i am wondering if i can put some cold hard numbers on what 'cant miss' means.

odds of success if you will.

i see two ways to do this, and a data set to check it on...maybe.

suppose i look at the nfl and nba drafts in the past--

1) how many 'cant miss' guys were annointed as such, and how did they do?

2) how many under the radar guys that became superstars are there?

i know this still has 'squishy' part to it-- taking the familiar example of leaf and manning for example:

do i call them both cant miss? or were there enough doubters on manning to say he was a suprise, not a cant miss?

i think for my work, if they were 'obvious' number one picks, like leafy and manning were-- 1 and 1a if you will, i will prob call them 'cm'. maybe see if the word 'franchise' is used in talking about them.....

it would be cool to have a minion that could do my legwork here--

find me a set of records from the past drafts and the 'scores' they had......

alas, no minions....unless i have any volunteers?

polians last radio interview, he said he saw what, 4 cant missers? 2 qbs, a rb and someone else in this draft?

toss all the 'cm' dudes in a pile, count the pile, and divide into 3 smaller piles-- guys that really were 'franchise', guys that were busts, and guys that were just good.

i wonder what the number would be for the franchise guys? .500? .850?? .333?

no way cant miss is 1.000, thus making it 'not quite cant miss' or 'usually cant miss'.

would that number be any differnent between football and basketball?

we could call it the manning to mandarich ratio-- m/m if you will.

or do we prefer manning to leaf ratio? m/l.

i think that might give us a way to at least handicap what luck (the player, not the fate!) might be. a way to price in the uncertainty of being franchise into our drafting.

my gut impression is that there are a lot of leafs, mandariches, and odens not in that franchise pile.

similarly, how many jordans and bradys are there? how often did the talent evade the scrutiny of 'those who know'??

neither of those guys were cant miss, were they? (or was jordan graded high enough to be a cant miss?, is there a source on how they were graded??).

for that matter wasnt unitas completely under the radar?

or can you widen it a bit, add in the freeneys and marinos too?

i dont remember anyone liking freeney as a pick, and he has been franchise, no?

so, i need to do some digging and see if i can do this....