????內特?希爾加盟ESPN有可能改變這一點。

????ESPN無疑是體育界的巨人，它不僅是北美最大的體育電視網絡，同時也是北美最大的新聞和信息公司之一。在新聞和數據收集方面，ESPN的規模是非常大的。這種收集和分析大數據的能力，正是ESPN的下一個競爭優勢。

????內特?希爾可能會在ESPN擔任一個總軍師的角色，他的到來對體育節目來說可能是革命性的。希爾在《紐約時代》（New York Times）工作的時候就是一個預言家，一個品牌，甚至是一個魔術師，他的博客FiveThirtyEight.com對選舉結果的預測準確到令人發指的地步。這就是籠罩在希爾頭上的光環。但是更重要的是，希爾可以利用數據講故事，從而讓我們大受裨益。這就是讓人興奮的地方。

????史蒂芬?D?萊維特的《魔鬼經濟學》（Freakonomics）一書通過微觀和宏觀層面揭示了經濟刺激是如何影響人類行為，從而改變了經濟學門外漢對社會問題的看法。跟它一樣，內特?希爾的博客通過對大數據的剖析揭示了人群的集體行為，而且在政治問題上給出了準確的結果。他能利用數字這根線將數據編成一個連貫的故事，再加上ESPN的資源，使他有了一個改變電視體育節目演播方式的機會。

????隨著我們從一個質的世界進入一個量的世界，隨著棒球經濟學從棒球進入所有主要體育項目，電影《點球成金》（Moneyball）里的那套數據分析法也真的起到了“點球成金”之效。目前體育記者和體育迷們有了兩個新的關注領域：

????——首先，在表現模式方面，現有數據能告訴我們什么。也就是說，球隊的老板、經理、教練、運動員和經紀人們是在何時、何地，如何做出關于人員、合同以及賽前和比賽策略的決策，以及他們是怎樣做出一系列其它管理和訓練決策的。

????——其次，數據怎樣才能直觀地展示出來，告訴我們對于我們喜歡或討厭的球員和球隊來說，決策和球隊表現之間的因果關系到底是怎樣的。

????內特?希爾并不是體育新聞界的比利?比恩（電影《點球成金》里的男主角），事實上發明棒球經濟學的人是比爾?詹姆斯。但是，如果ESPN在節目、愿景和創意上支持希爾的話，他還是大有可為的。為了使花在希爾身上的投資實現最大價值，ESPN不能把希爾當成又一個坐在演播里解釋數據的傳聲筒，而是應該開始考慮設計新的節目價值、元素和活力，以支持希爾擅于講故事的風格。

????Nate Silver's arrival at ESPN (DIS) just might change that.

????ESPN, which doth bestride the sports world like a colossus, isn't just the biggest sports network in North America, it's also one of the continent's largest news and information companies. When it comes to news and data-gathering ESPN has scale—massive scale—and that ability to capture and parse big data is ESPN's next competitive advantage.

????At ESPN Nate Silver is potentially an intellectual leader whose presence could be transformative to sports television. At the New York Times, Silver was a prognosticator and a brand, a conjuror who with his FiveThirtyEight.com blog was scarily accurate in predicting the outcomes of elections. That was the sizzle. But the actual steak is that Silver is able to tell stories we can all dine out on using data. That's what's so exciting.

????Just as Steven D. Levitt's Freakonomics changed the way the lay person—or, at least, the people who write for the layperson—frames social issues by revealing how economic incentives affect human behavior on both micro and macro levels, Nate Silver through FiveThirtyEight.com parsed datasets and analyzed deltas to reveal human behavior in the aggregate and deliver fascinating takes on outcomes in the political world. Silver's ability to use numbers as a thread and weave data throughout a coherent narrative, when coupled with ESPN's resources, gives him the opportunity to transform how sports stories are told on the TV.

????。

????As we move from a qualitative to a quantitative world, as sabermetrics has migrated into all the major sports—and Moneyball has become Moneyballs—there are two new major areas of focus for sports journalists and sports fans:

????--What the available numbers tell us about patterns of performance: How, When, Where and Why do sports executives, managers, coaches, players and agents make their decisions about personnel, contracts, pre-game and in-game strategy, and a host of other coaching and management decisions; and

????--How can the data be visually represented and animated to actually illustrate patterns of cause and effect with regard to the

????decisions and performances of the players and teams that we love and hate, to bring a new dimension to sports coverage.

????Nate Silver isn't the Billy Beane of sports journalism—that honor goes to Bill James, the man who gave birth to sabermetrics—but Silver could be something special if ESPN supports him with production, vision and creativity. To get the most out of their substantial investment in Silver, ESPN needs avoid thinking of him as just some new talking head who requires infographics instead of highlights. Instead, ESPN needs to start thinking up new production values, elements and animations to support Silver's style of storytelling.