I have a confession to make: despite this being an unusual topic for this blog, it wasn’t really hard for me to decide to invite our guest to share today. I did think about it. For a minute or two. But then I sent off the invite via email, and now here we are.

But Stephanie, you say, the title of this article uses the word football. And Sharon never wrote about American football. That’s true. Nor did she write about any other sport, since you brought it up.

All of that is true. But bear with me. Fans who followed Sharon closely for any amount of time on social media and her blog know that Sharon had a few passions in life: history, animals, her family and friends, and football (and not even necessarily in that order). Over the course of my friendship with her, it was a rare Sunday during the NFL season that we didn’t connect about football, either before a game, during a game, or after a game. And oftentimes all of the above. She subscribed to sports channels so she could keep track of the league at large, watched multiple games simultaneously on game day, knew the latest gossip on coaches and teams, new trade deals, injury reports… so basically all the things. And she held very strong opinions, the strongest of which was her love of the Philadelphia Eagles. Being a Minnesota Vikings fan, I tried not to hold that against her. We can’t all be perfect.

Since I became the caretaker of Sharon’s website and blog, I have tried to mirror presenting things that Sharon herself would have presented: talking about her books and their histories, hosting guests, and introducing you to newly published books. Today I want to do all of those things wrapped up into one. Sharon loved football. I’ve invited a guest to her blog, and this guest is going to introduce you to his new book (published October 3).

I’ve followed Matthew Coller for about three years now, initially through his daily podcast about Vikings football, but since have become a subscriber to his daily newsletter and Substack. Matthew is a beat reporter who loves football, and he self-admittedly does little other than footbally things. (He is also a chess fanatic, eats a lot of Taco Bell, and drinks Diet Dr. Pepper… but that’s for another day.) When I found out he had written a book about the history of the data analytics giant PFF (Pro Football Focus), I knew I had to invite him to talk about it. Sharon would have loved his book and undoubtedly would have told her fans about it.

I think you all know someone who loves football, and I think Football Is a Numbers Game would make the perfect Christmas gift for someone on your list! So with that long-winded introduction out of the way, I give you Matthew Coller.

I want to start by admitting something: Until I was asked to write a guest article here, I had never heard of Sharon Kay Penman. If you are wondering why someone who has not read anything that Sharon wrote, that’s because Stephanie Ling asked me to write an article here about my upcoming book Football is a Numbers Game: PFF and How a Data-Driven Approach Shook Up the Game because Sharon, I’m told, loved football. 

I can see why a historical novel writer would be into football. It has its fiefdoms and drama, the winners are crowned and the losers get tarred and feathered. Football has a million little stories within a season and characters that captivate you and drive you crazy. Following the journeys of 53 players, coaches, managers and fans has always been the best part. I imagine watching months worth of games that tell a complete tale is similar to reading a novel and holding your breath as it all unfolds. 

Before writing this I read on Wikipedia about Sharon’s inspiration for The Sunne in Splendour inwhich she said King Richard III was “a classic case of history being rewritten by the victor.” Gosh, that happens all the time in football. It made me think about how close Tom Brady, considered the best quarterback ever, was to losing during all of his championships. He was often within one play of losing. Not that he wasn’t great, it’s just that he gets to be considered football’s king rather than its biggest choke artist because a few things went his way in the most important moments.

My impression is that Sharon and I have written about very different subjects for very similar reasons (though it only took reading a small amount to see that she was a far greater wordsmith). She would take one piece of history, research the heck out of it and then take you there with her storytelling. That is along the same lines of what I tried to do with my book, except in a non-fiction way. 

Football is a Numbers Game is about a band of football-loving people who came together through a confluence of unlikely events to build a data company that completely changed the way the football universe operates and views the game. It’s about a fun little project that was started by an Englishman with a football magazine and a computer that ultimately turned into a $160 million company that works with every pro and college football team. 

The Englishman, Neil Hornsby, started logging football statistics into spreadsheets while he was going through tough times in his first marriage. When he grew bored with some of the available numbers and analysis of the game, he started inventing his own stats. Using message boards, he found other people who were thinking along the same lines and put together a small group of football nuts who were willing to watch the games and write down things that happened to form these new stats. Through the internet he met a struggling minor league baseball player from Boston, a wine distributor in Napa Valley, a tech wizard looking to escape the corporate world, a college kid unsure of his future, a bored math professor and a number of others who thought it would be fun to participate. They never could have predicted that their life directions would all be changed by Neil’s project. 

After they started publishing the information on the website ProFootballFocus.com, Neil’s little band of online friends were contacted by an NFL team and the largest sports broadcasting network in the world ESPN. It became more than just giggles at that point. In 2014, a highly respected sports broadcaster bought the company and aimed to build something special. Neil’s numbers eventually played a role in the Eagles winning the Super Bowl. 

But the road from playing in their football sandbox to operating a major company turned out to be more difficult than they could have expected. While they were changing the game, things inside the building grew tense and there were struggles over who would lead the company and in which direction they would take into the future.

Meanwhile there was a revolution going on in the sport. Football had always been an eye-test game but its leaders were starting to take notice that following the data could help them make better decisions. The data revolution didn’t just change the lives of Neil’s group. People who were never at the forefront of the game, like a Princeton grad with a Wall Street background who was hired as a general manager, began to get opportunities never seen before in the sport. Now there are data competitions that pro football teams use as hiring grounds to build their front offices. 

The crazy thing is that this only happened within a couple year span. It was only about five years ago when data exploded in the NFL. The people chronicled in my book might one day be looked at like the Wright Brothers of sports data.

I came away thinking about how something as deep in the sports woods as football analytics could end up having so many human stories behind it. 

So maybe you folks will like it. I wish I could give Sharon a copy and see if any of my characters reminder her of people in her books.  

Thanks to Stephanie for giving me the chance to say a few things about my book and her support of my day job, covering Minnesota’s football team. I appreciate all of your time and I’m thrilled to have learned more about Sharon. It’s not hard to see see why all of you are fans of her work. 

You can find Matthew’s book, Football Is a Numbers Game: Pro Football Focus and How a Data-Driven Approach Shook Up the Sport in stores, on Amazon, or from your favorite bookseller.

About Matthew Coller

Matthew officially became a Minnesotan when he moved from Buffalo, New York, to the Twin Cities to cover the Minnesota Vikings in 2016 for 1500ESPN Radio. He covered the team for 1500ESPN.com and the Purple Podcast. When the station rebranded as SKOR North, Matthew was given his own Monday-Friday show called Purple Daily, which offered 365-day per year coverage of the Vikings. In 2020, the station went off the airwaves due to COVID cuts and Matthew launched Purple Insider as a daily newsletter and podcast. He also wrote the book “Making of a Miracle: The story behind the Minnesota Vikings’ improbable 2017 season.”

You can read Matthew’s work and find his podcast at https://purpleinsider.com. You can also find him on X (@MatthewColler) and Substack (https://purpleinsider.substack.com/).