Information Cascades and the movie “Draft Day”
“Draft Day “is a movie about the Cleveland Browns General Manager Sonny Weaver Jr. and the dealings which occur on the day of the NFL Draft. Every year the NFL draft occurs and the highest acclaimed college football athletes get drafted to one of the 32 professional NFL teams. The order of the draft is decided upon by the record of the team the previous year. In every draft highly touted prospects expected to be drafted high end up slipping as teams select alternate players. This happens in all sports drafts with examples such as Michael Porter Jr. and Harry Giles. Michael Porter Jr. was described as the best high school basketball prospect since Lebron James, but over 10 teams passed on him as he had an injury in the past. This has turned out to be a huge mistake as now he is scoring over 20 points a game, while the player drafted right before him rides the bench and rarely gets minutes. Harry Giles on the other hand was a top 3 prospect his age and was expected to become the NBA’s, premier big man. This did not turn out to be and the teams rightfully passed on him. A similar situation exists in “Draft Day” with Wisconsin quarterback Bo Callahan. This post will discuss the effect daft cascades have on players sliding in the draft, in addition to the story of Bo Callahan’s slide after being known as a consensus number 1 draft pick in Draft Day.
Information Cascades can and do occur frequently in all drafts. A draft is a perfect setting for looking at cascades as each team picks after the other with teams making the decision sequentially, every team having private information only they know, and people observing the actions of others without knowing what the other teams know. The drafting scene of “Draft Day” perfectly puts together each of these elements. In “Draft Day” Sonny Williams Jr. is urged by the owner of the Cleveland Browns to “make a splash” in the upcoming draft. As a result, Sonny becomes desperate as the owner infers that Sonny’s job is on the line. Due to pressure, Sonny makes a crazy trade after consulting with no members of his team, and trades for the first overall pick, who in this situation is expected to definitely be Wisconsin QB Bo Callahan. Sonny made an impulsive decision, as his team had not done any scouting on Bo as they had the seventh pick where it was known they could not draft Bo. Sonny and the scouting team watch all of Bo’s scouting tape and acknowledge Bo to be the best prospect in terms of talent. Sonny furthers his investigation and comes across information on Bo’s birthday party. None of Bo’s teammates attended his 21st birthday party, which is made out to be a huge deal. This rubs Sonny the wrong way as a QB is supposed to be a leader for his teammates, but in Bo’s case, it seems no players on the team like or respect him enough to attend his birthday party. This information influenced Sonny in his decision.
Sonny ends up keeping the number 1 overall pick and choosing the player who he was going to at 7, Vontae Mack. If you have not seen the movie this scene is awesome because Vontae was really stressed out about slipping deep and not having enough money to take care of his two nephews who he is now in charge of since his sister’s passing. The information about Bo was nothing huge, but it was only known by Sonny and the Browns. No other team was privy to this information and as a result, an information cascade occurred. Each of the next 6 teams decided to pass on Callahan as they were afraid there was an issue with him after being passed over on the first pick. This idea relates to the marble experiment. Each person in this experiment picked a marble and did not know what the other person had picked. The people then went 1 by 1 choosing if they thought the bowl was mostly blue or red. In this experiment, the actual marble selected by the person stopped having significance after the second person’s guess. In this example, the Cleveland Browns act as the first marble with them choosing not to draft Callahan. The team with the rights to the second pick had a prospect they wanted and were scared of the information they did not know, so they also passed on Bo. This resulted in an information cascade and Bo slipping in the draft.
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