The Sports Economist

For a fifth consecutive season, the Rockies, to their credit, have acknowledged their disappointing on-field performance by not raising their season-ticket prices. No wonder attendance is down from the early years. In baseball, like art, people won't pay to look at a cheap product.

"It helps process our tickets and get them out faster."

Not only is Young on trial this week, college athletics is as well. Lang [the high school coach] testified last week that eight schools -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan State, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Memphis -- offered him money and other favors for Means' services.

The trial, which began last Monday, has exposed an ugly side of college athletics that is usually only whispered about with a wink and a nod. But it begs the question: If schools have become that aggressive when it comes to a lineman like Means, what must they be doing to acquire superstar quarterbacks, running backs and receivers?

The answer is, "Jim Beattie and Mike Flanagan."

The question is, "Who are the dunderheads running the Baltimore Orioles?"

The word is these two co-general manager geniuses have been smitten by the bold idea of trading with the Cubs for Sammy Sosa. When this deal becomes official, it will go down as the worst acquisition of a formerly potent superstar since the Mets signed George Foster.

State Senate President Tom Lee suggested on Wednesday that he'd like to stop Wayne Huizenga from receiving millions in tax breaks for refurbishing his stadium for the Florida Marlins because the team is leaving the ballpark and is seeking a $60 million subsidy identical to what Huizenga won years ago.

''I really want to look into how that was done, in what context it was done and what promises were made,'' Lee said. ``But there are allegations developing that [getting a new subsidy] would essentially represent a double-dip by the Marlins.''

Huizenga, the team's former owner, said through a spokesman that he's entitled to the money and will fight in court if the Legislature tries to take it away.

Whether the tax fight reaches that point is anyone's guess, although the Marlins' request has clearly ushered in a free-for-all in the Legislature.

''We've received phone calls from the [Tampa Bay] Devil Rays and everybody who would like to get on that bandwagon if they could. And the well here in Florida is only so deep,'' Lee said.

The Marlins ran afoul of Lee recently for suggesting the club might leave Florida if the Legislature doesn't approve the subsidy to help the team build a new stadium in Miami. Lee said at the time that he doesn't ``negotiate with terrorists.''

Read more here.

"The [Orioles'] offers, I thought, certainly were generous, and some might think beyond what they should have been," Angelos said. "They're trying to improve the club and demonstrate to fans that we're doing everything we can to make the club competitive with Boston and New York, and we're heading in that direction.

"But the market needs to be reassessed. The more millions that are squandered, the more fans will have to pay through increased ticket prices and concessions. Major League Baseball has to come to grips with the crisis it's in.

"These salaries are beyond what 90 percent of the teams are able to pay. It's a problem that has to be dealt with in the future."

''Jeffrey Loria is behaving in a peculiar way,'' Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist, baseball author and professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, said of the Marlins owner. ''What one would like to think is [Delgado] creates a cache around the franchise to get over the top on a stadium deal or excite [the mayors] in Las Vegas or Portland, Oregon'' for possible relocation of the team.

Florida is mostly interested in Delgado producing runs the way he did with Toronto, where he hit at least 30 homers each of the past eight seasons. He's the kind of hitter the Marlins have long coveted -- a left-handed slugger capable of altering the balance of power in the NL East. He's also a box-office draw who boosted season-ticket sales at least fivefold this week.

a) it ranks 24th among the 32 NFL teams
b) the Redskins' payroll of $117.9m is more than 50% higher
c) it's $22m less than Peyton Manning's (7 year) contract
d) all of the above are true

The Patriots pick players that they think will fit their system, and many end up being willing to take less money to stay with the club. Middle linebacker Tedy Bruschi negotiated a contract extension last summer, without an agent, that included a $3.5 million signing bonus and salaries totaling $3.9 million for the 2005, '06 and '07 seasons. Otherwise, he would have been an unrestricted free agent after this season. Some agents and players leaguewide were upset that Bruschi settled for such a modest deal.

Detroit expects it would lose $8 million to $9 million should the league cancel its season, even if it were to book make- up events at Joe Louis Arena, says Albert Fields, the city's deputy chief operating officer.

Ronald Ruffin, 57, director of the parking department, says that without hockey, the city would probably have to increase parking fees citywide, boost fine-collection efforts and tap the general fund.

Idle players will pay less in income taxes, costing the U.S. Treasury about $354 million and states about $57 million, says Norman Cherrey, an accountant for several players.

From the start of the 2007 season, it is proposed that any club qualifying for a European competition must have no more than 25 players in their first-team squad. Four of those players, however, must be home-grown, two of them having been trained between the ages of 15 and 21 by the club's own youth training programme, while two others could be developed by other clubs, provided these clubs are part of the same national association as the buying club.

Forty years ago the Oxford sage, Lord Franks, returned from rebuilding Europe, setting up Nato and forging a special relationship with America to try something easy. He tried to reform Oxford. He failed. It still defies reform. And where Oxford refuses to lead, Cambridge, London and the rest meekly follow. They have collapsed into the arms of government. They are institutionally dependent. They simply beg for more.

Both Peel and Gladstone lost their Oxford parliamentary seats for advocating reform. The place is, as Franks said, a "two-hatted monster", a government university composed of private colleges. Franks found the colleges self-satisfied, reactionary and decisive only in indecision. Most still are.

[A]n article from the Science News ... came to the following conclusion, based on the input of two statisticians during the 2002 and 2003 seasons: In pressure situations (three minutes or less to go, a kick that would create a tie or a lead change) 101 of 139 pressure kicks (73 percent) were good. But when the defense called time out and iced the kicker, the percentage drops to 63 (24 of 38 kicks).

I was thinking about this whole icing matter, so I sent my query along to the good Doctor Stamms of Stats, Inc. He came up with the following: Pressure kicks (using the same guidelines as described above, except that they're in the last two minutes, not three) since 1991, regular season -- 457 of 637 (71.7 percent) made, without icing on them. After icing, the number is 152 of 211 (72 percent). So it's a push. Next week we'll discuss kicks with frosting instead of icing.

The World Curling Federation decided a year ago that beginning next year it will split the men's and women's world curling championship into two separate events. The men's and women's championships were combined into one in 1989. [This link and these quotes courtesy of BrianF]

``I think the women are going to have to curl naked in order to get people out there,'' the Canadian skip said Monday. ``I'm not kidding. You're going to have to hope for an Anna Kournikova to come along to really jazz it up.''

1. Clemens' expected additions to the total revenues of the Astros almost surely exceed $18m for next year. The Astros would have lost money by not signing him to a contract like this.
2. Clemens will now be the most highly paid [in nominal U.S. dollars] pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball. Given what I read about him while he pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays, this status would be worth quite a bit to him.

As if their football team's 12-0 record were not reason enough for students at the University of Utah to celebrate, here's one more: The campus bookstore will give a 5-percent discount on new and used textbooks this semester, and the credit goes to the university's football team.

The Utes' gridiron success has caused a surge in the bookstore's sales of T-shirts, sweatshirts, and other merchandise bearing the university's logo. Profits are more than double the previous record, set in 1998, when Utah's men's basketball team made it to the NCAA Final Four, says Earl L. Clegg, director of the bookstore.

Minnesota State University, Mankato is examining new ways to promote Maverick athletics as part of its integrated marketing initiative for the entire university.

The Greater Mankato Area Chamber of Commerce has pledged financial support for the athletic plan, and MSU will earmark a portion of its revenues from the relocated Jan. 14 men’s hockey game at Xcel Center to help fund the effort.

"There is almost a religious belief in the Olympics," said New York City Councilwoman Christine C. Quinn, who represents the West Side neighborhood that would be affected by any growth.

"Their belief in the Olympics has blinded them." ...

"Not to sound too sportsy, but it's like a Hail Mary pass," Quinn said of the intense pressure to start the giant earthmovers.

After the pay cut he made $45,000. Of course $45,000 ain't what it used to be.

In 2003, $45,000.00 from 1950 is worth:

$343,850.00 using the Consumer Price Index
$287,586.21 using the GDP deflator
$571,714.59 using the unskilled wage

Last week, the president of Harvard, Lawrence H. Summers, inadvertently provided further evidence of the opposition to free inquiry that currently governs our institutions of higher learning. Invited to speculate off the record on the "underrepresentation" of women in science, President Summers threw out some hypotheses, including one about innate differentials in aptitude between men and women, that may account for the phenomenon. At this point in his remarks, an MIT female professor of science quit the room, declaring to the press that she couldn't breathe because "this kind of bias makes me physically ill."

"What better proof than she of Summers' thesis?" quipped a friend of mine -- and, indeed, what better evidence of underprofessionalism than a scientist who becomes nauseated at the mere hint of a theory that differs from hers? But this woman had artfully framed her outrage. Her claim of "bias" was intended not simply to discredit the male who had asked whether there may be substantive differences between men and women, but to define the permissible terms of discussion.

Unfortunately, the problem President Summers addressed will persist despite the attempts to silence him. No one doubts that women seeking careers in science face greater challenges than those in other academic and research fields. At a recent forum of Harvard graduate students, a succession of budding female scientists expressed their anxieties about having chosen careers that will conflict, more than most, with their no less strong desires to raise and nurture a family. More than one young woman present felt that a job with reduced pressure during her childbearing years might better suit her needs than competition at the very highest levels. The good news is that most of the young women acknowledged that their dilemma was one of choice rather than a product of discrimination against them.

The very notion of "underrepresentation," based as it is on the implicit goal of numerical parity, greatly prejudices our ability to understand why women make the choices that they do. If women gravitate to the hard sciences less than to other fields, we ought to grant them the intelligence of sentient creatures, recognizing the potential loneliness of such choices while trying to understand why groups and individuals act as they do. It is not President Summers who owes women an apology; it is the complainers and agitators who owe both him and all of us an apology for trying to shut down discussion of an "inequality" that is not likely to disappear.

Bettman and Goodenow are said to dislike each other and some observers have
expressed concern that the personal animosity between the two men was stalling
negotiations.

A recent USA Today column tackled the question, why is AFC dominating the NFC? This year, the AFC won an unprecedented 70% of the inter-conference games with the NFC. Beyond this season’s outcomes, the AFC has won 5 of the last 7 Super Bowls. Strangely, the current trend follows 15 wins out of 16 years by the NFC. Before that, the AFC (and AFL) teams won all but three championships from the 1968-1983 seasons. Beyond the Super Bowl, the Cowboys were the only NFC teams really competitive with the better AFC teams during the 1970s. Aside from Buffalo, the AFC playoff teams would have had a difficult time advancing in the NFC playoffs over 1984-1997. This year, stronger AFC teams missed the playoffs altogether than NFC counterparts who made it to the second round.

Such swings in conference dominance extend beyond the NFL. The NHL experienced similar East (1970s) to West (1980s) to East (late 1980s-mid 1990s) and back to West (late 1990s-) fluctuations. In the NBA, the West handled the East during the late 1970s to late eighties, while the East controlled matters during much of the 1990s. In recent years, the East has fallen to almost minor league status versus the West.

What’s going on? Pure statistical anomaly is possible but does not seem to sync with such drastic swings. The USA Today article poses answers such as the residence of great quarterbacks, defenses, or head coaches. Even if these have legitimacy, they are not really fundamental answers – why would one league come to hold more of the better QBs or coaches?

Here is my stab at an economics-related answer – competition as a spur to performance, or more specifically, the relevant market in which competition matters most. Although AFC and NFC play four inter-league games per year, a team’s performance relative to divisional and conference rivals determines the major markers of success or failure – appearances in the playoffs and playoff wins. If teams in one conference come out with better players or coaches over two or three years (through skill or luck), this initial endowment may develop into a longer-lived advantage for the entire conference as intra-conference competition spurs the chase to keep with the team next door.

While such an effect may seem to be a stretch, I would appeal to common training examples. On an individual basis, training with other players who “stretch” one’s own efforts and abilities enhances performance more than training against lesser rivals. I can attest to this over 25 years of running even with my modest abilities.

One lesson may be that even though competition as a term runs throughout economics, economists may not fully appreciate the value of competition as a spur to performance. This kind of thinking or research is often left to psychologists or other professionals.

January 18, 1950

Cleveland Indians righthanded ace Bob Feller takes a $20,000 pay cut at his own request after going 15-14 for the "Tribe" in 1949. He would improve to 16-11 in 1950 and would win 22 games in 1951.

Basketball legend Herb Fungus was clocked early this morning by the local police driving his Lamborghini at 29 mph in a 30-mph zone and staying in his lane after attending an all-night party. "No weaving, no line crossing, nothing," marveled a police officer at the scene.

NHLPA president Trevor Linden made the request Monday, asking for a smaller
gathering, according to a source. Linden, NHLPA senior director Ted Saskin and
outside counsel John McCambridge will represent the players while the league
will have Calgary Flames part-owner Harley Hotchkiss, NHL executive
vice-president and chief legal officer Bill Daly and outside counsel Bob
Batterman. A source indicated no proposals would be made from any side, but
rather the meeting is an attempt to kick-start talks.

The film suffers only in comparison with many other treatments of the tragic failings of the famous. As in the retellings of the private lives of other icons, there are tumultuous domestic disputes, infidelities and scandals. Johnson's eagerness to enjoy his victory to the fullest at times feels a little too similar to those other tales of celebrity misbehavior that were to follow in the 20th century.

But among his firsts, Johnson was a pioneer in focusing the mass media's attention on "the Negro" - as he was called - as an individual. Not that this was always flattering. The ugliest parts of the four hours are the dehumanizing portraits and bigoted screeds that ran in newspapers of that era, this one included.

Johnson's living-well-as-revenge style may now seem commonplace, but it was then startling, even threatening. Not only was his athletic achievement upsetting to whites, but his consorting with white women earned him further enmity, even within his own race.

The Belgian first division side seems to exist for no other reason than to serve as a middle-man for African footballing talent. They make no secret of it and, in fact, are proud of the efficient system they have set up, which has resulted in a situation where 16 of their 21 first-team players hail from Ivory Coast. Most are very young and most will be sent home if they fail to find a buyer after a year or two. It’s a bit like those fancy pet stores where cats and dogs are showcased for a fixed period of time and then, if they go unsold, are dispatched back to whatever pound or shelter they came from.

The Beveren "system" has produced dividends for Jean-Marc Guillou, its architect, a close friend of Arsène Wenger and former manager of ASEC Abidjan, perennial Ivory Coast champions. A few years ago Guillou realised that, while more or less honest agents had been trying to bring African footballers to Europe for decades, there was no formalised structure in place. And such a structure could be immensely lucrative.

So he put together an investment syndicate called Goal and invested £1 million to take control of Beveren, who were close to bankruptcy. He also pumped money into academies back in Ivory Coast and began moving players across wholesale. In economic terms, you could say he is vertically integrated, like the Flemish diamond tycoons of old. He owns the "mines" that dig out the players, the "workshops" that polish and cut them into finished products and the "shops" that showcase them to the wealthy buyers. In the past six months, the set-up has yielded a cool £4 million from the sale of only three players: Gilles Yapi Yapo, the winger, to Nantes, Yaya Touré (Kolo’s younger brother), the midfield player, to Metalurg Donetsk and Emanuel Eboué, the defender, to Arsenal.

"Beveren were a club on the verge of dying," Laurent Denuit, football correspondent for La Dernière Heure, said. "If Guillou hadn’t come, they would have died. He was looking for a European club to develop his business, a club where he could put his (African) players. Thus the scenario has been the same for the last few years. Beveren sell their best players and they are instantly replaced by new ones (from Ivory Coast)."

No matches found for "NHL"

• Players on steroids hit the ball harder and farther, which generates more offence and more demand for tickets, viewership, etc., ceteris paribus.
• Players on steroids have a higher probability of developing medical and health issues in the future.

If these assumptions are correct, I should think the owners would have favoured steroid use (by the players), and the players would have resisted it. And if this is correct, what had been happening was that steroid use was a typical prisoners' dilemma game. JC at Sabernomics says pretty much the same thing, but much more elegantly, without invoking the prisoners' dilemma model.

In this instance, the players would be enticed by the owners to take steroids; the enticement would be in the form of incentive clauses, bonuses for HR or SLG milestones, etc. Each player would have an incentive to respond to those bonuses.

As a group, the players would be better off not taking steroids to out-compete each other, but they cannot just say, "Let's all stop taking steroids." They need an enforcer to create absolute disincentives for the taking of steroids, and that's what this new agreement provides.

One player interviewed on a local sports-talk radio station said he doubted the owners would have pushed a steroid ban had it not been for all the negative publicity in the past few months. Possibly that negative publicity means the marginal revenue product of steroids is expected to diminish. If so, the owners are more willing now than they used to be to become the enforcers for a player agreement not to use steroids.

Yes, individual players will still try to find ways around the ban; there are always those who try to find ways to move off-diagonal in the prisoners' dilemma pay-off matrix. But for the most part, this ban will likely be welcomed by players.

One friend who knows someone who knows someone.... told me that, in actuality, the players never were particularly opposed to a ban on steroids. Their primary opposition to the league's drug policy was because they wanted the freedom to continue use of recreational drugs (especially marijuana).

The problem with my analysis is that if it is correct, players' associations in all sports ought to be negotiating for steroid bans, and it is not clear they are. Why not?

"The league has been set up for Carolina and Duke since that became the featured game," Williams said. "All the schedules are off of those two games and set up for television. CBS, ABC, ESPN pick the games for ratings and what's left goes to Fox. We've been the third team picked and that's why we play every Sunday night. We play one Saturday (ACC) home game in January and February and that's not fair."

Purnell said Clemson shouldn't open with Duke four years running.

"It's a tough opener," Purnell said of the 62-54 loss to Duke at Cameron. What's worse, in the new unbalanced schedule this season, Duke doesn't go to Clemson.

"Let's face it, we don't want to open with the best team in the league every year," Purnell said. "That's the bottom line. I want my AD to take this to the AD level and talk about it and consider moving it around."

By Forbes calculations (see: "NFL Team Valuations"), the Patriots' enterprise value, now worth an estimated $861 million, grew 200% between 1998 and 2003--more than any team in the league. Yet the Pats lagged the league average in profitability (in the sense of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, all divided by enterprise value [emphasis added]) in both years it won the Super Bowl.

"Going sideways year to year is more than made up for in capital appreciation [of the franchise], presuming the owners have enough capital to pay their rent," says David Carter of The Sports Business Group, a marketing consultancy. "And most of those folks aren't pushing shopping carts."

The citizens of King County voted no on Safeco Field, narrowly, the one time they were asked about it. The citizens of Washington voted yes on Qwest Field, narrowly, after football interests, principally Paul Allen, spent $6.3 million to enchant them.

Two stadium elections: The first was ignored and the second bought. But at least we had them. At least we were asked before being made to pay.

And we do pay. In King County, we pay an extra 0.5 percent on every restaurant meal, bumping the rate to 9.3; an extra 2 percent every time we rent a car or truck; and 2 percent on hotel and motel bills. We pay taxes on baseball until 2018 and on football until 2020.

Basketball was supposed to be different. The Coliseum was to be rebuilt with revenues. The construction debt of $74.5 million has been whittled down to $58 million, but now the Sonics say they cannot get to zero. Why? The luxury suites at Safeco and Qwest, which were funded by the public, have undercut the market for the luxury suites at the Key Arena. If commercial baseball and commercial football have a source of free public capital, commercial basketball must have it, too.

A decade ago, the need for a baseball stadium was declared by the Legislature to be a public emergency. That was crazy, but the Washington Supreme Court went along with it as a one-time thing. A permanent tax makes it routine.

Additional contributors add value for readers by increasing variety and limiting the potential for long gaps in posting. Co-contributors also reduce the burden on individual bloggers.

I find, as a reader, that there are limits to the benefits from more contributors. I tend to value the personality of the bloggers, expressed through the organization and layout of the blog, the choice of topics, and references in passing to the blogger's activities and interests.

The NCAA has approved a preliminary new rule that would penalize teams when their players do not stay academically eligible. Basically, the new rules stipulate that each men's and women's team competing in Division I will be judged upon two broad criteria: 1. an Academic Performance Rate (APR) (to measure how athletes are doing in the short run) and 2. a Graduation Success Rate (GSR) (to measure how athletes are doing in the long run). Although the formulas that determine these rates have not been made fully public, USA Today has the following description in this article:

• Academic Progress Rate: Every sports team will establish an annual APR. Individual scholarship athletes will account for two points per school term, earning one for remaining academically eligible for competition and one for remaining at the school or graduating.

• New graduation rate: The NCAA will compile a new graduation rate, different and more accurate than t