Category: Sports
My years in Fall River, Mass.
I lived there from ages 4 to 7, which spans 1966 to 1969. At that time, Fall River about forty years past its textiles manufacturing peak, as southern competition had deindustrialized the city. My father was invited to run the Chamber of Commerce there, with the hope that he could help revitalize things, and so the family moved.
I recall liking New England, and preferring it to my earlier Hudson County, NJ environs. All of a sudden we had a large yard and things felt nicer. The neighbors were chattier and less surly. The dog (Zero) could run around the neighborhood free, which I found both astonishing and good. I did not understand that the city had fantastic architecture. My father complained about it being provincial.
Whenever we would drive back and forth from NJ to Fall River, my sister and I would see a building in Providence, RI and for whatever reason we called it “the monkey squisher.” For trips to the shore, we would go to Cape Cod, and let the dog run on the beach.
Mr. and Mrs. Jennings were the immediate neighbors, and they treated us almost like their own kids. Their own boy was grown and in the service. Two other neighbors were Kathy and Carol Fata (sp?), who were slightly older than Holly and me, and again super-friendly. I believe they were either Lebanese or Syrian, which was common in Fall River at that time.
Most of all, I was into baseball and baseball cards in those years. I used them to learn some math and statistics, and of course to learn about the players. I watched baseball games on TV all the time, and to this day I remember some baseball stats from that era. I received an autographed baseball from Russ Gibon, Red Sox catcher at the time. Naturally I was a Red Sox fan. I had an allowance of a quarter a week, and on the way home from school would stop at a small newspaper store and buy baseball cards. The 1968 World Series was a huge thrill for me, and I was rooting for the Detroit Tigers and Mickey Lolich. I still remember the close call at the plate with Bill Freehan and Lou Brock.
Most of my reading was books on science and dinosaurs, or books on baseball. I was especially fond of a science book series called “Ask Me Why?”. I looked at maps plenty, and my favorite map was that of Italy, due to the shape of the country.
I recall watching the 1968 presidential election, and having my mother explain it to me. I also watched on TV the funeral procession for RFK, and I asked my grandmother, who then lived with us, why the police guards were not moving. “If they move an inch, they take them out and shoot them!” she snapped back loudly and decisively. In those days, people said things like that.
My kindgarten teacher we called “Mrs. Penguin,” though I doubt that was her real name. She would twist the ears of kids who made trouble, though that was not me. I had a letter box, but it bored me because my reading skills were ahead of those of my classmates. There was a girl named Stephanie in my class, and I thought she was cute. School simply did not seem like a very efficient way to learn.
In my hazy memories, I very much think of the Fall River days as good ones.
Remember when I said Luka was overrated?
Oh the howls that claim elicited. Basically Dallas did not want to give him a Supermax extension for $345 million (no, Luka did not ask to be traded). So Luka is now gone, here are some notes from ESPN:
The Mavericks were motivated to move Doncic because of his constant conditioning concerns, sources told MacMahon. There had been significant frustration within the organization about Doncic’s lack of discipline regarding his diet and conditioning, which team sources considered a major factor in his injury issues.
Though Doncic was relatively svelte by his standards when he reported to camp, his weight ballooned to the high 260s early this season, sources said. He sat out five games in late November, when the Mavs listed him with a sprained right wrist, an extended absence to allow Doncic to focus on his conditioning. He had a similar early-season layoff in the 2022-23 season.
Doncic has been limited to only 22 games this season because of a variety of injuries. He has twice strained his left calf since reporting back to Dallas before training camp in late September, although the Mavs reported the fall injury only as a calf contusion, sources said.
Doncic has not played since straining his calf again on Christmas Day but has been targeting a return before the All-Star break later this month, sources told MacMahon. Davis has also been out after being diagnosed with an abdominal muscle strain earlier this week. He has sat out the Lakers’ past two games. Davis was expected to be reevaluated in a week, according to the Lakers on Wednesday.
POTMR. In the short run this trade makes both teams worse off (LA defense), although longer run LA will keep around a franchise player of sorts. Here is one comment from an NBA star. It all shows in the body language.
p.s. LAL should now trade Lebron, and Bronny, to a contender for a pile of draft picks.
What is wrong with the NBA?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one hypothesis:
The NBA has a salary cap, which prevents teams in major markets, such as the Los Angeles Lakers or New York Knicks, from snapping up all the talent.1 An unfortunate side effect it that is harder for all teams to bid for additional players, or to keep the ones they have. Even when the total amount of the cap goes up, adding more talent at the margin has become increasingly costly in terms of penalties. It is becoming more difficult to form and maintain durable great teams, which makes it harder to elevate new superstars, which is what many fans want.
Think about a casual fan’s impressions of the NBA. They have heard of Michael Jordan and LeBron James, and maybe watched them play or even seen their movies. They know they are two of the all-time greats. The 27th-best player over the that same time span — whoever it may be — is extremely accomplished, but does not attract anything close to the same attention. Superstars are what the game and its popularity are about, most of all with the marginal fans who do not know every player.
It is not surprising that one of the best-known players today, with more than 8 million Instagram followers, is Bronny James, son of LeBron. Bronny has barely played in the NBA and is far from a star; his popularity stems from his family story.
Jordan won six rings and LeBron four, but who is to follow in their footsteps and be the game’s marquee player? One candidate was Nikola Jokic, center for the Denver Nuggets and three-time MVP. Given his extraordinary statistics, he is in the running to be MVP again this year.
His team is another story. The Nuggets won an NBA title in 2023, but since then they have been in free fall. They let some of their key rotation players leave, most of all because of the salary cap. If they had kept those players around, or brought in star replacements, the Nuggets would have had to pay large fines to the league. Denver is a relatively small basketball market, so it made more sense to let the players walk. Jokic thus might retire with only one ring, when he could have three or four and become a truly iconic star.
And this is important:
Of course, there are also problems with the product itself. Regular-season games don’t mean very much, and the median outing is too often mediocre. Optimizing players no longer give their best in these settings. Due to basketball analytics, too many three-point shots are taken. What was originally a source of excitement has become routinized and predictable. And perhaps American fans don’t relate as well to the growing number of foreign players and stars.
Worth a ponder.
Are sports bettors overly optimistic?
Corrective policy in sports betting markets is motivated by concerns that demand may be distorted by behavioral bias. We conduct a field experiment with frequent sports bettors to measure the impact of two biases, overoptimism about financial returns and self-control problems, on the demand for sports betting. We find widespread overoptimism about financial returns. The average participant predicts that they will break even, but in fact loses 7.5 cents for every dollar wagered. We also find evidence of significant self-control problems, though these are smaller than overoptimism. We estimate a model of biased betting and use it to evaluate several corrective policies. Our estimates imply that the surplus-maximizing corrective excise tax on sports betting is twice as large as prevailing tax rates. We estimate substantial heterogeneity in bias across bettors, which implies that targeted interventions that directly eliminate bias could improve on a tax. However, eliminating bias is challenging: we show that two bias-correction interventions favored by the gambling industry are not effective.
That is from a new paper by Matthew Brown, Nick Grasley, and Mariana Guido. Matthew Brown is a job market candidate from Stanford, and has a very interesting broader portfolio.
I do not, by the way, favor a ban on sports betting, but it is worth asking, when appropriate, what is the utilitarian cost of one’s libertarianism. On this particular issue, I would say “rising!”
What happened to football’s concussion crisis?
Here is a very good New York piece by Reeves Wiedeman, here is the excerpt from yours truly:
When I reached out to Tyler Cowen, he said that his prognostication of football’s death had been off in part because he misread people’s concern for their health and the health of others. “COVID changed my mind on this,” he told me in an email. “A lot of people simply will do foolish stuff, such as not vaccinating, even when their lives may be on the line.”
And:
Youth football participation steadily decreased for more than a decade after news about CTE started to break, but it is on the rise again. Roughly a million boys still play high-school football — twice the number that play either basketball or soccer — and it remains possible in much of the country to sign up your 5-year old to be a linebacker. Most surveys of parents find that they understand there are risks but that they also don’t want to keep their kids from playing.
And:
Fans, it seems, have chosen to believe the NFL has largely done what it can. “They addressed the majority of the ethical issues — the stuff that made them look bad — and now suddenly the story is ‘It’s just sad,’” Nowinski said. “What people are missing is that football has gotten more ethical, but it’s not necessarily safer.”
Worth a ponder.
True, false, or uncertain?
Most strategic improvements in sports have been in the direction of increasing variance and living with the (better EV) results:
Baseball: more extra base hits, no more bunting.
Football: more passing game, going for it on 4th.
Golf: driver ball speed increases.
Bball: 3 pointer…
Tennis: bigger serves/groundstrokes.
Snooker: cannoning the pack to extend breaks.
Chess: sub-optimal but niche exploitive lines.
That is from Agustin Lebron. Maybe a lot of the NBA improvements are simply insisting on better defense and fundamentals? And matching player defensive assignments, or five-man rotations, to more closely align with data on historical success?
Bolivian soccer competition
The men’s national soccer team is hoping that hosting World Cup qualifiers at an altitude higher than ever will help it improve in the South American standings.
The Bolivians usually play in the capital La Paz at 3,640 meters (11,940 feet) above sea level, but the South American soccer body CONMEBOL has allowed them to move their games to El Alto, the second largest city in the country at an altitude of 4,150 meters (13,615 feet). That’s as high as nine Empire State Buildings on top of each other.
With one win and five losses, Bolivia is second to last in the standings, and needs a win on Thursday against visiting Venezuela, which is fifth and coming off a quarterfinal run at the Copa America.
New Bolivia coach Oscar Villegas will make his debut after replacing Antonio Carlos Zago, who was fired in July after a winless Copa. Villegas hopes to exploit the higher altitude by picking a squad in which 80% of the players are used to the thinner air, including six from Always Ready club in El Alto, and six more from Bolívar in La Paz…
Venezuela’s home matches are at sea level…
Here is the full article, via Mathan.
My excellent Conversation with Nate Silver
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
In his second appearance, Nate Silver joins the show to cover the intersections of predictions, politics, and poker with Tyler. They tackle how coin flips solve status quo bias, gambling’s origins in divination, what kinds of betting Nate would ban, why he’s been limited on several of the New York sports betting sites, how game theory changed poker tournaments, whether poker players make for good employees, running and leaving FiveThirtyEight, why funky batting stances have disappeared, AI’s impact on sports analytics, the most underrated NBA statistic, Sam Bankman-Fried’s place in “the River,” the trait effective altruists need to develop, the stupidest risks Tyler and Nate would take, prediction markets, how many monumental political decisions have been done under the influence of drugs, and more.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: Why shouldn’t people gamble only in the positive sum game? Take the US stock market — that certainly seems to be one of them — and manufacture all the suspense you want. Learn about the companies, the CEO. Get your thrill that way and don’t do any other gambling. Why isn’t that just better for everyone?
SILVER: Look, I’m not necessarily a fan of gambling for gambling’s sake. Twice a year, I’ll be in casinos and in Las Vegas a lot. Twice a year, I’ll have a friend who is like, “Let’s just go play blackjack for an hour and have a couple of free drinks,” and things like that. But I like to make bets where I think, at least in principle, I have an edge, or at least can fool myself into thinking I have an edge.
Sometimes, with the sports stuff, you probably know deep down you’re roughly break-even or something like that. You’re doing some smart things, like looking at five different sites and finding a line that’s best, which wipes out some but not all of the house edge. But no, I’m not a huge fan of slot machines, certainly. I think they are very gnarly and addictive in various ways.
COWEN: They limit your sports betting, don’t they?
SILVER: Yes, I’ve been limited by six or seven of the nine New York retail sites.
COWEN: What’s the potential edge they think you might have?
SILVER: It’s just that. If you’re betting $2,000 on the Wizards-Hornets game the moment the line comes out on DraftKings, you’re clearly not a recreational bettor. Just the hallmarks of trying to be a winning player, meaning betting lines early because the line’s early and you don’t have price discovery yet. The early lines are often very beatable. Betting on obscure stuff like “Will this player get X number of rebounds?” or things like that. If you have a knack for — if DraftKings has a line at -3.5 and it’s -4 elsewhere, then it can be called steam chasing, where you bet before a line moves in other places. If you have injury information . . .
It’s a very weird game. One thing I hope people are more aware of is that a lot of the sites — and some are better than others — but they really don’t want winning players. Their advertising has actually changed. It used to be, they would say for Daily Fantasy Sports, which was the predecessor, “Hey, you’re a smart guy” — the ads are very cynical — “You’re a smart guy in a cubicle. Why don’t you go do all your spreadsheet stuff and actually draft this team and make a lot of money, and literally, you’ll be sleeping with supermodels in two months. You win the million-dollar prize from DraftKings.”
And:
COWEN: If we could enforce just an outright ban, what’s the cost-benefit analysis on banning all sports gambling?
SILVER: I’m more of a libertarian than a strict utilitarian, I think.
COWEN: Sure, but what’s the utilitarian price of being a libertarian?
Recommended, interesting and engaging throughout. And yes, we talk about Luka too. Here is my first 2016 CWT with Nate, full of predictions I might add, and here is Nate’s very good new book On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything.
Go for the Gold!
Bob Lawson and I have an op-ed in Barrons with a new perspective on inequality. Kamala Harris has said inequality is “the defining economic challenge of our time.” Indeed, the Gini coefficient for the United States is 0.4, one of the highest among developed nations, and Senator Bernie Sanders says US inequality is “obscene.” But consider another economy:
In this economy, the Gini coefficient is a whopping 0.60—much higher than in the United States or just about any country in the world. Living in this economy must be miserable, right? Well, what if we told you that the average wage in this economy was around $3 million, the median wage close to $1 million, and the poorest 1% earned nearly $800,000 a year?
The economy we are talking about is the NFL. Is comparing inequality within countries to inequality within a sports league an unfair or irrelevant comparison? We don’t think so. NFL inequality can teach us a lot about what inequality statistics mean.
First, inequality does not mean poverty. The average income in the NFL is well above the U.S. average income. Even the poorest 1% do well. Is that a special case? Not at all. The average income in the United States is well above the world average income. And while our poorest 1% don’t have it easy, their situation looks far better when compared to most people in the developing world.
Second, unequal does not mean unjust. Salaries in the NFL are set by competitive market forces. Jared Goff (Detroit Lions) at the top of the NFL roster earns a lot more than Cameron Sutton (Pittsburgh Steelers), who earns the veteran minimum. But Goff didn’t steal his position from Sutton. Nor do Goff’s riches come from Sutton’s penury. Goff doesn’t earn more because Sutton earns less. Goff earns more because he produces more.
[Some people warn that inequality leads to envy, resentment, societal dysfunction and even collapse. But] Steph Curry’s salary dwarfs those of most of his teammates on the Golden State Warriors. Yet, do we see resentment manifesting on the court? Do Steph Curry’s lesser-paid colleagues refuse to pass him the ball or secretly hope for his downfall? On the contrary, Curry’s teammates rally around him. They recognize that his success elevates their chances of winning championships, enhances their visibility, and potentially increases their own market value.
The dynamics throughout our entire society are certainly more complex, but the sports analogy illustrates a crucial point: When inequality is perceived as a result of merit, effort, and value creation—rather than exploitation or unfair advantage—it fosters collaboration instead of resentment.
In such an environment, people see high earners as role models and partners in success, not adversaries. In the same way, if inequality in the United States is seen as a result of merit, effort and value creation it can help the U.S. team cooperate against rivals in the rest of the world. Go Curry! Go Team USA!
[Sports inequality helps us to understand inequality more generally.] The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate inequality, but to ensure it reflects real value creation in a system with ample opportunity and dignity for all. That is best achieved through competitive markets. Do that, and inequality transforms from a divisive force into a driver of progress.
In short: Don’t fear inequality. Fear unfairness. Build a just system, and let the scoreboard reflect the game.
That was then, this is now, German edition
Via Scott Sumner.
What do different countries pay for Olympic gold medals?
Via Cremieux, and here is the related Wikipedia page.
The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling
Following a 2018 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, 38 states have legalized sports gambling. We study how this policy has impacted consumer financial health using the state-by-state rollout of legal sports gambling and a large and comprehensive dataset on consumer financial outcomes. Our main finding is that overall, consumers’ financial health is modestly deteriorating as the average credit score in states that legalize sports gambling decreases by roughly 0.3%. The decline in credit score is associated with changes in indicators of excessive debt. We find a substantial increase in bankruptcy rates, debt collections, debt consolidation loans, and auto loan delinquencies. We also find that financial institutions respond to the reduced creditworthiness of consumers by restricting access to credit. These results are stronger for states that allow sports gambling online compared to states that restrict access to in-person betting and larger for young men in low-income counties. Together, these results indicate that the ease of access to sports gambling is harming consumer financial health by increasing their level of debt.
That is from a new paper by Brett Hollenbeck, Poet Larsen, and Davide Proserpio.
France faces glut of unwanted Olympics tickets
The number of unwanted Paris Olympics tickets available for resale has hit more than a quarter of a million, as lack of demand increases concerns just days before Friday’s opening ceremony that many athletes will compete against a backdrop of empty seats.
The number of listings rose to 270,465 on Monday, up from about 180,000 a month ago, a Financial Times analysis of the official resale site shows. The most expensive offers on the resale site are for the opening ceremony, with the best seats priced at €2,970.
Note:
Tickets must be resold at face value.
Ahem. Here is the full FT story.
How to feed the Olympics, a problem in procurement
It’s a daunting task to feed 15,000 people no matter what, but if food is fuel, the chefs feeding the athletes at Olympic Village are somewhat responsible for how these athletes perform. Events management and catering group Sodexo Live takes that responsibility seriously. What results is an incredible feat of logistics, combining sustainable sourcing, diversity of options, and ensuring all athlete’s nutritional needs are met by some combination of the 500 dishes that will be served.
But it’s not just baseline nutritional needs that need to be met — athletes are coming from all over the world, with their own culinary traditions. The Olympics are supposed to be a place of cultural exchange, and this extends to the food. Sodexo Live has brought on partner chefs Amandine Chaignot, Akrame Benallal, and Alexandra Mazzia to serve dishes like quinoa muesli, chickpea pommade, and gnocchi in chicken sauce to showcase modern French cuisine. Other chefs on the team are charged with creating everything athletes will need to eat, both before and after the competition.
And:
One of the funny parts that we’ve learned is that we think they’re all athletes and in their physical prime, so distance doesn’t matter. But actually it does, because our dining hall is extremely large, it’s over 220 meters long and 24 meters wide. Walking from one side to the other takes five minutes. And these competitors, they’re not going to go that far, they’re going to really ensure the minimum steps so they don’t spend too much energy. Nobody expected that.
And:
Bananas are an athlete’s favorite thing. We anticipate getting two or three million bananas. At peak time there will be 15,000 people living in one place. So that means per day, at peak time, we’re going to go up to 40,000 meals. At the end of the entire journey, it’s over 1.2 million meals. I was working on quantifying the volume of coffee, how to produce it. And then someone said, “Can we get the coffee grinds back to us to use as a fertilizer?” So what’s the volume of grinds we’ll produce? I’’s 20 tons of coffee, so that means it’ll be 40 tons of coffee residue. But all of this is going to be used to grow mushrooms.
Finally:
Americans have been extremely vocal about what they want. They were more picky and sensitive about having a lot of gluten-free items, and a more vegetable-based diet.
The piece and interview is by Jaya Saxena, the reproduced answers are from Estelle Lamont. Here is the entire piece, via the ever-excellent The Browser.
My excellent Conversation with Brian Winter
Here is the video, audio, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
It’s not just the churrasco that made him fall in love with Brazil. Brian Winter has been studying and writing about Latin America for over 20 years. He’s been tracking the struggles and triumphs of the region as it’s dealt with decades of coups, violence, and shifting economics. His work offers a nuanced perspective on Latin America’s persistent challenges and remarkable resilience.
Together Brian and Tyler discuss the politics and economics of nearly every country from the equator down. They cover the future of migration into Brazil, what it’s doing right in agriculture, the cultural shift in race politics, crime in Rio and São Paulo, the effectiveness and future consequences of Bukele’s police state in El Salvador, the economic growth of Colombia despite continued violence, the prevalence of startups and psychoanalysis in Argentina, Uruguay’s reduction in poverty levels, the beautiful ugliness of Sao Paulo, where Brian will explore next, and more.
And here is one excerpt;
COWEN: What’s the economic geography of Brazil going to look like? All the wealth near Mato Grosso and the north just very, very poor? Or the north empties out? How’s that going to work? There used to be some modest degree of balance.
WINTER: That’s true. Most of the population in Brazil and the economic center, for sure, was in the southeast. That means, really, São Paulo state, which is about a quarter of Brazil’s population but roughly a third of its GDP. Rio as well, and the state of Minas Gerais, which has a name that tells its history. That means “general mines” in Portuguese. That’s the area where a lot of the gold came out of in the 18th and 19th centuries. That’s gone now, so it’s not as much of an economic pull.
You’re right, Tyler, though, that a lot of the real boom right now, the action, is in places like Mato Grosso, which is in the region of Brazil called the Central West. That’s soy country. I’m from Texas, and Mato Grosso is virtually indistinguishable from Texas these days. It’s hot. It’s flat. The crop, like I said, is soy. There’s cattle ranching as well.
Even the music — Brazil, as others have noted, has gone from being the country of bossa nova and the samba in the 1970s to being the country of sertanejo today. Sertanejo is a Brazilian cousin of country music with accordions, but it’s sung by people — men mostly — in jeans, big belt buckles, and cowboy hats. They’re importing that — not only that economic model but that lifestyle as well.
COWEN: What is the great Brazilian music of today? MPB is dead, right? So, what should someone listen to?
Recommended, interesting throughout.