Quote:
Originally Posted by Moonshine
It's kind of funny. I bet if you asked 1000 Colts fans if you would rather see the pats punt the ball to you or go for it that 95% of them would insta beg for the punt
Yet somehow all of sports nation thinks it's a bad play
This post is from a while ago, but I think it illustrates that one of the major flaws in the average person's thinking is with risk aversion:
For the Pats fans, going for it on 4th is atrocious because OMG if you don't make it the colts are probably going to win.
For the Colts fans, they want the Pats to punt because OMG if they go for it and make it they win the game.
The issue is that you're putting a huge part of the win probability of the game into one play which takes place immediately. Because of risk aversion, people on both sides don't want to do that -- they would rather have the risk spread over a larger number of future plays, even if that decreases their win probability. Hence the illogical "BB is gambling recklessly" comments -- folks can't see that it's a gamble either way, since they are incapable of weighing short term risks versus overall win probabilities. So that's how you can have both sets of fans wanting the Pats to punt there, and neither can see the inherent contradiction.
Oh and to everyone complaining about how the mainstream response is tilting them: you do realize that this is why you make money at poker, don't you?