The sciencification of (professional) sport is fairly recent, probably around 20-30 years. There's the famous story of Arsene Wenger coming to Arsenal in 1996 a

The sciencification of (professional) sport is fairly recent, probably around 20-30 years. There's the famous story of Arsene Wenger coming to Arsenal in 1996 and giving his players diet plans, something unprecedented in England at that point. There was plenty of time before that for mediocre conventional wisdom to spread and become entrenched. But sometimes it's right.