Is the $60 million fine too step for Penn State?

Amongst the many penalties passed along to Penn State for their lack of institutional control of a series of unfortunate and disturbing incidents at their university, the NCAA hit the athletic department with a $60 million fine.  This comes not just because of the sexual abuse of minors by former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, but in the subsequent lack of action and failure to report these issues by many in athletics and the university.  Today 29 prior faculty senate chair signed a document noting that the penalty was unfair to the the athletic department and the university, and that it was putting Penn St. in a bad financial situation.  While it is true that this penalty, plus all the potential civil suits which are on their way are potentially going to hit the university for a lot of money.  In the document the faculty group notes:

“The shock of the crimes that occurred here clearly underlines the need for greater vigilance and stronger policies. However, the sweeping and unsupported generalizations by the Freeh Group … and the NCAA do not provide a satisfactory basis for productive change,”

I can understand their unhappiness that Penn State’s reputation and finances are taking a hit on the academic side of things for issues that they view as being in the realm of athletics.  The problem is that the lack of institutional control meant that not only was athletics not doing anything about these incidents, but that those in the administration who should have been overseeing some of these issues also failed in their jobs.  If you look at the organizational structure of almost any athletic department, you will find that coaches are below the athletic director, and that the athletic director is usually below the chancellor/president and/or the Board of Trustees.  In this case, while the faculty can be unhappy and blast the NCAA for potentially harming academics, it is not the case that the administrative side of the university was entire without fault.

This seems to be another great argument in the favor of removing athletics from a university.  If athletics can have such power that they can cause such damage to a school because of the action of a few individuals in power, are universities taking a financial risk by giving so much power to sport organizations?  I am a big fan of college athletics, but it would seem that there is need to reconsider the powers given to athletic departments, and whether these departments should be able to influence others in the university community so easily.  The faculty group that signed this letter should give thought to more of  the reasons as to why Penn St. got into such dire straits in the first place.

Great New Data Opportunity

At 5pm UK time today (we’re 5 hours ahead of East Coast US), Manchester City will be releasing OPTA data for the 2011-12 season freely to those who join their analytics community at www.mcfc.co.uk/mcfcanalytics. This won’t be a trifling amount of data, either; as this OPTA blog article reveals:

Those that register their interest in this project will be sent our Opta data set for every ‘on the ball’ event for every Premier League player in every match in the entire 2011-12 Premier League season FOR FREE.

This is something in the region of half a million events per season, well over a thousand per match, and provides an excellent opportunity not just for the football (soccer) analytics amongst us, but also for academics interested in research. I’ve just had a paper published (working paper version here) which uses OPTA data for two seasons (2006 to 2008) and we find field evidence for implicit discrimination by Premiership referees against players of oppositional identity.

I’m very excited…

Where are the fans going in Minnesota?

The University of Minnesota once shared the Metrodome with the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League (NFL).  As the stadium fell into disrepair, the University decided on a new stadium plan for their college football team, which lead the construction of TCF Bank Stadium, where the Golden Gophers now play their home games.  The stadium has just under 51,000 capacity, and was touted as a more friendly environment to watch college football than the Metrodome.

A new article in the Star Tribune notes that student season ticket sales for Minnesota football games have been on the decline.  In the first year in the stadium they were at 10,000 student ticket sales.  Year two was less than 8,000, year three was less than 6,000, and as it stands as of this moment, there is around 2,000 student season tickets which have been sold for games this year.  This drop has been very drastic, and people are starting to wonder what is going on.  Well team quality has not helped, as the Golden Gophers have been rather inept on the field in the past few years, and many are saying that this is driving people away.

There is also the novelty effect which should be considered.  In the sports economics research it is noted that new stadium often help boost attendance for about 5 years, after which attendance will return to the mean.  In this case, the stadium’s novelty really seems to be wearing off, and with poor performance of the team, it will be interesting to see how sales progress in the future.

Minnesota is in the opposite bag of the University of Missouri, which has sold out football student season tickets for the first time in their history.  The athletic department at Mizzou has said that around 46,500 season tickets have been sold, as the team and university prepare for their first year in the SEC.  People seem very excited about the great ticket sales numbers, but I would caution everyone to think that this will mean giant gains in attendance, as we could be dealing with a novelty effect of the team playing in the most dominant football conference in the country.  It also helps that Mizzou has a home game against Alabama, the defending national champions.

Hat-tip to Professor Tyler Hack in my department who alerted me to this article about Minnesota football attendance.

NBC Coverage and the Olympics

For most of the world, the Olympics has been a wonderful live sporting event.  For the United States, it has mostly been enjoyed via the wonders of tape delay.  I personally use a mix of Japanese television streaming and NBC live streaming to try and watch most of the events on the internet, but that came to a stop today as the NBC online stream pretty much died right as the men’s 100 meter final was about to take place.  Some were thinking that NBC didn’t want to show the live event, so everyone would have to tune in to the tape-delayed coverage in the evening.

So here I sit in front of the TV waiting to watch the men’s 100 meters (which I will not say what happens for those who don’t know the result).  In fact, some metrics are claiming that around 2 billion people worldwide viewed the men’s 100 meter final live.  This article discusses the viewership (Spoiler alert: it tells you who wins the 100 meters) and how NBC denied the ability to watch the moment live in the U.S.  This would normally seem to make the Olympics less desirable for viewers, as the Uncertainty of Outcome hypothesis notes that for a match where fans can easily predict the outcome, fans will be less likely to attend that match.  NBC researchers seem to be finding the exact opposite of this, saying that viewers who know what is going to happen have been more likely to tune into the Olympics.  I think that they may just be capturing those fans who would watch the Olympics no matter what, and are checking the outcome of matches before hand because they want to know what happens, as it happens. It is also likely, that because the NBC has been heavily editing programming to show Americans winning, that Americans are more likely to tune in because they really are nationalistic and want to see the U.S. win those golds!  NBC has been crafty though, they heavily edited the women’s gymnastic team finals in the U.S., removing an early fall and mistakes by the Russians to make it look like the competition was neck and neck.  This despite the fact that the U.S. jumped to an early lead and really had no trouble winning the gold for the women’s teams gymnastics.  NBC went as far as to not show point standings throughout the telecast in order to give the sense of drama.  In some sense, even though their research shows uncertainty of outcome might not matter, they are still trying to create it… even when it doesn’t exist.

Also, the Olympics do not really compete with any noteworthy programming at this time of year, so it is a good time to be NBC.  In the previous cycle it was said that NBC potentially lost around $200 million in revenue on the Olympics.  The chairman of NBC noted that there is a chance that the Olympics this cycle might make a profit, as the ratings and ad revenue from the Olympics has been very strong.  NBC is really trying all they can do to get viewers and make money, but some will still be very unhappy about the tape delay and jingoistic coverage of the Olympics.  If you want examples, just head to deadspin or go to twitter and type “NBCFail”.  The number of people using this hashtag is staggering.

Lost in Translation (Olympics match-fixing version)

Another day, another new controversy.  Let’s see, we’ve covered Badminton, Soccer, and Boxing.  There was also the fencing semi-final with a clock that was stuck on 1 second left in a match long enough for one fencer to score a point and head to the finals.  People ask how an electronic clock can get stuck, well it happens when it is operated by humans, as there will always be an error factor.

The big focus has been on whether it is okay to try to not win during the Olympics.  Everyone has their own opinion, but it would seem smarter for events to be organized so that there isn’t the ability for such gamesmanship.  The newest issue has now come out with the Great Britain cycling team which won gold.  The issue in question came in an early round when one cyclist fell to the ground, which forced the race to an automatic restart.  The cyclist in question is Philip Hindes, a German-born rider for the Great Britain team, who has come out and said:

“So I crashed, I did it on purpose just to get the restart, just to have the fastest ride. It was all planned really,” said Hindes.

In track cycling the rules dictate that in the event of an early crash, teams can restart their race and the UCI, when contacted by AFP, said the result would stand.

British Cycling claims that this is not true, and that what Hindes said was as The Guardian put it: “lost in translation”.

What I see is another sport that allows people to fail in order to get a better shot at gold.  And really, isn’t that what it is all about for many athletes?  Trying to win the competition, no matter what the cost.

More Olympic Corruption?

Seems like it was just yesterday that I was talking about match-fixing in Badminton and Soccer at the Olympics.  For Badminton, the World Badminton Federation has cracked down hard on those who lost matches on purpose, and the Chinese coach is taking the majority of the blame for the two athletes from his country which threw a game, saying that they did so under his orders.  One of those athletes, went ahead and announced her retirement from Badminton on Weibo (the Chinese version of twitter).

Japan soccer, as noted yesterday, will not face any sanctions for purposely not trying to score.

While I was writing about corruption yesterday, there was some more suspicious action going on in London.  This time in Olympic boxing where Japan’s Satoshi Shimizu went into the third and final round of his boxing match against Azerbaijan’s Magomed Abdulhamidov down several points.  Shimizu came out like a raging bull and proceeded to knockdown his opponent six times in the round.  This is where things became fishy, as the referee Ishanguly Meretnyyazov refused to award an eight-count for any of the knockdowns.  The match ended with Shimizu looking happy, thinking he would win on decision, and yet when the winner was announced, Abdulhamidov was named the winner, and the crowd began to boo and jeer.

Japan immediately filed a protest, and after careful consideration it was ruled that Shimizu was indeed the winner of the match, and was given his place back in the Olympics, additionally the referee in charge of the match was sent home.  The focus on this fight grew even more as the BBC noted back in 2011 that Azerbaijan had made a payment of $9 million dollars to World Series Boxing (WSB), which some said were to buy two gold medals for the country in the 2012 Olympics.  From the BBC:

The insiders said Mr Khodabakhsh told them that a secret deal had been done to secure funding from Azerbaijan in return for manipulation of the Olympic boxing tournament to guarantee gold medals for Azerbaijani fighters.

One insider told Newsnight: “Ivan boasted to a few of us that there was no need to worry about World Series Boxing having the coin to pay its bills. As long as the Azeris got their medals, WSB would have the cash.”

So now boxing may be the next big focus in the match-fixing issues that seem to be growing at the Olympics.

Olympic hypocracy? Who should be punished for not trying to win?

The big news of the day in the Olympics is the removal of 8 badminton athletes from the games, including 4 South Koreans, 2 Chinese, and 2 Indonesians.  This year, Badminton was reformatted from a knockout tournament to group play, with teams then qualifying for knockout rounds based on their group play.  Those in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) said that this would be to improve the quality of play, and are already noting that it led to some incredible match-ups that one would not normally see this early into the tournament.  That may be true, but it also led to several teams realizing that the best strategy for them to advance in the knockout stages was to actually lose on purpose in the group stages.  Thus, the 4 pairs mentioned above were kicked out of the Olympics after not giving their all in matches.  The BWF, London Olympic Games Organizing Committee (LOGOC), and even fans pronounced this a great move as they said it went against the laws and spirit of the game.  Specifically, the BWF says that all players must give full effort in matches they play in.  One begs to ask: what exactly is “full effort”?  They also said that this may be a match-fixing mess waiting to happen, as teams found that the best way to avoid tough opponents in the knock-out rounds was indeed to lose.  One game in particular stands out with a Chinese team and South Korean team both trying to lose.  There is clearly a lack of effort, and the Chinese team celebrates with a high-five after losing the match.  The crowd realizing wait they have just seen, responds with very loud booing, and badminton became the headline of the Olympics today, but for all the wrong reasons.

At the same time, the Japanese women’s soccer national team employed very similar strategies in their final group stage match against South Africa.  Japan’s coach Norio Sasaki had already hinted in the Japanese media that 2nd place would be the goal to move through qualification for two reasons: the team would not have to travel for the knock-out round, and they would also be to avoid Brazil most likely.  Japan fielded a squad with 7 new members on the field, and despite enjoying a great deal of opportunities, couldn’t put one in the back of the net.  It was even said that Sasaki gave instructions to just run the match out to a 0-0 draw in the 2nd half when they knew that they were in the clear for 2nd place in their group.  So Japan’s master plan seemed to be working… until the Great Britain women managed a famous 1-0 victory against Brazil.  All of the sudden Japan’s plan has backfired and while they don’t have to travel, they are facing Brazil in the quarterfinals.

In the end, the LOCOG, IOC and FIFA said that Japan will not face any potential charges for not trying to score, as they did not violate any rules of conduct.  So for football (soccer) you don’t need to try, but for Badminton you do.  Someone explain this to me.

The lesson of the day seems to be to put full-effort into your matches as you never know what may happen.  However, it may also indicate a need for better scheduling systems, and further analysis of whether pool play or group stages really are better than knock-out tournaments.  If a federation designs a competition where there is incentive to lose on purpose, is it really the fault of the athletes who understand the system and do their best to try and get as far as they can in the tournament?  Purists would say that the athletes must give their all, but wouldn’t it also make sense to have competition designed to illicit such response from athletes?

Kansas City teams using taxpayer money to pay for pretty much everything…

It is not unusual for professional sport teams to use taxpayer money for upkeep and maintenance of their sport teams.  Well trouble may be brewing in the state I am based in (Missouri) as WHB 810 Sports Radio in Kansas City broke new yesterday that the Kansas City Royals, the cities Major League Baseball Team, is using only a small portion of the tax money they requested for maintenance and repairs.  This isn’t exactly illegal, but the Royals apparently are using only 9% of the $17 million in taxpayer money earmarked for maintenance and upkeep for stadium repairs.  What are they using the money for?  Well, in 2006 an amendment was added to the lease agreement to both the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs (the National Football League team for the city) which allowed them to use this fund to help pay for “game day operations”.  Well the Royals asked for money from the fund to pay salaries of employees ($4 million) and another $700,000 to pay for their taxes.  Both requests were approved, officially making it so that the Royals were paying their taxes with taxpayer money.  The best part?  The reporter from WHB 810 has actually provided with a list of what the Royals asked for and received from this special fund:

	Security	$287,377
	Telephone	$83,698
	Supplies	$657,838
	Uniforms	$86,301
	Salary, Full-Time Associates	$975,309
	Payroll, Taxes and Benefits-Full Time	$365,176
	Salary, Full-Time Associates	$321,355
	Payroll, Taxes and Benefits-Full Time	$133,617
	Salary, Part-Time Employees	$2,618,568
	Payroll Taxes-Part Time Employees	$200,320
	Security	$236,113
	Telephone	$515,696
	Stadium Services	$691,322
	Professional Services-First Aid	$241,931
	Utilities, Telephone, Cable TV	$2,291,385
	Day of Game Security	$247,528

And the Royals aren’t the only game in town, and it is now being noted from a source that the Kansas City Chiefs are doing similar things with the fund.  The Chiefs asked for $27 million, and used only a third of that amount on stadium repairs and upkeep.  It is noted that none of this tax money is allowed to pay for player salaries, but they are being used to cover other salaries of employees, and pretty much everything else.  The Jackson County Sport Complex Authority which approved these funds just sent re-nomination of their current head to Missouri governor Jay Nixon for approval.  Governor Nixon will need to think twice about this as citizens will clearly not be thrilled by this use of tax money.  This will also not improve Royals owner Dan Glass’ standing with the fans of his team.  They already are unhappy with the way the team is run and will not pay for players, now they find operations are being paid with their tax money, this can not go well.