorn instead of being appreciated for being smart.
But think of all the awful “long arm” jokes it has spawned!
http://www.samahope.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/crowd-goes-wild.gif
I’m always troubled by an attitude that side-eyes smart people. So, that said, I don’t trust the general public. Bringing in smart people, provided they have an open mindset, will yield some really intelligent ideas. I don’t think that can hurt much.
Intelligence and decision-making are two different skills
Amen. I know some smart folks…and not every one has equally great analytical skills.
Go to the casino there’s always a few youngbloods at the hold em tables that can run the pot odds and # of outs sooooooo fast during poker but they cant win the tournaments.
I dont think you can be too smart. These people can get analysis paralysis as we say. But I will always work from a position of information first.
This discussion is too intellectual for football, which, after all, is just a game. Who knows what will happen with the Browns? Wait, yes we do – the best indicator of the future is the past. (Disclaimer – I am the father of a Harvard MBA.)
So I guess the Browns should hire dumb people.
CB – I know some not so smart guys that do not have great analytical skills either.
I saw a lot of wasted words in that article. I read some of them and some were a waste of my time. Let the smart guys do there thing and lets see what happens. It cannot be any worse than what has been going on i with the Browns for ever it seems like.
Don’t care for your writing…it’s pretentious…you’re mocking people’s intelligence while you point to yourself as being the smartest guy in the room….bravo! Genius…
You have heared the term – Educated Idiot. Well this might apply with
The Browns unless they collaborate with someone who knows a player by the football physical and mental abilities he possesses. Someone who is a proven assessor of skills. Analytics involves using stats and figures to justify your choices. Numbers can be used to justify any result you wish to see on paper. Numbers are manipulated all the time to justify bad choices.I prefer to rely professional experience rather than numbers.Anyway, it is not going to take long before we see their genius handiwork. Sign Mack.
Kyle are you negative just because you didn’t go to Harvard? Come on! The good old boys haven’t fixed the Browns for the last 19 years, so lets see if a smarter front office works!