Meet The Outsiders

Compared to Bill James by the New York Times Magazine, AARON SCHATZ is the creator of Football Outsiders and most of the original statistical methods presented on this website, as well as lead writer on the book series Football Outsiders Almanac (and its predecessor, Pro Football Prospectus). He also writes for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. Before Football Outsiders, Aaron spent five years on the radio at WBRU Providence and WKRO Daytona Beach, and three years as the writer and producer of the Lycos 50, the Internet's foremost authority on the people, places, and things that are searched online. He has appeared on a number of TV and radio stations including ESPN, CNN, and NPR, and written for a number of publications including The New Republic [1], The New York Times [2], The Boston Globe [3], Slate [4], The American Prospect [5], and the Boston Phoenix [6]. He lives in Framingham, Massachusetts with his wife Kathryn and daughter Mirinae.

RIVERS McCOWN wants to strongly express that he has no known relation to Randy McCown, Josh McCown, or Luke McCown, though he is thankful that the latter two have made his last name pronounceable in several iterations of Madden. He started charting games for Football Outsiders in 2007 on a lark and soon found himself engrossed in football writing, statistics, and the idea that Phil Simms was often wrong about things. A lifelong Houstonian by choice, he has built up a tolerance to humidity and bad football teams. Prior to joining Football Outsiders, Rivers was Managing Editor for SB Nation Houston; he still contributes sparingly to Battle Red Blog [7] and his personal blog, From Mom's Basement [8].

One fateful night in January of 1985, a young DANNY TUCCITTO abandoned Dan Marino and his hometown Dolphins, jumping heart-first onto the Walsh-helmed 49ers bandwagon. After his fandom resulted in 5 Super Bowl championships over a 14-year period -- not to mention 4 national championships as a Hurricanes fan -- he took his winning-by-proxy talents to Gainesville (decision not televised). Immediately upon his arrival, he rooted home the first national championship for Gators football. After a Jordanesque wearing-all-these-rings-is-exhausting hiatus, he returned to Gainesville for graduate school. Soon thereafter, Florida accomplished the unprecedented feat of holding the football and basketball championship trophies at the same time. His unmatched psychokinetic powers were eventually recognized by UF, who anointed him as "Master of Sport Psychology." Before coming to Football Outsiders, Danny was the resident statistics nerd at SB Nation's 49ers blog, Niners Nation [9].

Born in Milan, Italy and reared in Denver, DOUG FARRAR fell in love with pro football as a wee lad in 1977, when Broncomania filled the mile-high air, and Lyle Alzado was more than a cautionary tale. Though he once dreamed of returning punts like Rick Upchurch, it was the allure of the guitar and pen that took Doug through his adolescent years. A Seattleite since 1985, Doug now holds true allegiance to the Emerald City and all she possesses. Doug has written for FO since 2006, and his current responsibilities include the weekly X-and-O column Cover-2, and adding snarky comments about Tim Ruskell to Audibles at the Line. When he’s not going over as much All-22 film as he can get from Game Rewind, Doug is also an NFL feature writer and blogger for Yahoo! Sports, a stringer for the Associated Press, and a contributor to the Washington Post.

MIKE TANIER considers himself America's most prolific NFL ghostwriter after four years as the resident draft guru and features writer for Sports Forecaster, which syndicates to over 20 newspaper websites in the US and Canada. (You can read some examples of that work here [10].) Mike has also contributed to his hometown Philadelphia Inquirer. Having grown up just two miles from Veterans Stadium, he took his then-13 month old son C.J. to watch the implosion of that legendary concrete slab, hoping that the event might exorcise some Philly sports demons. So far, the demons are covering the spread. When he's not researching obscure football facts or getting traumatized by the Philadelphia Eagles, Mike teaches high school mathematics in southern New Jersey. But his real passions are, in this order: a) family life, b) trying to get his Strat-o-Matic baseball team over the hump, and c) struggling to keep the characters straight on the PBS import show Age of Warriors. His weekly Rundown for FOXSports.com has morphed into the weekly Walkthrough column on FootballOutsiders.com, and you'll find his weekly game previews at the New York Times Fifth Down Blog.

BILL CONNELLY, author of the college football column "Varsity Numbers," grew up a numbers and sports nerd in western Oklahoma. His favorite teams growing up were, in no particular order, the Missouri Tigers, Miami Dolphins, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Portland Trailblazers. Perhaps he should have taken the hint and given up on sports a decade ago. Instead, he spends his time creating massive Excel files full of NCAA play-by-play and attempting to create the perfect, most all-encompassing football statistic ever. He lives in Missouri with his wife and pets, working for his alma mater. You can find more of his material at his SB Nation blog, Football Study Hall [11].

J.J. COOPER is a shameless frontrunner. There's no other reason to explain why a Georgia native would become a Pittsburgh Steelers fan in the 1970s, beyond the fact that the Steelers were always on TV and were always winning. But he does point out he was two years old when he developed his Steelers fandom and he's stuck with it for more than 30 years now, including the Cliff Stoudt, Mark Malone and Bubby Brister eras. JJ graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in journalism and has spent the past 15 years as a sports writer. He is the managing editor for Baseball America, a founding writer at the now defunct AOL FanHouse and one of the owners of the Steelers Lounge [12] blog.

BRIAN FREMEAU contributes the Fremeau Efficiency Index and other drive-based college football stats to Football Outsiders. Officially created in 2002 in an attempt to quantify momentum, FEI's roots actually extend to an early-90s NCAA hoops tournament forecasting project Brian still hopelessly maintains today. Now working for his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, he spends every home Saturday cheering his beloved Irish from the South end zone, Touchdown Jesus' outstretched arms in the background signaling into the blue-gray sky. Like Charlie Weis and Regis Philbin, Brian never played for Notre Dame, so his eligibility remains intact. He lives in South Bend, Indiana with his wife and daughter, whose birthday falls on Heisman weekend.

TOM GOWER has been a fan of the Tennessee Titans since they were the Oilers and he was growing up in Houston. He has remained a fan of the franchise in subsequent stints in North Dakota, Illinois, Washington, D.C., Japan, Maryland, Ohio, and back to Illinois. With degrees from Georgetown University and the University of Chicago Law School, he currently considers himself the most over-educated member of the FO staff. (Clearly, recent football success was not a priority in school selection.) Tom currently maintains Residual Prolixity [13] (despite its name, a football blog) and contributes to Total Titans [14] and Hoya Prospectus [15]. His contributions to each week's "Audibles at the Line" should not be considered legal advice.

MIKE KURTZ spent years as a Pittsburgh fan in the vast football wastes of Northeastern Ohio, with only his family as support, before moving to Chicago to heckle Rex Grossman. Deep in his heart a baseball guy among the three sports, he became an obsessive football fan in an attempt to make the hurting stop, with surprising success. Despite a somewhat notorious dislike of college football, Mike attended The Ohio State University. There he studied many things, was handed some paper, and then went to law school in Chicago. When he is not practicing law or editing the NFL content on Football Outsiders, Mike plays trombone in the CBA symphony orchestra and works as a high school football official.

NED MACEY has followed the world of sports from his childhood home of Indianapolis to Philadelphia, Detroit, Australia, and beyond. Ned graduated from Haverford College in 2002 following an illustrious college pitching career where he starred predominantly as a middle reliever. He recently graduated from University of Michigan law school and has returned to Naptown, where he prays that Bob Sanders can make it through an entire season without injury.

SEAN McCORMICK is the proud owner of the lone Richard Todd jersey still in existence. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University. When not teaching high school in Brooklyn, New York, he also indulges his inner masochist as a contributing writer for TheJetsBlog.com [16].

BRIAN MCINTYRE is from central Massachusetts, but grew up a fan of the Seattle Seahawks. Brian caught the football bug early, passionately following the sport even after having his six-year-old heart broken when the NFL went on strike six days before he was to attend his first NFL game (Seahawks-Patriots at Schaefer Stadium) in 1982. An FO game charter since 2006, Brian has written about the NFL since 2005 at his own site (Mac’s Football Blog [17]), on Scout.com, and for the Tacoma News Tribune.

BEN MUTH was raised in Phoenix, Arizona and had season tickets to both the Cardinals and Sun Devils. As a result, he insists on irrationally defending Jake Plummer as quarterback. He left the state to go to college in California. He played offensive line at Stanford from 2004-08 and was named first team all conference in his final season. He now literally bleeds Cardinal red (for the Arizona Cardinals and Stanford). He was picked up by the San Diego Chargers as an undrafted free agent in 2009
but released later that same year, due to combination of injury and giving up too many sacks in practice. Football Outsiders is his first writing experience.

VINCE VERHEI was raised to love football by his father, who explained that the players in blue jerseys were the "good guys" and their opponents were the "bad guys." With every Seahawks game effectively turned into another battle between the Super Friends and the Legion of Doom, with the fate of the world presumably at stake, he was hooked. After Al Gore invented the Internet, Verhei spent a lot of time Googling "football stats," and discovered FO shortly after its birth. He worked his way up the chain from commenter to guest writer to game charter to assistant editor, and now explores the upset of the week in the ESPN column Any Given Sunday. His essay in the Giants chapter of PFP 2008 was cited by Bill Simmons as one of his favorites (though Simmons also noted the math behind the story "made his head explode"). Verhei is also a writer and podcast host for Figure4Online.com, a Web site covering pro wrestling and mixed martial arts.

ROBERT WEINTRAUB grew up in suburban New York, and thus has no earthly reason for his lifelong fanaticism for the Cincinnati Bengals, other than conjectured cosmic payback for some transgression in a past life. But he bleeds Bengal Orange, which is appropriate, for he also frequently hemorrhages Orange thanks to his alma mater, Syracuse, and the team's tragicomic attempt at football adequacy.
He now lives in Atlanta, the epicenter of college football hyper-allegiance, so maintaining plausible deniability when writing about Georgia and Florida and Alabama is crucial. When not watching games in his ancient Boomer Esiason jersey, Robert contributes regularly to Slate, ESPN.com,
and The Guardian. Robert is also a TV producer, so will likely have something to say about the coverage of games on a weekly basis.

He may have started as an award-winning baseball columnist, but like Bo Jackson, WILL CARROLL chose to apply his talents to the gridiron game as well. His weekly football injury column began as Black and Blue Report for Football Outsiders back in 2005, then went to SI.com, then returned to FO in 2008, then returned to SI.com in 2010. Will drinks too much coffee, writes for too many outlets to list, hangs out with models, is available for weddings and bar mitzvahs, and caused AT&T to re-write their policy on "unlimited text messaging." He lives near Indianapolis.

TIM GERHEIM is Assistant Editor Emeritus. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Texas Law School, he brings a Houston viewpoint to FO despite the fact that he now lives in Washington DC. Tim still occasionally contributes to Extra Points and Audibles at the Line.

ELIAS HOLMAN, head of the Milwaukee Web programming firm Distance Software, was the mastermind behind the September 2008 redesign of Football Outsiders. Further bio to come.

As a one-time minor league trainer in the Florida Marlins system, PAT LAVERTY can actually explain the difference between an anterior cruciate ligament, a posterior cruciate ligament, and that other cruciate ligament, you know, the one that starts with "M." Now he works in the computer department at Brown University right across the street from Peter King's favorite Starbucks! His responsibilities at Football Outsiders include programming the Premium DVOA Database as well as most of our contest code. Pat's jersey of choice is the classic Chicago Bears #9 Jim McMahon.

SEAN McCALL works on the Premium DVOA Database and is the mastermind behind the customizable KUBIAK spreadsheet. He lives in Houston.

Atlanta-based BENJY ROSE was the original Creative Director and programmer for Football Outsiders; he still contributes graphic design to the site when not devoted to his job as proprietor of design agency B:COMPLEX Creative [18], his hobby playing keyboards in a classic/modern rock band [19], and his responsibilities as husband, dad to two kids, and ignorer of two dogs. Benjy is a rabid Jets fan, and is extremely proud that Abby learned her J-E-T-Ss just after her ABCs [20]. On Sundays during the season, Benjy can be found wearing his Kelly Green classic Al Toon #88 jersey and laughing at his son's obsession with Jerricho Cotchery.

Web designer and freelance cartoonist JASON BEATTIE awaits the return of the XFL so that he can repeat as XFL fantasy football champion. Let's be honest: an ability to differentiate between Rashaan Salaam and Rashaan Sheehee is impressive. Jason lives in Thornton, Colorado, and sports a #30 Terrell Davis jersey on game day, though he dreams of someday being able to afford a more modern Cecil Sapp model. He was one of the world's greatest Simpsons experts even before Max Scorpio bought the Denver Broncos for Homer. He is responsible for all of the caricatures of the Outsiders on the site, as well as the weekly cartoon that used to appear in Scramble for the Ball. You can see more of his cartooning at his Jason's Comic World website [21] or follow his inane ramblings about Gil Thorp at his blog, This Week in Milford [22].