The movie "Moneyball"* is about this same topic, except in the realm of professional baseball. Basically, Moneyball is about the application of Business Intelligence/Analytics to baseball.

One interesting thing the movie showed is that it's not just using numbers which matters, but which numbers you are using that can be even more important. It's not like the "old school" managers and scouts weren't using numbers to evaluate players, but they were using metrics like RBIs and Batting Averages. The Oakland A's started using metrics like On-base Percentages and found they could better predict a player's future success with these kinds of numbers. And since these metrics were undervalued in general by pro baseball, the players who had good On-base Percentages, etc. were also undervalued.

Their low budget for player salaries was what really drove the A's to have to find a way to compete with teams like the New York Yankees who could spend a bundle on players. Oakland had some amazing success using these new metrics, and the other teams were left scratching their heads about how the A's could do what they were doing with the kinds of players they had signed, at the salary levels they were able to pay.

* Oh yeah... I think there was a book by the same name too. 🙂