Firing the Coach Doesn't Make the Team Play Any Better, Study Says

Earlier this week, this blogger's beloved Milwaukee Brewers fired their manager, Ned Yost, with less than a month remaining in a pennant race. It's pretty common in pro sports to cut the coach loose when things go south; it's easier than firing all the players. But a study out of Sweden says that frankly, it doesn't do any good. Leif Arnesson at Mid Sweden University led a team that studied the Swedish Elite Series of hockey all the way back to the 1975/76 season. Sweden's league is another bastion of mid-season coach firing—five were fired last season. But after studying the data, Arnesson says that firing the coach in mid-season has basically no effect: A good team is still a good team, and a bad team is still a bad team.Arnesson says the effect should be the same across all sports, but you'd have a tough time selling that to ...