What is momentum and how important is it in deciding outcomes?
It has always baffled me that a football team, with 11 players on the field, all with different assignments, can be influenced by a magical “collective energy" that allows them to significantly improve at the same time.
There have been studies that support the idea that momentum is real and affects outcomes and those that show momentum is an imaginary concept. But it's hard to find anyone in sports, either a direct participant or observer, who doesn't use the term to describe certain events.
I would even go as far as to say that most people would know “momentum" when they saw it, even if they wouldn't be able to define it.
But while it seems like momentum is an observable phenomena during the course of a game, is it something that occurs from game to game, or is the baseball maxim "momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher,” a better description of the phenomena?
Most studies in this area have shown that there is no such thing as momentum from game to game in any sport.
Reach the reporter at nick.ruland@asu.edu
