If you love college basketball, you probably know Ken Pomeroy’s name, but you call him “KenPom” because that’s what the experts call him, and you want to sound like all the other cool kids.
All Hail Ken Pomeroy! Now Can Somebody Please Pay Him?
Pomeroy is the man behind KenPom.com, and the leading mind behind college basketball’s statistical revolution. He’s been name-dropped by everyone from Jay Bilas to Brad Stevens to Mike Krzyzewski, and his rankings formula is praised throughout college hoops to an almost cultish extent.
So what does Ken Pom get out of all this? Pretty much nothing. As he tells the New York Times in a much-deserved profile, covering college basketball isn’t even a full-time job.
Pomeroy said he makes a few dollars from advertisements on his site and has a small consulting deal with Baylor. But it is far from a windfall. Pomeroy, 37, said he spends about 20 to 30 hours a week on the site and watches college basketball another 10 to 12 hours a week. His full-time job is at the ; he isn’t sure what the future is for his site.
"It’s something that I always ask myself, exactly where do I want this to go," he said. "There’s a lot of conflicting thoughts about that. I don’t really have any basketball background."
Um... Seriously?
The guy that’s given fans, journalists, and coaches a whole new way to understand college basketball is nothing more than a weather analyst? Albeit an (obviously) brilliant, self-aware weather analyst: “I can’t communicate information the way that I read it because it will overwhelm them and make their eyes bleed.” Think being a statistician isn’t bad ass? Pfft... Ken Pom’s got numbers floating around his head that could make your EYES BLEED.
Or bulge, in Frank Martin’s case.
Anyway, check out the full profile for an interesting read, and don’t worry, if this is all a lot to wrap your head around, you’re not alone. A weather analyst has reinvented college basketball stats?
Yes, and you can read more at KenPom.com. But from a broader standpoint, I don’t know whether this should make me feel good about Ken Pomeroy, or bad, because even with devotees like Coach K, he’s still basically doing this stuff for free, and nobody’s hired him yet, and if he gets bored with it all, Ken Pom might just quit one day, and we’d all be stuck relying on RPI again.
One thing’s for certain, in the meantime. Until someone pays him to handle college hoops full time, I feel a lot better about the National Weather Service knowing that Ken Pomeroy’s in charge.
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