Of all the exceptional projects Jon Bois has delivered, his creation of a concept known as Scorigami is probably his most recognizable. First seen in a 2014 article for SB Nation that he wrote before making a video for the website’s YouTube channel (now known as Secret Base), the theory supposes that, if origami is the art of creating a figure through different folds of paper, Scorigami is the art of creating a final score never seen before in the National Football League (NFL) through different events. Scoring in other American sports is common, predictable, and largely inflexible, whether it’s scoring one run at a time (or at least per on-base player) in baseball or netting 2- or 3-point shots and 1-point free throws in basketball. However, in the NFL, the numerous ways and increments of scoring can yield unusual results.
One decade after that first article, Scorigami has become common sports parlance. It has its own website, its own Twitter account, and its own Wikipedia page. Even the NFL have recognized it with its own short film in 2021 spotlighting Bois. This simple, silly thing has brought football fans together, generating a universal rooting interest in any game being played. Also in the time since Scorigami was introduced, Bois has pioneered and produced a new singular form of documentary filmmaking utilizing statistical analysis working in tandem with elaborate graphing and chart design to find the weird and wonderful stories from the worlds of sports — and as of last year’s tremendous REFORM!, politics. But now he has returned to Scorigami for his newest multi-part project, reuniting with long-time Secret Base collaborator Alex Rubenstein to study this phenomenon and what it tells us about the NFL’s past, present, and future. Numbers-wise, Scorigami is Bois’ densest and most intricate film yet. But it also shows us exactly why he is one of the most formally daring, consistently excellent documentarians out there.
Released onto Secret Base’s Patreon first before making its way onto YouTube one installment at a time throughout September, Scorigami the film is split into four parts. Part 1 lays effective groundwork as a beginner’s guide, introducing the key components of scoring and graphing for the uninitiated and establishing the project’s lingo, such as the “Eternal Scorigami” to describe instances where a scoreline has only happened once. This section also covers the early origins of the league, highlighting Bois’ gift for mining playful anecdotes from a pool of data: here, early, unorthodox teams like the Moline Universal Tractors or the Providence Steam Rollers are giving plenty of space, all while the project underlines the ways that scoring has changed across the league’s history.
The following three parts predictably dig in with more granularity. Part 2 covers the American Football League’s contributions to Scorigami history, up until its merge with the NFL, as well as tracking rules changes that effect the methodology at play, including the introduction of the two-point conversion, which was a boon to the uncertainty of future football’s potential scoring combinations. Part 3, meanwhile, traces the NFL’s re-adoption of the two-point conversion after the initial decision to ditch it, which would lead to a wave of new Scorigamis that linger until the present day. The project’s fourth and final part delves into the great unknown, and it’s here that Bois and Rubenstein (whose creative impact should not be diminished) examine scores that could be completed, those that are more improbable, and those with odds so great that representing them in a visual format becomes a mind-melting task.
Along the way, viewers are treated to most of the trademarks one has come to expect from Bois and co. There are the aforementioned graphs and charts aplenty, here primarily in the form of the triangular Scorigami board. Also included are the usual news clippings, smash zooms, royalty-free synth/smooth jazz soundtrack (thanks to the APM Music Library), and a z-axis that allows the compiled data to rocket up to the heavens. And as always, the “camera” remains a restless presence, zipping around the visualized data points and digitally-created spaces, guiding us through the wonderful world of numbers that forms the basis of a Bois joint. In other words, at this point, we all know what we’re getting, but as one of the most natural and compelling storytellers working in our present cinematic space, where could Bois go where we wouldn’t be apt to follow?
DIRECTOR: Jon Bois; DISTRIBUTOR: YouTube/Secret Base; STREAMING: September 30; RUNTIME: 4 hr.
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