IU researcher designs football strategy device

Fans grumbling in protest after a bad play is a common occurrence in any bar or stadium during football season. Almost every football enthusiast has his or her own opinion about what the coach should have done in a certain play. Now, however, NFL teams may have a new way to decrease error in plays and make fans happy.\nSenior scientist Charles Bower from the IU physics department and partner Frank Frigo of Louisville have created ZEUS, an "off-the-shelf laptop" that simulates different conclusions to football games based on the decisions made during plays, according to a press release. It's designed to help football coaches make quick play decisions during games.\nFrigo makes a career in commodity markets and has even held the number one international ranking in backgammon.\nIn fact, Bower met Frigo over a game of backgammon; both are enthusiasts of the game. Bower said he made the connection between the all-or-nothing chance that both football and backgammon games involve.\nThe two began designing a tool that would help football coaches make that all-or-nothing decision based on statistical data, rather than a playbook.\nBefore starting the project in 2001, both Bower and Frigo conducted extensive research concerning NFL game logs, statistics from hundreds of games and common traits of coaches and players.\nThe program was completed in 2004. ZEUS implements all the data Bower and Frigo collected and is able to simulate more than 1,000,000 plays in a number of seconds. \nBower provided an example of a play in which ZEUS can be applied to help a coach make a decision based on solid statistical data. A coach weighs the outcome of a crucial decision during a play and has to consider the consequences. For example, at fourth down and a few yards, should the team punt the ball or go for the first down? This tool allows the coach to see what the chances of success of each decision are.\nZEUS can help predict what the team will gain or lose from the number of decisions available to the coach at that point in the game.\n"In many cases, a coach will call a time out in the middle of a play to decide what action to take," Bower said. "You even see the head coach huddle together with the other coaches and players in order to discuss what to do. ZEUS can simulate the possible outcomes of any plan of action unique to that play in a matter of seconds and provide the best choice, which would save an important timeout."\nBower and Frigo have combined their efforts to create a company called EndGame Technologies, LLC. The key aim of the company is to provide profession sports with top "Game Theory" methods.\nA third partner in the project is Bo Durickovic of Austin, Texas. Durickovic makes a career in software development and marketing.\n"Bo is a marketing negotiator," Bower said. "He and Frank prepare the presentations and bring in the business aspect to the project."\nThe three partners have a Web site called www.pigskinrevolution.com. The site explains the purpose of ZEUS as well as analysis and commentary on a number of NFL games.\nBower and Frigo have marketed the tool to eight major league football teams and have received positive interest, but no contracts have been made yet. Bower would not disclose a selling price at this time.\n"We've enhanced ZEUS over the past couple years and are still making improvements," Bower said.