NFL Draft Databases
April 11th, 2008 | Published in Data, Sports, django | 6 Comments
Update: a bug in the search form pointed out by Joe Weiss has been fixed. Thanks, Joe!
I’ve written before about the applicability of database work to sports, particularly local college and professional teams, and there are signs out there that some news organizations are tackling this previously under-served area. With the NFL draft fast approaching, one of those perennial datasets is a team’s draft history - a topic of discussion among fans, although not quite a scientific study since so many factors figure into what players are drafted, to say nothing of how they actually perform. It’s perfect for the local paper.
So let’s take a look at some newspaper databases. I picked the Miami Dolphins, since at least three fairly large newspapers cover that team (the Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post). I found the Sun-Sentinel’s draft database first - it was teased from the home page - and it is pretty straight-forward, with one problem: it wasn’t working when I loaded it (update: it works now.) The SS’s sister paper in Orlando uses the same app. Search is one good way to start an app like this. It lets you look at specific positions and colleges (provided you know what they are), although just having a search form assumes that your visitors know what to search on. In this case, they probably do.
Next up was the Palm Beach Post’s draft app (disclaimer: I worked for the Post from 1995-1997), which is powered by Caspio. My feelings on news organizations using Caspio are fairly well-known, I think, but this database works and has some good elements, particularly the standardization of positions and use of drop-down menus. The display of the results, on the other hand, is, well, lame. And not indexed in Google (the first result for a search of “miami dolphins draft database” is the SS’s app).
Despite the Herald’s football coverage, I didn’t find a Dolphins draft database on the site. Maybe they don’t have one or are building it now. Maybe they have higher priorities. So those are the current options.
In the interests of not being just another talker, here’s another way to do something like this. The first thing, which is something I didn’t give enough respect to previously, is to devote time and energy to the interface. Like, say, the Indianapolis Star did with its Web feature on Peyton Manning. In particular, check out the interface for the database of passes. But let’s say that you, like me, are graphically challenged or that you have limited resources in the graphics area. All you need to do is be better for your team than DraftHistory.com is.
I believe I have, using Django and 92 minutes of development time (much of which was fixing bad data). Presenting the Miami Dolphins Draft Database that costs nothing except server time and staff time (which, did I mention, was 92 minutes?). Instead of using drop-downs (which I could add), particular slices of the data have their own url, such as first round picks or quarterbacks or players from South Carolina. No, my design isn’t going to win awards, but ask yourself if those other examples will, either.
Just for fun, I’m going to do this as a Rails app, too, to show that it’s not hard to find open-source Web framework options no matter what language you prefer. Comments are welcomed.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:59 pm (#)
As someone who has struggled with this, I appreciate the post.
My own, less elegant sports example, http://datacenter.courier-journal.com/sports/recruiting/search.php, took me much more than 92 minutes using PHP and Dreamweaver.
One problem is that crunching data behind-the-scenes for stories doesn’t necessarily prepare you for making artful presentations on the Web. This is a new thing for a lot of us and it shows.
Not knowing the tools intimately and not having the right tools are also problems. Django’s news pedigree is an obvious benefit — I wish I could use it at our place. There are a lot of frameworks and while they’re easy to find learning to use them well — especially if you work in isolation, without others at hand to guide you — isn’t so easy. Or maybe I’m just as stupid as I sometimes feel.
I’d like to read more on how to skillfully present data on the Web. I haven’t found much in my own searching. Stuff like, when should you use a dropdown and when shouldn’t you? When is it better to browse and when is it better to search or should you always offer both options? How do you lead the uninitiated through a dataset so they don’t just end up feeling lost? As nice looking as that Indy Star passing database is, I couldn’t make it work in Firefox, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I wasn’t using it right or it just wasn’t working. I’ve watched intelligent people in our newsroom become flummoxed when presented with a couple of search fields on a form. I haven’t seen much evidence-based discussion of how to do this well, but maybe I’m not looking in the right places.
Do you or any of your readers have any suggestions? Is there a Tufte of the Web database?
April 12th, 2008 at 12:27 am (#)
This is a great example.
One thing I noticed, search is currently case-sensitive. I instinctively searched “marino”, which returned nothing.
Should be easy to correct by using “icontains” in Django.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:45 am (#)
Mark: Agreed - data presentation is tough. There’s not a huge volume of resources out there that I’ve seen, but Wilson Miner (designer of EveryBlock) recently wrote a piece that I like.
Joe: Thanks - there are 1-2 other small fixes I need to make in the next day or so.
April 13th, 2008 at 2:59 pm (#)
Where did you get the data? DraftHistory.com?
April 13th, 2008 at 3:45 pm (#)
Aaron: No, I got it from the Palm Beach Post app, and it required a little cleaning (some duplicate college names).
April 14th, 2008 at 10:45 am (#)
Glad the draft database was useful, our Palm Beach Post readers like it, too.
I put the database together for our website. It took a great deal more time cleaning up the data — getting it in a pdf format, converting to columns, then doing some Excel work to join and unjoin columns. Then, of course, cleaning up the data, such as translating football acronyms into full words and turning all caps into caps and lower case.