12/18/06 Coaches' Corner

[Eaglesfan27]

Acquiring players is important, but just as important is determining how long to keep players. When are they going to start to decline? When are they going to retire? I'm not aware of any definitive studies on this issue, and I've been running some tests over the last few weeks to try to come up with some answers. Of course, there is an element of randomness that is going to preclude any clear answer on any specific player. However, I'm attempting to further clarify some general assumptions I had and try to find some predictors of when a player may be about to retire.

So, I took a look at many universes over a 30 year history. I kept scouts of at least very good level for each of the specific positions I was looking at, and with those positions I randomly sampled 30 players at each position that were rated between 40-50 at their peak, another 30 at each position who were rated between 50-60 at their peak, another 30 at each position who were rated 60-70 at their peak. Finally, I looked at 30 from each position who were rated 70 and above at their peak. Over the next week, I'll be posting all of my findings in the thread that inspired me to look into this further which was Skydog's initial snapshot and specifics on retirement. This thread can be found here:

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=54189