Objective momentum scoring systems for basketball, football, and wrestling were designed and applied to data from these sports to assess whether establishing momentum was followed by consistent improvement in performance either immediately after momentum was established or throughout the remainder of the contest. In a relatively consistent way across all three sports little evidence was found that establishing momentum according to the present scoring systems is followed by better performance, especially when teams were equated for ability. Momentum as defined here does not appear to be a very useful explanatory concept.
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