Hello Fantasy Speed Skating Managers,
Stepdad has been through the wringer. After downing a two-four of
Dad’s delicious beer, I blacked out and had a nightmare that I accidentally
dropped Mei Han to pick up Masaya Yamada. Fortunately I’ve since (temporarily) sobered
up and have returned to my favourite pursuit of mishandling basic statistics.
I originally planned on finishing this column in time for Christmas
but, being the deadbeat that I am, I completely missed that deadline. I
subsequently planned to finish the column in time for New Year’s Eve, but I
also missed that deadline.
I’m sure that many fantasy managers have already made new year’s
resolutions. Whether your resolution is to keep better track of other people’s
picks on draft night (Jalen), to avoid horrifying trades (Christian), to stop trying to drop Metodej Jilek for people on Cody's team (Emil), or not to
outsource your team selection to someone else (Tay and Anders), Stepdad is
proud of you for trying to make yourself a better person. For those who haven’t
yet made a resolution and still want to become a better manager in 2024, I’ve
put together a handy list of ways to improve yourself and your fantasy speed
skating team.
Tip 1: Length doesn’t matter
In the draft’s first season, many managers put little effort into
their team names. I won’t call specific people out, but low-effort names like
“Team Leenstra” (Matt), “Team Slutty Men” (Garrett and Connor), and “Pavel is
Clean” (Simon) were particularly disappointing. Since then, more managers have
started to take pride in coming up with clever, witty, or thought-provoking
team names. Deep cuts like “Kulizhnikov Yardcare, Incorporated” (Christian) and
self-aware names like “Bottom of the Pack Victory Lap” (Lindsey) are shining
examples of inspired team names.
However, managers appear not only to be competing on team name
quality, but also on quantity. Specifically, managers have been picking longer
team names on average each season. In the 2018-2019 season, the average team
name was 17.75 characters long. Since then, the average name length has
increased every year to 32.33 characters in the 2023-2024 season. This increase
leads to an obvious question: Are managers lengthening their team names in
hopes that longer names will lead to better results?
To address the effect of team name length on performance, I’ve gone
back to the archives and compared relative team name lengths and final ranking
(or in the case of the 2023-2024 season, current ranking) for each season. To
compare the different seasons, I’ve rescaled each season’s rankings to rank
teams between one and 40 (i.e., the number of teams in the current season). I’ve
fitted a linear trendline to the combined data for all the seasons to see if
there’s a relationship between team name length and team performance. The below
graph shows the total mess that is the results:
The results are unambiguous; despite what Dad may tell you, length
does not matter in fantasy speed skating. Although the line of best fit has a
positive slope, the coefficient of determination of 0.027 implies that team
name length is as good as useless as a predictor of performance. Let this
please be a caution to anyone who tries to top Jonah’s 2022-2023 team, “Équipe
Centre de Glaces Intact Assurance présenter par René Levesque et le Parti
Québecois,” with its unruly 91-character length (not to mention his
disappointing and downright disrespectful invocation of the revered and holy M.
Lévesque, may he rest in peace). Anyways, if your new year’s resolution is to
become a better manager by picking a longer team name in 2024, you probably
need to reconsider your choices in life.
Tip 2: Longer isn’t better, better is better
(and Stepdad knows what’s best)
Team name length is not a good predictor of success, but what about
team name quality? Earlier this season, your Biological Father used Poll of the
Week results to explore popular opinion on this season’s team names. As a first
cut, I compared the number of votes for each team name and current rankings. I’ll
spare you the chart because it looks just list the length vs. performance graph
above, namely that there’s no discernible relationship between the two
variables.
Clearly, the crowd’s wisdom doesn’t reveal which team names will
lead to managerial success. However, the Poll of the Week results only reflect
the
popularity
of each team name. Popularity is not the same as
quality
.
In the spirit of an ethical and impartial researcher, I searched (briefly) for
a more objective way of evaluating team name quality. After carefully
considering the options, I decided that the best way to do this was to rank
this year’s team names based on vibes (i.e., how much I like each name) and
then compare the team name rankings to the league’s current standings. The
results are truly astounding, as shown in the graph below:
Unlike the previous graph, there is an unmistakable relationship
between the two variables. In general, the better that my opinion of a team
name, the better that team performs. Numbers never lie and the rock-solid coefficient
of determination of 0.798 shows that team performance can almost entirely be
predicted by team name quality (as assessed by me, your Stepdad). The takeaway?
If you want your team to do well, ask me to help name your team.
Of course, there are exceptions. Some teams are outperforming their
weak names, such as the uninspired “Let’s go Girls” (Ryan) and “I am a
Belieber” (Greg). Other teams have names much stronger than their performance;
for example “12pm public skaters” (Jalen) and “Jenning de B-group” (Rachel).
Especially notable is “COWS Pei” (Jenna), which, despite its tortured puns, might
be the best team name in the history of fantasy speed skating. Like seriously,
who names their team after an ice cream store? Wild.
Anyways, if your new year’s resolution is to pick a better team
name next year, I can help. For the bargain basement rate of $450/hour, I will
happily provide anyone with team name selection consulting services. Not only
will your team have a great name, but your team is pretty much mathematically
guaranteed to perform better. The price might seem steep, but expertise isn’t
cheap, and the results speak for themselves.
Tip 3: Experience matters
Okay, let’s move on from team names for a minute. Another question
that’s worth exploring is the impact of manager experience on team performance.
In other words, does a grizzled old lunatic like Dad have a better shot of
outperforming a young, aspiring, first-time rookie manager like Bon?
To look into this, made some box and whisker plots. Each
box/whisker set is for a given experience category (i.e., how many previous
seasons a manager has competed in the league). For teams with multiple managers
(e.g., MCV or The Momagers), I used the experience of the most experienced
manager in the team. The boxes show the middle quartiles (i.e., the 25
th
to 75
th
percentiles) and the whiskers show the lower and upper
quartiles. The line in the middle of each box shows the median performance
within each group.
From the graph, it’s clear that experience has played a role in
team success up to this point in the season. In general, more experienced
managers outperform less experienced managers. The lower bound, upper bound,
and median all generally increase in rank with increased experience. I haven’t
confirmed any of the above in a statistically rigorous way because I straight
up don’t know how. As usual, if someone statistically inclined (Emil? Max?)
wants to set me straight, I’d welcome it.
The relationship between experience and performance is more of a
guideline than a hard rule. Thomas, for whatever reason, has an absolutely
terrible team this year and is a disappointing outlier. Eric and Emil, despite
their two years of previous experience, are still bad. Charlotte, despite
competing for only her second year, is currently in third. Peter, despite being
a complete speed skating virgin is somehow in 14
th
place. While not
doing quite as well as Peter, Bon is still performing above the median for
rookie managers at 26
th
place.
Over the previous seasons, managers have come, and gone, and (in
some cases) returned to compete in fantasy speed skating. I worry that some
managers, especially rookies, might resolve to spend time on pursuits more
useful than fantasy speed skating in the new year. However, the results above
show that this would be foolish. Like a fine wine, managers age well with time.
Why quit gambling now when next year will probably be the year that you win
money?
Conclusion
If you made it this far, congratulations on wasting 10 minutes of
your life. If you skipped to the end, here are my recommendations for your
fantasy speed skating new year’s resolutions:
Don’t
resolve
to pick a longer team name; it won’t make you better.
Do
resolve to pick a better team name; it will
make you better.
Do
resolve to keep competing in fantasy speed
skating this year, because you will only improve with time unless you’re Eric
and Emil (or Thomas).
If have any other burning questions about what it takes to win at
fantasy speed skating, please let me know, and I’ll do my best to haphazardly
and inadequately address them in a future column. I wish most of you a joyous
2024 full of friends, family, fast lap times, and reasonably priced beer.
Regards,
Stepdad