If you’ve read just about anything I’ve written during my four years with alligatorSports, you’re probably expecting a lot of numbers in this space.
I hate to disappoint, but I have just one: This will be the 471st and final time my name appears in a byline, podcast or video show for the Alligator.
Most of those have been packed with references to KenPom, cfbstats.com and even a few metrics I made up on the fly.
My appreciation for the numbers isn’t as simple as the cliché that they never lie.
In reality, numbers are the only things that keep me sane. They’re the key to my confidence, to me being myself and to no longer spending all my time worrying about what other people think.
When I was a freshman at UF, I played a LOT of online poker. After a high school career in Connecticut agonizing about what was “cool” and how I was viewed, I got to come to UF and be alone. At the end of my freshman year, I only knew the names of maybe a dozen non-athletes. And I absolutely loved it. I still had all my friends from back home, but down here nobody was watching. I could do whatever I wanted.
For a time that meant at least 40 hours each week of poker, not counting the class periods surfing Two Plus Two and crunching hand histories on PokerStove.
I haven’t found anything more mentally stimulating than getting inside a person’s brain and finding a way to always be one step ahead. The game works the way life should: You get a set of rules that everyone has to play by, and you work to master them and develop a style that allows you to acquire equity and ultimately be the best you can be.
More than that, poker taught me the most valuable lesson I’ve ever learned: You can do everything right and still fail, and you have to accept that.
You can make perfect move after perfect move after perfect move for seven or eight hours, and if you’re lucky you’ll get everything in the middle as a 56 percent favorite. Then there’s the times you do everything right and the other guy just happens to have aces. Or the times you get it in ahead, the dealer brings an unlucky turn and you lose anyway.
Sounds pretty depressing, right? I mean, why bother to do things the right way if all of life is just a game of chance?
To me, the difference between winners and losers — in poker and in the real world — is that desire and willingness to scratch and claw to make sure the chance of success is 56 percent instead of 53. That extra three percent doesn’t reflect in the quality of everyday life, and the vast majority of the time it’s completely invisible. But I have enough faith in the numbers to believe it’ll bear itself out in the long run.
In the meantime, I can take comfort in the fact that I’m always doing everything I can to give myself the best chance to succeed at whatever I’m trying to do, and that I’m being true to myself within that process. With a genuine belief in that system, everything that goes wrong in life is pretty easy to deal with. It’s just variance. Bad luck.
That being said, I refuse to sit here at age 22 and pretend for a second that I’ve figured out the “right” way to live. I’m in no position to give advice. I’m just trying to learn something new and get a little bit better every day.
But that faith in the odds has gotten me through every bit of adversity I’ve faced in a relatively cushy life.
When a girl doesn’t want to go out with me, I shake it off. When is a shot like that any better than 30 or 40 percent anyway?
When my best friend decided to become a stranger without warning, it was a bad break. I still approach friendship the same way I always have, and I’m still there for anyone who needs me.
But enough about the bad. I’ve also had some unbelievable streaks of good luck, like being given a shot at the Alligator and meeting all of the great people I’m about to thank.
To me, this whole student-paper-good-bye-column thing makes about as much sense as a recently called-up Triple-A player doing a press conference to say a teary and heartfelt farewell to the International League. But if I’m given space to thank all the people who put me where I am today and made life worth it, I’m going to take advantage.
Thanks to Phil Kegler, Kyle Maistri and Bobby Callovi for hiring me and giving me a chance back in Fall 2009.
To Adam Berry for showing me the ropes and, as recently as yesterday, making some of the best edits you’ll find anywhere.
To Chiang, Tyler, Tom, Watts, Boothe, Joe and Phil for editing my stuff despite a blatant lack of regard for inch counts. (This column is already longer than it should be.)
To Corey, Fink and the rest of the copy staff for putting up with my ridiculous numbers.
To my parents for giving me every opportunity I could ever dream of, to my boys from Connecticut for keeping it a place I can call home, and to Katie for indulging my obsession with Hayley Williams.
To my roommates at The Stables, who are always good for some BSing and will at least pretend to care when I theorize about beer pong advanced metrics. (I still contend that shooting percentage on shots that hit plastic, like batting average on balls in play for baseball, will normalize to a certain figure based on your shooting form.)
To stats for making my life possible, even as I all but abandon poker and probability to pursue a career with words.
And to any of you who made it through my long-winded, usually stat-packed ramblings one final time.
After four long years, this truly is the End of Gregulation.
Contact Greg Luca at gluca@alligator.org.
