Nate Silver ("Blogger for Times") joining ESPN

In an interview I read somewhere months ago, Silver said that he was getting bored just doing political stuff, and was looking to branch out. The Times did have him write some sports, but I guess ESPN was perfectly willing to outbid them.

 

Aren't most of the heavy stat guys behind the ESPN Insider wall?

If Silver is going to be free, I don't see those guys ever getting read.

 

Is that mentioned somewhere? Why would he be free?

 

Ah, I just assumed he would be. Maybe he isn't, but that also will cut down on his profile. Of course that would be something for ESPN to worry about while Silver has cold hard cash.

Who here would sign up for Insider because of Silver? I wouldn't.

 

Not if he's on TV a lot, including as a regular guest on Olberman.

Certainly, Mel Kiper Jr. and Todd McShay have pretty large profiles despite almost everything they write being behind a paywall.

 

From Playbook (no permalink):

 

Not as successful as Vegas.

Nate Silver will have a month to take a good, full crack at predicting the NFL. We'll see.

 

Sports predictions are so different from elections. This has come up before -- Silver weighing in on the MVP debate and all the ensuing reactions from others that "haha SEE!! Nate Silver says it's Trout!" But that isn't what he does, at least on 538 -- he translates historical information and the degree of certainty to which it can be counted on.

I don't see him ever coming up with a 99.6 percent chance of victory for any particular Super Bowl champion. In fact I can't really think of anything in sports that he is going to be able to predict to that level. I'm sure it will still be interesting, but it isn't going to set the agenda or lead the conversation the way his political work did.

 

I imagine they'll route him toward the NBA and have him begin making the case for why LeBron James is a better all-around player than Michael Jordan.

Football's too visceral for stats to easily take hold. If given a choice between ESPN's QBR and a now-defunct episode of "Jacked Up," football fans will take Jacked Up.

 

I care nothing for what Silver thinks between LeBron and Jordan. He's just another voice, not unique at all. Even if I were inclined to believe there was some numerical way to answer that question, there are all sorts of good analysts tackling it already. His Trout-Cabrera analysis was interesting, but no more interesting or informative than a dozen others that I read.

Silver's brand has become: When he says it's going to happen, it's GOING TO HAPPEN. Period. Sustained me and millions of others when the Romney camp was making all that noise about how they were right and Silver was wrong. I don't see how that translates to the sports world.

Maybe it was about the NYT sports section snubbing him and not making him feel like he could pursue that lark during the down times.

 

Gotta love that if you're Abramson. Your sports section (which you don't really love) won't embrace Silver, who is generating 70 percent of your web traffic, so it contributes to a year long plan blowing up on you.

 

Yeah. I also was curious about the section being described as "innovative." I don't see that too much in their coverage, and rejecting Silver sounds like something right out of the turf-war handbook of the 1970s.