About This Lesson
Students each run a franchise. They draft a roster of historical players, a simulation engine plays out the season, and then they answer the question that drives the whole unit: why is one player worth more than another?
This bundle includes three parallel activities — baseball, basketball, and football — plus a cross-sport primer on how a simulation engine works. Each is a printable student packet with a teacher guide attached.
The structure is the same in all three: students commit to a drafting theory in writing before they see the player pool, log a handful of team numbers each week, then use league-wide data they collected themselves to grade their own prediction. Baseball takes on batting average versus on-base percentage and slugging. Basketball frames roster building as an allocation problem — 240 player-minutes and one ball — and introduces true shooting percentage and per-36 rates. Football covers positional value, replacement level, and rate stats versus totals, and ends in a data-cited debate.
The sim engine primer turns "how does the computer decide?" into a probability lesson: converting statistics into probabilities, combining two players' rates with the odds-ratio method, probability band tables, and sampling variability. It ends with an unplugged dice version so a class can hand-simulate an inning.
Runs 3–8 weeks. One period to launch, then 15–20 minutes weekly. Students who have never watched a game can do the analysis — sports knowledge helps with the draft, not the math.
The platform is free at pennantchase.com. Class leagues are free; email [email protected] for setup help or bulk student logins.
