Sports Reference Blog
Approximate Value and Hall of Fame Standards
Posted by Neil on February 28, 2013
PFR user Oscar asked today about whether we had a football version of Baseball-Reference's Hall of Fame standards using Weighted Career Approximate Value. To that end, I analyzed weighted career AV data on retired players who started their careers in 1950 or later. Here was a breakdown of all Hall of Famers in that group:
| Maximum | 159 |
| 90th percentile | 130 |
| 75th percentile | 114 |
| Average | 101 |
| Median | 101 |
| 25th percentile | 88 |
| 10th percentile | 73 |
| Minimum (non-kickers) | 31 |
| Minimum | 0 |
Using a regression formula, we can also say what your odds of making the Hall are at any given Weighted Career AV threshold:
| Wgtd Career AV | p(HoF) |
|---|---|
| 160 | 100% |
| 140 | 98% |
| 130 | 94% |
| 125 | 91% |
| 120 | 85% |
| 115 | 78% |
| 110 | 69% |
| 105 | 57% |
| 100 | 45% |
| 95 | 33% |
| 90 | 23% |
| 85 | 16% |
| 80 | 10% |
| 75 | 7% |
| 70 | 4% |
| 60 | 2% |
| 50 | 1% |
| 45 | 0% |
Wow this is great, wonder how it will change as time passes though as some positions become more clogged than others and standards change. Take a player like Donovan McNabb whose Weighted AV of 107 should put him over 60% chance of making it but since he didn't win a Super Bowl his chances of getting in drop. Or take another player like Brian Urlacher, with a Weighted AV of 120, whose attempt to get in will follow Ray Lewis which means some may not see him stack up well against Lewis' career.
This is interesting and it will be fun to test the correlation between this and other HoF factors, thanks.
Just saw this. Cool stuff - definitely a useful baseline measure.