Ron Pisarz Jr., like so many of us, fell in love with the classic Sports Illustrated football game Paydirt. It wasn’t until about two decades later that, while honing his chops as a software engineer, he revisited that “gateway game” as an exercise in converting it to digital form — and Data-Driven Football was born.   

He began circa 2006-07 by calculating the 2005 and 2006 NFL seasons using play-by-play data. Given the abundance of NFL data these days, he took his analyses “to the nth degree,” writing software to parse that data to hone the simulation’s realism and balancing his three primary concerns: playing time, realism and fun.  

So diligent is Ron that he spends about an hour watching condensed versions of each NFL game every week; he later spends about four hours per team refining that data into the final play sheets. So loyal and attentive are his fans that they will text him during games to ask how a particular play is likely to be reflected in those team charts.  

In this interview from Sept. 27, 2021, Ron shares his thoughts on:  

• Achieving statistical accuracy
• How his eight-man league functions to ensure competitiveness
• The preference for the board vs. PC  
• Preserving the magic of tabletop sports sims  

Buy at the Data-Driven Football website: http://datadrivenfootball.com/index.htm
Video version: https://youtu.be/Ipt3rs2m9Z0