Category: Sports

Sports number markets in everything what would Oliver Williamson say?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Pitcher Roger Clemens gave slugging first baseman Carlos Delgado a Rolex, valued at $20,000, for uniform #21.  Former NBA player Vin Baker once bought his number from another player for the relative bargain price of $10,000.   In 2007, NFL player Jason Simmons used the opportunity to do a good deed, giving new teammate Ahman Green #30 if Green agreed to pay the down payment on a home for a disadvantaged single-parent family.

Former NFL punter Jeff Feagles is one of the few who has been able to sell a number twice — although with mixed results.  His first transaction, with quarterback Eli Manning, went smoothly, and Feagles got a family vacation to Florida out of the deal.  His second one, however, did not go so well.  When wide receiver Plaxico Burress joined the New York Giants in 2005, he bought #18 off Feagles in exchange for an outdoor kitchen.  But as of August 2010, Feagles had not received the kitchen. (Apparently, this was unrelated to the fact that by this point, Burress was in prison for accidentally shooting himself in the leg at a New York City night club.)

There is more to the article here, and my Dan Lewis source is here.  Of course, given that the players are now on the same team, these are more like repeated exchanges than at may first appear.

Marginal Revolution and the Martial Arts

by  Alex Tabarrok in

It surely ranks high in the annals of the improbable that the August 2011 issue of Black Belt: The World’s Leading Magazine of Martial Arts contains an article (not online) in which your loyal authors are featured. Mark Hatmaker, writes:

Image: Martial monk

“I’ll borrow the phrase “marginal revolution,” a term coined by economists Tyler Cowen and Alexander Tabarrok. This esteemed duo defines marginal revolution as the tiny changes that can be made to a system that result in large changes at the end point–gold vs. silver, for example. These tweaks, these marginal improvements, are what steadily accrue into large rewards.

…Once you gain a fundamental level of skill and conditioning, you must make tweaks to nudge your progress upward. As a marginal revolutionary, you must recognize that small is fine, that shaving off one-tenth of a second can be an eternity and that one-eighth of an inch can be a great distance. Every gain is important, no matter how small.

The picture is from the Shaolin Temple. Here are previous MR posts on Kung Fu.

Hat tip to Carl Close.

Very good sentences thwarted markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

“Such exorbitant commercialism must stop,” said Jan Tönjes, chief editor of Germany’s St. Georg magazine. At a recent show in Wiesbaden, he said, a woman tried to buy a rubber glove that the horse had spat on as a souvenir.

The article is here (interesting throughout) and for a related pointer (not to this passage) I thank Michelle Dawson.

The utility function

by  Tyler Cowen in

Wimbledon’s queuing public welcomes the abuse. In fact, the experience is such a delight that some daydream about it all year.

“We get to spend time together—no husbands, no children, no after-school clubs,” said Suzanne Pyefinch, who has queued for 27 years with her sister, Michelle, and seen everyone from Bjorn Borg to Roger Federer. Last weekend she was cooking sausages by her tent.

“Our bacon went off, and we had a bit of a panic,” she said. “The ice melted, and it just went funny in the car. But the important things are done. We’ve got the Pimm’s, so we’re happy.”

Ms. Pyefinch said she was still recovering from an encounter with a snorer. “That guy snoring last night, it was a song—fantastic, absolutely fantastic,” she said. “But you just get on with it. We all look like rubbish at the end of the two weeks, but we’ve had the greatest time ever.”

The article is here (interesting throughout) and for the pointer I thank John Chilton.

Why is recorded, non-live sports so boring to watch?

by  Tyler Cowen in

There is a new essay by Chuck Klosterman.  He lists several reasons why watching recorded sports events is such a downer, but he lays heaviest stress on a Bayesian argument:

2. “If this game has already ended and I don’t know anything about what happened, it was probably just a game”: This sentence is so obvious that it’s almost nonsensical, but I suspect it’s the one point that matters most. It’s the central premise behind the entire concept of “liveness,” which is what this whole problem comes down to.

…When you watch an event in real time, anything is possible. Someone could die. Something that has never before happened could spontaneously happen twice. When there are three seconds on the clock, not one person in the world can precisely predict how those seconds will unspool. But if something happens within those three seconds that is authentically astonishing and truly transcendent — well, I’m sure I’ll find out about three minutes after it happens. I’m sure someone will tell me, possibly by accident. You can avoid the news, but you can’t avoid The News. Living in a cave isn’t enough. We’ve beaten the caves. The caves have Wi-Fi.

Do you watch the live, non-recorded performance and enjoy the hope of a Black Swan?  The essay is interesting throughout.  I thank a  loyal MR reader for the pointer.

Bill James pursues serial killers

by  Tyler Cowen in

That’s right, the baseball guy with superb skills of pattern recognition.  The article is interesting throughout.  Here is one James proposal:

James also posits a way to reform prisons, which he dubs “violentocracies.” His proposal: smaller facilities that house no more than 24 inmates and are part of a larger, incentives-based system. At a Level 1 prison, for example, you get a lawyer, a Bible, and around-the-clock supervision; at Level 5, a cat and a coffee machine. At Level 10, you can earn a living and come and go with relative ease. The idea, James says, is not only to reduce the paranoia-fueled violence in large prisons but to encourage prisoners to work their way up the ladder.

The core of the article is more like this:

In reading so many crime stories over the years, James was surprised that so many weak descriptions are taken seriously, while so many good ones go unheeded. In his system, police would rank eyewitness accounts, from a few basic details about the suspect’s height or race (Level 1) to IDing your neighbor as he moves a body out of the garage freezer in broad daylight (Level 6). These scales could later be applied to James’ 100-point conviction system.

For the pointer I thank Brent Depperschmidt.

Should NFL players become like economics professors?

by  Tyler Cowen in

With the lockout ending today, free agency would seem to be in place:

In the union lawyers’ world, every player would enter the league as an unrestricted free agent, an independent contractor free to sell his services to any team. Every player would again become an unrestricted free agent each time his contract expired. And each team would be free to spend as much or as little as it wanted on player payroll or on an individual player’s compensation.

The NFL Commissioner presents multiple reasons why this is a bad idea, most of which are obviously hypocritical (some players might get paid less!, and yet the players mostly favor the new system).  The serious argument I can see is that of competitive balance, but a) do fans really enjoy competitive balance or do they prefer national stage mega-rivalries of titans?, and b) there are ways to restore competitive balance other than using monopsonistic collusion in the labor market.  Here is a serious economic analysis by John Vrooman (pdf), and it suggests persuasively that sharing venue revenue can remedy the revenue imbalance problem and restore balance to the extent that is required.

Here is James Surowiecki on this topic, he is not pro-owner.  I’ve yet to see any good reason to object to the new status quo, namely universal free agency in the NFL.

I have not, however, followed this issue closely.  Working on the Modern Principles text with Alex has, among other things, taken away from my consumption of sports.

Which universities spend the most on athletics?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Number one is UT Austin, at $112.9 million a year, followed by Ohio State, U. Florida, Louisiana State, U. Tennessee, Wisconsin-Madison, Auburn, Alabama, U. OK, and then USC, which is still spending $80 million a year.

That is from Charles’s Clotfelter’s very good new book Big-Time Sports in American Universities.  Clotfelter is relatively sympathetic to sports in universities and considers their fundraising and civic virtue advantages.  Of course those numbers are gross and not net expenditures.

Endgames for basketball, the 2-for-1

by  Tyler Cowen in

When should a team try for two shots near the end of a game or quarter?  Here is part of Mr. Winston’s request:

Hypothetically, your team is tied with about a minute left. Your team should shoot the ball with no less than 45 seconds left on the clock, so that if you miss and fail to get the offensive rebound, you are almost guaranteed to get the ball back. Here is his reasoning: “2-for-1 is a basic fundamental premise – I get 2 shots, you get 1. If we are tied before that begins, I am going to win more often than you. Period. Even if the first shot is less-than-great, you have to take a decent look early.

Here are a few points against the 2-for-1:

1. Taking a bad shot too early can lead to long rebounds and leave a team unable to get back to defend.

2. Turnovers and offensive rebounds and fouls are common near the end of games.  No one  knows how many shots are left in the game, so don’t think that backwards induction will work.

3. Your chance of drawing fouls, or inducing sheer defensive lapses, goes down if you take the rapid shot.

4. Taking the bad shot early may disrupt shooting rhythms, dispirit the team if there is a miss, and lead to too much play focused on the shot clock rather than quality execution.

5. You still might get a final shot attempt even if the first two shot attempts, by you and the opposing team, run down the shot clock a fair amount.

Overall I am not one to insist on the 2-for-1.  Basically you are immediately spending a valuable asset — a possession — without that much information about its value.  The deeper economic lesson is that infinite horizon models are more plausible than you think, because no one knows how rapidly events will be taking place.

Here is one paper on endgame strategy in basketball, focusing on the intentional foul.

“What doesn’t kill you only makes you run faster”

by  Tyler Cowen in

There is no Great Stagnation:

Among the tools at Salazar’s disposal is the good ol’ cryosauna, which works like this:

A container of liquid nitrogen turns to gas and is pumped into the cylinder where the athlete stands, plunging the temperature below negative 200 degrees Fahrenheit for a short burst of time. The body believes that it is dying and rushes blood to protect its vital organs. Two minutes later, when the athlete emerges from the container, the concentrated and enriched blood rushes back through the body, providing an instant cleanse and relief.