By Steve Sailer
02/25/2012
From The Onion:
"Great Team Chemistry No Match For Great Team Biology"
Despite college basketball analysts' frequent remarks that the team exhibits "great chemistry," the Texas A&M Aggies were edged out Wednesday night 66-58 by the No. 4-ranked Kansas Jayhawks, who apparently have great team biology.
Sports differ markedly in how easy it is to predict professional success, with basketball being the easiest, probably because height is so important and obvious. The NBA used to conduct a seven round draft, but bored teams would purposely fritter away later-round choices on random tall people, celebrities, and women. So, the NBA switched to only two rounds. Even so, the number of undrafted players to achieve stardom is low. The best undrafted player ever is probably defensive specialist Ben Wallace, followed by Brad Miller and John Starks and a surprisingly short list of other star players.
When you think about it, basketball’s kind of a stupid sport because it gives such an advantage to height, which is a randomly genetic attribute, not an earned virtue.
Have any new team sports been invented in the last generation? We've got a bunch of new individual sports, most of them X Games stuff, like snowboard cross, that are pretty cool, but are any new team sports emerging?
In contrast, baseball’s draft goes on forever. Mike Piazza was picked in the 62nd round.
In the NFL, famous undrafted players include Kurt Warner, Wes Welker, Warren Moon, and Jeff Garcia.
In golf, the creation of the Senior Tour for 50+ players led to a small number of senior stars emerging who had never had any success on the regular Tour. One had lived in his car for years, working on his swing.
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