PowerPlay 杂志

Today we look at the decrease of career longevity. We know that the career longevity (CL) of player coming out of  the sports academy may be 5 or 6. It is also confirmed that the CL cannot drop two seasons in a row. There are six levels of career longevity: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. The first season, when the player reaches the career longevity 1, he stops improving. The seasons following will be worse. But what would the overall table look like for the career longevity pathways? What is the system of descent from 5 or 6 CL down to 1? Sarth has prepared a tables where the players are up to 40 years of age, and I will present it on his behalf. By age 27, the table is known due to beta data. The minimum age, which can be achieved by CL 1, and conversely the summer maximum, which can be various stages of CL is known. Because the formulas agree to 27 years old, there is no reason why it cannot be extrapolated for years exceeding 27. Old age is just as likely that CL decreases by one, or two phases. This article aims to draw attention to the maximum and minimum years, during which you can achieve different levels of CL.

At this time graphics and tables will be used to better explain the theory. Keep in mind this is someone's theory and idea. There could very well be mistakes, be them miniscule or critical. So to continue, please bear respect to the work Sarth conducted. I have come to subscribe to this theory. Now, without further delay...

The simplest possible table of current career longevity: 

In the table you can see what CL possibilities arise at each year of age. However, the tables are in fact much more complicated then that. If you want this table to see how your player will fall, remember that it can not fall on two consecutive CL. CL cannot descend from 6 to 5 to 4 in three consecutive years. Any drop in CL can be the result of many influences. A drop in CL depends on age, injury and even chance. It will be shown here, the best and worst of what player one can expect given a certain age. It can then be seen, the golden middle years, which leads some 80 percent of players, probably even more.

Sarth's work goes back to beta, as mentioned earlier. Here players were aged up to 27 years old. Upon looking at players Sarth found a CL of 4 at this age and also a CL of 1. As we have not bare witness to any players older then 27, tables exceeding 27 years of age are merely linear extrapolations of the current theory. Rather then discuss more of the methodology behind his reasoning, I'll cut to more of the results and rainbow tables. For the remainder of the tables the CL value will be expressed as a fractional CL. The table below illustrates the fractional CL maxima and minima:

Given the above table, there are many different decent pathways. Depending on the maximum and minimum number of years at each CL a player's career could be greatly different from the next. For example, if a player dropped in CL every 2-3 years starting with the minimum 5 CL at age 15, they would hit CL=1 at age 24 or thereabouts. On the other hand, if the maximum number of years a player could spend at each CL is 4 or 5, a player entering the academy the same year as the aforementioned player could hit CL=1 10 years later at age 36. The table below illustrates the two scenarios:

Let's take a closer look at the right side of the above table, where a player stays at a given CL for 4 or 5 years. The path is then all equal, the only difference is the CL at which they arrived from the academy. The left side of the table has a player arriving with the highest possible CL, while the right side has the lowest possible CL. By observing the two extreme pathways, one would see that a drop from 6 to 5 CL at age 18-19 represents the career path with the most longevity while a drop from 5 to 4 CL from the transition from 16 to 17 represents the weakest career prospects. Observe the table below:

Again, the table is accurate to 27 years of age, after which is just an extrapolation of the theory and formulas. Next we shall look at a very similar table, however now with a 2 or 3 phase decent:

The above table keep in mind is the absolute worst possible scenario given the fact a player cannot drop CL in two consecutive years. Scanning the market one will find 22 year olds with a CL ranging from 3 to 5. This bodes a strong case for the 4-phase CL table. However, looking at 24 year olds, one can find a CL ranging from 2 to 4, which does not exclude the above tables as they are simply illustrating the longest-phase decent path and the shortest-phase decent path.

I present this work not as my own but as a translated/edited version of someone else's. I have come to use this information and have found it to be very accurate in it's infancy. I hope you all will respect the leap of faith made on numerous instances here all the while gaining insight from what I like to call the rainbow tables. Thanks all for reading and I look forward to comments.

Yours in PPM,
canucks357