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Welcome to this week’s episode of Hot Takedown, our podcast where the hot sports takes of the week meet the numbers that prove them right or tear them down. On this week’s show (Aug. 18, 2015), we follow up on the soccer metric WhoScored. Last week, we cited it as a reliable metric. This week, we talk about why so many soccer geeks don’t trust it and what it says about the state of soccer analytics. Then ESPN FC analyst Gab Marcotti discusses how he uses stats for a general audience and offers a preview of the new Premier League season. Then we take a look at how RFID tracking could change the NFL. Every player in the league will be wearing a tracking chip this season.
Stream the episode by clicking the play button, or subscribe using one of the podcast clients we’ve linked to above. Below are links to some of the articles we discussed on the show.
- Mike Goodman of Grantland offers a Premier League preview.
- Deadspin questions the usefulness of Expected Goals (ExpG).
- Carl Bialik interviews Bayern Munich’s head of analytics.
- All NFL players are getting RFID chips this season.
- More on all the juicy data we’ll have from each NFL game.
- Significant Digit: 4. Neil Paine found that golfer Jordan Spieth’s majors run this year was the fourth-best of all time.
Video: RFID tracking comes to the NFL
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