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There is an almost universal belief by athletes, sports fans and media observers that momentum is an important force in sports contests. Terms such as winning streaks, the hot hand in basketball shooting, and batting slumps in baseball are part of the lexicon of sports and are examples of perceived momentum. Prior research has demonstrated that athletes perceive that momentum exists, but evidence of the effect of momentum on performance within individual athletic contests has proved elusive. This research extends that exploration by looking for momentum over a season. Actual winning and losing streaks for the 28 major league baseball teams and the 29 National Basketball Association teams were compared to streaks that would have occurred under the assumption that game outcome is independent of the outcome of the most recent previous games. The chi-square goodness-of fit test showed a very close fit of actual streaks to expected streaks under the independence assumption. with none of the ten chi-square probabilities approaching the customary .OS significance level. Also, the Wald-Wolfowitz runs test for randomness produced only 5 team season observations out of 86 with significance levels =< .05. The results suggest that sports participants and observers place an unjustified importance on momentum as a causal factor in outcomes of sport contests.
Webster's International Dictionary ( 1993, p. 1456) defines momentum as "the force of motion acquired by a moving body as a result of the continuance of its motion." With one game remaining in the 1997 NFL football season, the Green Bay Packers had established a playoff seeding which would be unaffected by the result of that final game, so they could rest some of their top players to give nagging injuries an extra week to heal. Coach Mike Holmgren acknowledged he had a dilemma and stated, "I don't want to lose momentum. I've never been in this situation" ("Aikman Vows," 1993, p. D3). He seemed to believe that the act of winning that final season game would increase the chance of winning the first play-off game, independent of the respective strengths of the competing teams-that there was some intangible momentum force that would influence the outcome of that subsequent game.
The concept of momentum is often cited by participating athletes and observers of sporting...