From The
Editor
Momentum
Momentum is a tricky thing. It’s an
unquantifiable thing. There’s no
statistic that defines it, no trick you can
learn to achieve or keep it and there’s
no way to know when it’s coming or
going. It just is until it isn’t. And yet
it may be the most important key to
success in business and in sports.
How many times have you seen a
baseball team rip off ten straight wins
in a season? It happens dozens of
times across major league baseball
every year. And inevitably and almost
always it’s followed by a losing streak
of some kind. You would think a team
that is good enough to win a dozen
straight games is also good enough
not to lose eight in a row but that’s
what having and losing momentum
does.
Houston Heat hadn’t won a major
tournament in the U.S. or Europe for a
year until they won in Chartres, France
earlier this season. And in Texas they
went back to back. That’s momentum.
It’s a combination of confidence that
comes from winning, combined with
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straight up luck, making your opponent
feel like they are supposed to lose and
probably a handful of other factors
even that smartest people in sports
and business haven’t figured out.
Last year the Los Angles Chargers
opened the season with four straight
losses and they closed the year with
six wins in their last seven games. This
year the NY Mets started the season
11-1 and then they lost 35 of their next
52 games. That’s the good and the
ugly of momentum.
Popular Science did a study of 565,915
sports bets recently. They found long
winning streaks followed by long
losing streaks were very common.
They found that often when a gambler
loses six bets in a row, the odds of
that same person losing a seventh
bet actually increase. Mathematical
anomalies? The best know science
publication in the world determined
lucky streaks (momentum) are real.
They just happen and no one knows
why. There’s no science to it.