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Relative age effects in American professional football

  • Jack F. Heneghan und Michael C. Herron EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 14. Juni 2019
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Abstract

We test for the existence of relative age effects in professional American football. In a sample of 18,898 football players born on or after 1940, there is an excess of January and February births – consistent with a relative age effect associated with calendar year – as well as a slight increase in September births – consistent with the fact that some football players we analyze attended high school in states with fall school cutoff dates. We consider the possibility that relative age effects may affect skilled football positions more than positions relying heavily on player weight, and we find suggestive evidence of this. Lastly, and contrary to what has recently been shown in professional hockey, we find no evidence that misguided preferences for relatively older players lead to selection-based inefficiencies in football player drafting. Our results have implications for evaluating potential football players and speak broadly to the role of physiological factors beyond player control on athletic success.


Corresponding author: Michael C. Herron, Professor of Government and Chair, Program in Quantitative Social Science, Dartmouth College, 6108 Silsby Hall, Hanover, NH 03755-3547, USA
aA.B. in Economics from Dartmouth College, June, 2018, and professional quarterback formerly of the San Francisco 49ers (National Football League) and Arizona Hotshots (Alliance of American Football).

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Jacqueline McInerney for research assistance and Simon Herron, Hollye Swinehart, Andrew Wolff, two anonymous referees, an associate editor of the journal, and the editor of the journal for comments on earlier drafts.

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Article note

This article originated as a Dartmouth College research project in the course Quantitative Social Science 30.01: Sports Analytics. The course project was co-authored by William Chisholm III and Kai Yan in addition to Jack Heneghan.


Published Online: 2019-06-14
Published in Print: 2019-08-27

©2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 18.9.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/jqas-2018-0030/html
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