Tell Your Statistics to Shut Up!

In 1905, legendary football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg once proclaimed prior to taking the field before a game, that “statistics are for losers.” That durable axiom has since survived for more than a century and oft repeated since then.

Personally, I have never been a huge statistical groupie because people can often be blinded by impressive numbers.

For example, take the ad nauseum quarterback passer rating.

When it first debuted in 1973 it employed a complex formula ranging in scale from 0 to 158.3 to judge quarterbacks in four categories - completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdowns per attempt and interceptions per attempt.

But that can be deceiving. For example, mediocre back-ups like Bubby Brister and Gus Frerotte each have higher QB passer ratings than Hall of Famers Joe Namath and Johnny Unitas.

Think about that for a second.

Now with the pro football draft roughly three plus months away, you will hear a lot of regurgitation and dizzying quantities of statistical analyses on potential first and second round picks.

But those who follow sports closely, I’m sure can run off a list of sure-fire superstar draft choices that turned out to be nothing short of dud grenades when they got to the professional level.

And I have witnessed on numerous occasions the same logic applied to college academic performance or professional standings and often with the same disappointing results.

Someone once confided in me, that sadly, some of the dumbest people he’d ever met in his life were doctors.

Or as it occasionally happens in my case, accountants.

One seller firm that we took on not too long ago, insisted that any potential successor practice had to be run by a managing partner or CEO with a degree from an Ivy League college. It seemed like an absurd demand, since many of the most successful firms in the territories I managed were run often by folks who came from limited family means and slugged it out in state or city colleges.

An Ivy League diploma in my opinion guarantees one thing – an inordinate number of requests for donations after graduation.

Sometime later I fielded one of the many calls we receive each year asking us if we know of any young CPAs wanting to change jobs. The firm owner added that it would be great if said candidate not only had an accounting degree but an MBA from a prestigious institution like Wharton. My guess is that a pedigree like that would serve to burnish the “about us” section on his website.

I wish these were outliers, but that scenario has played out far too many times in my experience to earn that designation. It’s the execution on the field/office that should serve as the official barometer.

When it comes to statistics or heralded academic achievements, I will always defer to the disclaimer on a securities prospectus, “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

And that includes the passer rating.