Best of the Rest: NCAA Performance Outside "Big Six" Conferences
Four years after George Mason Wins the Lottery, Butler has reached the thin air normally reserved for teams from the “major conferences.” Their success prompted …
NFLPA, retired players, and NFL owners
Readers may recall postings on the Sports Economist about relations between retired NFL players and the NFL Players Association. One such posting is Compensation issues …
Feds Looking at Kansas Jayhawk Basketball Ticket Sales
The Feds have begun an investigation into the sale of tickets to Kansas Jayhawk men’s basketball tournament games, and maybe season ticket sales, according to …
The economic wisdom of Ray Lewis (updated)
No, the title is not a typo. In this interview for ESPN, Lewis claims that, “one of the consequences of a lost NFL season will …
Upsets and Blowouts in Tournaments
Here is the abstract of a paper in the most recent version of Economic Inquiry on upsets and blowouts in tournaments: In equilibrium play of …
Betting on the Tournament
From the Washington Post: The roughly $80 million wagered on the NCAA tournament in Las Vegas represents a minute fraction of the total betting on …
Barriers to Entry and Franchising
Co-blogger Phil Miller has recently written on his own blog, Increasing the size of a league imposes [negative] externalities on existing team owners. The new …
Home Advantage Omen for Ashes Whitewash
With cricket’s latest ‘Ashes‘ series having been decided more than a fortnight ago, much of the remaining interest in the final Test, just underway, centres purely …
Moneyball: Normal v. Abnormal
What are the limits of a “Moneyball” — expected value of a particular position — approach to personell decisions? A Sports Illustrated piece on Albert …
Maryland Stadium Authority – the gift that keeps on giving
Baltimore has Camden Yards and M and T Bank Stadium thanks to the work of the Maryland Stadium Authority. One might think that after spear-heading …