At the end, I decided not to submit a paper to the 2011 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.  I had a paper idea in mind, but I wasn't able to get much progress in time to write a decent abstract, and I was struggling over whether it made enough of a contribution to present at this kind of meeting.  There are a couple other projects that are ongoing, but those efforts are not yet mature enough to write a summary paper. 

If all goes according to plan, I should be at the SSAC, and I look forward to seeing what, if any, soccer-related research papers made the final cut.