Roland Fryer

I was really interested in why salaries of running backs have declined and why they seem to be less important parts of the offense than I remembered.

It's been kind of a slow drip, a slow decline of running backs.

And then you think, why?

I've always had a crush on you, Stephen, so I just want to get closer.

I think it's such an intriguing question.

It's one of these things where your intuition and your eyeballs can oftentimes be inconsistent with what the actual data tell us.

Where does our intuition fail us?

I think it does it a lot in life.

I'm just fascinated by human behavior generally, but how we think about the use of my favorite subject, economics, when it comes to issues like valuing positions in a game that's as complex as football.

So, look, I'm of two minds about this because I have this job at Harvard.

I'd give it away in a second if I could have been an NFL player, right?

Right.

I started playing football at age five.

The coach asked me to race their fastest player, and I won.

And he said, you're on the team.

In Texas, you play flag football five and six years old.

And seven years old onwards, you strap on the pads and go to work.

The coolest thing about playing was that they had a legitimate draft.

You'd run a 40-yard dash.

You'd kick the ball.