Your a coach of a high school football team. It's fourth quarter, and your trailing behind your opponent in score. You have the ball at your opponents 40, but it's fourth down and long. Should you punt or go for it? Well, some statistics would encourage you to go for it.
James Kwak of the Baseline Scenario blog shares with us these two links (including one which David Romer of UC-Berkeley wrote) that discuss some statistics and the game theory behind the scenario above. The bottomline is: never punt the ball. Well, at least for the most part. It's funny because in playing Madden in Playstation, I never like to punt. Most of the time, I go for it at fourth down. I don't know if it's just my preference or some kind of intuition, but lo and behold, there's some statistical facts that would back up such strategy.
Very interesting. Not so for punters.
On a slightly unrelated note, for what would be the last Arch Rivalry game in the near future, Mizzou beat Illinois 37-9 last Saturday, September 5. Mizzou won the last Arch Rivalry game. With star players such as Chase Daniel and Jeremy Maclin already in NFL, Illinois is expected to have a chance at winning the series after they lost to Mizzou in the last four games. Unfortunately for them, new quarterback Blaine Gabbert was excellent and helped the Mizzou team notch a fifth win. Well, they didn't employ the no-punt strategy, but then again, I don't think they need it either.