High Tech Soccer

I got talking with one of the other parents on my daughter’s team at practice last night. To be honest I had always pretty much ignored this dude in the past because I thought he was such a geek, but it seems I may have been wrong. He tells me his is working on something called a ‘software algorithm’ that allows him to play out youth soccer games on his computer with a 98.7% accuracy rating! How cool is that? At this point I was so taken with the fellow that I invited him back to my place to discuss it further, but he said something about a re-run of episode 7 season 4 of Star Trek TNG being on cable that he had to see.

But anyway, his computer program considers all the relevant factors. For example, if a team is able to recruit players from a team that finished higher than them last season they should obviously improve right? The guy uses these transfers to generate a factor which he calls Poaching Pointers in his program. He also uses something called the Dick Factor to account for what he calls the A-Hole Ratio in the coach’s approach to the game. These two items are then multiplied by a figure called the Payment Expectation Factor which relates to how much money the parents are prepared to invest in the team. This sum is then subtracted from the number of kids on the team who are in therapy and applied to the game itself being played on the Reality Distortion Field, which must be that new soccer complex over in Macomb County.

For state of the art parents like me this type of tool is going to be essential in the future. Some other poor deluded parent on the team suggested we could just let the kids play the games and see what happens, but where’s the fun in that?