The mathematics of play-calling

University of Richmond football coaches spend their days analyzing Montana video.

Perhaps they should just call Lawrence Sidbury.

Last school year, UR's senior defensive end developed a computer system that predicts plays based on past play-calling in comparable circumstances. The research project was part of Sidbury's computer science major. He received an A for his project.

"Certainly well-deserved," said John R. Hubbard, a professor in UR's department of math and computer science. Hubbard taught the class on data mining that included Sidbury's computer system.

Sidbury, of Cheltenham, Md., presented the project this past spring at UR's annual Undergraduate Symposium.

"The fact that I got to mix football and school was pretty good because rarely do you get to do that at our school," said Sidbury, who was named to the all-Colonial Athletic Association first team.

The UR captain also has worked as a geometry tutor for Tsquared Tutors, a Richmond-based company that provides supplemental instruction to students from area schools.

Sidbury, who will lead the Spiders against Montana on Friday night in the Football Championship Subdivision title game, began the computer project by inputting all of UR's play calls on offense from the 2005 and 2006 seasons. Data was then separated based on down-and-distance, weather, score, field position and other factors.

For his presentation at the symposium, Sidbury desired a deeper database, so he used randomly generated play calls rather than actual play calls from UR's 2005 and 2006 seasons. That "provided a wider range of correlation to demonstrate the project," Hubbard said.

Sidbury completed his computer science major and has a minor in mathematics. He said he intends to leave the prognostication of plays to the UR staff because his computer program "still has a few kinks to work out. I guess I can say that I really haven't used it to try and predict what [an actual team is] going to try to do."

That could be possible, in real time, according to Hubbard. Say James Madison is playing UR next year and the Spiders' defensive coaches in the press box had access to a computer program similar to the one designed by Sidbury. Richmond's coaches could, conceivably, be able to set up a between-snaps defensive strategy based on the play calls of JMU offensive coordinator Jeff Durden in similar situations during his previous five seasons at Madison.

"It stretches the current technology, but it's certainly imaginable," Hubbard said.

Of course, college offensive plans often change significantly from season to season, depending on personnel and other factors, even when the offensive coordinator doesn't change. And high-quality OCs are valued for their unpredictability.
Contact John O'Connor at (804) 649-6233 or .