Bette Nesmith Graham is best known for being the inventor of Liquid Paper (a precursor of and competitor to Wite-Out). Her story is an interesting one. After her husband divorced her and left her a single parent (that child would later grow up to be guitarist Michael Nesmith of The Monkees), she took up work as a secretary at a local bank during the day, while also studying for her GED at night. Graham’s first passion was art and painting, but due to these unfortunate circumstances, she was forced to push her dreams aside. Money was still tight, so when the opportunity came to use her artistic talents to paint the windows of the bank after hours for extra cash, she jumped at the opportunity.
Perhaps the long nights studying for her GED wore on the single mother, and she began to make mistakes at work. While painting the windows one day, inspiration hit, which led her to come up with a simple solution. Similar to how artists paint over their mistakes, why couldn't secretaries do the same with their typing errors? With that in mind, Graham used her kitchen blender to mix a formula (water-based paint she would tint to match her company’s stationary) for her new invention. At work, with a watercolor brush, she would paint over her mistakes erasing the error. Eventually she began marketing the invention, and then in 1979, sold her company for $47.5 million.
So, I “invented” something the other day. Likely not as revolutionary as Liquid Paper, but I do think it’s pretty interesting and useful for fantasy players.
The origin story behind my creation is much less fanciful than Graham’s. Several weeks ago, I had just finished recording a podcast and was kind of drunk. The night before I had built out a spreadsheet that included every run and pass play since 2007, and all relevant PFF data along with it. My television wasn’t working, so I began playing around with this sheet. Here was the thought process that led me to come up with this new stat:
(Notes: All references to fantasy points are in PPR.)
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