That's my list in three minutes.

Some snips from a USA Today story on Alabama football coach Nick Saban:

Hired three years ago for a then-unheard-of $4 million a year peeving rivals and higher education watchdogs who complained of misplaced priorities Nick Saban has coached the Crimson Tide football team to an undefeated record, No. 1 ranking and shot at the school's first national championship in 17 years. Alabama meets No. 2 Texas in Thursday's Bowl Championship Series title game in Pasadena, Calif. (8 p.m. ET, ABC)

Saban took over a storied program that had fallen on hard times, delivered a first-year record of 7-6 and since has led Alabama to 25 victories in 27 games. But it's not just the Crimson Tide's winning percentage that has soared.

The demand for tickets to Alabama's home games is so great that Bryant-Denny Stadium is adding about 9,000 seats, which will make it the sixth college facility with a capacity of more than 100,000. Donations to the athletic program are up. So is marketing revenue. And overall athletic profits have more than doubled at a time when barely a fifth of all major-college programs are generating enough overall revenue to turn a profit.

[snip]

The waiting list for priority-seating tickets requiring a donation atop the price of the seat has jumped from about 1,200 four summers ago to 15,000.

The school launched its first capital campaign for athletics in 2002, with a goal of $50 million in five years. By the 2007 spring game, it had raised $70 million. The drive ended, but the flow of money has continued, and donations total $102 million.

Alabama's take from its media and marketing rights contract with Learfield Sports and ISP Sports will jump $1.3 million this year, to $8.5 million, according to senior AD Finus Gaston, the school's chief financial officer for athletics.

Football revenue jumped 16% in Saban's first two years from nearly $56 million before he arrived to almost $65 million in 2008 and the sport turned a $38.2 million profit in 2008. Gaston conservatively projects a $39 million profit for 2009 and, with the expanded stadium and ticket demand, says he expects the climb to continue.

From the December 8, 1909 NYT comes an "oops" of a headline:

Soccer is Dawning in American Sports

Less Dangerous and More Open Football Becoming More Popular

Yale and Princeton Also Giving More Attention Than Ever Before to Clean and Healthful Game

The story discusses how Harvard and the other Ivy League schools are interested in promoting soccer to "the plane of major sports, including it in the category with football, rowing, baseball and track."

Yep, that worked out.

The NCAA now sanctions 34 post-season football Bowl Games in the Bowl (ie. Division I) Division. That's room for 68 teams. 119 teams play Division I ball. To be eligible for a bowl, however, you have to win at least 6 games, at least 5 of which must be against Division I competition. This year, there are 71 such teams.

So three eligible teams won't go to bowls this year. And there will be some pretty dull matchups. Go below the fold to explore the possibilties.

The Dec. 2, 1909 NYT reports on the sale of a minor league team:

The deal transferring Little Rock's Southern League baseball franchise to Chattanooga was closed today. The price paid by Chattanooga was $12,000.

Yesterday's WSJ ran an article listing 10 teams that supposed achieved the "least with the most," as determined by having the lowest winning percentage over the past decade among teams averaging at least two players per year drafted by the NFL. The list includes PAC 10 teams Arizona (21 drafted players, .402 win pct), Stanford (30, .409), and UCLA (25, .525) and SEC clubs South Carolina (28, .508) and Ole Miss (22, .517).

But here's the problem--basing this list on teams with at least two NFL draftees per year says nothing about the talent level of these teams' opponents. I haven't looked up all SEC or PAC 10 clubs, but Alabama had 35 drafted players over the past decade, LSU had 49, and USC had a whopping 61 (15 of whom were first-rounders). So instead of being teams with "a demonstrable history of wasting NFL talent," the teams in the chart may well have been outgunned by teams with even more pro talent.

UPDATE: Pro-football-reference.com has a nifty tool that allows one to find all players drafted out of each college conference. Over the 2000-2009 drafts, there were 304 PAC 10 players drafted, an average of 30.4 per team. Hence Arizona, Stanford, and UCLA were all below the conference average of drafted players. As for the SEC, its 12 teams had 401 players drafted for an average of 33.4 per team. South Carolina and Ole Miss are both well below this average.

The Nov. 13, 1909 NYT reports the upcoming college football schedule. It is interesting to consider how important (and not) some of the following programs are one hundred years later:

Fordham vs. Rensselaer Polytechnic
Princeton vs. Yale
Dartmouth vs. Harvard
Michigan vs. Pennsylvania
Chicago vs. Cornell
Amherst vs. Williams
Colgate vs. Syracuse
NYU vs. Lehigh
Virginia vs. Georgetown
Bucknell vs. Dickinson
Union vs. Hamilton
Holy Cross vs. Worcester
Wesleyan vs. Trinity
Vermont vs. Brown
Ursinus vs. Swarthmore
Gettysburg vs. Indians at Carlisle
Haverford vs. Rutgers
Bowdoin vs. Maine
Vanderbilt vs. Ohio State
William and Jefferson vs. Pittsburg
Penn State vs. West Virginia
Minnesota vs. Wisconsin
Illinois vs. Northwestern
Denver vs. Haskell
Drake vs. Missouri
Idaho vs. Oregon

The Nov. 4, 1909 NYT reports on high demand for Yale-Harvard tickets and the "problems" facing school officials in "allocating" tickets (as if the market couldn't do a better job) but the story admits, in the end, that the market is busy re-allocating some tickets to those who value them more but ignores the important question of why the teams aren't taking advantage of willingness to pay:

Yale and Harvard football officials are staggered at the demand for tickets to their annual football game at Cambridge on Nov. 20. Seats are being distributed under the application system. To-day applications closed, and the managers are at their wits end to devise means to accommodate the alumni of the two institutions, not counting the general public. Long ago it was seen that football lovers outside the Yale and Harvard graduates would have to hustle for seats. Now it is certain that, even if the alumni can be seated, they will have to greatly curtail their family parties....There are 34,500 seats in the Stadium. Yale takes half, and Harvard the remainder, but Yale has for several years gracefully turned back to Harvard from 3,000 to 5,000 of Yale's half in order that Harvard alumni might all be accommodated. To-day's rush for tickets here makes it certain that Yale men have more than applied for Yale's share of the seats in the Stadium, and that, for the first time, Yale cannot help Harvard in filling the demand of the Crimson after the Yale graduates have been satisfied.

Prices for tickets this year are sure to reach figures before unknown. Already $50 each is offered here by a Westerner for three tickets. There seems no room to doubt that blocks of three tickets will surely bring $100 apiece long before the day of the game.

The early 1900s is before big-money sports existed, notwithstanding the increased popularity and demand for spectator sports. Even for-profit sports franchises have uniform pricing (baseball tickets were all $0.50). However, the economics of sports (entertainment) tickets was no different then as it is today, and yet the response by event promoters seems to be the same - allocate the tickets by lottery and then complain that the secondary market pops up with "high" prices.

I have, from time to time, reported on the goings-on in American Football in the early twentieth century. Needless to say, the game was extremely dangerous and, despite reforms in the 1906-1907 period, in 1909 players were still being maimed and killed. Indeed, the cancellation of the 1909 Army-Navy game was announced on Nov. 3, 1909:

[F]inal decision having been reached to-day by the athletic authorities of the Naval Academy to grant the request of the Superintendent of the Military Academy to cancel the game owing to the death of Cadet Eugene A. Byrne as a result of injuries received Saturday in the game with Harvard.

Later in the issue is a letter to the editor on this point:

We are told that football promotes alertness in the brains of the players, teaches them to make quick decisions, compels them to implicit obedience to authority, and holds them to strict training while the season lasts. The finer the men physically the better for them, it is said, is the moral and spiritual development they gain from playing this particularly perilous game.

There is another side which many women and a few men see with clear vision. Is this sport or any other worth the death of young men just at the time when they are stepping into maturity? A few days ago it was a midshipman in the navy who died of a fractured vertebrae, and this morning is is a cadet at West Point whose death is reported of a twisted spine. Apart from the heartache to parents, the wound to love and the disappointment to circles of kindred, can the Nation afford thus to sacrifice the flower of its youth? If these boys died as heroes die, in saving lives, as firemen sometimes die, in the rescue of victims from burning buildings; if they died on the battlefield in a good cause, there might be consolation for the bereaved and added glory to the Nation whose sons they are. Simply to die in an athletic contest that is shockingly brutal is a waste to the Nation and a stab to the home that is without excuse.

And another story discusses ending a program:

SCRANTON, Penn - Announcement was made to-day by the Faculty of St. Thomas de Aquinas College that the football schedule for the remainder of the season had been canceled, owing to the numerous fatal accidents which have occurred. It was also stated that the college would not be represented by another eleven until the game is modified.

1. I <3 the modern world: blogging from the front porch, passing out candy to trick-or-treaters. FWIW, Starburst "GummiBursts" are pretty good. Shannon chose our Halloween candy well. We also have bite-size Snickers, 3 Musketeers, and Milky Way bars. My prior is that due the complex array of subsidies in agriculture, junk food is much cheaper than it would be in an unregulated market.

2. I'm a big fan of Robin Hanson's blogging at Overcoming Bias, and I think there's an excellent opportunity to learn a lot about bias by studying college sports and, in particular, sports coverage. An announcer just said something about USC being the "best one-loss team in the country," and my question is "by what standard?" Judging from the quality of the loss, they aren't even the best one-loss team in their own conference (Oregon lost to unbeaten Boise State and USC lost to 3-5 Washington, but they're about to settle this on the field). Since there's so much randomness in sports, team superiority isn't transitive. Houston beat Oklahoma State and UTEP beat Houston, but I'm pretty sure UTEP isn't better than Oklahoma State.

I trust rankings like Matt Ryan's Gus Rankings and Sagarin/ELO-CHESS a lot more because while they aren't perfect, they rank teams according to their on-the-field performance rather than their brand name, and they consider an entire season worth of information rather than one game. According to the Week 8 Gus rankings, Iowa is #1. No argument there, the Northern Iowa game notwithstanding. The Gus Rankings also suggest that Oregon is the best one-loss team in the country--and that Oregon is better than Boise State based on the quality of the teams they've vanquished. USC is #13 and the sixth-best one-loss team in the country, with two-loss Virginia Tech and two-loss Ohio State ahead of them.

Obviously, there's no perfect way to do this, but if I had a vote in the polls I would use the Gus rankings or something similar to cast my ballot.

I was at ground zero for the Arlington Cowboys Stadium debate (while on staff at UT Arlington). There are a number of reasons I don't live there anymore - and the stadium is one of them. Likely if I had stayed in the Metroplex I would have relocated to another city - more on principle and concerns about the opportunity costs of the stadium than the actual out-of-pocket expenses.

I agree that, in general, the development gains from new stadiums are generally overblown, but I think the jury is out on this stadium (and perhaps a few other ones such as new Yankee Stadium). As Mark Rosentraub has documented in his new book "Major League Winners" there are a few (just a few) examples of stadiums/arenas yielding some gain (I am reading it for review at the moment).*

Whether there are gains, monetary or non-monetary, is somewhat a question of fact and somewhat a question of ideology, especially when it comes to the measurement of quality of life compared to the opportunity costs of the stadium.

I admit to fighting the good fight against the taxpayer's of Arlington (at least) paying for a portion of the stadium, actually drawing some attention to myself as I howled in the wind. However, the stadium referendum passed (relatively overwhelmingly 55-45) and I ended up taking a new position at UNC Charlotte.

From my contacts with those still in Arlington, the general spirit is one of optimism concerning the stadium - perhaps there is no other way to feel about the stadium at the moment. .

However, I have strong evidence (N=6) that the Arlington Cowboys Stadium did provide third-party benefits for myself and two co-authors. Using the stadium debate and the Arlington referendum, we were able publish two ground-breaking papers (one in Contemporary Economic Policy and one in the Journal of Urban Economics). I know that those two publications helped in my tenure bid at UNC Charlotte and likely ended up translating into some permanent increase in my income. In the end, this is perhaps the strongest evidence I have found of third-party benefits of a new publicly built stadium in Arlington Texas.

We have more projects underway concerning the Arlington stadium so we will see in the next few years (decade?) whether this particular stadium can be grouped with Rosentraub's "Winners" or with Rosentraub's "Losers."

Of course, in the fall of 1909 no one really knew it was a streak, but the headline is telling for those of us around 100 years later:

CUBS LOSE LAST CHANCE FOR PENNANT

As mentioned before (half tounge-in-cheek) when the Cubs let their 1908 World Series flag fly away upon being displayed, the baseball gods were none-to-pleased.

Still aren't evidently.

From the Sept. 22, 1909 NYT is the following headline:

"Cy" Young Beaten by Boston

In my disgust at the Cincinnati Bengals Bungals latest draft choice debacle, a question occured to me.

Andre Smith, the team's number one pick fat lazy bum from that school in Tuscaloosa, had some $21 million of his $42 million contract guaranteed. Whilst not uncommon for top NFL draft picks to have some guaranteed money, most NFL player contracts do not have much if any guaranteed cash. For the typical NFL player, if you get hurt and don't play, you don't get paid.

In contrast almost all MLB player contracts are fully guaranteed. Players can get paid for years even after career-ending injuries.

My question is why the difference? In football the risk of injury is largely borne by the players, while in baseball by the owners.

Is this because baseball is less risky and players have longer average/median longevities (I don't even know if this is true)? Is it because evaluating baseball talent is easier than football talent? Is it because of differences in the bargaining strengths between the respective leagues and players' unions? Is is just some kind of random path dependency?

Comments open (for a short time only).

From the AJC we see another margin on which colleges are competing for the rents generated by unpaid athletes:

Joey Harrington’s 10-story billboard in New York did not help him win the Heisman Trophy, as was its intent.

But the billboard, put up in 2001 across from Madison Square Garden when the former Falcons quarterback was a senior at Oregon, accomplished perhaps a broader purpose for the Ducks, his college team. It got the attention of plenty of oversize teenage boys.

“It said to every player that came to Oregon, if you get yourself to the point where you’re in the race for a national award, if you put yourself in the Heisman race, we’ll put your face in New York,” Harrington said. “It definitely sent a message.”

Tennessee is sending a similar message to high school football recruits in metro Atlanta. The school has put up two billboards with Heisman Trophy candidate Eric Berry, a safety from Creekside High School, along with new coach Lane Kiffin.

From today's WSJ:

Slugger Albert Pujols was supposed to start seeing better pitches after his St. Louis Cardinals traded for Matt Holliday to bat after him. Lest pitchers walk Mr. Pujols too often, Mr. Holliday, a sound hitter in his own right, would have more at-bats with players on base. But since the move, Mr. Pujols is batting .200 with zero homers, his longest drought of the year. Mr. Holliday, though, is batting .541, with three home runs.

Here's the abstract of Bradbury and Drinen in the J of Sports Econ:

Past studies estimating the marginal revenue products of baseball players have assumed individual players' hitting performances to be independent of teammate spillovers. However, the baseball community's widely held belief in "protection"—that a good (bad) player can improve (diminish) the hit probability of the batter who precedes him in the batting order—violates the assumption of the independence of batting outcomes. In this paper, the authors identify two possible hitting externalities in baseball. Using play-by-play data the authors find evidence contrary to the protection hypothesis—the quality of the on-deck hitter negatively impacts the preceding hitter—though the magnitude of the effect is very small.

The July 20, 1909 NYT reports on a new world record in what I interpret to be speed walking or "pedestrianism":

WINNIPEG - Announcement was made to-day that at the Canadian athletic championship meet here Saturday, George H. Goulding of Toronto in the mile walk broke the world's record in 6:25 1-5. This lowered not only the American record of 6:29 2-5, but also clipped four-fifths of a second off the world's mark made by G. E. Larner at Brighton, England, in 1904.

The current American indoor record is 5:38.2 held by Tim Lewis.

So, given a century of technological and human capital improvement the speed walk has improved 22%. Not bad.

The Chicago Cubs last won the World Series in 1908. Some blame the curse of the goat, others attribute this to the Merkle Curse, others blame bad ownership. I blame the fans - Cubs fans are "too" loyal in the sense that they continue to attend and support the team despite their poor history of post-season play. Teams with very loyal fans can skimp on quality (on the margin) and this might explain why the team hasn't had a breakout year in the last century.

The June 17, 1909 NYT reports on an incident that might deserve mention in this context:

Chicago's second successive world's championship pennant was hoisted to-day [June 16, 1909] after a parade of both teams, headed by a brass band. Just before reaching the top of the high pole, however, the rope pulley broke, and the emblem blew away back of the bleachers in centre field.

The June 11, 1909 NYT reports:

PARIS - "Bobby" Walthour, the American bicycle rider, to-night won a fifty-kilometer motor-paced race in 41 minutes 21.5 seconds.

Today I went out with my 2007 technology (LeMond Alpe d'Huez with Schimano 105s) and averaged 16 14.5 miles per hour, but without the ability to draft an automobile/motorcylce.

Obviously Walthour was doping.

Rival sports leagues often have a hard time establishing a foothold against the dominant league. Those sports leagues who have viable franchises are often asked to merge with the dominant league - which happened in baseball long, long ago, and more recently in basketball and hockey.

The June 8, 1909 NYT reports on the demise of the Eastern Baseball Association:

The new Eastern Baseball Association, which started with clubs at Newberg [NY], Poughkeepsie, Middletown, Kingston, Amsterdam, Schenectady, Gloversville, and Johnstown, was disbanded on Sunday after eleven days of existence. Poor patronage and lack of capital killed the league.

Also, team owners didn't appeal to their local governments for subsidies and new stadiums.

One often hears griping about boorish behavior, steriod use, and the like from professional athletes. Tom Glavine's generosity with his time last night to sign autographs--including one for Pee Wee (see photo below)--is a nice contrast. Glavine was in Rome for a rehab start (he gave up no runs and was especially sharp in his last 4 innings) and, by coincidence (scheduled long before it was announced that Glavine would be pitching), Pee Wee's little league team was the team of the night for the game.

BTW, the ballpark was sold out when it probably would have been no more than half full on a normal Tuesday night. In my Rome Braves paper on stadium alcohol availability, I estimated that Chipper Jones increased attendance by one-third and less well known players by perhaps 10%. The Glavine effect appears to be larger, though n = 1.

According to this Running SuperFans blog post,

You know what else turns out to be countercyclical? We’ll give you three clu…oh, you guessed running? Correct!

Check this out: just this weekend, the Cleveland Marathon set an event record for most participants. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, two new marathons are about to be run for the first time. So while the rest of the economy is going down the port-o-john, running is on the rise!

Also check out their hilarious running videos. For example:

here.

This came to my email box, but I have no answer. If anyone can help, I would appreciate any insight:

Do you know the last time two new intercollegiate football teams began their first season of play against one another? It is happening this year in Division III when Anna Maria College and Castleton State play each other in the first week of the 2009 season. They are both beginning college football programs for the first time.

From this week's Sports Business Journal:

Of the $100 million coming to the Magic, Martins said the team will put $50 million directly toward construction of the new arena, which is set to open in October 2010. The rest of the debt is earmarked for pre-opening costs, including capitalized interest costs and unspecified debt reserve requirements. That portion of the funds also includes $12.5 million for the construction of five new community gymnasiums as required by the team’s arena deal with the city.

Most of the $480 million arena cost, which includes a $100 million land-purchase price, is publicly funded, with the Magic responsible for $50 million in construction costs. The team will also pay $1 million in annual rent and will pay for any cost overruns.

I know, there are people (usually non-economists) who argue that the events held in the arena will generate some amount of new spending. Perhaps, but work done by myself and Dennis Coates (working paper here) suggests that events held in an arena generally have less of an immediate impact as proponents predict. The main reason? Most of those who attend the event are locals who simply redirect their entertainment (and perhaps food) spending to the event rather than generating new spending. How would locals generate NEW spending? One way would be to pull money from savings to spend today, but even then the total economic impact is ambiguous.

Sports economists have argued for years that spending on arenas, at least at the levels that cities have been spending in the past ten years or so, is not justified. The vast majority of the benefits of a new stadium are internalized by the team owner (here is a general-audience presentation concerning MLB stadiums and the associated academic paper and a general-audience presentation concerning NFL stadiums.) thus a proper burdern-sharing has more construction and maintainance costs on the shoulders of the team. Alas, the curernt political economy of sports arenas leads to the public picking up 2/3 of the bill on average (see slides 7 and 8 of these lecture notes).

BTW, the $1m in annual rent is approximately 0.23% of the arena's initial value. This is equivalent to renting a brand new $100,000 house for $19 per month. How sweet it is to be a major league franchise.

More links:

Skip Sauer on EconTalk concerning stadium economics (MP3 audio)
Devin Leary-Hanebrink: "Socialized Sports: Your Money at Work" (MP3 audio)

Cross posted at Heavy Lifting

The May 11, 1909 NYT reports an interesting criterion for continuing an intercollegiate sport:

At the meeting of the Harvard Athletic Club this evening it was voted to abolish basket ball as an intercollegiate sport at Harvard on account of the lack of interest and financial support.

However, if interest and financial viability are the means by which a sport is tp be justified on campus, the vast majority of teams (male and female) would be disbanded or would have to move to a "pay to play" format. Notwithstanding many people's angst concerning football and (today at least) men's basketball, because of their large revenue generating potential and (subsequently) large expenditures, many of the sports on even the biggest campuses around the country would be in trouble without the cross-subsidization from net-revenue-generating sports (and let's not forget the taxes paid by the student body).

There are many who propose that new sports venues create situations for new development around the stadium. This development is then used as a justification for using tax dollars to pay for the venue. Generally, those who make such claims are NOT economists and make the claims long before the stadium has been built. Sports economists have been fighting the good fight to disabuse politicians and the electorate from these development dreams. I would say that we have had a modicum of success as about 50% of stadium referendums fail (those who pass, however, cost more and more over time).

The May 10, 1909 NYT reports on a politician swimming upstream in the stadium-development racket:

Alderman John J.F. Mulcahy is preparing a bill which, if it passes the Board of Aldermen, will force the New York Baseball Club to seek other quarters. The bill will open a street through the centre of the Polo Grounds, and will enhance the value of much of the surrounding property, and for that reason Alderman Mulcahy's bill is receiving strong support of the property owners near the Polo Grounds.

The good Alderman had this to say:

I am a lover of all kinds of sports, especially baseball, and while I do not want to work any hardships on the New York Baseball Club, I believe that the property rights of my constituents should be safeguarded, and with this object in view, I have looked the matter up, and have had a private survey made. I am not preparing the bill, which I feel certain will be passed, and will make every effort to push it to a successful conclusion.

Once again my beloved Reds are off to a better than expected start. They are above 0.500 with a 14-13 record as of today.

Also once again, my wife is getting excited believing that in spite of all the fundamentals, this is the year the Reds will put it all together. "Remember 1990!" she will say. I mutter in reply something about "regression to the mean" and for the better part of a generation, the Reds have sadly proved me right.

I just pulled the numbers from MLB for current win percentage and run differential (runs scored minus runs allowed). Running a simple regression yields the following result:

Win% = 0.50 + 0.0035 RunDiff

R-Sq = 65.3%

So as expected a larger run differential converts into a higher winning percentage.

And sure enough my Reds are performing better than expected. Their negative 13 run differential projects to a 0.452 winning percentage--fully 6.6 points below their actual .519 showing.

Here are the data (sorted from high to low based on the residuals):

I do not play poker and thus find it very dull to watch on television. However, the market clearly has a different view of the "sport" given the number of channels on which poker tournaments are aired.

There are any number of underrepresented "sports" that haven't had their day on the tube. Why not broadcast the world rock-paper-scissors tournament or The Lingerie Football League (possible NSFW)?

The May 5, 1909 NYT reports on what must have been a barn-burner competition of yet another non-traditional sport:

The Cavendish Club of Boston, the Omaha Club, the Cavendish Club of New York, and the Howells Woman's Club of Boston carried off the honors of the first day's play in the twelfth annual congress of the National Women's Whist league, which began here [Boston] today. The Hotel Somerset was crowded with expert followers of the game and the play was eagerly watched.

The NWWL? Sounds as good as any other league acronym.

Barton, the top Republican on the Congressional committee examining the BCS, likened the BCS system to communism:

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, who has introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from calling a game a national championship unless it’s the outcome of a playoff, bluntly warned Swofford: “If we don’t see some action in the next two months, on a voluntary switch to a playoff system, then you will see this bill move.”

Barton, the top Republican on the committee, said at the hearing that efforts to tinker with the BCS were bound to fail.

“It’s like communism,” he said.

Story.

HT: Todd.

The April 28, 1909 NYT reports on an automobile festival on Long Island in which cars were able to race on a two-mile or one-mile track. For some races, cars were flighted by price range; for others it was a "free-for-all."

Overall, there are 52 reported outcomes with the following manufacturers competing:

 tab make

             make |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.

------------------+-----------------------------------

         american |          2        3.70        3.70

          babcock |          1        1.85        5.56

             benz |          2        3.70        9.26

          bianchi |          2        3.70       12.96

            buick |          7       12.96       25.93

         cadillac |          2        3.70       29.63

 chalmers-detroit |          2        3.70       33.33

         columbia |          2        3.70       37.04

              emf |          2        3.70       40.74

           haynes |          2        3.70       44.44

             knox |          8       14.81       59.26

           lozier |          1        1.85       61.11

          maxwell |          1        1.85       62.96

         national |          4        7.41       70.37

  palmer & singer |          4        7.41       77.78

          panhard |          2        3.70       81.48

          renault |          2        3.70       85.19

              spo |          1        1.85       87.04

          stearns |          7       12.96      100.00

------------------+-----------------------------------

            Total |         54      100.00

I took the times reported and converted them into miles per hour. I then gathered the reported horsepower of each car and identified those vehicles that were in the cheapest class of cars ("gasoline cars selling under $1250"). I also noted whether the car competed on a one mile or two mile track. Here's an interesting tidbit for an econometrics class:

. reg mph hp cheap onemile,r

Linear regression                                      Number of obs =      52

                                                       F(  3,    48) =   27.37

                                                       Prob > F      =  0.0000

                                                       R-squared     =  0.5486

                                                       Root MSE      =  8.9093

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

             |               Robust

         mph |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

          hp |   .2563863   .0540599     4.74   0.000     .1476915     .365081

       cheap |  -12.73051   3.284603    -3.88   0.000    -19.33465   -6.126372

     onemile |   3.772493   2.521449     1.50   0.141    -1.297219    8.842205

       _cons |   51.78519   3.429448    15.10   0.000     44.88983    58.68056

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The most expensive, and the fastest, car in the group was a Benz, which came in at 120 horsepower and topped 102 mph.

High school kid pitches 4 no hitters in a row.

Speaking of "anything will happen that can" and baseball:

Columbia Pictures and director Steven Soderbergh have set Demetri Martin to star alongside Brad Pitt in "Moneyball," the adaptation of the Michael Lewis book about ballplayer-turned-Oakland Athletics g.m. Billy Beane and his attempt to field a competitive team on a slim payroll.

Also joining the roster is a group of actual baseball players: former Oakland A's team members David Justice and Scott Hatteberg have signed on to play themselves in the picture, while Daryl Strawberry and Lenny Dykstra are among those who will be seen on camera being interviewed about their experiences with Beane when he was a phenom drafted by the New York Mets before flaming out and becoming a baseball scout. Shooting begins in June.

Source. It'd be cool if my director sister got a gig on this film.

Watch it live online here. Coverage starts at 9:20 ET.

9:22 a.m. Wheelchair Division Start
9:32 a.m. Elite Women's Start
10:00 a.m. Elite Men & Wave 1 Start
10:30 a.m. Wave 2 Start

Good luck to all my friends (Scott, Laura, Dink, Rita, Georg) running today. I'll see you there next year.

P.S. Auburn MBA student David Wishart is hoping for an under 2:25 time and top 25 place. Good Luck David!

You can track your favorite runners here.

The quality of sports writing continues to improve, I think. Check out ESPN Page Two writer, Jeff MacGregor on Kentucky firing basketball coach Billy Gillispie after two years.

Taking a page directly out of Sun Tzu's "The Art of What Have You Done For Us In The Last 15 Minutes?" the strategic deciders at UK last Friday made the unstunning decision to unhire a guy they never should have hired in the first place. This, the Great Uncoupling, might cost the state another $6 million in prenuptial penalties. How high the price of sweet freedom! And poor decidering! That they then chose not to fire or tar and feather themselves for having engineered the whole boondoggle comes as a surprise to no one.

So they now begin another panicked search for the next overpriced bad fit. Because, yes, by all means, let's put the same people who made the last terrible decision in charge of making the next terrible decision.

Meanwhile, with 50 wins and two second-round tourney trips in his first two seasons, Mark Turgeon is looking mighty handsome as the Texas A&M head coach.

From the March 30, 1909 NYT:

Hugh McLean of Chelsea, holder of the world's middle-distance motor-paced bicycle championship, and also holder of the world's record for one and two miles, motor paced, announced to-day his retirement from the bicycle track. Hereafter, it is understood, he will manage the boxing career of Sandy Ferguson.

More on Ferguson here.

The March 4, 1909 NYT reports on another awe-inspiring display of caging:

Williams College was victorious tonight in basketball over the Wesleyan College five, scoring 25 points to Wesleyan's 17.

That would be either the Williams or the Tufts basketball teams in 1909, as reported in the Feb. 26, 1909 NYT:

Williams College tonight defeated Tufts College in basketball by the score of 15 to 9.

I know the game was played just a bit differently back then, but seriously, there should have been a mercy rule for those in attendance.

The Feb. 25, 1909 NYT reports the 1909 schedule for the University of Pennsylvania:

Sept. 25 - Gettysburg
Oct. 9 - Amherst
Oct. 16 - Brown
Oct. 23 - Penn State
Oct. 30 - Carlisle
Nov. 6 - Lafayette
Nov. 13 - Michigan
Nov. 25 - Cornell

One date (Oct. 20) was unsettled at press time. Those being courted were Ursinus (this is my unknown school of the day, although I admit to a Southern bias), West Virginia, Villa Nova, Dickinson, and Georgetown.

At the time the lineup wasn't all that bad, although I would have to dig into my data to find out whether Ursinus had any presence on the gridiron. It is interesting how college football has changed in 100 years.

This post on mlbtraderumors.com caught my eye:

According to Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Cardinals have released Adam Kennedy. They'll still be responsible for his $4MM salary. The move was "apparently made at the strong urging of manager Tony La Russa," who didn't want Kennedy to be his starting second baseman.

Skip Schumaker has been working out at second base, and could play there if the Cards don't add anyone to replace Kennedy. Strauss mentions Brendan Ryan and a few others as possible competitors for the job.

This is good news for Orlando Hudson, who has another possible bidder for his services.

I'm guessing Hudson shouldn't wait too anxiously by the phone--releasing Kennedy doesn't free up his $4m salary. Kennedy's salary being a sunk cost shouldn't alter the decision to sign Hudson, something the Cards were apparently not interested in doing. Maybe Hudson is an improvement over Schumaker and Ryan while he wouldn't have been an improvement over Kennedy, but that raises the question of why the Cards would then release Kennedy.

Evidence in the crimiinal case against Barry Bonds was released yesterday. It reminded me of reading Game of Shadows last summer. I brought a dislike of Bonds to the book--my impression was that he was a jerk and juicer and the book reinforced those impressions.

Yet the book and its description of the case against Bonds offended my libertarian sense of legal fair play. As recounted by the book (or my 7 month old recollection of reading it), the case against Bonds and Balco started when a federal agent went snooping through the trash outside Balco. The agent didn't appear to have any sort of probable cause but apparently started sniffing around based on a gut instinct. Even worse, the book (and the authors' newspaper articles preceding it) report what is supposed to be secret grand jury testimony. It is certainly their right to report testimony, but the leaking, presumably by prosecutors, is not kosher. So, yeah, I think Bonds is a bum, but bums have rights too and I find his treatment offensive.

... comes from a Cincinnati police officer arresting Ole Miss basketball coach for an altercation with a cabbie (empahsis added):

Cincinnati — A newly released police video shows Mississippi basketball coach Andy Kennedy pleading with an officer before his arrest on an assault charge.

“I’m begging you … this is a major deal, man,” Kennedy told police.

He added: “This is going to be a national incident, sir.”

[snip]

Kennedy told police on the video that he had a verbal altercation about how many people could ride in the cab, and that it “makes no sense” to arrest him.

In response to his pleas, an officer said: “You think we’ve never arrested somebody that’s made national media? … We deal with the Bengals all the time.”

Sorry Bob. The incident has spawned suits between the cabbie and coach; the coach's suit includes a claim that the incident has cost him a "loss of consortium" with his wife. Source.

Whereas the Super Bowl is the best sporting event in the known universe;

Whereas going to work on the Monday after the Super Bowl just sucks;

And Whereas "Super Bowl Saturday" has the same alliterative appeal as "Super Bowl Sunday";

Let It Hereby Be Resolved that the NFL will MOVE THE DAMNED GAME TO SATURDAY!

Co-blogger Ed points us to this report that Milan might pay 4.5 million pounds (or $6.3m) to obtain David Beckham from the LA Galaxy. In our paper (previous post here) on Beckham's effect on MLS attendance, Bob, Kate, and I made a back of the envelope guess that Beckham's marginal revenue product for the Galaxy in 2007 was $20m. Reports indicate that the Galaxy pay Beckham about $10m thereby implying a net gain of $10m (a figure that has probably declined a bit after the initial excitement over Beckham's arrival). So a $6.3m transfer fee looks like we might have been in the neighborhood.

But here's an interesting question--Beckham is also highly valuable to the other MLS teams. I wonder if the other teams might increase the amount the league pays toward the salary of star players, its Designated Player Rule, in order to entice the Galaxy to keep Beckham.

Co-blogger Art has begun running and plans to run the Mike Cody 4 Mile Classic at Rhodes College in a couple weeks. As a new runner, he's smartly starting with a run/walk strategy to make the distance.

I've run only one 4 mile race, the Ohio-Michigan 4 Mile Run in July 2006, and ran it in 24:22.

So here's the bet: If Art runs his 4 miler in less than twice the time (48:44) I ran mine, then I owe him a beer at the APEE meeting in April. Otherwise he owes me the beer.

In other running news:
Congrats to Scott Beaulier on his 3:07 marathon on Saturday at the Museum of Aviation Foundation Marathon in Warner Robins, GA. That's a new PR for Scott and a BQ.

Having lived in Arlington, Texas, for 11 years before moving to Charlotte, NC, I enjoyed a boost in my quality of life by living about ten minutes drive time from the Ballpark in Arlington (now Rangers Ballpark in Arlington). Unfortunately, while I was in Texas, the Rangers appeared in the playoffs three times and were waxed each time by the Yankees (the rangers were a combined 1-9 against the Bombers). Usually sometime in the summer, when the temperature became obnoxious and the team's quality became ever more apparent, attendance would fade off.

Frustrated and very warm Rangers fans might agree with a proposed legislation in Texas reported in the Jan. 16, 1909 NYT:

The bill introduced in the Texas House of Representatives yesterday by Mr. Bowles to prohibit the playing of baseball on Sunday has caused much uneasiness among the owners of the clubs of the Texas League and many friends of the sport. They declare if th e bill becomes a law it will kill professional baseball in Texas.

A NYT piece suggests NBA attendance depends more on team quality than macroeconomic condidtions:

The Kings are suffering from the twin perils of a poor economy and poor play, with a 7-19 record and no certified stars. The problems are mirrored in Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Charlotte, N.C., and Memphis, which comprise the bottom fifth of the N.B.A. attendance list.

Over all, N.B.A. attendance is flat — about a half-percent higher than at this point last season on a per-game basis. Cumulatively, arenas are at about 89 percent of capacity, on par with last season.

Given the recession, league officials are actually encouraged. They are expecting neither a significant increase nor a significant decrease in attendance this season.

Still, it is hard to ignore the thousands of empty seats at Arco Arena and Conseco Fieldhouse, or anecdotal reports that things are worse than the official numbers indicate. (N.B.A. teams report attendance based on tickets distributed, not turnstile counts. The latter figure is not publicly available.)

On basketball blogs, fans and reporters swap horror stories about the anemic crowds. A Nov. 12 game between the Grizzlies and the Knicks in Memphis drew, officially, 10,129 fans, but the crowd looked much thinner. A Nov. 3 game between the Bobcats and the Pistons in Charlotte drew a reported 11,023 fans. But two-thirds of the seats appeared empty.

In fact, several teams are defying the recession. The Pistons, operating in one of the most depressed economies in the country, have sold out 246 consecutive games at the Palace of Auburn Hills and lead the league in home attendance, with 22,076 a game.

The Oklahoma City Thunder, despite a 2-24 record, is averaging 18,457 a game in its inaugural season at the Ford Center (capacity 19,314). The franchise drew just 13,335 fans a game last season in Seattle.

Perhaps no team cheers N.B.A. accountants more than the Portland Trail Blazers, who are drawing 20,516 fans a game — an increase of 5,000 over three seasons ago, when the economy was sound but the team was not. Poor play and player misdeeds so alienated the fan base that the owner, Paul Allen, filed for bankruptcy protection and handed the Rose Garden back to creditors.

The Dec. 18, 1908 NYT reports on passenger traffic and train revenues generated from the Yale-Harvard game held in New Haven Connecticut the previous week:

[T]traffic and earnings from the Yale-Harvard football game here last month show that the passengers carried were 39,777, as compared with 41,454 passengers for the Yale-Harvard game in this city two years ago. The revenue received from football passengers on the steam road was $71,299, as compared with $62,901 from the Yale-Harvard game of 1906. On the day of the football game the company ran into New Haven sixty-six trains, carrying 584 cars and 21,215 passengers, and out of New Haven fifty-five trains carrying 500 cars and somewhat over 20,000 passengers. This army of passengers was handled without incident.

This is a great example of how price elasticity changes with the availability of substitutes. How else could one get to New Haven in a timely fashion on the day of the game?

The December 15, 1908 NYT reports on the pending new digs for the Pittsburgh Pirates:

Pittsburg's (sic) new National League baseball park will have a seating capacity of 20,000...They [the plans] call for an immense three-decker, V-shaped grand stand, from every part of which the "fan" will have an unobstructed view of the playing field...

One of the innovations will be the apartments for the players. Under one corner of the grandstand will be the rooms of the Pittsburg players, consisting of plunge and shower baths, massage rooms, smoking and lounging rooms, with a billiard and pool parlor. There will be similar rooms for the visiting team, and a room for the umpires. The rooms are so arranged that the players and the umpires can slip away in case of trouble, without crossing the field, thus eliminating the danger from the rowdy element.

It is interesting that there was considerable concern for the safety of the players and umpires. During the playoffs in 1908 there were a number of instances of players being hit by items thrown by dis-enchanted fans. One important, and overlooked, aspect of sport in the United States is that the only barriers between the fans and the field of play are, generally, in place to protect the paying fans rather than to protect the players from the fans. Contrast that with many other countries (especially in association football) and it gives food for thought.

Gwinnett County GA is apparently having difficulty selling the naming rights for the stadium being built for the Braves AAA franchise. The stadium is also coming in over budget. Just wondering, could this be the way the county is making up the financing gap?

While neighboring counties encourage recycling, Gwinnett County’s new solid waste management ordinance puts teeth into it. The ordinance provides for a civil fine of $500 for violations, which includes those who fail to “source separate residential recovered materials.”

From the Dec. 3, 1908 NYT:

President Johnson of the American League has announced the the price of tickets to world's championship series games next season would certainly be cut in two. He said the National commission had come to the conclusion that it was not just to the "fans" who had paid their money to see the clubs battle through the regular campaign to pay big prices for the series at the season's close.

In light of the annual controversy over how college football's national champion is determined, I've written up a proposal for how conferences can be realigned. My modest contribution is below the fold.

Chris Paul of the New Orleans Hornets is why. He is a remarkable player (I'll pass on the comparison to MJ, but see below) who is fun to watch. Yes, you can say that about a number of players and that's nothing new. But Chris Paul is proving that he is on another, more worthy, and historically significant level. Recapping Saturday's victory over the Miami Heat, ESPN laid out these facts:

Paul finished with 21 points and 13 assists for his sixth straight double-double of at least 20 points and 10 assists to open the season, surpassing the mark set by Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson in 1968.

Paul also has an incredible 90 straight games with a steal. That's 13 more than Michael Jordan's longest streak and second only to Alvin Robinson at 105. Tune in my friends.

My former student John Fowler points me to this news item:

Some baseball agents already are thinking about trying to beat a possible tax increase for their well-paid clients under an Obama administration.

President-elect Barack Obama has proposed increasing the top federal income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, where it was under president Bill Clinton.

If signing bonuses are paid before Jan. 1, they likely would be taxed at the current rate and would not be subject to any increase.

"It's something we'll consider," agent Craig Landis said Tuesday at the general managers' meetings. "Besides the federal issue, we have a state issue in some cases, anyway, where it's advantageous to take signing bonuses because of the state income tax. A Florida resident can take the signing bonus and not have to pay his team's state tax."

Obama's proposal would increase federal income tax on families earning more than $250,000 annually, money that would help finance a decrease for workers and families earning less than $200,000. It's also possible more income might be subject to the Social Security tax.

Next year's major league minimum is $400,000. Agent Scott Boras, negotiating eight- and possibly nine-figure deals for free agents Manny Ramirez and Mark Teixeira, already has thought about the possibility of asking for larger signing bonuses payable this year in some of his contracts.

...even though I'm not certain we should be. After last night's thrilling conclusion to the Texas-Texas Tech game, Alabama is #1 in the AP, USA Today, and Harris Polls. I expect the Tide to be #1 in the BCS standings whenever they come out. My Top 10 plus a few thoughts are below the fold.

Now with stocks plunging and a steady drumbeat of layoffs, bankruptcies and foreclosures, sales efforts such as variable pricing, pay-as-you-go plans, package deals and even mandated cheap seats are growing. They're likely to only get more popular.

"We read the papers and know there are jobs disappearing and people being laid off," said Greg Schenkel, the Pacers' vice president of corporate and public relations. "We were not oblivious to the real world out there.

That's from today's AJC; the article also has some good stuff about teams' price discrimination strategies. Previous posts here and here.

In preparation for the possibility of starting a vintage base ball club in Auburn, I'm doing some historical research on local base ball history and was pleased to discover very early evidence of base ball in Auburn.

Thomas Porter Whitby, a veteran (1862-1865) of the 37th Alabama Regiment of Volunteers , organized a base ball club in Auburn in 1866 while attending the East Alabama Male College (which ultimately became Auburn University).

The Auburn University archives has Whitby's original paper listing the "Members who paid for Base Ball". It is dated March 12(?), 1866.

The note also indicates that he "Paid for Ball - 1.00" which is $13.47 in today's terms (using the CPI). For comparison, an official MLB ball is on sale today for $11.41. A high school ball goes for about $5.

A small tidbit of interest from the Oct. 15, 1908 NYT:

Baseball writers connected with the leading daily papers of every major league city, excepting Brooklyn, met here [Detroit] to-day, prior to the closing game of the world series, and formed an organization to be known as the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Its objects are to promote uniformity in scoring methods, to act in conjunction with the leagues in rules revision suggestions, and to gain control of baseball press boxes, the conduct of which is a sore spot with working newspaper men all over the country.

Here is the association's amazingly annoyingly green website, and I'm not talking about the environment.

The Oct. 15, 1908 reports on the final game of the 1908 World Series, which the Chicaco Cubs won over the Detroit Tigers 2-0:

The series, however, created less interest in the two cities most affected than that of last year, if the attendance may be taken as a guide. The paid admissions were only 62,232 for the five games and the receipts totalled $94,976 [$2.3m in 2007 dollars], as compared with $101,000 last year. The attendance at teh final game this afternoon was only 6,210, with gross receipts of $9,577.50.

Of the money taken in the players of Chicago, the winning team, get $27,669 and the Detroit players $18,446. The club owners get $19,681 each and the National Commission $9,497.

Information is important to decision making and in this case I wonder if attendance to the last game would have been a bit higher if it had been advertised that the Cubs wouldn't win another World Series for 100+ years? The 1908 World Series per-cap revenue was $1.54 or approximately $37 in 2007 dollars. This year, depending on the stadium in which the Series takes place, the face value of upstairs tickets will be in the $150-$200 range.

The NBA is eliminating about 80 jobs in the United States, the first major American sports league to announce layoffs because of the worldwide economic turmoil.

Commissioner David Stern told The Associated Press last month the league would cut staff in anticipation of the downturn. He said Sunday the figure would be about 9 percent of the American work force, and the league confirmed the number of jobs the next day.

“My guess is that by the time we tip off in a week or so, we will be down modestly in season tickets. … We think we’ll be up in revenue, but I just can’t say for sure whether we’ll be up or down in attendance because it’s just so touch-and-go, because sports tickets are very much disposable income,” he said. “So, we’re not going to see a huge impact, but I dare say we will see some impact.”

Source. Previous post.

Some select college football scores as reported in the October 4, 1908 NYT (home team first):

Lehigh, 5; Stephens Institute 0
Nebraska 43; Doan 0
Wooster University 8; Ohio State 0
Minnesota, 6; Lawrence, 0
Chicago 39; Purdue 0
Vermont 5; Holy Cross 0
Illinois 17; Monmouth 6
Oberlin 32; Hiram 2;
Tennessee 12; North Carolina 0
Bowdoin 15; New Hampshire 0
Dennison 35; Heldelberg 5
Georgetown 15; Gallaudet 0
Georgia Tech 32; Gordon Institute 0
West Virginia 22; Westminster 0

The Oct. 4, 1908 reports on a debate concerning artificial aids in sports, and an unexpected PED:

Dr. Leonard Hill, F.R.S., whose experiments with oxygen in athletics first drew attention to this subject, which aroused considerable discussion on both sides of the Atlantic, has this week stated the case strongly but temperately...

Montague Holbein...denounced the use of oxygen...as unsportsmanlike. Dr. Hill's rejoinder is this:

"Oxygen is not a stimulant. To the perfectly trained runner or race horse oxygen will do nothing if given before a sprint. The trained man or horse has got enough in him for a spring, and an excess has no effect. It is to the tired or untrained man or the man fatigued by prolonged effort that oxygen does so much...

"Almost the whole of modern sport is conducted with artificial aids. The record feats of to-day are too often not sport, but deadly, earnest business. Either, I say, limit sport to reasonable feats of endurance or else add oxygen to the other artificial aids now employed in breaking records, and so diminish the harm done the athlete's body."

Not everybody is convinced by Dr. Hill's contentions. For instance, Lord Lonsdale declares that the use of oxygen is unsportsmanlike and un-English...

From the October 3, 1908 NYT:

Billiards are dying out - in France, at least. According to statistics of taxes, while there were 94,123 billiard tables in France in 1892. In 1906 there were only 89,939. It is probably to the success of outdoor sports and of motoring that is due this loss of affection for a game which has had famous votaries.

The Oct. 2, 1908 NYT reports on Arthur Brides's re-instatement to the Yale football team:

A boom for yale Varsity stock was evident this afternoon when the Faculty of the Yale Medical School declared Arthur Brides, guard and half back for two years, eligible for the eleven. Brides has finally removed every scholarship technicality, adn this afternoon reported for practice.

Ben Powell and I bagged Grays Peak (14278') and Torreys Peak (14267') after we attended a Liberty Fund symposium last weekend in Denver.

Grays (L) and Torreys (R) from the trailhead:

On the Summit of Grays:

The Sept. 29, 1908 NYT reports on academic eligibility at Yale:

The chances are slim for Arthur Brides, Yale's all-around football star, wearing a uniform this season. Brides was to-day definitely notified that he cannot join the eleven unless he removes the deficiencies in his studies. There is little chance that Brides can fill the demand, but he will pluckily try to do so before the big games. He will not report with the team for weeks, and the football coaches say that they regard him as out of the competition.

1. Fayetteville was really nice. I had a great time on Friday meeting with members of the economics faculty and presenting Charles Courtemanche's and my paper on Wal-Mart and obesity, and I enjoyed hanging out with Patrick and Sonia Gill (friends from college who just moved to Fayetteville) Friday night and Saturday before, during, and after the game. Next presentations of the Wal-Mart paper: UAB this Friday and West Virginia next Friday. Next live college football game: West Virginia-Rutgers.

2. Alabama is a legitimate contender for the SEC title. p(Alabama is a national title contender|Alabama beats Georgia on Saturday) = 1. p(Alabama beats Georgia) = 0.4.

3. That said, I think that if the Big 12 champion, the SEC champion, and USC go unbeaten, USC has the toughest case to make for inclusion in the title game. That blowout win over OSU might get less and less impressive with every passing week, and there are four SEC teams and four Big 12 teams in the top 10 while the Pac-10 looks like a one-team wonder (the Pac-10 proved last week that it's no Mountain West Conference; this past weekend, Boise State's win at Oregon proved that the Pac-10 is probably no WAC, either). It will be fun to watch.

4. That said, there's always a lot of talk every year about how a playoff would not only ensure a "real" champion, it would make more money. If this is true, though, I wonder which transaction costs prevent efficient Coasean bargains.

5. College sports illustrates a hard-to-measure-but-nonetheless-real improvement in standards of living: the enormous increases in the ornateness and complexity of college football tailgate parties. It seems like every tailgate party has a tent, comfortable camping chairs, mountains of really good food, a giant plastic blow-up mascot, and a flat-screen TV with a satellite hookup. And with only a few exceptions, everybody is pretty friendly mo matter who they're pulling for. It's a great way to spend a beautiful Autumn Saturday.

There are a couple of minutes left in the first half and the Alabama-Western Kentucky game is turning into a beatdown. I now believe "Alabama is a serious contender for the SEC title" with p = 0.85. The ease with which the Tide is beating the Hilltoppers is only part of the story: the fact that Tulane almost beat the VT- and WVU-vanquishing East Carolina Pirates makes last week's uninspired showing against the Green Wave look a lot better.

It's halftime. On tap after Jacob finishes his bottle: a family outing to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the rest of this game and a handful of others.

I'm in Tokyo for the Mont Pelerin Society meetings. Myron Scholes has given the most enlightening talk so far. But I've also learned something about Japanese pro baseball. I knew that the Nippon Ham Fighters are not "Ham Fighters" but rather "Fighters" sponsored by Nippon Ham, but it's news that all the teams are sponsor-branded. Seibu Lions are sponsored by Seibu, a major private railway company [correction: department store]. The funniest is Yakult Swallows. I thought they were only named after the bird (which is their emblem), but it's also a play on words: coin-op drink machines reveal that Yakult is a beverage company. Swallows, get it? Well, at least I hope it's an intentional play.

Here's some more brand equity. Bob, his student Kate Sheehan, and I just had a paper analyzing David Beckham's affect on MLS attendance accepted for publication; here's the abstract:

In January 2007, Major League Soccer (MLS) announced that international soccer sensation David Beckham would be joining the league playing for the LA Galaxy. This paper examines Beckham’s effect on MLS ticket sales for the 2007 season. Depending on specification, our results indicate that Beckham increased ticket sales as a share of stadium capacity by about 55 percentage points. We then use these results to evaluate MLS’s Designated Player Rule and to perform a back-of-the-envelope calculation of Beckham’s benefit to the LA Galaxy.

Basically Beckham's playing fills a stadium that would otherwise be roughly half full. The $400k MLS contribution to his salary doesn't come close to covering his spillover benefit for other teams. Even at something like $10m per year from the Galaxy, hiring Beckham looks to have been a shrewd move by the Galaxy.

Fun project--thanks to Kate for a cool idea and to Bob and Kate for inviting me to join in.

Stephen Dubner points out that they get more comments when they offer schwag. Their latest contest: pick the score of tomorrow's LSU-App State game. My guess: LSU 45, ASU 3. My guess is just barely non-random. All I'm really sure about is that LSU won't let themselves get caught overlooking ASU. I'll be keeping up with the LSU-ASU score--and the Alabama-Clemson score--from the stands at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, where I'll be taking in the Ole Miss-Memphis game with a couple of friends.

From the WaPo:

Sentiment among NFL leaders to reduce the preseason to two or three games per team and lengthen the regular season to 17 or 18 games, up from the current 16, is growing, and it seems generally accepted that such an adjustment likely will be made within the next few years.

"I think it would be a positive," New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said this week, "and I do think it will happen."

Goodell and the owners already were studying the issue before the defending Super Bowl champions, the New York Giants, lost standout defensive end Osi Umenyiora to a season-ending knee injury in a preseason game against the New York Jets on Saturday night, and before the Redskins had to fret that Jason Taylor's knee injury the same night would end his season.

And while they regret having their product diminished by injuries to players in games that don't count in the regular season standings, the real impetus for Goodell and the owners to act on the issue is economic.

More regular season games would mean more revenue in television rights fees, which are worth about $3.7 billion per season in the current deals with NBC, Fox, CBS, ESPN and DirecTV.

"The players' view can be really simple: If I get paid for two extra games, I'll play two more games," former San Francisco 49ers offensive lineman Randy Cross said. "The fans' view is: More of the real stuff is better. The realistic view is: It's a way to generate more revenues."

Players aren't paid during the preseason; instead, they're paid in 17 installments during the regular season. The owners make big money by charging regular season ticket prices for preseason games, but still could come out ahead if the additional regular season games boost TV rights fees considerably.

The drawbacks to adding games would be diluting the product, and limiting chances for younger players.

From Forbes:

But they're no Texas Rangers fans who flock to the Arlington ballpark through last place finishes and playoff runs alike. The Ranger faithful don't care if the team trades away its best players or spends $252 million to sign an MVP-caliber batter like Alex Rodriguez. No team's attendance is less tied to its on the field performance than the Rangers', and nowhere else in the country do fans peel off at a slower rate when the club has thin years.

(Of course, had owner Tom Hicks studied the attendance numbers a little closer back in 2001, he might not have offered what has come to be known as the worst contract in baseball history.)

Two things going on here. First, the primary focus of the article is measuring fan sensitivity to winning and proclaiming the franchise whose attendance is least sensitive to winning to have the most loyal fans. (BTW, the Tigers and the Angels are rated as having the least loyal fans.) Neat idea, though one might raise questions about methodology. (The authors give some but not complete detail.) For example, I wonder if the sample period of 1991 to present isn't problematic b/c some franchises have been good throughout (Atlanta) and others have been crummy throughout (KC). That is, there may not be sufficient variation in team winning percentages over time to get a strong estimate of the relationship between winning and attendance.

Second is the aside about the ARod contract. The authors might be on ok ground if they mean that it was a bad contract because with very loyal fans the Rangers didn't need to sign more talent in order to win more games to draw more fans. On the other hand, the authors are off base if they are merely commenting on the size of the contract or trying to say something about ARod's performance. Yes, ARod got a large contract but he has also performed at a very high level over the past decade. Comparing pay and performance, his contract nowhere near as bad as those signed by, say, Carl Pavano, Mike Hampton, or (it appears) Barry Zito. I'll leave comments open for a day or so if readers want to offer other candidates for the worst contract in baseball history.

What's Chinese for Milli Vanilli?

The unquestioned star of the Opening Ceremony was a little girl who performed "Hymn to the Motherland" in front of the entire world. I remember watching her and thinking how adorable and talented she was, the "poster child for all of China." Well, it turns out that she wasn't as talented as we all thought. It was in fact, a seven year old singing to the whole world on a pre-recorded tape, not the cute, pig-tailed Lin Miaoke, whom we all came to know and love according to a report from The Telegraph.

"This was a last-minute question, a choice we had to make," the ceremony's musical designer, Chen Qigang, said. "Our rehearsals had already been vetted several times - they were all very strict. When we had the dress rehearsals, there were spectators from various divisions, including above all a member of the politburo who gave us his verdict: we had to make the swap."

A "grueling competition" had been waged to choose the performer, but at the last minute the "swap" was made because the seven year old girl simply did not portray the image that the Chinese wanted to convey to the world, she had buck teeth according to the story.

That's George Will on the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics:

This year's August upheaval coincides, probably not coincidentally, with the world's preoccupation with that charade of international comity, the Olympics. For only the third time in 72 years (Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980), the games are being hosted by a tyrannical regime, the mind of which was displayed in the opening ceremony featuring thousands of drummers, each face contorted with the same grotesquely frozen grin. It was a tableau of the miniaturization of the individual and the subordination of individuality to the collective. Not since the Nazi's 1934 Nuremberg rally, which Leni Riefenstahl turned into the film "Triumph of the Will," has tyranny been so brazenly tarted up as art.

ESPN reports:

A former University of Toledo basketball player has been charged with fixing games in the latest development in a nearly two-year federal gambling probe.

I don't know what's more surprising, that his occurred or that anyone cares enough to bet on MAC basketball games.

Question for thought: Should point shaving be a crime?

You could argue that the player violated the contract he has with the NCAA not to engage in such activities, but we don't usually criminalize simple contract violations. How is a point shaver different than a player who simply dogs it? As far as the betters are concerned, if the line setters have done their job right, half the betters should be on one side of the line and the other half on the other side of the line. An effective point shaver would change which half won, but I can't see any reason why I should care about one side over the other side. The whole thing was a coin toss anyway.

Would Walter Block defend this undefendable?

Here's a list of 10 including Britney Spears Baby Safety Night, Jose Canseco Juice Box Night, and Terrell Owens Unappreciation Night (featuring 81 cent hot dogs).

The [Augusta, GA] GreenJackets will make fun of the retired, maybe now un-retired, quarterback legend, by giving away flip flops in honor of the flip flopper.

The first 100 fans through the gates for the team's August 4th game against the Savannah Sand Gnats will receive a pair of flip flops.

But that's not all. The GreenJackets plan on retiring Favre's jersey number (4), only to reinstate it the next day. Luckily, the team doesn't currently have a player wearing that number.

The idea for the night is still in development, but other events planned include seat upgrades to anyone wearing a Favre jersey. Fans wearing a "cheesehead" will also receive a free brat at the concession stand. The team will also be hosting contests including the "Lambeau Leap" and the "Strahan Sack." Though we're not exactly sure how the latter would work. Who could do the best fake?

Story here; HT to Skip Sauer.

The July 24, 1908 NYT reports on a deal between the Cleveland and Washington baseball teams:

It was announced today that the Cleveland American League Baseball Club has purchased the release of Pitcher Falkenberg and Third Baseman Altizer from the Washington club. The consideration is said to have been $10,000. The two men named will, it is expected, join the Cleveland Club at once.

Baseball-referenc.com reports Mr. Altizer's statistics for the 1908 season were not steller (indeed for his entire career): .224 batting average with Washington and a .213 BA with Cleveland; .274 on base percentage with Washington, .278 OBP with Cleveland, and so forth. Altizer moves on to the White Sox in the next year.

What about Falkenberg? He plays for Cleveland through the 1913 season with an ERA below 3 (except for 1911 when he had an ERA of 3.11) and he wins 23 games in 1913 before moving on to Indianapolis in the Federal League (oops).

The July 21, 1908 NYT reports on the London Olympics. One event which is no longer on the agenda was tug-of-war. This day's issue reports on a potential figurative casus bella:

The City of London policemen, who won the Olympic tug-of-war, as issued a challenge for a match with the American team, the members of both teams to be in their stocking feet or in any way the Americans prefer, and the match to be for love or any charity.

Congrats to my good friend Rita Barnes who just completed the Badwater Ultramarathon (135 miles starting in Death Valley and finishing at the Mt. Whitney trailhead) with a time of 42:21:13.

Wow.

Earlier this evening on ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" program, Peter Gammons was asked to comment on the possibility of the Braves trading first baseman Mark Teixeira. Gammons stated (this quote may not be exact; I'm typing from memory) "that the Braves have to decide if they can get back as much as they gave up for Teixeira last year" when they acquired him and pitcher Ron Mahay for five prospects.

This is decidedly not the problem the Braves face. The five prospects sent to Texas are a sunk cost since, unfortunately for Braves fans, there's no indication that the Rangers would reverse the trade and send the prospects back to the Braves.

Instead, the decision now is based on comparing the costs and benefits of keeping Teixeira vs. trading him. Some of the costs and benefits can be thought of in terms of financial gains or losses and while other come in the form of talent gains and losses (which, of course, have financial implications since they affect winning and fan attendance).

For example, if the Braves keep Teixeira the benefits include having him on the roster for the rest of the year thereby giving them larger (though still remote) odds of making the playoffs and larger attendance (both from winning more games with Teixeira's formidable bat in the lineup and from not appearing to concede the race to other teams). The benefits also include getting two compensatory draft picks for him when he leaves at the end of the year as a free agent.

By contrast, the costs of keeping Teixeira include his salary for the remainder of the season (perhaps $4-5m) and the cost of signing two high draft choices (approx. $1m each).

The Braves choice is to compare the net gain from keeping Teixeira to the value of the talent they can acquire for him. If trade rumors are to be believed, there are no teams offering substantial talent for Teixeira (this can, of course, change between now and the July 31 trade deadline). There would be two advantages to trading him for prospects rather than waiting for draft choices. One, as noted above, is that draft choices require signing bonuses. The other is acquiring prospects who have already played, say, 2-3 seasons of minor league baseball gives (for both the Braves and the trading team) a better read on whether they will turn out to be bona fide major league talent. That is, prospects with minor league experience are less risky than newly drafted players who have not yet begun the transition from high school or college to pro baseball.

BTW, my prediction is the Braves will keep Teixeira because, as noted above, there doesn't seem to be strong market for him. I think there's also a behavioral reason--the Braves management would take a lot of heat for trading Teixeira for much less than they traded away to get him.

*See JC Bradbury and Dennis Coates for interesting discussions of "what is sports economics?".

Here's an example of sports crowding out other economic activity*:

The renowned Vienna State Opera canceled one performance and complained about dismal attendance at another, blaming the European soccer championship being played in the Austrian capital.

Performances are usually nearly sold out, but the opera house said 29 percent of its seats went unsold for its most recent event, Verdi's "La forza del destino." The opera house also said it had decided to cancel a ballet evening June 29, the day when the final is played in Vienna.

Officials said in a statement Tuesday that would-be visitors fear negotiating through masses of soccer fans in downtown Vienna.

I'm betting that if an economic impact study of the European soccer tournament was done it didn't net out lower opera attendance and canceled opera performances.

*I think this idea is attributed to Phil Porter.

The June 9, 1908 NYT reports that the U.S. Olympic team had been selected the day before in New York City:

Seventy-six athletes were selected yesterday to represent the United States at the Olympic games in London next month. A supplemental list of fifty-eight men has been added to the regular list, and it is probably that many of these will be added before the team sails. The committee wrestled with the selection problem for nearly ten hours at the Astor House before a decision was reached.

The minimum subscription which will be accepted to defray the expenses of sending any one entrant to the games was fixed at $325.

In 2000, the United States spent approximately $400m (in total) for Olympic sports. I haven't been able to track down exactly how much is spent on taking the team to the Olympics, but my guess is that it is considerably more than $7,300 per athlete.

An interesting tidbit is the amount of lobbying by the US Olympic Committee reported by OpenSecrets:

Notice the up-tick in lobbying efforts the year before an Olympics, most noticable before a summer Olympics.

Mariah Carey's first pitch:

Not as bad as the Cincinnati Mayor's last year:

The St. Paul Saints will give away 2,500 "bobble foot" dolls before Sunday's game at Midway Stadium.

The baseball team says the promotion, which coincides with National Tap Dance Day, is "in tribute to all their toe-tapping friends and fans from around the nation who may ever have set foot in Minneapolis-St. Paul… even for just a change of planes. The one-of-a-kind collector’s item depicts a restroom stall and a bobble foot peaking out from underneath."

Source.

"Do I have a gambling problem? Yeah, I do have a gambling problem," Barkley said. "But I don't consider it a problem because I can afford to gamble."

That is the inimitable Charles Barkeley, quoted in May 2006 by ESPN. Today the Wynn Las Vegas went public trying to collect a 7-month old $400,000 gambling debt.

The April 21, 1908 NYT reports:

T.P. Morrissey of the Mercury Athletic Club, New York City, [yesterday] won the twelfth annual renewal of the Boston Athletic Association marathon road race, covering the twenty five mile from Ashland to the finish mark in 2:25:43 1-5...

The weather conditions were ideal for the first time when the contentstants, 120 in number, lined up in Ashland, ready to start on their journey of a trifle more than twenty-five miles to Boston.

This year's Boston Marathon has 25,000 entrants and the potential pay off to winning would seem greater today than 100 years ago. The Gould hypothesis would suggest that over time runners are getting better and the long-tail approach would predict the right tail of 25,000 entrants to be faster than the right tail of 120 entrants.

I wonder about sample selection, however. My immediate thought is that sample selection was a bigger issue in the past, but that is probably debatable.

I'm off to Boston this weekend to run Monday's 112th Boston Marathon. This will be my second Boston and I'm hoping for a much better run than last year's disappointing 3:29. Also running this year is Beloit College's Scott Beaulier* who qualified to run Boston last year in Gainesville FL with an impressive 3:11.

Are there any other economists running?

It's that time of year: March Madness. I've watched parts of two NCAA games this year (UT-Memphis and Duke-UNC), but that hasn't stopped me from joining James Hamilton's Econbrowser group at ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge or from creating a Division of Labour Group. The DoL is limited only by the extent of the market, so all are welcome.

Update: I'm told the DOL bracket link doesn't work. Here's the long way around. Register for an ESPN.com account and search the group directory for "Division of Labour."

You knew this was coming:

The Macon Music announced today that the team will host “Eliot Spitzer” Night on Friday, June 13th 2008 when the Music play host to the Aiken Foxhounds.

During “Eliot Spitzer” Night, the following elements will exist:

1. The Music have extended an invitation for former New York Governor Spitzer to be on hand and throw out the first pitch
2. The team will give away a New York Vacation including a one night stay at the MayFlower Hotel
3. Client #9 (or fan #9) will receive a free Music prize pack
4. Any fan with the name Eliot, Spitzer, or “Kristen” along with any fan from New York will receive $1 off admission
5. The Music will play Frank Sinatra music throughout the evening in honor of New York
6. Wire Taps will be placed throughout the ballpark this evening
7. ATMs will be available for cash withdrawals not to exceed $5,000 per hour
8. Any fan who has resigned their position will be given $1 off admission
9. The 871 fan will receive a gift certificate for the Macon Music Team store.

Here and here are previous examples of wacky promos.

... this part of Allen Sanderson's essay on incentives:

For example, given that the Chicago Bears can sell out Soldier Field constantly, and the National Football League (NFL) shares its television revenues equally across members of the cartel, it is not surprising that the owner of the Bears is willing to do without a costly high-quality quarterback—payroll would rise but any effect on revenues would be shared with all the other teams.

True enough, but what if a better quarterback (which means almost anyone since the imcumbent is Rex Grossman) allowed the Bears to charge higher ticket prices while selling out Soldier Field? This source indicates that stadium "gate" revenue is spilt 60-40 between the home and visiting teams, respectively. Thus, even a team could reap a large, though not complete, share of revenue generated by a QB upgrade.

My friend Scott and I ran an official 3:34:51 yesterday at Last Chance for Boston Marathon Last Chance is so named because this is the last weekend you can qualify for this year's Boston Marathon. (I qualified back in September though so this was just a tune-up run.) The course is a one-mile loop which would seem boring except that it has the feel of a big race because everybody is compressed on the course so there's a lot of people around you all the time.

We ran with a pretty even pace throughout except for a 15:25(!!) last mile (mile lap times below). You see we screwed up at the end. They weren't calling out lap counts (at least not for us) and we lost track. We stopped after the 25th lap thinking we were finished, got the medal, turned in the timing chip, started to walk to the car and everything. But then we got to thinking that our "time" seemed a bit too good for our pace. "Shoot, we better check..." Sure enough we were short a lap. So we had to go collect our chips out of the bucket, run the last lap (clutching medal in hand), and finish. We would have had a 3:27 or so had we not stopped for all this time.

I am a bit perturbed at the organization for not calling out everyone's laps (like they did last year) and several other people I talked to complained about this too. Oh well. 3:27...3:34...it really doesn't matter I guess. All in all we had a nice tune-up marathon for Boston.

50 334 Robert Lawson 40 M Bexley OH 3:34:51
1: 10:22 10:22
2: 7:49 18:11
3: 7:52 26:02
4: 7:43 33:45
5: 7:51 41:35
6: 7:51 49:25
7: 7:44 57:09
8: 7:55 1:05:03
9: 7:50 1:12:53
10: 7:59 1:20:51
11: 7:51 1:28:42
12: 7:51 1:36:32
13: 7:50 1:44:21
14: 8:34 1:52:55
15: 7:53 2:00:47
16: 7:56 2:08:43
17: 7:48 2:16:31
18: 7:59 2:24:29
19: 8:00 2:32:28
20: 8:01 2:40:29
21: 7:40 2:48:08
22: 7:33 2:55:41
23: 7:55 3:03:35
24: 7:50 3:11:25
25: 8:02 3:19:26
26: 15:25 3:34:51

Not yet, unfortunately, but I have a guest post on Sabernomics. I compare the Macon Braves move to Rome in 2003 to the upcoming move of the Richmond Braves to Gwinnett County.

Speaking of Sabernomics, the paperback edition of JC's book is will be out on February 26.

A few years ago one of my favorite students came in to ask me to sign off on his early (December instead of May) graduation form. I began to launch into my "why the heck would you want to leave college early--don't you know the real world sucks" lecture, but he stopped me short by saying he wanted to hike the 2175 mile Appalachian Trail and needed to start in March. Oh. Now that's a good reason to graduate early! I signed his form eagerly. He completed the hike and then moved to "do good" work in Oregon.

Now he wants to hike the 2650 mile Pacific Crest Trail that runs from the Mexico border through California, Oregon, and Washington. Here's a section from his letter to friends:

If only I had been mature enough to listen to my advisor Dr. Lawson, and pursue a Master /PH.D in Economics and trust that my faith would always be there for me to explore later. Yet, my naive ears did not listen. As many of you know I left Capital for the wonders of the world, exploring the east coast as I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail the summer after my graduation... I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corp and worked for joy and love, having all my material needs provided for through this program and given a monthly stipend of $80.00.

He's trying to raise $2650 ($1 per mile) for charity along the way.

Who am I to say he chose wrong? He sounds plenty wealthy to me.

In today's AJC, JC Bradbury takes on the Gwinnett Braves deal. Well done JC!

A previous post on the Gwinnett give away is here.

When the Mt. Washington avalanche risk is 'HIGH' do not go hiking in Huntington Ravine.

Lance Armstrong is running the Boston Marathon this year, and unlike most people running for charity, he actually qualified the old fashioned way.

BOSTON - Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong plans to run the Boston Marathon in April to raise money for his foundation.

Armstrong, 36, qualified for Boston by finishing the 2007 New York City Marathon in two minutes hours 46 minutes 43 seconds, good for 214th place. The Boston qualifying time is 3:15 for men between the ages of 35 and 39.

From the Jan. 19, 1908 NYT we learn that football was king in Michigan even back then:

At the annual Michigan Athletic Association today it was shown that the total receipts of the last fiscal year were $33,894 [$776,000 in 2006 dollars]. Of this ammount, football brought in $25,894 [$580,000 in 2006 dollars and 76% of total revenue]. The baseball games lost $800 and track athletics $2,666. The management put $18,000 into the Ferry Field improvement fund and has a balance of $7,816. Last year the balance carried over was $10,545.

From an AJC article on Atlanta's AAA baseball team moving from Richmond to a $38m taxpayer funded stadium in Gwinnett County GA:

Last July, a consultant reported building a stadium with 5,500 permanent seats and grass seating for another 1,500 would cost $25 million to $30 million. Such a stadium also would include 16 private suites, 300 club seats and 2,300 parking spaces within walking distance of the stadium.

Convention, Sports & Leisure International, the Minnesota-based consulting firm hired by the Gwinnett Convention & Visitors Bureau, found that building and operating such a stadium could create hundreds of jobs, generate up to $7 million in consumer spending every year and generate as much as $12 million in tax revenue over a 30-year period.

The firm's study concluded that Gwinnett County provides "one of the strongest markets in the country to support a minor-league baseball team."

News reports in Richmond say community leaders are angry over the minor league team's departure from their community after more than four decades.

But at least one sports industry figure there says the loss is more emotional than financial.

"I dont think the direct economic impact of the Braves being here or not is that great," said John Lugbill, executive director of the Metropolitan Richmond Sports Backers, a public-private sports commisson partially funded by tax dollars. "But the positive attributes to the community are important."

See also Skip Sauer's post at The Sports Economist; be sure to read Rod Fort's comment on the post.

Background: Rome has been selected to host the 2008 and 2009 NAIA national championship football games. Local officials estimate a $1-1.5 million local economic impact.

Just how bad was basketball in the early days? The Dec. 22, 1907 NYT reports on the Penn-Army basketball game from the night before:

By a score of 22 to 21 the University of Pennsylvania defeated the cadet basket ball team here to-day. With five seconds to play and only one goal needed to give the soldiers the lead, the excitement was intense, both teams playing frantically.

In the first half McNicholl made three goals and Fitzpatrick added a point from the foul line. The half ended with the score 7 to 10 in favor of West Point.

Earlier this week I posted on shoddy inference based on the Mitchell Report. Today's NYT has a column from Jonathan Cole and Stephen Stigler:

An examination of the data on the players featured in the Mitchell report suggests that in most cases the drugs had either little or a negative effect.

For pitchers identified by the report, we looked at the annual earned run average for their major league careers. For hitters we examined batting averages, home runs and slugging percentages. We then compared each player’s yearly performance before and after he is accused of having started using performance-enhancing drugs. After excluding those with insufficient information for a comparison, we were left with 48 batters and 23 pitchers.

For pitchers there was no net gain in performance and, indeed, some loss. Of the 23, seven showed improvement after they supposedly began taking drugs (lower E.R.A.’s), but 16 showed deterioration (higher E.R.A.’s). Over all, the E.R.A.’s rose by 0.5 earned runs per game. Roger Clemens is a case in point: a great pitcher before 1998, a great (if increasingly fragile) pitcher after he is supposed to have received treatment. But when we compared Clemens’s E.R.A. through 1997 with his E.R.A. from 1998 on, it was worse by 0.32 in the later period.

Hitters didn’t fare much better. For the 48 batters we studied, the average change in home runs per year “before” and “after” was a decrease of 0.246. The average batting average decreased by 0.004. The average slugging percentage increased by 0.019 — only a marginal difference. So while some batters increased their totals, an equal number had falloffs. Most showed no consistent improvement, several showed variable performance and some may have extended the years they played at a high level, although that is a difficult question to answer.

Some players improved and some declined. But the pattern for the individuals’ averages was consistent, and the variability of players (with the exception of home run counts) was low. There is no example of a mediocre player breaking away from the middle of the pack and achieving stardom with the aid of drugs.

They do offer a caveat:

It is possible (but not addressable by these data) that one effect of drugs is to help players compensate for decline as they age, and thus to extend their careers. But there is no evidence in these data for performance enhancement above previous levels.

HT: JC Bradbury

From the Dec. 21, 1907 NYT:

Intercollegiate football, which has been barred from the Northwestern University two years, will be resumed at the opening of the season of 1908. The decision of the Trustees was read to-day by President Harris in the presence of 1,500 students, and was greated with cheers. The annual football contests, however, are to be limited to three intercollegiate games.

In the ensuing years (1908-2004), Northwestern amassed an overall winning percentage of 0.391 (900 games, 340 wins, 536 losses, 24 ties).

The Freakonomics blog links to a chart (published by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) which reports that 46 of the players named in the Mitchell Report improved their performance in one or both of the two years after they supposedly started taking steriods. There are a lot of issues that can be raised here--is the Mitchell Report correct? what if these players were taking roids before the date cited by Mitchell? wouldn't some of the players improve because they had not yet hit the peak age of 28 or so? isn't it a stretch to claim that the juice helped some players in the second year after they started using but not in the first?--but here's a more fundamental issue: The Mitchell Report named 86 players so finding 46 (a mere 54%) that improved might well nothing more than random chance. Indeed, 46 is less than one standard deviation (4.6) away from 43 for a binomial distribution with n=86 and p=.5. Could it be that the Freakonomics guys have been, ahem, fooled by randomness?

From the Dec. 17, 1907 NYT:

It is announced in Washington that the fans there will not have a chance to see the Senators in uniform until the opening game of the season, which should be a matter of satisfaction to National Capital fandom. Manager Cantillon will again lead his troupe of alleged players to Galveston, where he will sift out their baseball knowledge for a month and then play minor league clubs on the return trip to Washington.

Representative of the shady dealings before the era of free-agency began (again) in 1976:

Chicago White Sox say they were double crossed in a deal for Ira Thomas, one of the Yankees catchers, who was obtained by Detroit. They fail, however, to say how the double crossing was accomplished.

This year, for the first time, the average earnings of the 120 major-college football coaches hit $1 million, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

I'm sure the sports econ guys are already all over this, but for a casual observer like me, this is really neat.

USA Today has a detailed report on college head football coach compensation. My buddy Ravi writes, "Hit the "Click Here" near the top of the article for an interactive spreadsheet with salaries AND CONTRACTS for all the Division I-A college football coaches. Lots of surprises - who'd have guessed Joe Pa would be on the bottom end of the list?" (Note: requires Macromedia Flash.) Stoops is on top, of course, at $3.62m. Auburn's Tubberville is way up there, too, and that's before his recent extension. A&M's new hire, Mike Sherman, will be at $1.8m. There is an option for dollars per win, too.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your regressions.

From the Dec. 3, 1907 NYT:

Walter Camp, Yale's athletic adviser, to-day came out against the present rule in a statement in the Yale Daily News, in which he said:

"The American collegian, whether spectator or player, does not care for a game in which the element of chance is paramount. He likes to see or play a game where hard work counts and a game where definite planning secures well appreciated results. For this reason he does not care for the unlimited forward pass, which can now be tried without severe penalty on first and second down. Throwing the ball around indiscriminately may be the last resort of a weak or inferior team, and, as such, is unsatisfactory.

On the other hand, the current BCS format seems to include an "element of chance" and evidently folks outside of Ohio and Louisiana aren't satisfied.

Disclaimer below the fold.

The Dec. 1, 1907 NYT reports:

NAVY TRIUMPHS OVER ARMY, 6-0;

CROWNING OF FOOTBALL SEASON.

30,000 Enthusiastic Persons See the Sturdy Naval and Military Youngsters Fight Their Annual Football Battle at Philadelphia.

I am sad today. Joe Nuxhall, The Ol' Lefthander, has died.

Joe Nuxhall, who became the youngest player in modern major league history when he pitched in one game for the 1944 Reds at age 15, then went on to spend more than half a century with Cincinnati as a pitcher and broadcaster, died Thursday in Fairfield, Ohio, outside Cincinnati. He was 79.

I am really sad today.

Like most of the the DoL crew (Josh, Frank, Craig, Tim, Ed, and Mike D.), I'll be at the Southern Economic Association meeting in New Orleans next week (Saturday-Wednesday).

Aside from the conference itself, I'm looking forward to a couple of meals at Mr. B's on Royal Street, my favorite restaurant on earth. You haven't lived until you've eaten the barbecued shrimp there. Of course the butter in the recipe (1.5 sticks per serving) may just kill you!

Anyway, here are a few items from the grab bag.

1. Wired magazine reports on some nasty malware that hackers have embedded in web ads on sites like the Economist,

The worst-case scenario used to be that online ads are pesky, memory-draining distractions. But a new batch of banner ads is much more sinister: They hijack personal computers and bully users until they agree to buy antivirus software.

And the ads do their dirty work even if you don't click on them.

[HT: Dave.]

(2) Looking for a good workout regime? Consider the daily workouts offered up by navyseals.com. Muy loco.

(3) I'll be running the Ole Man River Half Marathon Sunday in New Orleans. I've never run a half before as such. My fastest split time in a full marathon was 1:31 so I'm hoping to run this in around 1:28 (6:43 pace). Last week's Forestry Preserve Trail Run 5k in Auburn, Alabama was a good warmup race as I came in 3rd overall with a time of 20:30 on a pretty tough course.

In a weird "history repeating itself" story from the November 14, 1907 NYT:

"Hurry Up" Yost is coaching Michigan football teams for the last season this Fall, and will retire at its end and be succeeded by McGuigan, the former crack Michigan player, who is now with Vanderbilt....

Yost has had a remarkable career on the football field. His unbroken record of victories with Michigan raised him to a place of prominence second to no coach in the country before Michigan fell before Chicago in the memorable game on Marshall Field. that defeat broke a five years' string of successes in which there were two years that Michigan was not scored on. He built up a wonderfully fast scoring machine, and rolled up enormous totals during the season by his ability to instill swift play into the Michigan eleven.

But that was before the reform movement hit the conference colleges, and in the days of the old style game. When the new style of play was introduced Yost pooh-poohed it, but he found later that the old scheme would not go and his teams had not been taught the new...

Diana Nyad, the business of sports commentator for "Stateplace," offered some thoughts about MLB's revenue growth on this morning's program.

Diana Nyad: It is totally surprising. In the last four years, the NFL has grown by about 25 percent a year, which sounds right. Baseball's grown by 50 percent a year. ...

And attendance at an all-time high. One of the reasons is that they're starting to build these, you know, urban ballparks -- St. Louis and San Diego are great examples. You know, there are these beautiful retail stores. You go out for the experience, not just the ball game itself.

Two franchises out of 28 get new ballparks and that somehow makes's the industry's revenues grow 50% per year for four years. Doubtful. Revenue generated by MLB Advanced Media is more likely (HT to JC Bradbury for the link).

[Nyad:] And what's happened is that that kind of money by the big teams, you know, was forced a few years ago into revenue sharing. And that's why this year, we've seen the intent of that revenue sharing come to life. Just as a . . . you know, I'm not a huge baseball follower, but it was great for me, and I think a lot of people, to see the Diamondbacks, the Cleveland Indians and the Colorado Rockies instead of the perennial big-money teams. So like, the whole country now has some reason to hope that their Pittsburgh Pirates, their Baltimore Orioles, their Seattle Mariners, might make it up to the big show.

It's not at all clear that competitive balance has increased and, if so, that revenue sharing is responsible. See John Palmer on The Sports Economist.

Jagow: [B]aseball's economic health is pretty good right now. Are the managers going to see any of it? Because we hear about Joe Torre signing a big contract with the Dodgers, but I understand that the salaries for other baseball managers are quite low compared to other sports.

Nyad: You're right. I was actually shocked, I had no idea -- half of the managers out there make less than $1 million a year.

I bet managers have relatively low MRP. Few fans probably come to see a specific manager. Although they are frequently fired for team performance, managers probably have small effects on the number of games a team wins. I'm not even sure how much difference there is in strategy across managers. Managers' biggest effects may be in how they manage players' egos and personalities.

[Nyad:] Now, we might say, "Well, that's a lot of money. Good, that's what they should be making, not these $10 million a year, give me a break."

She doesn't use the word players, but I assume that's the $10 million dollar a year reference. Demand for players is a derived demand; player salaries are driven by team revenues (see above).

[Nyad:] But the truth is, the baseball managers, they work like dogs. I mean, from the day the season ends, they're over in Japan recruiting, they're getting ready to bid for those free agents, which'll start next Tuesday.

Really? I've never heard that managers recruit a la college basketball coaches. I think she's confused managers with general managers, though I'm not even sure how much time they spend scouting and recruiting in Japan.

[Nyad:] And you know, Ozzy Guillen of the White Sox says, "We are grossly underpaid."

Boo hoo.

[Nyad:] I think a huge reason is the college game. There's no Major League manager who's looking to say, "Eh, I think I might go manage Arizona State next year." There's no crossover at all with the college game ...

A reasonable point, at the margin.

Man, I just can’t wait to see what happens to A Rod! Will he sign with the Yankees or go free agent?! It's all so very exciting!

Hey, is there any other news in baseball this week?

My how times have changed. Here's a Texas A&M fan (me) all excited about pre-season basketball rankings. (Thanks for nothing Fran!).

A&M is #14. A Durant-less t.u. is #16. Kentucky is #22. Full rankings here.

Of course, pre-season rankings are meaningless and sportswriter polls are filled with biases. Here's Noel Campbell on football polls and televised games.

And here's another Lopez getting suspended for skipping classes.

From the October 25, 1907 NYT:

Early indications do not point to a victory for Cornell over the Quakers [Pennsylvania] this Fall.

The two games which will be of the most interest this week are those in which Cornell meets Princeton at Ithaca and Pennsylvania plays the Indians at Philadelphia.

Chicago started well into its schedule of big games, beating Illinois 42 to 6. Michigan had a hard time winning from Wabash, 22 to 0.

The Dartmouth team, after its showing against Maine, is confident that it can defeat Amherst. This is Dartmouth's only big game besides that with Harvard on Nov. 16

the 1907 World Series is underway in early-mid October, with the Chicago Cubs beating the Detroit Tigers on Oct. 11, 1907 to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the best of seven series. Tigers fans are deflated that their team was unable to grab a victory in Game 3 and the Oct. 12, 1907 NYT reports on many aspects of the event:

Detroit carried off premier honors for enthusiasm. Purchasers of admission tickets began streaming out toward Bennet Park before 7 o'clock. Two hours later there were four long lines waiting for the ticket windows to open.

Baseball fanatics of Blue Island, a distant suburb of Chicago, resorted to carrier pigeons to carry the news of the game by innings. A pigeon fancier, accompanied by Major Gobel and a number of fans, took forty pigeons to the ball park and turned them loose after each inning to carry the news of the game to Blue Island.

Detroit yesterday witnessed the first world's championship contest in twenty years. In 887 Detroit, then a National League team, with it's famous "Big Four" in its line-up won the title, defeating St. Louis eleven game to four.

The official attendance was announced as 11,306, which is a record for Detroit, but a poor second to the Chicago crowds.

From the NYT:

IN her prime, Joan Benoit Samuelson, one of the best female distance runners, should have been faster than Alberto Salazar, one of the best male distance runners.

Ms. Samuelson’s running was beautifully smooth. Mr. Salazar’s was not.

Yesterday I ran the Indian Run 60k in the Hocking Hills (OH). My final time was 6:31:02--13th overall out of 36, 12th out of 32 men, and 3rd out of 4 men in my 40-44 age group.

To answer your questions:

Yes, I know this is insane.
Yes, I know about Art DeVany 's view that running marathons (or ultra marathons) is bad for you.
No, I don't agree with him.
No, I don't think this is bad for my knees.
No, I am not "running from" something, at least nothing I can think of.

Many articles on the Belichick/video camera kerfuffle contain references to the 1951 NY Giants who, in a recent book, were said to be stealing signs using a telescope located in the outfield and a buzzer for communication. For example:

The Patriots' three Super Bowl wins will now always be suspect thanks to a coach who not only refuses to play by the rules but also refuses to acknowledge he did anything to break them. But how about the pennant won by the 1951 New York Giants, who were using a telescope-and-buzzer system to steal signs at the Polo Grounds where Bobby Thomson hit the “Shot Heard 'Round The World?”

Although there is no way to prove that the Giants' sign stealing didn't affect the 1951 pennant race, I have a forthcoming paper showing that most of the Giants' improvement after they started stealing signs came from better pitching not better hitting. Indeed, the Giants scored nearly a run less (0.85) in home games after July 20 than in home games before July 20. (July 20 is the day the sign stealing scheme started according to Prager.)

This is not to say that Belichick was not stealing signs or that his sign stealing had no effect. (Yesterday's results--Patriot blowout of a good San Diego team and another Jet loss--suggest stolen signs had little to do with the Pats thumping of the Jets.) It does mean that writers should think twice about asserting that the Giants stole the pennant in 1951.

ADDENDUM: An astute reader asks if my results for the 1951 Giants might reflect a general trend of improving pitching over the course of a season. Two answers. First, my analysis of Giant hitting controls for the quality of the opposing team's starting pitcher. (I use ERA, but I also tried more sabermetric measures like HR rate and BB rate.) Second, the trend in 1951 might have been different, but the current trend is for pitching to deteriorate over the course of the season (here; scroll down to the section labeled "Months").

According to ESPN, the NHL will soon announce that a regular-season game will be played in an outdoor venue on January 1, 2008. Outdoor hockey? But won't the ice melt? One guess which city they picked.

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Get ready for an NHL big chill on New Year's Day: Penguins at Sabres in an outdoor game at Ralph Wilson Stadium.

The league is set to announce next week that the Buffalo Sabres will host the Pittsburgh Penguins, a person familiar with the event told The Associated Press, in what would be the NHL's second outdoor game.

Buffalo is considered an ideal location to host the game, and not only because of its reputation for cold, bitter winters. The Sabres' attendance has risen dramatically: last season's Presidents' Trophy-winning team sold out all of its 41 regular-season games.

HT: Mitch Mitchell for the title phrase.

I ran the Erie Marathon today. It rained either hard or very hard the entire way, but I managed to run a nice time: 3:14:40 (about 7:25/mile pace). This is about a minute off my PR (Personal Record) but is good enough for a BQ (Boston Qualifying time). :-)

I've never felt so awful immediately after a marathon as today, but I feel pretty good now after several hours (of course that could be the celebratory beers talking!)

Times below the fold (for running nerds):

Ben Powell (Suffolk University) and Ed Lopez (SJSU and Liberty Fund) and I hiked up Charleston Peak (11,918') outside of Las Vegas in July. We lucked out with beautiful clear skies and warm temps (it can be quite cold even in July). There was no snow at all unlike the last time I hiked it (aslo in July).

Odds of winning the PGA championship before the tournament started on Thursday:
Tiger Woods 5/2
Field (all others) 9/5

Odds this morning, after Tiger shot a 63 on Friday:
Tiger Woods 1/5
Field (all others) 5/1

(USA TODAY) -- What's the French phrase for "doping debacle"? VICTORY BEFORE DEFEAT: Rasmussen wins stage before removal from Tour

Rasmussen, 33, had claimed to be in Mexico his wife is Mexican but was actually in Italy, working with an unidentified physician. The ruse was discovered when a former pro racer saw him training in the Italian Dolomites June 13 and 14 and gave that information to a Danish TV station on Wednesday.

Rasmussen missed four mandatory tests in the last 18 months and is also under investigation for shipping banned blood products in 2002.

"We did all we could do to get rid of him," Tour director Christian Prudhomme told Agence France-Presse.

Rasmussen wasn't the first rider to be ousted Wednesday. Italian Cristian Moreni, who was part of a riders' anti-doping protest at the start of Wednesday's stage, was taken into custody at the finish line because his urine sample from the July 19 stage tested positive for testosterone. He admitted his guilt, and his French Cofidis team left the race.

Prerace favorite Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan and his Astana team were expelled Tuesday after he tested positive for blood doping after his July 21 time trial win.

Yikes. Sad. I was really impressed with Rasmussen's poise throughout the Tour. Yesterday's stage win was truly impressive.

I break lines with a lot of my libertarian friends when it comes to doping. Though like any self-respecting libertarian, I think such drugs should be legal, I strongly support the bans imposed by the sports authorities governing the various sports. I notice that a lot of my libertarian friends disagree and support Barry Bonds and others accused of doping. But rules are rules boys. (As a libertarian I'm opposed to government not governance.*)

What I found really odd was how the Versus TV announcers made no mention yesterday of Vinokourov's ouster (ok I could have missed it but I watched almost the whole stage last night on tape). This after singing his praises for two weeks.

*It is a fair question to ask if the sports' bans on doping would continue if the state ended its jihad against drugs.

From USA Today comes this example of sports economics:

The escapees in Tuesday's stage were out front for more than six hours and 145 miles, only to be absorbed with the finish line in sight. If they hadn't taken a roadside restroom stop early on, they might have kept overall leader Fabian Cancellara of Team CSC from taking a surprise stage win.

Agritubel, a non-ProTour team that got a wild-card spot in the event, has been especially aggressive about getting riders out front. It was Cedric Hervй on Monday. Look for Nicolas Jalabert today.

ADDENDUM (7/18): Co-blogger Bob points me a similar instance in this year's Boston Marathon:

At yesterday's 111th Boston Marathon, two Kenyan athletes with slim credentials appeared to be trying to steal the race, when in fact they were simply stealing television time, promoting a running shoe ...

Kudos and a big ol' shout out to my college roommate, former DoLer, and Ashland University history professor, John Moser for his fantastic performance as Howard Cosell last night at the Ashland (Ohio) Sports and Society Chautauqua. Well done John!

If you're in the area, there's still three more nights left with performances of Bobby Jones, Alta Weiss, and Joe Louis still to come.

Fort Myers, Fla. — A minor league baseball team will poke fun at the University of Florida coach who backed out of his deal with the Orlando Magic when the Fort Myers Miracle host "Billy Donovan Night" on June 20.

A Fort Myers man who shares the coach's name is scheduled to throw out the first pitch. After that, waffles — to poke fun at the coach's "waffling" — will be served. And hair gel, mocking Donovan's slick look, will be handed out.

Story here.

Colleague Mike Ward and ex-colleague Carolyn Dehring and myself have recently submitted the second of potentially three papers concerning the November 2004 Cowboys Stadium referendum in Arlington. The second paper available here at SSRN focuses on the impact of the potential stadium on local property values and how those impacts influenced precinct-level support for the stadium vote.

We find fairly compelling evidence that precincts in which property values increased with the probability that the stadium would be built in Arlington provided more support for the stadium referendum - what we claim is a direct test of the so-called Homevoter Hypothesis.

Here are the details:

A Direct Test of the Homevoter Hypothesis

We propose a methodology that facilitates a direct test of the homevoter hypothesis, which posits that homeowner/voter support for a public good project is positively related to the project’s expected effect on property values. First, we estimate how events that indicate an increasing probability that the public good project will be undertaken impact local residential property values before the referendum is held. These pre-vote impacts are considered noisy signals to homeowners about the market’s assessment of the net marginal benefits of the project. Second, we aggregate these market signals to the precinct level and relate them to precinct-level voting results concerning the proposed project. We apply this method to the 2004 referendum in Arlington, Texas, concerning a publicly subsidized stadium to host the NFL Dallas Cowboys. The analysis supports the homevoter hypothesis and establishes a possible methodology for future evaluations in this small but growing empirical literature.

The first paper available here investigates the impact of the pending stadium referendum on property values in Arlington relative to the surrounding areas.

Cross posted at Heavy Lifting

Baseball fans seem to be of two minds when it comes to Barry Bonds nearing (and ultimately breaking) the homerun record of Hank Aaron. What should not be lost, however, is that one of these days there will be newspaper headlines around the country mentioning Barry Bonds and the record. In the distant future people might be somewhat jealous that we were living at the time.

Consider this example from the May 25, 1907 NYT:

Cy Young Blanks the Browns

ST. LOUIS, May 24 - Boston defeated St. Louis today 4 to 0. Powell was hit freely, while the locals were unable to hit Young. Powell fielded poorly, and two errors by him materially assisted the visitors in scoring.

Strike outs: Powell 5, Young 1.

Time of Game: One hour and twenty-six minutes.

Those reading the headline 100 years ago likely had no idea that today we would be jealous of seeing Cy Young. Regardless of one's opinion about Barry Bonds, we should remember that others will be jealous of us one day.

Update on racial bias in NBA foul calling. You might recall Penn economist Justin Wolfers and co-author making NYT's front page for their preliminary work concluding that referees were more likely to call fouls on players of different race. The NBA counter-argued that the Wolfers study didn't have data on individual referees' race. After some back and forth, the league has now shared its referee race data with Wolfers, who has re-run some regressions. And ESPN hired a third party economist, Thomas Miles at Chicago law, to weigh in. Miles likes the Wolfers story better.

Seldom do preliminary results get so much attention, right? And seldom do arcane econometrics get such detailed discussion in the news.

New ESPN write up here.

The May 2, 1907 NYT reports from Albany, NY:

A decision of interest to baseball magnates and players was handed down yesterday by the Court of Appeals against the New York Baseball Club of the National League and in favor of Fred Pfeffer. Pfeffer was under contract by which he claimed he was to receive $2,400 a year and $600 additional for playing to the best of his ability. He claimed to have been suspended unjustly, it being charged he was not in playing condition. He sued for $800 and interest. His claim was afterward assigned to Frank Russell, who has finally won after a long litigation.

Thus, the salary in question was from the 1896 season. The story doesn't report on the total amount of interest involved, but assuming an interest rate of 5% (high or low?), the entire award would amount to approximately $1300. If Russell took a thirty percent contingency fee (high or low? I admit I don't know what the norm was back then), this would leave Pfeffer with $871.

If we assume the $800 represents the economic damages incurred for being fired, and the base salary was $2,400, this would imply that Pfeffer's reservation wage (essentially the value of his best alternative to baseball for the NY Giants) was around $1,600. His reservation wage might have been considerably lower than this, which would have implied a larger claim in the law suit, but he might have chosen the amount for which to sue in a strategic fashion. *

Nevertheless, I find this little tidbit of data of interest because we have very little information on particular player salaries from the early days of baseball. I have a working paper with former UTA Masters student Jennifer Ashcraft analyzing unique salary data I discovered from the 1880s (available here) and there are some aggregate numbers (mainly average salaries) that have been revealed during various law suits over the years, but during the early days of professional baseball salaries were not revealed as openly as today.

One more player observation on baseball salaries doesn't help a whole lot, but let's take a crack at "robust inference on one observation" (my forthcoming Nobel-winning magnum opus).

Fred Pfeffer was an average hitter, especially as he primarily played second base and shortstop (positions that historically weren't expected to generate above-average batting numbers). Pfeffer's career statistics were a .255 batting average, a .312 on base percentage, and a .369 slugging percentage; all fair-to-middling' numbers. If the salary for an average player like Pfeffer was $2,400 but Pfeffer's reservation wage was somewhere in the area of $1,600, perhaps Pfeffer (and other players?) had more negotiating power under the reserve clause than is generally believed.**

The negotiated wage between Pfeffer and the Giants fell between Pfeffer's reservation wage and Pfeffer's marginal revenue product. What was his MRP? My work with Ashcraft suggested that the average ratio of MRP to wages amongst the best players in the game during the 1880s averaged 2.5. Thus, the so-called contract zone might have had a lower bound of $1,600 and an upper bound of $6,000. This would suggest that Pfeffer was able to negotiate about 18% of the $4,400 difference between his MRP and reservation wage, with the team keeping the rest of the difference.

This would seem to be back-of-the-envelope-consistent with the numbers in the Ashcraft-Depken piece.

How cool is that.

* HT to colleague Mike Ward for ealier discussion that led to this post.

** [tongue-in-cheek] My magnum opus titled "Robust Inference on One Observation - How to Win Every Argument Every Time" is replete with sentences filled with parentheticals, and hypotheticals. Unfortunately, publishers (okay, one) have taken a dim view of my work from which I can only conclude that all publishers are idiots.

Cross posted at Heavy Lifting

The May 2, 1907 NYT reports from Princeton, N.J.:

George R. Murray, the general athletic Treasurer for Princeton University, to-day gave out the statement of the baseball association for the half year ended Jan. 1, 1907. The report shows a net profit of $11,78.34 for the season. The heaviest expenses being the coaches' salaries, $4,844.92, and training table, $3,159.11.

If the men's baseball team had 1 head coach and three assistant coaches. I don't have access to the actual salaries of these four individuals, but if they are paid the average at Princeton, total coaching salaries would total $246,000.

Are coaches today worth twice (in real terms) as they were 100 years ago, assuming Princeton coaches are paid the average salaries at Princeton? This would imply a growth rate in coaches real salaries of approximately 1.4% per year. I might believe that growth rate, after all has the marginal productivity of a good baseball coach changed all that much over the past 100 years? Moreover, as baseball is rarely a revenue generating sport (and it doesn't seem to be at Princeton), the value of marginal product is likely changing very little.

Granted, if the Princeton coaches are paid more than the average, then the growth rate would be a bit higher. However, the increase in coaches salaries have been greatest in football and basketball (both men's and women's) where the greatest amount of rents are gathering and with the players not being paid those rents are being distributed (to some extent) to the coaches of those particular sports.

Whether there is any largess for the coaches of non-revenue generating sports (where coaches likely have lower opportunity costs, lower productivity gains, and lower amounts of rent-generation) is an interesting empirical question. I am not sure if the data to answer that question are readily available, but it would prove an interesting dissertation topic.

I think the best writing in newspapers is often found on the sports pages, but this line from Saturday's Columbus Dispatch by writer Jim Massie was a real groaner:

CINCINNATI --With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Reds looked more uncomfortable lost than a polar bear up to its white, furry haunches in a Sahara Desert sand dune."

I hope Jim was drinking when he came up with that one!

Thanks to everyone for your e-mails about the marathon. I had three goals going in:

(1) Requalify for Boston with a 3:20.
(2) Beat my bib number (6252)
(3) Have fun!

I ran a 3:29:20 so I failed to requalify, but I did beat my bib number coming in 5363 out of 20038, and I also had lots of fun. The fans in Boston are simply the best (a special nod to the gals at Wellesley College!). As Meatloaf said, two out of three ain't bad. Oh yea, the weather wasn't nearly as bad as the media made it sound. We had light rain in the beginning and only occasional gusts of wind and it got better throughout the day.

Split times (unofficial) are below the fold for you running geeks.

The April 17, 1907 NYT reports the following:

Max Spitzner, who won the National gymnastic championship in several events in the contests at the Madison Square Garden last year, to-day lost his left arm.

It was torn away by machinery in a camera factory in which he was employed. Spitzner was the champion gymnast of Connecticut.

Weather Advisory - 2007 Boston Marathon:

FORECAST:
The most up-to-date weather forecast calls for a predicted Spring storm on Monday, including heavy rains (potentially 3 to 5 inches), with the start temperatures in the mid to upper 30's. Wind will likely be East (in the face of the participants for most of the race) in the 20 to 25 mile per hour range, with gusts to as much as 50 miles per hour. This will produce a wind chill index of 25 to 30-degrees Fahrenheit.

Tomorrow I'm off to run Monday's Boston Marathon. Alas, it looks like a Nor'easter will bring heavy rain, high headwinds, and temps in the high 30s/low 40s. So much for a good time (in either sense)!

My bib number is 6252 (out of 22,500). If you want to follow along, the website will post 5k splits in (almost) real time. The race begins at 10 a.m. and is broadcast by the Versus tv network.

The April 12, 1907 NYT reports on opening day in professional baseball:

The largest crowd that ever witnessed an athletic event in this city saw New York win the opening game of the American League season here to-day by the score of 3 to 2. There were 12,902 paid admissions...

Opening day attendance is therefore up approximately five-fold. And while nominal ticket prices [for the Yankees] have increased from $0.50 to somewhere around $50, in real terms this is also about a five-fold increase: from about $10 to about $50.

The April 11, 1907 NYT reports on opening day in Major League Baseball. Much like this season, many teams are faced with the "odd" occurrence of snow on the ground in April. Take Detroit:

Detroit has Gloomy Outlook

Gloomy are the baseball fans whose appetites have been whetted since Hugh Jennigs became Manager of the team. It has snowed off an on for three days, and this morning broke with two inches of the white mantle on earth. Some moderation gave hopes but the weather man gives little hope. Secretary Navin says the game will be played if the snow isn't too deep, but the outlook is a cold, uncomfortable day. The advance sale equalled the park's capacity. The team is on edge and has shown well.

Time for a bit of DOL frivolity. Thanks to a colleague who has an extra ticket, I'm going to tonight's NCAA Championship game in Atlanta. I have no connections to either Florida or Ohio State so I'm wondering which team I should cheer for. I've opened comments until I leave about 3:30 this afternoon. Arguments based on economics (or the economics departments at the two schools) will be most convincing.

File this in the "why did we try that?" drawer. The March 29, NYT reports from Memphis, TN:

John W. Schorr, prominent in the past in the ownership of thoroughbred horses, has volunteered his services as starter at the matinee racing to be held here on April 6 by horsemen who will experiment in holding horse races with the betting feature eliminated... [emphasis added]

I have just finished reading J.C. Bradbury's The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the economics of baseball or sabermetrics (the statistical analysis of baseball).

J.C. has first rate discussions on a number of baseball issues such as hit batsmen, hitters "protecting" each other in the line up, the absense of left-handed catchers, and coaching prowess in lobbying umpires (though I thought this was the weakest chapter). He also breaks down the myths about large market teams dominating small market teams and explains that the sudden explosion of hitting had a lot to do with the league's expansion (without denying the possible steroid connection). His economic analysis of the game in terms of player values and the supposed monopoly power of MLB is also excellent.

The best thing is that now I have a reply to the folks on the street who ask me about Freakonomics. I will say “yea that’s an ok book, but you should read The Baseball Economist if you want to really see how economists think.”

My former student Todd Nesbit and good friend Russ Sobel are making some news in the blogosphere and elsewhere with their views on Nascar's "Car of Tomorrow."

From SI.Com:

In 2006, Todd Nesbit, assistant professor of economics at Penn State Erie, and Russell Sobel, professor of economics at West Virginia University, produced a study that explored how drivers react to having cars so safe that they can generally walk away with no injuries after crashing into a concrete wall or another car at a very high rate of speed. "Based on results of our study, we would project that drivers will drive more recklessly and take more risks while driving the Car of Tomorrow," Nesbit said.

A cricket fan committed suicide while another died of a heart attack in India after watching their national team's crushing defeat to Sri Lanka in the World Cup match in the Caribbean, police said on Sunday.

Upset over India's loss and after having an argument with his wife, 25-year-old farmer Mahadeb Sarkar hung himself after the match in the village of Bajitpur in West Bengal.

His wife, Sadhana, who was also upset about the defeat, tried to hang herself in another room, but she survived.

ATSRTWT

HT: Saurav Roychoudhury

The Feb. 27, 1907 NYT reports the final schedule for the National and American League baseball teams I hesitate to say that hope was in the air the same as today because there had only been three World Series and therefore an utter lack of ~100 year droughts that make people avid fans of teams like the Cubs, White Sox, and Red Sox.

The article also reports on several rule changes - some of which are still with us today. Rule changes in most sports are generally intended to increase the social welfare of the league members - teams and players - by making the game safer for the players, safer for the fans, and/or more entertaining for fans (which implies that fans will be willing to spend more to attend the events and increasing the returns to players, managers, and owners).

Many times rule changes aim to improve offensive efficiency, and hence scoring, as it is believed that fans like to see scoring. Other rule changes are intended to bolster the defense and improve the parity of the league, as it is believed fans like more evenly matched contests. And still other times rule changes might address off-the-field behavior, as it is believed that bad behavior of a few players might reduce the overall appeal (demand) of the sport.

The rules changes in 1907 were as follows (with my opinion as to where the advantage lies in parentheses):

Rule 14: No other player except the pitcher shall be allowed to take the gloss of the ball, under a penalty of $5(?) for each offense (advantage: pitcher/defense);

Rule 51: A batsman stepping from one box to the other after the pitcher has taken his position shall be declared out (advantage: pitcher/defense);

Rule 83, Section 4: In all cases where a base runner is retired by being hit by a batted ball, unless batted by himself, the batter shall receive credit for a base hit (advantage: batter/offense);

Where two umpires have officiated in games it has always been the rule for the assistant umpire to decide all plays at first and second bases. This clause in the rule has been eliminated and the two umpires will have to come to an agreement about the matter (advantage: junior umpires);

If a catcher interferes with a batsman while striking at a pitched ball, the batsman becomes a base runner (advantage: batter/offense);

If there are two base runners and one passes another in an effort to make a run while the first runner is being "touched" the runner who passes is to be declared out (advantage: defense).

JC Bradbury recently bemoaned the lull between football and baseball seasons. Since I like college hoops better than football I don't share his boredom in February and March, but if you're bored like JC you might want to check out the college football recruiting model developed by Allen Lynch and his co-authors. The model correctly predicts roughly 70% of players choices which isn't too bad since most players were picking among 4-6 colleges.

What if you like college hoops as I do? Allen can help us too. For the last 13 years or so he and Jay Coleman have been publishing The Dance Card, a formula designed to predict which teams will receive at-large tournament bids from the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. The Dance Card is updated every so often during the season so it's easy to keep track of which teams are on the bubble.

Total Miles: 1315.8
Number of Runs: 195
Average Run: 6.7
Longest Run: 26.2
Average/Week: 28.2
Average Pace: 7:46
Hours (est.): 170.4

Yellow: individual runs
Blue: weekly average
Pink: two-week average

Not as many runs/miles as last year, but a good year. In addition to setting a marathon PR, I ran post-high school PR's in the 5k (19:03), 4 mile (22:20), and 10k (40:20). Unfortunately, the year ended on a sour note as I came down with a bad case of piriformis syndrome that sidelined me for two months. I've only just begun to run again, but am still hoping to run Boston in April.

I have subscription about to expire to Trails.com. The site has chapters from dozens of hiking books in .pdf form that you can retreive. I have 38 free downloads remaining. So if anyone wants any information about a mountain or hiking trail, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Every year we have to listen to the inevitable cries from this or that team that is left out of the big national title game in college football. This year it's Michigan. "Why can't we have a tournament like other sports or football at other levels?" they ask.

Count me in the minority that acutally likes the Bowl game system and dislikes tournaments.

What I don't like about tournaments is that every team, except one, finishes the season with a loss. Every team, except one, no matter how great a season they had ends up with a bitter taste, a "woulda, coulda, shoulda..." GMU basketball fans had a fantastic season last year, but let's face it, it was more bitter in the end than sweet.

The reality is only one team can win the "national title." But I like the fact that after the bowl season is over exactly 50% of the teams in the post season will look back on the season with a warm feeling of a bowl victory.

Sports games are inherently zero-sum, and therefore not like real life (notwithstanding all the sports/life metaphors we have to endure), but 50% winners and 50% losers strikes me as closer to real life than 1 winner and N-1 losers.

This OSU-hating Columbus resident, who is also an FSU alumnus, has only one thing to say about the BCS championship game:

GO BUCKS! GO BUCKS! GO BUCKS!

(I can't believe I said that.)

The Nov. 28, 1906 NYT has an article describing some odd views on sport by the President of Harvard:

President Charles W. Eliot, since his recent declaration that the discontinuance of football would do the university no harm, made several objections to-day to basket ball, hockey, and even baseball.

"To discontinue football, hockey, and basket ball at Harvard would do no harm," he said. "Basket ball is very objectionable. It is too rough, and there are too many chances for cheating. The rules have been stretched so that they spoil the game. It would be a good thing, especially, to have basket ball discontinued."

Hockey he stamped as too rough.

"It [hockey] requires teamwork," he added, "and I must say I have no use for a game that requires that. It is not open enough, and as in basket ball, its rules have been distorted. Rowing and tennis are the only sports in which honorable play altogether is practiced. You can no more cheat in those two sports than in a game of cards; you would be crowded out of society if you tried.

The Nov. 27, 1906 NYT reports:

Yale's entire football receipts for this season will be about $65,000. From the Yale-Harvard game each university receives about $32,000, and from the Yale-Princeton match the rivals each secured about $13,500. Yale's only other big game was with Brown, in which her share was about $2,000. The minor games will, however, bring the total up close to $65,000.

The 1906 college/high school football season was the first played under the new rules designed to open the game and reduce the probability of severe injury. At the end of the season, the initial impact of the reforms were reported in the Nov. 26, 1906 NYT:

Eleven players were killed and 104 were injured in the United States during the football season according to the Chicago Tribune. These figures are compared with the casualties of 1905, when 18 players were killed and 159 severely injured, and, according to The Tribune, show that "debrutalized" football has accomplished in a large degree the object aimed at, in rendering the game less dangerous to life and limb.

The decrease in casualties is especially marked among high school players. In the season of 1905 11 high school players were killed and 47 injured, while in the season just closed seven were killed and 25 hurt. All college and high school games this year were played under the new rules drawn up after the close of last season to satisfy the agitation for less dangerous football. This year not one fatality has occurred in the game played by the larger American colleges.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is self-described as "the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities."

John Fund reports on some of ACORN's shenanigans relative to elections. The article includes these references to minimum wages.

Its manual for minimum-wage campaigns says it intends "to push for as high a wage as possible." But it doesn't pay those wages.

In 1995 Acorn unsuccessfully sued California to be exempt from the minimum wage, claiming that "the more that Acorn must pay each individual outreach worker . . . the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire."

So at least one employer's demand curve for labor slopes downward.

From the AJC (via a colleague who is a UGA alum):

Athens —Former University of Georgia basketball coach Ron Jirsa benched a player after he refused to change his major when his class schedule conflicted with practice, former UGA center Robb Dryden said this week.

Current UGA administrators say Jirsa's actions would not have been tolerated then, nor would they be today. UGA President Michael Adams would not confirm Dryden's assertion that the handling of his situation contributed to Jirsa's firing at the end of that season.

Even worse than what this episode says about UGA athletics is what it implies about UGA's child and family development program.

The October 15, 1906 NYT reports on the Chicago White Sox beating the Chicago Cubs in the first intra-city world series, describing how the "Hitless Wonders" somehow took down Goliath; the 1906 Chicago Cubs went 116-36, for a .894 winning percentage (more here).

The article reports that total attendance during the six game series was 99,845 with total "receipts" being $105,540. Thus, the average ticket to the 1906 World Series was approximately $1 or about twice the regular season admission price.

The folks at EH.net suggest that

In 2005, $1.00 from 1906 is worth:
$21.63 using the Consumer Price Index
$17.32 using the GDP deflator
$95.27 using the unskilled wage
$116.18 using the nominal GDP per capita
$402.45 using the relative share of GDP

From the Detroit Tigers website we learn that the face value of Tigers tickets for the regular season ranged from $5 to $60. These same tickets during the World Series will range from $75 to $250.

More at Heavy Lifting

In Norman, OK, home of the University of Oklahoma, half the cars -- and more than half of the pickup trucks -- feature an upside-down longhorn sticker on the back, as a sign of disrespect for the University of Texas. In Austin, TX, home of UT, they return the favor with a new brand of beer.

The October 6, 1906 NYT advertises the Fordham-Rensselaer Polytechnic football game to take place at 3pm at Fordham Field. Ticket price: $0.50 ($10.81 2005 CPI adjusted).

I went to the Fordham Athletics website to find the ticket prices for this season's games:

Loge (reserved, mid-field) $15.00
General Admission $12.00
Student/Child $5.00
Group $5.00

Wow, the general admission price to Fordham games has barely changed in real terms over 100 years. What gives?

I grabbed the historical records of Fordham Football (the school's football program has a bit of a checkered past - many years it did not field a team, etc. - but Fordham has been playing in the Patriot League as of late). Over the past 100 years, the school has played 766 football games with a record of 382-349-35 (through the 2005 season) for a winning percentage of 0.498.

Fair-to-middlin' football is worth about the same today as it was 100 years ago?

[Fordham records in Excel format]

1905 and 1906 was a period of reform in collegiate football. New rules were instituted, most notably the forward pass. As the first games were played with the new rules, there were interesting contrasts in how the new rules are received.

From the Sept. 27, 1906 NYT:

The first real game of football under the new rules was played here [Carlisle, Pa] between the teams of Carlisle Indians and Villa Nova College. The Indians won by a score of 6 to 0, scoring a touchdown and a goal in the first half and failing to score in the second.*

The game was variously criticised by the largest crowd that ever witnessed a contest here. The side lines were filled with football experts, who received the game rather unfavorably. The spectators, however, appeared to enjoy it more than the old sport and regarded the rules as distinctly desirable.

As a matter of fact the play was very open and interrupted by almost constant fumbling...Villa Nova tried a forward pass on the first play...and it succeeded in gaining ten yards. After short gains, however, it lost the ball through the ball touching the ground without touching a player on an attempted forward pass.

The passing was more of the character of that familiar in basket ball than that which has hitherto characterized football. Apparently it is th intention of football coaches to try repeatedly these frequent long and risky passes. Well executed they are undoubtedly highly spectacular, but the risk of dropping the ball is so great as to make the practice extremely hazardous and its desirability doubtful.

On the other hand, it seemed impossible for either team to gain ten yards consistently without such plays.

So, the "professionals" didn't like the new rules at first but the fans dialed in immediately? Why is that not surprising?

* In 1906, a touchdown was worth five points and a point-after-attempt was worth one point.

Front page of today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the following headline:

Stadium to look 'like a spaceship'

More at Heavy Lifting

From an editorial in the Sept. 26, 1906 NYT:

Many and violent are the vicissitudes of baseball. Necessarily so, with the prevailing practice of strengthening the local teams by importing mercenaries without any regard for the real residence of the mercenaries, so that the strongest team indicates not at all the superior culture of its putative habitat in baseball. It denotes only the superior judgement or length of purse, or both, of the local management which has secured the services of the team. It is hard to see any rational basis for the local patriotism which can nourish itself on the achievements of "hired men" from anywhere, even though we have proof that local patriotism is roused by the contest to seething enthusiasm.

When baseball (and other sports) players lived in the local area during the off-season, interacted more with the local fans, often through off-season jobs, there might have been a stronger tie with the team. Indeed Psychologist Robert Passikov suggests that one component of fan loyalty is "bonding with players and other fans."

However, civic pride is only valuable to team owners in as much as it translates into revenues, i.e., people in the stands. To this end, if winning is more important than nativism, the decried "mercenaries" are potentially welfare improving - players are worth more and are paid more, team owners earn more revenue (and potentially profit), if the team wins more fans enjoy an increase in surplus. Evidently the editors of the NYT suffer a decrease in surplus, but I'm willing to bet that the net is positive.

For an example of local-only talent-based sports, look at high-school sports. Granted the competition is a little lower as the talent has not been completely developed, but in general people are not willing to pay as much nor willing to attend as much as at the "mercenary" based teams - even at the minor league professional levels. Although, I must admit to exceptions, such as certain Texas high school football games which attract more people than some college games.

From the Sept. 23, 1906 NYT:

"I do not believe the present experiment in American college football can survive. In my opinion, the whole country will within five years be playing the Rugby game."

Oops.

Today's San Jose Mercury News runs a front page feature on Stanford's new football stadium, built in an astounding 43 weeks including demolition of the old 86,000 seat Stanford Stadium in an astounding 2 weeks.

Less than 10 months after bulldozers razed the old structure, Stanford's 50,000-seat, $100 million stadium will open for business Saturday when the Cardinal plays Navy.

...

The stadium project, long a goal of the athletic department, was publicly unveiled 15 months ago, and work started the moment last season ended in November. Within two weeks, the old stadium was gone, clearing the way for more than 300 workers and roughly 30 subcontractors to meet the ambitious deadline.

With noted donor and billionaire real-estate mogul John Arrillaga overseeing the daily operation, two crews worked 16 hours a day, six days a week to fulfill a mission Bowlsby called ``nothing short of a miracle.''

The speed was made possible by a hybrid fast-track and design-build construction method. Move that old PPF outward. Tickets are still available for tomorrow's opener against Navy. Good thing the Cardinal didn't open against the mighty Spartans of San Jose State, who last Saturday overcame two 20-point deficits to beat the Stanford boys from down the street, 35-34.

While I'm talking college football stadiums, by-a-mile my favorite college football stadium is is Kyle Field at Texas A&M. I've seen probably a hundred games there. Maybe more. I could write a treatise on all the intricacies that make game day at A&M unique (my fiancee says the tradition of kissing your date after A&M scores says it all). But it's all a very tacit affair. Bottom line, you just have to experience it yourself. While the team has been in decline since 2000, the 90's saw a 92.5 win percentage at Kyle, including a 31-game streak from 1990-95 and a 22-game streak from 1996-2000. Kirk Herbstreit has repeatedly called Kyle Field his favorite place to call a game. MSNBC ranks it 4th in the nation.

Some notable stadiums I've been to that fail to impress. Notre Dame, LSU Tiger Stadium, and K-State's Wagner Field (Louisville's was bad too). The best small stadium is a tie between TCU's Amon Carter and Southern Miss's "the Rock" in Hattiesburg. Man, can those people tailgate.

I have not been to West Virginia's Mountaineer Field, but that will be corrected on Oct. 14 when I attend their homecoming game against Syracuse. Oh. I'm presenting a paper there too. It's currently half time of the WVU Mountaineers hosting the UMD Terps. WVU just returned a kickoff for a TD to go up 38-10. I hope there's similar fireworks when I visit. Go Mountaineers!

Well, enough economics for now. I have some more football to watch. :-)

A news item:

"... the backup punter on the University of Northern Colorado’s football team has been charged with stabbing the first-string punter in the kicking leg as a way of disabling his rival for the starting assignment ...

According to a witness to the alleged assault, Mr. Mendoza’s rival, Mitch Cozad, stabbed him from behind and then fled in his car. The Tribune reported that Mr. Cozad could be identified, even though he was wearing a hood, on account of the personalized license plates on his car, “8-KIKR.”

From the AJC:

History's first marathoner famously keeled over and died after finishing the grueling journey, which now measures 26.2 miles. But this summer brought the news that not just one but two men thought it would be "fun" to run 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days.

But one of the men, 25-year-old Sam Thompson, recently became what is believed to be the first person to complete the triple 50, and when we talked two days after his last marathon, he said he felt astonishingly good. In fact Thompson, a virtually unknown ultrarunner from Vicksburg, Miss., actually ran 51 marathons in 50 days — he threw in Washington, D.C., for good measure, just hours after running one in Maryland.

Drivers and team officials are still grumbling about NASCAR's points system:

NASCAR vice-president Jim Hunter said series officials are seriously considering a change that would award more points to race winners.

Atlanta Motor Speedway president Ed Clark said the best fix is to put a premium on winning.

ATSRTWT.

An offering from The Onion:

PITTSBURGH—After five years of serving Pittsburgh as their state-of-the-art sporting facility, PNC Park, the home of the rundown, poorly maintained Pirates, said Tuesday it is threatening to leave Pittsburgh unless a new team can be built within the next three years.
PNC Park

"When I came here in 2001, they promised me a championship team," the stadium said. "I was warned by venerable and much-beloved Three Rivers Stadium—which imploded soon afterwards, as you know—that I should look elsewhere, that this team was set in its ways and not focused on rebuilding, that they were simply using me as a means to make money," the stadium said. "I was young and brash and I didn't listen. Now that I am more mature and have settled a bit, I realize I have to do what is best for me and my family."

HT: KR

Baseball Prospectus has a nifty Monte Carlo simulation of baseball teams' probability of making the playoffs. Of the DOL gang, it looks like Larry will have the best oppotunity to see playoff baseball--the Cards are estimated to have an 80% chance of making the playoffs. Bob's Reds rate about 29%; Craig and I are pretty much out of luck--the Rangers have a 2.5% chance and the Braves a 3.5% chance. I think BP repeats the simulation daily to reflect games of the previous evening.

1. Colgate at Ithaca
2. Hamilton at Ithaca
3. Oberlin at Ithaca
4. Niagra at Ithaca
5. Bucknell at Ithaca
6. Bowdoin at Ithaca
7. Princeton at New York
8. Western University of Pennsylvania at Ithaca
9. Holy Cross at Ithaca
10. Swarthmore at Ithaca
11. Pennsylvania at Philadelphia

       date      visitor   visitscore       home      homescore
 9/29/1906      Colgate           0        Cornell          0                 
 10/3/1906     Hamilton           0        Cornell         21          
 10/6/1906      Oberlin           5        Cornell         25             
 10/10/1906      Niagara          6        Cornell         23             
 10/13/1906     Bucknell          6        Cornell         24                
 10/20/1906      Bowdoin          0        Cornell         72                
 10/27/1906    Princeton         14        Cornell          5  
 11/3/1906   Pittsburgh           0        Cornell         23              
 11/10/1906   Holy Cross          6        Cornell         16                 
 11/17/1906   Swarthmore          0        Cornell         28               
 11/29/1906      Cornell          0   Pennsylvania          0                

The August 26, 1906 NYT has a lengthy interview with "one of the most prominent men interested in football at West point," who otherwise remains unnamed, concerning the new rules put in place for the 1906 season (set to start in four weeks). Here are a few snippets:

The forward pass, which was advanced as so potent a factor in opening up the play, I do not believe will be very prominent. The pass is too uncertain, requires too much accuracy in handling the ball, something that was extremely difficult under the old rules to make it of great value. Its moral effect, in keeping the opposing side on the qui vive of expectancy watching for its appearance, will be of greater value than the pass itself. I believe you will see few passes and unimportant gains made with them when made....

The change which I regard as most important in opening up the play is the on-side kick. When a ball is free to be secured by either side when kicked it is obvious that it introduces the greatest possibilities for forward passing imaginable. For instance, if a forward pass is desired the pass much be made to certain prescribed men, and must be cleanly handled or lost. The same end is gained by simply kicking the ball a short distance ahead of the scrimmage line and allowing any man on the kicking side to secure it...The consequence of this must be the spreading out of the defense to meet such plays and the consequent weakening of the line of defense...I believe the ten-yard rule would have been ruinous without this one change...

It was the little meannesses, the direct attempt to annoy and inflict distracting pain, that those who understood the game best sought most to avoid. I think the mere separation of the two lines by the length of the ball will almost entirely correct this evil, together with the restraint of another official...

I am not one who believes that you will see the grand game die. I believe that its virility and innate value will pull it through its serious sickness and that the coming season will see it restored to all its old-time popularity and power. As for styles of play, let me say the team that builds up the best defensive system will be the successful team, not the one with the strong offense.

Jim Bouton, who came down a couple of years ago and gave a great talk at Duke about his then new book, Foul Ball, has a new project. (He doesn't get tired of projects).

The Vintage Base Ball Federation (VBBF) was officially launched yesterday.

Got some pretty decent coverage, at several places.

Congratulations, Jim, and good luck.

Since several of the boys here at DoL are VBB participants, I thought I would blog this up.

(Full disclosure: Jim B has been very supportive of my run for Governor of NC, and has agreed to write the foreward for the resulting book. He is a big believer in participant observation, which he is certainly good at himself. Now, I'm not saying he would VOTE for me; he just loves encouraging other people to do weird stuff. I am going to have to work to make that book even half as good as either Ball Four or Foul Ball. And, I was using the latter book in class; a very fine textbook on local land use from a public policy perspective)

(Nod to my man Martin, who is complicit in nearly everything)

The NCAA has released the rules changes for the 2006-2007 football season. Many are reasonable and others are questionable. The main upshot seems to be a) reduce the amount of time it takes to play a game and b) decrease the odds that a bad call can make the difference between a lucrative post-season berth, a not-so-lucrative post-season berth, or no post-season berth.

Major rules changes:

In the August 16, 1906 NYT is an interesting article describing how :

the New York National League Baseball Club [the NY Giants] brought suit against the Chicago National League Baseball club [the Chicago Cubs] for $3,500, alleging damages to that extent on account of the forfeited game of Aug. 7, when Umpire Johnstone was refused entrance to the Polo Grounds and gave the game to Chicago. Manager McGraw of New York wanted the game to be played with player from each of the teams as umpires, but the Chicago manager refused to agree to this, and the Ne York management now declares the club is damaged to the extent of the club is damaged to the extent of $3,500....The damages are said to lie in the loss of gate receipts.

Wait a second. New York bars an umpire, the game is forfeited to Chicago, and New York sues Chicago for damages?

Going back to the Aug. 8, 1906 NYT, here's what evidently happened.

Johnstone umpired a game between Chicago and New York on the previous day [Monday, Aug. 6] and ordered "Manager McGraw and Third Baseman Devlin out of the game. McGraw and Devlin received their notices of official suspension yesterday [Aug. 7] , and the action against Johnstone by the local club came immediately after...The New York Club officials refused to admit the umpire to the grounds, and he promptly declared the game forfeited to Chicago by the customary score of 9 to 0...Police Inspector Sweeney had requested the New York Club not to allow Umpire Johnstone to enter the grounds, as after threats against him it might precipitate a riot...For a time 8,000 spectators massed in front of the entrances and would not leave the grounds. Many of them were appeased with the announcement, however, that all reserved seat checks and rain checks would be good for any other game this season, and a subsequent announcement was made...that money would be refunded on all checks upon presentation at the office of the New York Club...

It seems that McGraw argued that if there was to be any forfeit it should have been the Cubs that forfeited to the Giants. This was because, according to the rules at the time, if an umpire was absent or unable to perform his duties, an agreed-upon individual chosen by the home team could substitute. McGraw claims he had a substitute ready to go at 5 minutes before 4pm (the start of the game) and the Cubs were the ones who walked away. Therefore, the Cubs should forfeit.

One wonders if this means that if the Cubs had forfeited the refunds would not have been offered by the Giants.

Back to the $3,500 claim, the price of admission to the Polo Grounds in 1906 was $0.50. This would imply an actual gate of 7,000 people versus the estimated 8,000 people (assuming all tickets were redeemed for a refund or another game). The attendance figures available in the Retrosheet.org game logs from 1906 indicate an average attendance at the Polo Grounds in 1906 of 7,200 with a standard deviation of 3,000 (albeit on only eight games).

From the August 12, 1906 NYT:

Many of the rules [of college football] have been changed and others thoroughly explained, with the double object of eliminating brutality and making the game more interesting to spectators. Of the many changes, the most radical has been the introduction of the forward pass.

The necessary distance to be gained in three downs has been doubled - that is, the side in possession of the ball must gain ten yards in three downs instead of five...This is the most direct legislation against mass plays, and is intended to make the game more open.

The time of the game has been shortened by ten minutes, making the two halves each thirty minutes in length.

Hurdling is defined and forbidden. Hurdling in the open is jumping over or attempting to jump over an opponent who is still on his feet.

There must be always at least six men of the side in possession of the ball on the line of scrimmage, and if only six are on the line one of those not on the line must have both feet outside the outside foot of the player on the end of the line.

The definition of holding, which in the past has been productive of much wrangling, is more clearly defined, and includes: Grasping an opponent with hands and arms, placing the hands on an opponent to push him away from the play, circling in any degree any part of the opponent with an arm.

Thankfully, as professional and college football is (still!) right around the corner, rules changes of these ilk were instituted.

From Scout.com the article "NFL Rule changes for 2006" posted on August 12, 2006:

Down by contact calls may be reviewed by instant replay. Reason for the change: Provides a mechanism for correcting an obvious on-field officiating error.

Each instant replay review will be a maximum of 60 seconds in length. Reason for the change: Shortens game length.

Individual players are prohibited from using foreign objects or the football while celebrating. Reason for the change: Promotes sportsmanship.

If possible, rushing defenders must make a conscious effort to avoid low hits on the quarterback. Reason for the change: Player safety.

The prohibition against blocking in the back above the waist applies to a player of the kicking team while the ball is in flight during a scrimmage kick. Reason for the change: Player safety.

All players are prohibited from grabbing the inside collar of the back of the shoulder pads or jersey, or the inside collar of the side of the shoulder pads or jersey, and immediately pulling down the runner. Reason for the change: Player safety.

During a field goal attempt or a PAT, any defensive player within one yard of the line of scrimmage at the snap must have his helmet outside the snapper’s shoulder pad. This will provide protection to the snapper, who is in a defenseless position. Reason for the change: Player safety.

No more than six players can line up on the same side of a formation on a kickoff. Reason for the change: Player safety.

If there is a personal foul...that occurs between the end of the second period and the beginning of the third period (or between the end of the fourth and beginning of OT), the penalty shall be enforced on ensuing kickoff. Reason for the change: Provides uniform enforcement for personal or unsportsmanlike conduct fouls throughout the game.

If there is a foul during a scrimmage kick or a free kick prior to a player of the receiving team securing possession of the ball, the offended team will have the option of taking the penalty at the previous spot. Reason for the change: Eliminates re-kicks.

If an offensive foul is a foul by the kicking team prior to a player of the receiving team securing possession of the ball during a down in which there is a safety kick, scrimmage kick, or free kick, the period may be extended by an untimed down, if the defense accepts the penalty. Reason for change: Eliminates fouling to obtain an unfair advantage.

Teams can now opt to take the result of the play OR replay the down when there is an inadvertent whistle. Reason for the change: Current rule too punitive.

Personally, I like the carryover of personal fouls from the end of the half/regulation. It has always bothered me that a penalty thrown at the end of the half, say for taunting or other bad behavior, didn't carry any true punishment.

Although I am not a huge fan of instant replay, the professional (and increasingly the college) game is so fast and there are so few games that perhaps it is warranted relative to, say, professional baseball's regular season. An additional problem is the increasing cost to a bad call. It is entirely plausible that a bad call could be marginal in the sense that it could deny a team a post-season berth. In this case, the dollar cost of the bad call to the teams might be dramatic and justify the use of instant replay. This is why the instant replay is becoming more important in college football - a bad call could be the difference between a high pay-out bowl game and a low pay-out bowl game.

If high school football begins to generate significant revenues, be ready for instant replay at that level as well.

This is a little afield from my normal NYT extracts, but for other purposes I have been scouring old documents for issues concerning college athletics. During the process, I came across this article in the Jan. 19, 1905 issue of Life Magazine:

FOOTBALL IS INDISPENSABLE

We have four embarrassing national possessions - the Monroe Doctrine, the Tariff, the Philippines and the Game of Football. They are all very troublesome, but of none of them can we let go. There is continual grumbling about football, but what does it avail so long as football brings in the money on which nearly all the other forms of college athletics subsist? Football is the hard-working rich uncle of all the little impecunious athletics, the milk-can for all the infant athletic industries. It has got to work for gate-money, or there will be destitution in the college athletic family - no sweaters, medals and photographs for the earnest workers, no new grounds for the scrub and minor teams, no paid coaches for anybody, no anything but mere play, except, perhaps, for the baseball teams, whose opportunities are such that they can earn their own money. Let us stop thinking so much about football as a game, and think of it more as a laborious form of benefaction, even though we realize that the great danger of benefactions is the chance of pauperizing folks, or industries, that could struggle along on their own legs if they had to, and would be better off if they did.

Except for the Philippines issue, this article could be reprinted in today's Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, or Sporting News, and have the same accuracy as it did 101 years ago.

It is interesting that over the past one hundred years only r two more sports have begun to carry their own weight in terms of revenues approaching costs: men's basketball and, to a lesser extent, women's basketball.

Amateur sports are generally of lower quality than professional sports, and the lack of revenue generation by, say golf and swimming, suggests to me that those sports are indeed remaining amateur. The sports that generate the most revenue on campus are also those that are closest to professional-quality play.

The former editor of Wired magazine, Bill Goggins, just died while running a marathon. He was at mile 24 and on a very respectable 7:24/mile pace (the exact pace of my last marathon) when he collapsed.

Also I just read about a young man who died of heatstroke during a run.

I'm sure Art de Vany will mention this when I see him next.

I guess I'll wait until about 8:00 before running tonight. It'll be down to 85 by then.

HT: Dave Reed

From the July 31, 1906 NYT:

The fifth game of the roller skating basketball championship played at Madison Square Garden rink last night resulted in a tie, the Colonial and Calvary teams each scoring 8(?) goals. The contest was close throughout and the teams were evenly matched. The game will be played over next week.

As a follow up on my previous mention of the test case pertaining to Sunday Baseball in 1906, the July 31, 1906 NYT reports:

Sunday baseball advocates got a black eye yesterday when Justice Blanchard handed down a decision in the Supreme Court denying their application for a writ of certiorari to review the adverse ruling of Magistrate Walsh against them...This is regarded as the death knell of Sunday baseball supported by the contribution box in lieu of an admission charge.

Hard to believe, but in the early 1900s there were "Sabbath enactments" in various states which precluded all sorts of activity on Sundays. One that has proved thorny during the 1906 baseball season was the ability to play ball on Sunday.

The July 28, 1906 NYT discusses a test case concerning Sunday Baseball that was to be decided in New York Supreme Court.

To date, there have been at least five different weekends on which Sunday baseball was played and one or more players or managers were arrested for violating the Sabbath enactments. The wording of the laws differed from state to state, but they had in common the ban of "public sport," a term that had a hazy definition.

It seems pretty clear that all involved agreed that charging admission for a baseball game on Sunday would be an example of public sport - and to date that had not been attempted. The alternative, as it has been tried multiple times in 1906, was to have a baseball game in which there was no admission charged but "where the onlookers choose to deposit voluntary contributions in boxes placed in the vicinity of the entrance to the ground."

From the article:

Lawyer Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, representing the clubs, said the case was brought in order to have a decision from the Supreme Court as to what the Penal Code meant by public sport, which were the words used in the section against Sabbath violation, and maintained that, as the games on the Bronx Oval were not for admission fees, they did not come within the wording of the statute...

Where do the police weigh in?

Deputy Police Commissioner Mathot said a definite ruling was wanted as to what was a violation of the Sabbath and what was not. The police made arrests and the prisoners were almost invariably discharged by the Magistrates the next morning. He explained that failure to interfere on the part of the police led to complaints from religious societies. He conceded that there were no complaints in this particular case and added:

"We are thoroughly indifferent in the matter, but want to get a ruling which will place the police in the position of knowing what action we are to take."

Now, I admit to not being a legal scholar, but it does seem a bit odd that religious societies would want the police to interfere with Sunday baseball. In fact, all such Blue Laws have always interested me. Are they passed to suppress temptation of the flock or the temptation of all? If it is to suppress temptation to the flock, what does this say about the power of the religion/religious leaders to dissuade those from breaking the Sabbath? If it is to reduce temptation to the non-converted, what's up with that? By what right do the religious stop the non-religious from doing what they want?

It is also interesting that the courts are being asked to determine what "breaking the Sabbath" means. Although there are still Blue Laws of various types on the books in different states/cities, it seems that the church-state differences have become less blurred over time. Why should the state determine what can and cannot be done on a Sunday, as a more special day than Tuesday or Thursday?

In the purely economic area, it would be fascinating to obtain revenue figures from these Sunday games. At the time, attendance to a baseball game would range from $0.25 to $0.75, depending on where the seat was located. The free-rider equilibrium would suggest that the donated gate would be less than the required gate, ceteris paribus on the number of people in the stadium. However, if the free gate encouraged more people to show up, the donated gate might actually have been greater than the revenue generated by positive ticket prices.

Bob's post noted that the ballgame we caught in Asheville featured $1 beer night. It turns out that Asheville is the official birthplace of Thirsty Thursdays. From The Oregonian (6/3/04; no link--excerpt via Lex/Nex):

It [Thirsty Thursday] is part of the fabric of the Class A South Atlantic League franchise in Asheville, N.C., the official birthplace of Thirsty Thursday. Hanging on a wall of the office of Ron McKee, general manager of the Asheville Tourists and a friend of Cain's, is a plaque of the registered "Thirsty Thursday" trademark.

"We have a thousand people on the concourse who never see a pitch. They just stand there and socialize. But we keep our lines pretty long -- they can't just come in here and guzzle."

The Rome Braves were not allowed to sell beer on Sundays during their first two seasons ('03&'04) in Rome but were allowed to sell on Sundays beginning with the '05 season. It doesn't seem to have made much difference; after controlling for other factors related to attendance, two co-authors and I find that Sunday attendance in 2005 didn't differ from Sunday attendance over the previous two seasons. Apparently it is CHEAP beer that spurs attendance.

Every so often someone will ask my advice about how to start running. Having a few minutes to kill today, I thought I'd write down a few pieces of advice (below the fold).

It seems hard to justify Zidane's actions during the WC finals. However, there are usually two sides to each confrontation. Short of Zidane having some serious personal problems, it is likely that he was provoked in some way. That said, the point of a team is to sacrifice your personal needs to that of the team - admittedly not the most libertarian ideal, but one that seems to work.

I haven't had a chance to go back and rewatch the match, but others suggest that Zidane had to deal with Materazzi pulling on his shirt, literally tweaking his breasts and other such antics. Whether Materazzi said what Zidane claims, perhaps we will never know.

However, colleague Dennis Wilson points out this YouTube clip of five Materazzi plays that might suggest that Materazzi has a worse reputation than casual fans in the States might suspect.

Warning: There is some relatively graphic contact depicted.

I'll add to the minor discussion begun by Bob and Frank about the World Cup. Since I've played soccer for 25 years and been an economist for only about 10, I feel more qualified to speak here than in most of my previous posts.

First, I agree with Frank that the "flopping" is getting out of hand. Soccer is kind of the opposite of public policy, where an action's (intending to harm another player) initial effect (the foul) is usually much harder to spot than the secondary effect of that action (falling). Thus, most refs assume the cause occurred when they see the effect (including me when I was ref), even if the effect is staged. Of course, flopping is stupid too because the perceived benefit (possibility of a free kick) is almost always low compared to the cost (your teammate on the ground, unable to do anything for a few seconds).

Second, I congratulate Bob for granting the game some respect, one which most people do not do even if they've never played or even seen a game. I was thinking of which sport, soccer or the Golden Calf of football, engenders in its participants a sympathy for libertarian ideas:
--Football: coach tells me what to do in next play, I do it, return to coach and repeat. The only players that seem to exercise any creativity is the QB and the two or three guys who run with the ball.
--Soccer: coach gives me an outline what he wants me to do before the game, but rarely tells me what to do during it. I have to make my own decisions.
Football seems more a top-down autocratic system of government, while soccer seems more a dispersed-knowledge society of individiual decision-makers. The best teams, obviously, are those who can create a spontaneous order out of 11 players.

Third, even though Italy played a better team game during its run up to the final, I was rooting for France because of the amazing creativity demonstrated by Zidane in the two games prior to the final. Zidane's penalty kick during the final was even better; I thought the foul was weak, and that Zidane may have chipped his shot as a way of recognizing the weak call. Buffon just guessed the wrong way. Zidane's head-butt, though, was just completely inexplicable. My mom, brother, and I just sat there stunned for a few minutes. A decent comparison might be if you saw Milton Friedman on TV praising the current system of public education in the US: the polar opposite of your expectation. It's unfortunate that this is what he will be remembered for rather than his creativity throughout the later stages of the tournament.

Watching the World Cup makes me wonder: Does FIFA stand for International Federation of Flopping Athletes? Seeing some of the best conditioned athletes in the world fall down in agonizing pain after the slightest of jostling and then, moments later, make a miraculous recovery after having a medic douse them with a water bottle sure gives that impression.

I think Cannes or the ESPYs should include a category for best acting in a flopping role.

I watched the big game on Sunday (that's the World Cup final for all you American readers) with co-blogger Frank and Ben Powell. We were in Cancun and the atmosphere among the locals was pretty exciting. I admit to having turned from being a big soccer hater to someone with a gruding respect for the game. But still wouldn't it be just as effective to use Roshambot to determine the winner instead of penalty kicks?

Also some stuff from God's sport (that's baseball for you goshderned feriners):

Brandon Dutcher points to a Moses bobblehead promotion that reminded me of the "Opening Day Genesis" and the hilarious "First Baseball Game" (I can find two bits of it here and here).

[I just received a worthy comment from Wilson Mixon: "Very interesting, but historically dubious. It would appear that baseball got lost somewhere along the way. Otherwise, why would Jesus have had to ask, "Where are the nine?" (Luke 17:17)"]

A new PR: 19:03 (16/320 overall; 16/203 men; 2/28 men age 35-39)

This is neat. Track the tour via a Google Maps extension.

. ivreg2 reds (yellows =foulscomit foulssuff match06) matches yr06 hc, r first

First-stage regressions
-----------------------

First-stage regression of yellows:

OLS regression with robust standard errors
------------------------------------------

                                                      Number of obs =       64
                                                      F(  6,    57) =    12.35
                                                      Prob > F      =   0.0000
Total (centered) SS     =   846.359375                Centered R2   =   0.5672
Total (uncentered) SS   =         5799                Uncentered R2 =   0.9368
Residual SS             =  366.2885346                Root MSE      =    2.535

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
             |               Robust
     yellows |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
     matches |   .0851108   1.004385     0.08   0.933    -1.926136    2.096357
        yr06 |   2.726882   4.007503     0.68   0.499    -5.298004    10.75177
          hc |   -4.63538   1.161479    -3.99   0.000    -6.961201   -2.309558
  foulscomit |   .1837463   .0298394     6.16   0.000     .1239939    .2434988
 foulssuffer |  -.0605243   .0319657    -1.89   0.063    -.1245345     .003486
     match06 |  -.1744405   1.222848    -0.14   0.887    -2.623151     2.27427
       _cons |  -.5548464    1.78105    -0.31   0.757    -4.121337    3.011644
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Partial R-squared of excluded instruments:   0.3870
Test of excluded instruments:
  F(  3,    57) =    13.76
  Prob > F      =   0.0000

IV (2SLS) regression with robust standard errors
------------------------------------------------

                                                      Number of obs =       64
                                                      F(  4,    59) =     5.86
                                                      Prob > F      =   0.0005
Total (centered) SS     =           33                Centered R2   =   0.2031
Total (uncentered) SS   =           58                Uncentered R2 =   0.5466
Residual SS             =  26.29657278                Root MSE      =     .641

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
             |               Robust
        reds |      Coef.   Std. Err.      z    P>|z|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
     yellows |    .079954   .0378841     2.11   0.035     .0057027    .1542054
     matches |  -.0317426   .1084575    -0.29   0.770    -.2443155    .1808302
        yr06 |   .0989152   .1865216     0.53   0.596    -.2666604    .4644908
          hc |  -.5537637   .2174461    -2.55   0.011    -.9799503   -.1275771
       _cons |   .0132214   .3341736     0.04   0.968    -.6417467    .6681896
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anderson canon. corr. LR statistic (identification/IV relevance test):  31.320
                                                   Chi-sq(3) P-val =    0.0000
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hansen J statistic (overidentification test of all instruments):         2.849
                                                   Chi-sq(2) P-val =    0.2406
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Instrumented:         yellows
Included instruments: matches yr06 hc
Excluded instruments: foulscomit foulssuffer match06
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From Reuters:

BERLIN (Reuters) - The hordes of beer-swilling men who have descended on Germany for the World Cup are proving a disappointment for the host nation's sex workers, preferring to party in public rather than spend time with prostitutes.

"Business is pretty dead, even the regulars stay away because of all the crowds and the hype," said Leppert, who has been working as a dominatrix in Berlin for eight years.

That last paragraph provides a new wrinkle to Phil Porter's finding that sporting events have a displacement effect.

Big time congrats to my two running friends, Rita Barnes and Jeff Schmidt, who ran the Mohican 100 (yes miles!) last weekend. Rita finished in 27:10 (third female) and Jeff in 28:27.

This is from the June 16, 1906 NYT:

BASEBALL, POLO GROUNDS TO-DAY 3:30 PM Giants, Champions, vs. St. Louis. Adm. 50c.

The point? In 2004, the average per-game season ticket prices for Major League Baseball cost $19.82. That doesn't seem too bad of a price increase over the course of one hundred years.

Like most economists I know, I get irritated when people ask me what's going to happen to interest rates, the stock market, or "the economy". I usually mumble something about that (i.e., macro) not being my field. You can tell from the look on their face, they're thinking, "well, sheesh, you're supposed to be an economist, what good are you?!" If I'm feeling frisky, I say something like, "If I knew what was going to happen to [fill in the blank] I'd be rich and in any case I certainly wouldn't be giving that information away to you for free." That usually shuts 'em up.

But the real truth is that I'm really bad at making predictions. On the very few times I've placed a bet in Vegas on a sports game, I have always (yes always!) lost. I know it's basically a 50-50 shot (factoring in the odds/points) but I don't have a good record. I mean it's like 0-6.

So yesterday, I decide to go do a 5.2/10.4 mile "prediction run" sponsored by the Toledo Road Runners Club. A prediction run is one in which you try to predict your running time (obviously you run sans watch). I decided to run the 10.4 mile version. The beauty of a prediction run is that you don't have to race it. Thinking the course would be on some rough trails (the run was at "The Oaks" a fantastic Toledo metro park with lots of trails some of which are pretty rough), I figured on a nice easy 8 minute/mile pace--83 minutes. It turns out the run was on nicely manicured wide and flat trails and some bike paths. And I ran with a fellow (who I've run with a few times) who's pretty good. So we settled into a nice 7:30 pace. Bottom line: he came in 5 seconds off of his time and I came in over 4 minutes off (faster) my prediction.

GRRR. It's bad enough that I can't predict interest rates or who's gonna win the NCAA Championship Game (curse you UCLA!), but I can't even predict how fast I'm going to run a simple run.

he'd hit the ball better. On the other hand when he hits it, he really hits it.

The stats on Toledo Mudhens player Mike Hessman: G 49 AB 165 R 18 H 22 (including 7 doubles and 11 home runs) BB 27 SO 54 SLG .376 AVG .133

Around this time of the year, what with the NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals, and - this year - the World Cup, ticket scalping becomes a favorite topic of discussion amongst the media, cultural critics, and the socially sensitive. After all, why spend four thousand dollars on a basketball ticket when that could help feed a family of four for a year?

Ticket scalping is not a bad thing, any more than buying e-bay at $20 and selling it at $30. However, the social/media perception and characterization of the ticket scalper is definitely less favorable than the millionaire next door.

There are many who seek to ban scalping of tickets, either locally near the arena or generally. The arguments for doing so range from allegations of unfair price gouging, event promoters warning about counterfeit tickets, and politicians claiming that ticket scalping restricts attendance to certain events to an elite. However efforts to stop arbitrage through legislation is difficult at best. As long as e-bay and stubhub and other ticket exchange sites exist - either in New York, Dallas, or the Cayman Islands - it will be be difficult to stop those who have tickets to sell from contacting those who want tickets.

Moreover, it is not immediately clear that banning ticket scalping makes tickets any less expensive (at the ticket window) - see my paper concerning anti-scalping laws. [shameless plug]

I suggest we ignore the stories about $500 or $1500 tickets and jump to the extreme - so any media types can credit DoL for this one. Scanning e-bay this morning I came across the following auction:

In case you can't read the fine print, the auction is for 4 tickets to tonight's (Thursday's) Game 1 and the seats are evidently right down on the floor next to the visiting team's bench. Price per ticket? The Buy-it-now option has it at $17,500 per ticket. That's a brand new Ford Fusion.

As an interesting homework question for my Sports Econ students this semester, I was looking up ticket prices for a potential Game 7 in Dallas. There is an auction for 8 tickets in the rafters (face price $18) on sale for $68.75 per ticket. That's a 382% markup before the series even starts.

I would think those tickets would likely go for $400 (at least) if the Game 7 actually happened. My hunch is fed by tickets for tonight's Game 1 in similar sections being offered for about $300 each.

My currently-under-reconsideration paper on anti-ticket scalping laws [yet another shameless plug] suggests that ticket brokers place little residual value on tickets they cannot sell. Perhaps from the prevailing ticket price for the potential Game 7 we can determine what the broker thinks the odds of a Game 7 will actually be.

If there are only two states of the world: Game 7 occurs and ticket value is $400, or Game 7 does not occur and the ticket's residual value is $2, then the $68.75 per ticket would imply an expected probability of Game 7 occurring of

400xprob + (1-prob)x2 = 68.75
prob = .1677 or 16.77%.

If the ticket might sell for $600 with the same residual ticket value if Game 7 doesn't occur, the $68.75 per-ticket price implies a probability of 11.11% that Game 7 would actually happen.

It is likely that the tickets for Game 7, even in the rafters, would sell for a considerable premium over a Game 1 ticket as a Game 7 ticket is guaranteed to determine the champion, and Dallas Mavericks fans have been waiting a while for the chance to see their team in the finals. Does this mean that the broker puts even less probability on the event occurring?

I went to Tradesports.com and found the current options for Miami winning a potential Game 7 is bid at 9 and for Dallas winning a potential Game 7 is bid at 21.1. pic here. Colleague Mike Ward has convinced me that the sum of these bids is the expected probability that a Game 7 will occur (thanks MW). This would put the expected odds near 30% (give or take 5%?).

I am tempted by the arbitrage possibility, but then my financial advisor would likely be unhappy.

[Update: A closer look at the e-bay auction for the 8 tickets indicates that if Game 7 is not played, the broker offers a full refund less delivery fees and pay-pal fees. Does this make it a riskless play on the part of the consumer? If the broker is willing to give a full refund if the game is not played then why not hold on to the tickets until Game 7 actually occurs or there is a higher probability of
Game 7 actually happening?]

[Update #2: The financial advisor wonders if the broker is offering to redeem the face value of the ticket while keeping the premium.]

[Update #3: After the first two games of the series, perhaps the broker knew more than I gave him/her credit for. The Heat seem to have no answer at the moment, making a Game 7 less likely.]

Cup time is always exciting - although in the past the U.S. population didn't care that much. The 2002 Cup generated the germ of what was once a promising project but has since shifted to the back-burner: what impact does the cup tournament have on national income growth rates and do these rates significantly differ across different types of countries. If they do differ, and the rest of the world takes the month off every four years while the U.S. chooses not to - how much could this account for the per-capita income difference between, say, Brazil and the United States? Over the course of fifty years, or twelve cups, the "negative compounding" that the one-month fiesta might induce could be significant.

Well, I don't have the answer to that particular question, but we can take a look at some preliminary results. I regressed the one-year change in log real GDP (essentially a real GDP growth rate) on five continental dummy variables (South America is the reference continent), a dummy variable for those years when the world cup occurred, a dummy variable that takes a value of one if a country qualified for the world cup, additional dummy variables for how far the country made it in the world cup, and a dummy variable that takes a value of one if the country hosted the world cup, using a GLS procedure that allows for heteroscedasticity and country specific autocorrelation across countries.

The data describe an unbalanced panel of 146 countries from 1951 through 2000 and were obtained from the Penn World Tables and combined with world cup data that we gathered.

     dlnrgdp |      Coef.   Std. Err.      z    P>|z|     [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

      africa |  -.0054362   .0027153    -2.00   0.045    -.0107581   -.0001143

        asia |   .0134052    .002869     4.67   0.000     .0077821    .0190284

    namerica |   .0074735   .0029221     2.56   0.011     .0017462    .0132007

         eur |   .0135593   .0026013     5.21   0.000     .0084608    .0186578

     oceania |   .0035837   .0039538     0.91   0.365    -.0041656    .0113329

worldcupyr   |  -.0031483   .0011778    -2.67   0.008    -.0054567   -.0008398

qualifiedwc  |    .002958   .0033245     0.89   0.374    -.0035579     .009474

secondround  |  -.0015984   .0045547    -0.35   0.726    -.0105255    .0073287

  roundof8   |   .0045202   .0056684     0.80   0.425    -.0065898    .0156301

  roundof4   |   -.003048   .0073198    -0.42   0.677    -.0173945    .0112986

    finals   |  -.0062801   .0117451    -0.53   0.593    -.0293001    .0167398

    winnerwc |   .0064542   .0140176     0.46   0.645    -.0210197    .0339281

      hostwc |  -.0056349   .0093987    -0.60   0.549    -.0240559    .0127861

       _cons |   .0147723    .002353     6.28   0.000     .0101606     .019384

Before everyone jumps up and down, this is a preliminary result. The major limitation in this specification is that the impact of the world cup is assumed to be constant throughout the 50 years of the sample, but it may be the cup has more of an impact today than it did forty years ago. Furthermore, it is assumed that the impact of the cup tourney is the same across all countries - large, small, rich, poor, north, south. The original question posed at the beginning of this post hypothesizes that the impacts are different. As I said, I hope to eventually find the time to turn attention to this idea.

Hopefully, this will plant a flag without promoting a scoop. More below the fold.

From Fox Sports:

For the 2002 World Cup, FIFA gave Japan and South Korea $100 million apiece. The money helped defray the costs of 10 expensive and relatively useless stadiums.

Japan, not wanting to be outdone by South Korea, invested more than $4 billion on stadiums, including one in Nagoya that FIFA chose not to use for any World Cup games. According to a study by Clint Waltz at Troy University in Alabama, only two of Japan's 10 arenas would pay for themselves over time.

Full story here.

The new JPE has Allen Sanderson and John Siegfried's retrospective on Simon Rottenberg's 1956 article "The Baseball Players' Labor Market." Sub required; abstract below:

Fifty years ago this Journal published Simon Rottenberg's "The Baseball Players' Labor Market," the first professional journal article in sports economics. In this retrospective we review some of his insights and analyses with regard to competitive balance, constraints on payroll and freedoms to contract, revenue sharing, territorial rights, and the supply of talent. We also note subsequent industry developments Rottenberg could not have anticipated and identify where he was ahead of his time.

Last Friday, the Minnesota legislature announced it had reached a "deal" to tax Minneapolis residents (and tourists) by 0.015 pennies per dollar of taxable sales to build a new stadium for the Minnesota Twins. The new stadium is anticipated to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million (give or take 10%).

One of my studies was the focus of a story on the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis last Friday. The study focused on the impact of new stadiums on team finances. Not surprisingly, team owners stand to gain considerably when the public finances a new stadium. Video here. I still have a face for radio and I need to learn not to interject so many cynical chuckles during a telephone interview, but I commend Brad Sattin for finding me on the Internet and being willing to run with the story.

There was no announcement about the anticipated size of the Twins stadium, but given recent trends it will likely be between 40,000 and 50,000 seats. Let's take the higher number, which would imply the new Twins stadium will cost approximately $10,000 per seat.

Today the Minnesota state legislature also approved a new stadium for the Minnesota Gophers (see a trend here? Next the Vikings will get a new stadium). The interesting thing is that the Gophers stadium is anticipated to be 50,000 seats and cost only $248 million or $5,000 per seat. (announcement here).

Why the big difference in stadium costs? There are likely additional land costs in downtown Minneapolis incurred for the Twins stadium that the Gophers won't have to pay. However, I doubt the land costs are roughly half the cost of the stadium. Here in Arlington, the city is anticipating the land to cost a little more than one fourth of the total stadium cost.

What else is different? Perhaps there are different costs in building a football stadium compared to a baseball stadium. Yet, previous construction figures do not suggest the differences are that dramatic. More likely the difference is that the hopes and dreams of the Twins ownership include more numerous and more luxurious luxury suites - subsidized by the public dollars.

While it is not immediately clear that university administrations are immune to the principal-agent problem more clearly at work in the professional venue racket, I bet university administrations make stadium size and expenditure decisions closer to the social equilibrium. [I have no solid empirical evidence for this, just a hunch]

While the math in Minnesota doesn't seem to add up, this example is not unique. There are other college campuses (Stanford comes to mind) building stadiums with (ostensibly) public dollars, union labor, and with the same characteristics and regulatory constraints as professional venues but at half the cost.

Perhaps the Vikings can play in Gopher stadium instead of the Gophers playing in the Vikings's stadium?

The first time the city of Irving, Texas, had a chance to respond at the ballot box to the Cowboys leaving town for Arlington, the citizens of Irving sock it to Cowboys fans and the team.

From the Star-Telegram:

The user fees allow the city to tax professional football players up to $5,000 per game played at Texas Stadium, to add up to $3 in parking fees and to increase ticket prices as much as 10 percent. But city officials have pledged not to impose the so-called locker-room tax.

The city of Irving wants to impose the taxes to pay for the destruction of Texas Stadium and the redevelopment of the property. It is an odd sort of user-tax, one that would have been welcomed in the case of Arlington.

Oops. There are parking and ticket taxes but they will be put towards Jerry Jones's "contribution" to the stadium.

Inspired by a Los Angeles Angels fan who filed a lawsuit against the club because he did not receive a red nylon tote bag as part of the major league club’s Mother’s Day promotion last May, the Altoona Curve (AA/Eastern League) have announced that they will be holding Salute to Frivolous Lawsuit Night as part of their Sunday, July 2nd game at Blair County Ballpark.

The first 137 kids will be given a beach ball with a warning not to ingest it

Source here.

UPDATE: A correspondent suggests the Altoona Curve should differentiate between frivolous laws and frivolous lawsuits. He reports that,

The lawsuit [against the Angels] is not frivolous given California’s preposterous Unruh Civil Rights Act, which explicitly grants just the sort of cause of action the plaintiff has filed. Based on the reports I’ve seen, not only does the plaintiff have a viable case, but he is almost certain to win (or get a favorable out-of-court settlement). People have been filing, and winning, Unruh suits and settlements like this in California for decades. There are law firms that specialize in Unruh claims.

Last Saturday's run for the roses was marred, in my mind (and I am sure others), by the fact that the race had its first "sponsor" - Yum! which owns KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, A&W, and Long John Silvers. Yep, fast food and the mint julep and big hats, that's a great combination. The Visa sponsorship and selling the official bourbon for mint juleps to Evan Williams (yack) was bad enough, but at least it was still The Kentucky Derby.

Evidently, Yum might have come out ahead (in some sense) if this story from AdAge is correct:

The Yum logo appeared clear and in focus for three minutes, 15 seconds during NBC's 90-minute broadcast, while the presenting sponsor was also mentioned by the network's announcers on 18 occasions. All told, Yum and its fast-food restaurants -- A&W, KFC, Long John Silver's, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell -- received $2.665 million in exposure.

According to news reports, the cost of the five-year sponsorship deal is estimated at just more than $1 million a year.

From the AJC:

The new BCS format is a move mandated by the university presidents in order to expand opportunities to the smaller, non-BCS conferences.

The Fiesta Bowl gets the first shot at executing college football's grand new experiment. On Jan. 1 it will host the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl in the brand new $455 million Cardinal Stadium in nearby Glendale. On Jan. 8 the same organization will host the BCS championship game.

Don't like this version? Don't worry the BCS will probably change again next year.

Probably not; explanation here.

HT: Wilson Mixon

Hiking Trip #1: La Madre Mountain

Todd Nesbit and I began at the Sandstone Quarry in the Red Rock National Conservation Area near Las Vegas at 8:30 a.m. It was cool and very windy. We headed toward Turtlehead Peak (pic from La Madre) but headed left toward La Madre at the saddle instead of going up Turtlehead. About 5 miles, 3800' of net elevation gain, and 4 hours of tough bushwacking/difficult loose rock later we hit the summit (pic). Great views of Red Rock Canyon, the Las Vegas valley, and the larger Spring Mountains to the north.

Hiking Trip Report #2: Grand Canyon

After taking the bus to Yaki Point, Ben Powell and I hit the South Kaibab Trail into the canyon at about 7:15 a.m. It was cool, windy, and rainy the whole way down. After 2 hours or so we finally made it the 6+ miles and 4800' of elevation loss to the river (pic). We ran into a park ranger who gave us the good news that the weather was supposed to clear for a few hours before a snow storm hit. After a little lollygagging around near the river, we headed back up the Bright Angel Trail with mostly sunny skies and better temperatures. We took a hero shot pic near the rim and promptly headed for the nearest bar. 16-17 miles, 7.5 hours total.

Yesterday, the good folks at Chick-Fil-A released the new log for the erstwhile Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl, now called simply the Chick-Fil-A bowl. I know it is a small thing, but being from Georgia originally, I wasn't too happy about the name change.

The new logo vs. the old logo:

In the official press release is this paragraph:

Tickets for this year's Chick-fil-A Bowl are now available for public sale, and fans are encouraged to purchase early in order to guarantee availability. Fans can reserve their seats now by calling the Bowl ticket office at 404-586-TIXX (8499) or online at www.chick-fil-abowl.com.

The URL with the hyphens is clunky relative to the actual URL, however its inclusion in the press release suggests that it was on someone's mind at one time. Perhaps cyber-squatters got to the hyphenated URL first?

There has been much discussion about the similarities between GMU's basketball success and that of the law school and the economics department. Pete Boettke and Alex Tabarrok on Slate.com here (and the interesting side bar here). Also see Radley Balko for FoxNews.com about GMU and George Mason the man here. Obviously, the sports coverage itself has been pervasive, as expected. (BTW, this weekend I'm at a Liberty Fund conference where I'm the only GMU alum, and there has been a lot of buzz about GMU. All the interest in the program among the other conferees has been a delight.)

But does GMU have a chance?

Consider the argument (attributable to Boettke?) that the top programs are more vulnerable to early player exit to the NBA, and that "senior led teams are more effective than freshman led teams. No matter how good freshman players are, a senior player of similar skill level will outcompete the freshman player 8 out of 10 times." (That's Boettke.) In fact, GMU starts 3 seniors (and 2 soph's) and gets 21 minutes from a junior. Meanwhile, of the 7 Gators that play more than 12 mins/game, 4 are sophomores, 2 are juniors, and the other is a freshman. While Florida's five starters average 10 or more PPG, none of their players averaged double figures prior to this year.

In short, tonight's game will come down to Mason's experience and tenacity vs. FU's talent and new chemistry. If the "money ball" idea wins out, GMU will advance. I really hope so, because it'll be great for Coach Larranaga and the Patriots, but also because I'll be joining the gang at the APEEs in Vegas tomorrow and the final is Monday night. How great would that be?

Comments are open....

One of the modern greats, Sri Lankan batting star Sanath Jayasuriya, has announced his retirement from test matches. He will continue to play one-day internationals, where his aggressive batting style is more valuable, and hopes to play in the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies.

Test cricket, where matches last five days, is notoriously dull. A batsman need be in no hurry to score runs. I once saw England’s Nasser Hussain score only one run from the first 30 deliveries he faced. The one-day game is more exciting, and Jayasuriya has helped make it so.

Jayasuriya’s lasting contribution was to be one of the first batsmen to recognize that in the one-day game, with the batting team limited to 50 overs (at 6 deliveries per over, that’s 300 deliveries from the other team’s bowlers), it pays to score rapidly. More teams lose by scoring too few runs from their 50 overs than by using up all their outs, so go for a high number of runs per over, even at a greater risk of making an out. In a 1996 match against Pakistan, Jayasuriya scored 76 runs off of just 28 balls, an astounding run rate. The most common result from a batted ball is one run; hitting it beyond the boundary scores four (or six if it clears the boundary on the fly). Jayasuriya's performance that day was like a baseball player hitting five home runs in a game.

Today's Star-Telegram points to one of the most bizarre naming-rights issues I have seen in quite a while:

Under a proposal, Dallas-based Methodist Health System would pay $150,000 a year for two years and then $25,000 a year for eight years to name the facility Methodist Mansfield Stadium. The $21.7 million, 11,000-seat facility on Texas 360 and East Broad St. would be open in time for the 2006-07 school year.

Trustee Nancy Ryals, who expressed her concern about the name, said it could give the wrong impression that the district is affiliated with a religious group and could open the district up to other religious advertising. She said she would rather name it for someone who has given a great deal to the district but understands that it is a financial benefit.

-----
Addendum: Pete Boettke's analysis from a week ago, after GMU had advanced to the sweet 16, is very informative and has several well reasoned clues for the rise of parity in men's hoops......and law and economics....
-----

Writing for ESPN.com, Andy Katz has this to say about the Patriots of George Mason:

But even if George Mason was a single-digit seed instead of a No. 11, that probably wouldn't matter for historical purposes. This was the greatest run ever to the Final Four. End of discussion.

...

The Patriots were one of the last five at-large teams to make the field, and all they did was knock off three of the last six national champs: Michigan State (2000) in round one (without suspended second-leading scorer Tony Skinn), North Carolina (2005) in round two and Connecticut (2004) at the Verizon Center in overtime in the Elite Eight. Wedged in there was Missouri Valley champ Wichita State in the Sweet 16.

Let's go over this again: The Patriots took out Tom Izzo, Roy Williams and Jim Calhoun, the latter a Hall of Fame member and the first two likely to be enshrined some day.

I wasn't lucky enough to be there in person like Pete Boettke, who reported by email to have sat 10 rows behind the GMU bench, and Alex Tabarrok, who was ecstatic on MR. But I was lucky to have watched with Ed Stringham, Ben Powell, and an ecstatic contingent of eight crowding around the t.v. in Ben's living room. As a fan of the Spurs, Cowboys and Aggies, I never thought it would be GMU that would amaze me the most in sports. All five starters were players of the game. Best of luck to Coach Larranaga and his epitome of a team. I hope they win it all!

Three female runners finished third, fourth, and fifth in the Dubai marathon in the United Arab Emirates even after faulty directions forced them to run an extra 2.5 miles on the 26.2-mile course. The mistake cost the runners about 15 minutes—about what they lost by. [Story.]

This isn't as strange as you would imagine. Elite runners often find themselves running alone. And small races often have fewer volunteers, signs and fans on the course. It's not hard to zig when you should have zagged.

In fact, closer to home, a large group of runners at last weekend's Cherry Blossom Marathon in Macon, GA ran an extra 1.3 miles or so.

This came to me from a friend running his first marathon,

My overall time was just under 3:41. *BUT*, and I'm sure nobody but you will believe me when I tell them this, a bunch of us added on an extra ten minutes or so of running. We were supposed to go down this little side road and turn at the aid station. Unfortunately, there was nobody manning the station telling us to turn, so we all went all the way to the end of the road. When we came back, a ton of slow people were in front of us. And, then I saw what I didn't want to see: mile marker 7 and a 1:04 time o n my watch! I should've been on pace for a 54 time at mile 7!!!

I marked my time at the 25 mile mark to get an idea of where I would've been without the extra distance, and it was 3:29 and change.

This from another person I know, who besides being a great runner, is also a race organizer himself,

The organization for the Cherry Blossom Marathon has gone downhill. I was running seventh during the mishap, but rallied to fourth. The lead car did not know the course, and blew by the turnaround in this neighborhood. Runners coming back out of the neighborhood were telling people to turn around at a stop sign. When I got to the stop sign --- there wasn't any markings so I guessed there may be a problem. I hit the seven mile marker and knew there was a problem as that mile I was around 15:30. I calculated that it cost me an extra 8:45 --- which given my pace at the time 6:45 per mile --- would mean we ran an extra 1.3 miles. I calculated I should have run a 2:55 if we had run the course right. Oh well. They did correct it at some point. I had friends who ran 3:55 --- and they said --- a police car zipped ahead, and turned around runners at the correct point. Only the leaders (at least the first 50 in the race) had to run the extra distance.

In hiking mountains it's not always the highest mountain that is best. Many of the Colorado 14ers are fairly unimpressive peaks simply because they rise only a couple thousand feet from the nearby ridge (or saddle) leading to the next peak.

So mountains end up being defined in terms of something called prominence more than height. There's quite an elaborate science behind determining a mountain's prominence.

Prominence is a term that represents the elevation of a summit relative to the surrounding terrain. It is defined as the elevation of a summit relative to the highest point to which one must descend before reascending to a higher summit.

Here's a list and map of the 57 "ultra" prominent peaks in the 48 states of the U.S. with prominences greater than 5000 feet.

I've hiked up one, 56 to go.

A tasty new ballpark treat from a minor league baseball team:

The Grizzlies and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts have teamed up to create “Baseball’s Best Burger.” The burger, which was debuted at the Grizzlies' December 10th sale, consists of a thick and juicy burger topped with sharp cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon. The burger is then placed in between each side of a Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut.

The team owner must be a cardiologist.

HT: Mini Me

In a passing comment in a story about Oregon trying to make some money of the 2010 Vancouver games:

The U.S. Olympic Committee reported that the state of Utah fielded a $2.8 billion boost in economic output from the 2002 Games.

The Ohio Village Muffins Vintage Base Ball Club, the 1860 rules teams that Josh and I play for, has a cool new website.

Here's a pic of me taking a mighty swing. (Take note of how far the ball went!)

UPDATE: link above won't work. Here's the pic:

Economic impact studies are typically discussed in the context of multi-hundred million dollar stadiums or mega-events like the Super Bowl. Economists have generally concluded that most studies grossly overstate the potential benefits and understate the actual costs of an event/arena, thereby ensuring an unreasonably high net economic benefit for the local economy. Economists have been poking holes (big, "you sunk my battleship" holes) in the sides of these studies for years. However, the inertia of the "economic impact study" seems to trump what economists have to say.

While the big studies understandably attract the attention of economists, I am growing a bit more sensitive to the smaller claims, which, although less dramatic, might actually do more damage. The local claims of $X million being generated by the local watermelon-spitting tournament are much more numerous (by definition) than the studies of a local Super Bowl. Perhaps economists should focus some attention to these more numerous smaller claims because they seem to add to a mythology.

Case in point, the Red Diamond Vulcan Cup soccer tournament in Birmingham, Alabama. Local tourism officials estimate the "soccer tournament will have an economic impact of more than $4 million."

Perhaps, but I doubt it. The article points out that the tournament is expected to bring 6,000 people to Birmingham. The tournament entails 232 teams (from all over), which would require only 26 people from out of town for each team. Let's say that ten percent of the teams are from Birmingham (I don't know for sure, but this is how it worked when I played club soccer), then if all 6,000 people were to come from out of town (thereby avoiding substitute spending issues), each team would only need to bring 29 people. This number is reasonable and therefore the claim of 6,000 visitors may not too be far from the truth.

What is less likely is that the 6,000 people would, in two days, create $4 million in economic impact. Let's take the easy approach first. Without any so-called multiplier effect, 6,000 people spending $4m in two days would require $333 in per-capita per-diem spending. This level of spending is unrealistic, especially when you consider that some of the visitors are little brothers and sisters who do not require such expenditures. [Aside: I claim it would be difficult to spend this amount of money per day in Birmingham if you wanted to - but I am originally from Chattanooga, so I can make fun of Birmingham (he he).]

I have written elsewhere that evidence suggests per-capita per-diem tourist spending is closer to $100-$125. Thus, the 6,000 visitors might generate closer to $1.2m - $1.5m over the two days. I haven't seen the study the Birmingham folks used, but I am sure they used some form of "multiplier effect" to determine the total impact of the soccer tournament.

The easily abused multiplier effect is a simple scaling of the direct spending assuming no leakages from the local economy. Blame Keynes (?). The standard approach is to take the direct spending $D, "select" an "appropriate" multiplier, m, and calculate the total economic impact as $D(1+m). Obviously, the total impact is very sensitive to the multiplier chosen.

In our example at hand, if the direct spending is $1.2m-$1.5m and the total impact is $4m, this implies a multiplier of 2.33 - 1.66. Both are probably a bit high, but not as high as I have seen in some studies (many times multipliers are "chosen" as high as 4 or 5!!).

Econometric estimates of multipliers, accounting for leakages, substitution, etc., suggest a multiplier closer to .7, which in the case of the B'ham tournament would lead to total economic impacts in the range of $2.04m-$2.55m (all based on the assumption of 6,000 out-of-town visitors spending between $100-$125 per day for two days).

Standard and Poor's estimated the Birmingham economy in 1998 was approximately $27.968 BILLION. Therefore, while I personally (and probably a lot of people) would love to have a slice of a $4m pie (or even a $2.5m pie), in the grand scheme of Birmingham qua economy, even the most optimistic number represents approximately 0.014% (assuming no growth since 1998).

Granted, the overall economy is ultimately comprised of any number of .014% contributions (about 7,142 of them ;-), but the local McDonald franchises likely have a bigger economic impact than a soccer tournament but don't get the credit they deserve. This must be because there isn't a local Fast Food Bureau.

My peeve is not with tourism and convention bureaus, per se. Rather the manner in which they justify their existence. Instead of being satisfied (or thinking the public would be satisfied) with securing conventions, tournaments, and so forth for their own sake, local tourism folks feel obligated (perhaps it is CYA, perhaps SOP) to point to some mystical economic benefits that a) probably aren't measured correctly, or b) are so minuscule that it almost belittles the event when put in context.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 51 that if men were angels, no government would be necessary.

Call the following Plummer's Quandry: if all men were Unitas, coaches would not be necessary.

As Malcolm Gladwell puts it:

Speaking of which, how fascinating was the Plummer meltdown in the Pittsburgh game? People have been beating up on Plummer, saying that his true colors emerged in that game. I prefer to look at it the other way. Shanahan managed to put in place an offensive system so brilliant and so precisely tailored to his quarterback that he could make Plummer -- Plummer! -- look like a great quarterback for 17 consecutive games. That's pretty remarkable. The Plummer story is not about the frailty of individuals. It's about the redemptive power of environments.

Read the whole interview. It's excellent.

In all the hub-bub about millions of dollars for stadiums and star players coupled with Bode Miller revealing all that is bad about U.S. amateur sports, the story about the Rochester highschool basketball team manager scoring 20 points in four minutes was refreshing. Most people point to the fact that the young man is autistic, and I don't take away from that however I have no experience with autism. To me the real story was a) the coach letting the tireless and loyal team manager get a chance to play and b) said manager actually experiencing being a hero.

[Update: Of course, this entry makes a lot more sense if there is a link to the video itself. An odd typo made it invisible. Here it is]

Some claim that sports management is such characterized. Sometimes you do wonder. Consider this this blast from AB News:

The AP reports that Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp., has lost more than $12 billion in bad investments over the past decade -- including $600 million he has poured into the Blazers and their arena since 1988 without realizing a dime of profit.

Unfortunately, such is not the case, at least for the moment:

Executives with the Portland Trail Blazers say the NBA team will lose $100 million over the next three years and desperately needs some kind of "public-private partnership."

Lance Conn (manager of Allen's investment company) claims that the Blazers receive no revenue for suites, clubs, courtside seats, game concessions or parking at the Rose Garden Arena." If true, and I do not closely follow the financial arrangements of NBA teams, this is testimony to myopic behavior by the city of Portland and/or to the ineptitude of Allen and company.

I have stated for quite some time that cities that build arenas/venues with public dollars should enjoy a greater share of the revenues generated by said arenas/venues. Unfortunately, cities seem reluctant to push back against franchise owners in negotiating revenue-sharing with the team. I do not necessarily envision the city becoming a for-profit partner with the team, rather the city should secure as much revenue as feasible to retire any debt incurred for stadium construction as quickly as possible (the opportunity cost of stadium debt is staggering).

I have no theoretical model (yet) to predict the optimal revenue sharing, however I am fairly certain that it is greater than the current norm. On the other hand, the city can't take all revenue generated by the arena/venue because if the team goes belly up the arena is essentially worthless.

I hope the folks in Portland keep their politicians from being swayed by threats to relocate the team, etc., to foolishly involve the local government/taxpayers in the business of a professional franchise. I know that it has "sort of worked out" in Green Bay, but that situation is likely the exception that proves the rule.

I hate to seem to be picking on Kansas City for the moment, but that's where a good amount of stadium activity is taking place.

The good folks of Kansas City are being asked to tax themselves $1 billion to provide roofs for Arrowhead and Kaufman stadiums, and to provide "upgrades" for the stadiums over the next 25 years. The main impetus for a roof over Arrowhead is so that KC can host a Super Bowl (once).

The mayor of Kansas City provides even worse justification:

Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes highlighted the potential of hosting Super Bowl games, All-Star baseball games, college championship tournaments and extreme sport competitions at a roofed and renovated Truman Sports Complex.

"What if the Jayhawks - or maybe the Tigers - could make it to the Final Four, and that Final Four was held right here in Kansas City?" Barnes said.

Yet, just how valid is the Final Four argument?

There are various ways to skin a cat, but I grabbed the information on the Final Four from 1939-2005. Since 1939, Kansas, Missouri, and (I threw in) Kansas State, have been represented in the final four 15 times. Since 1970, the three schools have made it to the Final Four 8 times.

During the entire sample period, the city of Kansas City hosted the Final Four 10 times, by far the most of any city over the history of the Final Four [mainly because the NCAA was based in Kansas for so long]. However, since 1970, Kansas City has only hosted one Final Four. Both New Orleans and Indianapolis have hosted four Final Fours since 1970, the most in the country.

Assume the allocation of Final Fours amongst cities and the quality of basketball teams is independent (this might not be true, but so be it). Assume further that Kansas City replaced Indianapolis or New Orleans and hosted four randomly allocated Final Fours over the next thirty five years. Finally, assume the quality of MissKansas basketball was the same over the next 35 years as it has been in the previous 35 years, i.e., one or more of the three teams will be represented in eight (randomly selected) Final Fours.

With these assumptions in place, it is possible to calculate the odds that Kansas City will host a Final Four when one of the three MissKansas teams makes it to the Final Four as 0.228x0.114 = 0.026 or a 2.6% chance. How did I come up with that number? Take 8/35 and multiply by 4/35 to obtain 32/1225 which is approximately 2.6% (with rounding).

What proportion of the $1 billion in taxes would the folks of Kansas City consider worthy of "gambling" on the chance of seeing one of the three teams in a KC Final Four? This is impossible to objectively measure, of course. However, the mayor puts forth the Final Four as one of five general "mega events." So, perhaps we could use 20% of $1 billion. However, this number is just too high for a reasonable argument (as we will see).

I am going to take an extremely small percentage of the $1 billion to prove my point. Let's use 1%, or $10 million, for giggles. For the $10 million to be an "even gamble," the benefits to the entire population of Kansas City of seeing one or more of the MissKansas teams in the Final Four in Kansas City would have to be $285 million ($10 million/0.026)!!! Any claim that the folks of KC would value seeing any particular team in a Final Four at this level is simply not credible.

Granted, I have assumed that all of the value of hosting the Final Four in KC rests on the probability that one or more of three MissKansas teams play in the Final Four. This is a strong assumption, but in the end it likely doesn't make much of a difference. For example, let's assume hosting a Final Four (regardless of what teams are involved) yields a $3 value for each of 1 million people in the KC tax jurisdiction. Then, hosting the Final Four would have a value of $3 million, which would reduce the break-even value of the three-team possibility to $270 million. This number is still not credible.

Therefore, while the mayor's rhetoric seems reasonable on the surface, and who wouldn't want the chance to see their favorite college team play in the Final Four in their home town, a little bit of reflection makes it seem completely ridiculous. The Mayor of KC is not unique in this instance. Just about every politician appeals to the local constituency's hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Unfortunately, if the local citizenry were asked for their objective value of the politician's appeal, it is likely to be considerably lower than what the price of the stadium/arena/venue entails.

In fact, this might be one of the worst reasons I have seen proffered for spending considerable tax money to build/renovate a stadium.

[STATA Data File]

The answer to this question has eluded us for so long that, perhaps, we have stopped trying to find an answer. Now, however, we know the cost of "world class," at least for Kansas City!!

From AB News:

The cost of the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo., has risen 10% to $276 million because of upgrades to make the downtown arena a "world-class facility," officials said.

The increased costs include $3.5 million to enable the arena's exterior to be completely covered with glass and $2.5 million for terrazzo floors inside

A better example of "if you're buying, I'll have top sirloin" is harder to come across.

Last year the NBA instituted a dress code for its players. There was a lot of howling that the league had no right to do this, but then it was pointed out that the current collective bargaining agreement indeed gives the league the right to institute a dress code. For those who didn't read the CBA before signing on, they have no one to blame but themselves.

An immediate outcome of the dress code was that several players received new endorsement contracts with men's fashion companies, many of which did not have endorsement contracts with basketball players before. While some players likely lost contracts with other companies, at least some players seemed to be made better off after the dress code. Why the players did not/could not obtain such endorsement contracts without the dress code is not clear.

However, the NBA as a league is a fairly well organized cartel and seems to be doing exactly what a cartel is expected to do - enhance and protect the profitability of its member firms. The dress code has evidently allowed the NBA the cover to launch an upscale men's fashion line:

The collection will be available later this spring. Initial product offerings include wool and leather blazers at $348 and $648, respectively, that feature NBA and team logo embroidery on the inside lining. Dress shirts will go for $87.50 to $89.50, and woven silk ties will retail for $39.50.

While the NBA faces challenges, at least in certain areas the NBA qua cartel seems to be doing just fine, thank you very much.

From espn.com:

The team without a home or owner might also not have a name.

According to the Times, Major League Baseball, aware of Bygone Sports' claim to the Washington Nationals name, thought it had reached an agreement with the company for the name's rights when the franchise was moved from Montreal in 2004.

Should the Nats become nameless once again, we here at DOL will gladly renew our offer of assistance in naming the team. More than ever, the name Porkers would seem appropriate for a team playing so close to the "Bridges to Nowhere" Congress and soon to be playing in a new stadium funded by the fleecing of DC taxpayers.

From espn.com:

LOS ANGELES -- As a UCLA linebacker in the late 1990s, Ramogi Huma left college after four years with $6,000 in credit card debt. His scholarship paid for tuition, room, board and required books but not incidentals such as phone bills and travel expenses. Coming from a lower-income family, he lacked the funds to cover the difference.

Huma, though, said that the lawsuit does not ask that athletes be treated in the manner of professional athletes with free-agent rights. Instead, it asks for the restoration of funds for incidental expenses, which the NCAA eliminated in 1973 in a cost-cutting move.