mbass@mikebasscoaching.com
The NFL draft was broken. The research by Cade Massey and Richard Thaler was uncovering this. The draft inhibited parity instead of promoting it. Forget conventional wisdom. The value of a first-round pick increased instead of decreased from Nos. 1 to 32. They ran the numbers.
Massey and Thaler were on the phone one day when another revelation hit them.
“One of us said, ‘This explains the Cincinnati Bengals,’ ” Massey told me Sunday, conceding that some 20 years later he is not sure which said what they both realized:
The Bengals were proof of the “Loser’s Curse.