Cafe Hayek

Striking out

Sometimes I get depressed about the quality of statistical work in economics. Then I read something from another social science. Here is a recent study where psychologists find that having the initial "K" increases your chance of striking out when playing professional baseball. Why? Well, it's obvious isn't it? The letter "K" is used when keeping score in baseball to represent striking out. So it's obvious now isn't it? Still don't get it? Neither do I. But hey, it's in the data. Between 1913 and 2006, players with first or last initial "K" struck out 18.8% of the time compared to 17.2% for the fortunate players unhandicapped by their initials. Here is the "explanation" of the authors:

Despite a universal desire to avoid striking out, K-initialed players strike out more often.  For those players, we argue that the explicitly negative performance outcome may feel implicitly  positive. Even Karl “Koley” Kolseth would find a strikeout aversive, but on the whole, he might  find it a little less aversive than players who do not share his initials, and avoid it less  enthusiastically.

But why? Why would having the initial "K" make striking out more pleasant? I just don't get it. The authors go on to "test" their theory by looking at grades of a sample of MBA students:

The MBA students in our sample are well aware of a direct connection between academic  performance and successful job placement. Nevertheless, despite the pervasive desire to achieve  high grades, students with an unconsciously-driven fondness for C’s and D’s were slightly less  successful at achieving their conscious goal.

That is, Charles Darwin received poorer grades than Alan Alda. But it turns out that Alan Alda didn't do better than the non-ABCD initialed:

Interestingly, A- or B-initialed students did not perform better than students whose  initials were grade-irrelevant. There are two possible explanations for this. First, students with  grade-irrelevant initials may already be maximally motivated to succeed. Second, because  performance is determined by motivation and ability, any increased motivation to succeed that  arises from having initials that match positive performance outcomes may not necessarily  translate into increased performance.

There is, of course, a third explanation: there is no real relationship and the authors have been fooled by randomness. Yes, their results are statistically significant. But how many relationships did they explore before finding the ones that were statistically significant. And ho many relationships are there to explore? To really test the theory, you'd have to look at baseball players with the initial "E" and see if they commit more errors than others. You'd have to look at guards in the NBA to see if those with initials "A" have more assists. Centers whose initials include an "R" should be better rebounders. You'd have to look and see whether students with the initials IC were more likely to take an "incomplete" in a class.

I guess Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England should have been a football player. Or maybe he just gets fired more often than the average Briton because it doesn't bother him as much as someone with a different last name.

Did Kafka know baseball scoring? Does this explain why he found success in life so difficult? Is this why he named a character "K"?

Do players whose initials are a backwards "K" strike out looking more than the average?

Butt Out

Here's a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:

Senator Arlen Specter imagines that it is his and his fellow maharajahs' duty to investigate why the National Football League destroyed the Patriots' tapes of the Jets ("Goodell Defends Handling of Patriots' Spying Case," February 2).

If I were NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, I would respond to Sen. Specter's threat to call a Senate committee hearing to investigate this matter by saying only "Dear Sen. Specter:  The rule that the Patriots violated is one that the NFL, not Congress, created.  We are a private organization quite capable of enforcing our own rules.  So butt out; this matter is none of your damn business.  Sincerely...."

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Telling Stories

Which of these stories is right?

The Giants will win the Super Bowl. They have the momentum on their side. They have a great pass rush. They will be more relaxed than the Patriots because they don't have the pressure of the perfect season. They'll be able to control the ball with Brandon Jacobs. Manning hasn't thrown an interception in the playoffs.

Or is it this one:

The Patriots are the better team. They have Super Bowl experience. They have the better coach. Their quarterback is better.They will shut down the Giants running game and force Manning to make mistakes.

So which one is better? Neither, of course. They're just stories. But on Monday, one narrative will look convincing and the other will look foolish. But of course there was no way to really know ex ante which story was better. Ex post it will seem obvious. But even ex post, judging the stories or the storyteller is just so much finger-snapping. It's just one data point. Don't be fooled by randomness.

Can a camel understand football?

From the Asbury Park Press:

Forget what the sports analysts are saying. Super Bowl XLII will end in victory for the New York Giants, according to Princess, "Popcorn Park Zoo's famous prognosticating camel," the zoo announced Monday.

Princess had an 11-6 won-loss record for games picked during the season. And "her playoff standings were phenomenal, selecting eight out of 10 winning teams. Last week she accurately predicted the Patriots for the championships, but not the Giants," the zoo press release states.

Each week, Popcorn Park's general manager, John Bergmann, has had the names of two teams playing that weekend written on his hands. Then he offered Princess her favorite snack — graham crackers — in both hands. Whichever hand she nibbled from, that was regarded as her choice in the game.

"I can't explain it, but her predictions, more often than not, are right on the money," Bergmann said. "I'm hoping she's right this time, because I'm a Giants fan."

I think most people understand that the success of Princess is not due to her understanding of football, or her "gut feeling" or her intuition. It's just random. But on Monday morning, some human football "experts" will seem smart and some less so, simply because of one data point, the result of Sunday's game.

 

Which story is better:

The economy is in crisis. The subprime mortgage mess has taken down the housing market and thrown the banking industry into turmoil. The crdeit crunch that is inevitable will soon knock out other industries as well.  The anemic December job numbers (18,000 net jobs created) show are just the beginning of the problem. A recession is imminent or we may already be in one. We have to do something.

Or is it this one:

Yes, housing and banking are struggling. But the rest of the economy is healthy. The December job numbers were atypical. Unemployment claims are down. We don't need a stimulus package.

Who is right? Tomorrow, February 1, the January job numbers will be released. There are hints that they will be very strong. Some people's stories will look wise and others less so, at least for a while. If the numbers are strong, the worriers will find some other data point to wave around.

But I suspect the experts are like Princess, the pigskin prognosticating camel. We are fooled by randomness. We don't really understand the macroeconomy. Certainly not enough to micromanage it.

Ode to the Patriots

My ode to the Patriots written for WSJ.com is here.

The case for Clemens

Here's a statistical analysis of the career of Roger Clemens, purporting to show that his career trajectory is similar to that of Randy Johnson, Curt Shilling and Nolan Ryan, three people who presumably did not take steroids. The point is that it's not THAT unusual to be successful in your 40's and that Clemens's performance didn't spike when people think it did. The analysis is done by the agents who represent Clemens in contract negotiations.

Is it a convincing analysis or an example of how to lie with statistics? I'm only reporting on this one. You decide. I like the charts, though. Nice use of color to make the case.

UPDATE: J.C. Bradbury does his own analysis of Clemens (HT: Matt C.) and shows that Clemens strikeout and home runs relative to the rest of the league declined with age as you might expect if he weren't a user (or if steroids make no difference). There's no obvious spike relative to the rest of the league. Interesting. He does not look at the key questions of whether the decline is slower than for other pitchers or relative to the past. I would assume that all players are working harder to stay in the major leagues because the returns are higher to baseball than they used to be. On the other hand, younger players are working harder to make it into the league, so maybe there's no difference.

Is he a cheetah?

ESPN reports:

The IAAF ruled Monday that double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius is ineligible to compete in the Beijing Olympics because his prosthetic racing blades give him a clear competitive advantage.

The International Association of Athletics Federations had twice postponed the ruling, but the executive council said the South African runner's curved, prosthetic "Cheetah" blades were considered a technical aid in violation of the rules.

"As a result, Oscar Pistorius is ineligible to compete in competitions organized under IAAF Rules," the IAAF said in a statement.

Pistorius, known as the "blade runner," announced last week that he would appeal any adverse decision, including taking the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.

"The natural feeling from our side would be to appeal the verdict and see what avenues we can take forward," Pistorius' agent, Peet van Zyl, told the BBC after Monday's verdict. "Oscar wants to prove that he isn't getting an advantage."

In case it isn't clear, this guy doesn't have feet, or at least the kind most of us are born with. He runs on artificial feet. See the picture here.

Can this distinction between "fair" and "unfair," "natural" and "unnatural" persist? I doubt it.

Another drawback of antitrust regulation

The NFL this year has put some games exclusively on the NFL Network, a cable offering that most fans don't have. The New England Patriots are playing the New York Giants this Saturday night on the NFL Network. The Patriots have a chance to go 16-0 with a victory, so interest in the game has become rather intense. So a lot of fans (outside of Boston and New York who can watch the game on local TV) are disappointed. They either have to sign up for NFL Network, go to a bar carrying the game or do without. Now, the NFL has changed its mind and will simulcast the game on the NFL Network, CBS, and NBC:

"We have taken this extraordinary step because it is in the best interest of our fans," commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement after the league announced it was reversing course.

Touching, but a bit weird. It punishes the people who signed up for NFL Network not just to miss this game. And of course, there's more to the story:

Last week, two prominent members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Goodell threatening to reconsider the league's antitrust exemption.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who co-wrote the letter with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he was "delighted" by the NFL's concession.

"I think it was a smart move on their part," he said in a phone interview.

Leahy expected to speak with Goodell again next month about the ongoing question of how many fans will be able to see games on the channel. Saturday's matchup wraps up the NFL Network's second season of airing live contests, with eight per year. This one and a key Thursday night game between Green Bay and Dallas last month drew widespread complaints about the lack of availability.

"I never completely gave up hope, but I was getting a little discouraged Christmas afternoon when we still had not gotten a positive answer," said Leahy, who added that his staff members were talking with NFL officials during the holiday.

So much for the rule of law. When I told my 12-year old son what had happened, he said, "But they don't have the right."

Well, they shouldn't have the right. But they do have the right. And even though, as a cable-free Patriots fan since 1962, I am happy to be able to watch the game, I wish it weren't so.

Steroids and science

How much does steroid use improve strength and performance?

Here is Arthur De Vany's summary of recent research at the New England Journal of Medicine. Skip down to the bottom if you want the bottom line.

Here is his analysis of the impact of steroids on home run hitting.

Here is his first reaction to the Mitchell Report.

Here is JC Bradbury on HGH and a recent study at the New England Journal of Medicine.

Clemens vindicated

The uproar this morning is that Roger Clemens, someone who everyone agrees is one of the best pitchers of all time, is a cheater, a steroids user going back to 1998. His reputation is ruined, he may not make the Hall of Fame, and according to Thomas Boswell, one of the deans of America's baseball scribes, he's like Pete Rose,  Barry Bonds or maybe even Shoeless Joe Jackson in that his name will never be the same:

Now, Roger Clemens joins Barry Bonds in baseball's version of hell. It's a slow burn that lasts a lifetime, then, after death, lingers as long as the game is played and tongues can wag. In baseball, a man's triumphs and his sins are immortal. The pursuit of one often leads to the other. And those misdeeds are seldom as dark as their endless punishment.

Shoeless Joe Jackson, an illiterate outfielder who hit like a demon in the 1919 World Series, but neglected to blow the whistle on his crooked teammates, died with his good name as black as their Sox. Pete Rose, who bet on his team, but never against it, finally confessed. It could be good for his soul, and buys him dinner at my house any night, but may never get him into Cooperstown. Now, they have company: two giants of our time, just as humbled, though no less tarnished.

Why does no one seem to understand that if many and maybe most of the batters are taking steroids, a pitcher who takes steroids is leveling the playing field, not getting an unfair advantage?

BTW, I'm a Red Sox fan. Clemens left the Red Sox in 1997 saying he wanted to be closer to his family in Texas, then signed with the Toronto Blue Jays, a team not known for its proximity to the Lone Star state. Red Sox fans have always resented his exit, particularly given what followed. He proceeded to have what was arguably his best single season as a pitcher, throwing 264 innings and posting an ERA of 2.05 when the league ERA was 4.53, An astounding steroids-free performance.

Halfway through the 1998 season, when we know that a lot of batters started using steroids, Clemens, according the Mitchell Report released yesterday, started using steroids as well. He pitched extremely well in 1998, but nothing close to his 1997 performance.

Clemens's steroid use in 1998 tarnishes his reputation? How exactly? To suggest that his failure to blow the whistle on teammates or fellow players outside his team is to misunderstand the culture of athletes. And to compare him to Shoeless Joe Jackson for not blowing the whistle is a repugnant comparison. Boswell conveniently fails to mention that Jackson (who I do sympathize with, given his on-field performance in that 1919 World Series) took money under the expectation that he would deliberately play poorly. His failure had nothing to do with whistle-blowing.

Yesterday's report shouldn't tarnish Clemens or his teammate Andy Pettitte, or the other 80 or so names mentioned. The report relied on FOUR sources, a clubhouse guy for the Blue Jays, a clubhouse guy for the Mets, the Balco investigation and various news stories that have found evidence of steroid use. The number of sources wasn't low because they were the main sources. The number was low because virtually no one wanted to talk to Mitchell. The sources he used were already under investigation. That means that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

What we now know is that steroid use was widespread, extremely widespread, in major league baseball beginning in 1998. The effects of steroids and HGH (which was also widely used) on performance are unclear. Yes, great players took steroids to get an edge. But so did mediocre players. It didn't make them great either because everyone was taking them or because the extra impact on performance was small.

When everyone cheats, it's not cheating any more.

You can judge a man morally for having so much competitive fire that he flaunts the rules and endangers his health. I think that's particularly strange when the rules are not enforced as they were not in 1998.

But even so, what yesterday's report makes clear to me is that you can't judge a man's reputation as a baseball player because he used something that so many other people were using in search of an edge. For me, the "scandal" of steroid use is now a smaller story, even though it is all over today's front pages.

Roger, you'll never be as good as Pedro, but you belong in the Hall of Fame. I wish I could vote. And of course, in some sense, I can. I believe that in 20 years, the consensus among fans will be that Roger Clemens was one of the greatest pitchers of all time, without an asterisk. And Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire will join the same true pantheon of greatness even if they never get to Cooperstown.

The Mitchell Report

The Mitchell Report is going to come out today. Supposedly it will expose at least 70 players by name as steroid users. ESPN is already reporting that Roger Clemens is one of them. This is going to change the perception of Barry Bonds and others as "cheaters" because we're going to find out that both pitchers and batters used steroids. Here is my old post where I speculate on Hayek's perception of the scandal.

Contract incentives

Curt Schilling is coming back to the Red Sox. His base salary is $8 million. he can make an additional $3 million based on meeting various performance milestones. Then there are some unusual incentives:

He also can make an additional $2 million by meeting weight clauses -- $333,333 for each time he passes one of six random monthly weigh-ins.

Now, I'd like to weigh a little bit less myself. Interesting question--how much money would it take for me to change my eating and exercise habits. Less than $2 million. But it's interesting how hard the Red Sox think it's going to be for Curt Schilling to do so and he admits he should weigh less. How much money would you have to be paid to go without that second helping at dinner? Then there's this:

Schilling also would get $1 million next year if he receives at least one vote in Cy Young Award balloting.

That's weird. Why would the Red Sox want to give a baseball writer a very easy way of giving Curt Schilling a million dollars?  Curt could just split it with him. Is Cy Young voting anonymous? Is it going to be awkward to vote for Curt if he goes 1-4 with a 4.90 ERA?  And if a writer votes for Schilling after a mediocre year, would Curt take the money? If I were the Red Sox, I would have made  the minimum number of votes two or three.

Schilling's version of the whole thing is here (HT: Jeff Bliss). He blogs well.

Bufoonery

In honor of Don's superb description of the politician's daily tribulations, and in honor of the start of the World Series, here are two recent examples of political bufoonery followed by a classic. First off, John McCain shows how tough he is. Or isn't. He can't seem to make up his mind. Actually he was joking or maybe not (HT: Drudge):

Republican presidential candidate John McCain told workers of small weapons factory that he not only wants to catch Osama Bin Laden if elected, but said he "will shoot him with your products".

"I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products," McCain said.

McCain told reporters afterward he was joking when he made the comment at Thompson Center Arms in Rochester.

"I certainly didn't mean I would actually shoot him. I am certainly angry at him, but I was only speaking in a way that was trying to emphasize my point," McCain said. "I would not shoot him myself."

Why not? Does he not think Bin Laden deserves shooting? Does he think it untoward to shoot someone, that it somehow smacks of the vigilante? Is it too violent an act for a man who would be President? Would he want Bin Laden brought to trial? Or would McCain simply delegate the task of shooting Bin Laden to someone else for some unmentioned reason? Was it really a joke? Can you name another joke that contains the phrase "gates of hell?"

Then there's McCain's competitor for the nomination, Rudy Giuliani, who at a fund raiser in Boston, goes out on a limb and says he is rooting for the Red Sox to win the World Series:

Rudy Giuliani, a big Yankee fan, said he will be backing the Boston Red Sox over the Colorado Rockies when the World Series begins tomorrow.

"I'm rooting for the Red Sox," Giuliani said while wearing a red tie during a press conference in Boston's financial district. "I am an American League fan."

The former New York mayor said he wasn't pandering to the local crowd either.

"I am not just saying that because I am in Massachusetts. If I am in Colorado in the next week or two you will see that I have the courage to tell the people of Colorado the same thing," he said.

Yes, he is a man of remarkable conviction isn't he? He's not afraid to tell the people of Colorado that he is a fan of the American League. The only problem I have with this incredible tale of political courage is that no Red Sox fan ever roots for the American League team in the World Series if it's the Yankees. And I doubt most Yankee fans root for the Red Sox.

My favorite political sports gaffe comes from John Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts who invoked "Manny Ortez" as a star for the Red Sox, combining Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. He then corrects himself and refers to "David Ortez." He then mentions that this fellow, David Ortez along with Manny Ramirez and Curt Schilling and others will be off taking a break for the All-Star game when in fact the All-Star game break refers to the teams and people NOT playing and the players he names are actually playing in the game and hence going without a break. But the best part is Kerry's comforting the listener that he and John Edwards won't be taking any break. I assume he is referring to his relentless efforts to make my life better or at least win the nomination on our behalf. The Kerry clip is here. It ends with a clip of Kevin Millar giving a refreshingly candid assessment of sports talk radio. Kevin Millar will never be President of the United States.

Consolation

I'm a lifelong Red Sox fan and I thoroughly enjoyed last night's victory over the Indians. But here's a confession and consolation for Indian fans: We didn't deserve to win. I know. That sounds more like confession than consolation. But hear me out.

We didn't deserve to win. Last night, everything went our way. We got the call on Lofton that was clearly wrong. Your third base coach blew it on sending Lofton home later. You hit 400 foot outs that if they'd gone a foot or two farther would have broken the game open. We had infield singles that could have been outs. We killed rallies with double plays that should have cost us more than it did. You had a double that hit so high off the wall it could have been a home run if it had been hit almost anywhere else. So many what-ifs and all in one game? It's hard to bear. You can even say we didn't deserve to win because we spent about twice as much as you did and it just isn't fair.

So where's the consolation?

The consolation is that we've been where you are now. The Red Sox until 2004 had all the same complaints. We could point to so many what-ifs in 1975 and1978 and 1986 and 2003. Why did every crucial call (from the interference that made Fisk throw wildly, to Reggie Jackson's hip check of the ball in the basepath) have to go against us? I know, you have no idea what I'm talking about, but every Red Sox fan knows. Why did Dent's home run have to clear the wall? Why did Little leave Pedro in? Why was Buckner in the game instead of Stapleton? So many what-ifs. Why did they all seem to go against us? And besides, the Yankees spend so much more than us.

But when it ends, when all the breaks go your way, when Dave Roberts just beats the throw and when the umps reverse the call on Rodriguez knocking the ball out of Arroyos glove and a thousand other things happen along the way, the sweetness is so sweet because of all the sadness that came before. Your day will come. And I hope it happens sooner than later. And I hope it happens against the Yankees not us.

What does this have to do with Cafe Hayek? Not much. But I'm sure there's some neuroeconomics in the dopamine rush that comes from winning over so much losing. It has something to do with why we keep getting up when the world knocks us down, something to do with risk-taking and perseverance.

The UnNatural?

Here is my commentary on NPR's All Things Considered on the Rick Ankiel story.

Ankiel

The Rick Ankiel story is amazing. I was at Busch Stadium when he fell apart as a pitcher (thank you, RM) and have happily noted his absurdly glorious comeback as an outfielder. Ankiel is in the news today as the WSJ's Daily Fix reports:

Rick Ankiel had been one of the best stories in baseball this year. Mr. Ankiel, the onetime rising pitcher star who suddenly fizzled out and couldn't throw a strike, returned to the St. Louis Cardinals in August as a slugging outfielder.

On Thursday afternoon, he hit two home runs and drove in seven to up his season total to nine homers and 29 RBI in 23 games. His performance has helped the Cards to pull within one game of the Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers, who are tied for first-place in the National League Central.

"He's been putting up Nintendo numbers," shortstop Brendan Ryan told the St. Louis Dispatch's Derrick Goold. "To do it in September where every hit, every RBI is everything we need to win is incredible. He's going to be a better position player than maybe he ever could have as a pitcher."

But on Thursday night, New York Daily News reporters T.J. Quinn, Christian Red, Michael O'Keeffe and Bill Madden broke the sad story that Mr. Ankiel received a 12-month supply of human growth hormone in 2004.

It's unclear whether Mr. Ankiel will face any repercussions legally or from Major League Baseball, which has been accused of doing too little to rid the sport of performance-enhancing drugs. Mr. Ankiel has not been accused of wrongdoing, and he stopped receiving HGH before MLB banned it in 2005, according to the News.

But why do the authors call this a sad story? A kid who had the potential to be a Hall of Fame pitcher suddenly finds himself unable to find home plate. It must have been devastating. I suspect he tried a lot of things to resurrect his life and cope with the despair of disappointment--prayer, alcohol, hard work, perseverance, weight training, and according to the cited story, HGH. Three years ago. It wasn't banned by baseball at the time. He wasn't alone in using it. Are we supposed to think of him as a cheater? I don't get it. Until we know how widespread the use of chemicals is and was in baseball, I have no idea what to think of Rick Ankiel's use.

Clutch hitting

It is very hard for sports fans, sports writers and even athletes do accurately assess which of their  players perform well under pressure and which do not.

This brilliant dissection (Rated R for language) of a recent sports column on the topic of "hitting in the clutch" shows how powerful numbers can be for clarifying fuzzy thinking.

Play Ball

Finally, baseball season is here. When your team isn't playing, check out The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed, by J.C. Bradbury. He takes a look at a number of empirical questions and uses economics and statistics to explore them. What's particularly good is how he uses economics to point out, for example, that a pitcher doesn't give the same effort on every pitch. He saves extra effort for extra important situations when the incentive to higher effort is there. So it's not clear that having a better batter batting behind you in the batting order means that you'll have a better chance of getting a hit. The standard argument is that the pitcher won't want to walk you and give the next guy a chance to drive you in. Bradbury observes that if the next guy is really good, the pitcher might try extra hard to get you out. A clever observation and then he tests it. He tests lots of interesting questions. Check it out.

I'm excited to read Crazy '08 by Cait Murphy, the story of the 1908 baseball season. It was an extraordinary season. It's hard to believe the drama and twists and turns off the field that made that season special. One of my favorite sports books of all time is The Unforgettable Season the story of that season from the news stories of the day. It's back in print. Looking forward to Murphy's version.

I'm the coach of my son's little league team. One of the things I've struggled with is teaching kids to hit and pitch. (I know—what's left? Rules. Throwing. Fielding. Where to throw. Where to run. When to run.) It's surprisingly difficult to find good instructional guides on hitting and pitching. Most of them are surprisingly opaque. What is striking to me about hitting (pun unintended but left anyway) is how differently a professional hitter hits compared to the rest of us. Look at any major leaguer when he makes contact. His head is over his back knee. His front leg is straight and his back leg forms an L. There's nothing intuitive about it. Learning to do it requires instruction and lots of practice. The secret turns out to be with the hips. The only thing I've found on how to teach a kid to hit the right way that you can actually figure out is by Phil Plante and is here. Download the first file at the top. Then check out the rest of the stuff.

On pitching, the best stuff I've seen is this page by Chris O'Leary, which has a healthy emphasis on what NOT to do, which is very important for young arms.

Finally, the best stuff on baseball you've never seen before is Alex Reisner's elegant work. Don't miss the dead bird page in the history section. 

Why they make so much

When college football coaches get a lot of money, people complain about the injustice of it. Some of those complainers are fans, who have romantic ideas about college sports. But they're the reason coaches make so much.

In this piece at the Boston Globe, I tell complaining college sports fans to look in the mirror. An excerpt:

But if those fans want to find someone to blame they should look in the mirror. They are the source of that salary they find so exorbitant. Their desire to revel in victory is what drives the university to pay not an exorbitant salary but merely the going wage, what it takes to attract a talented coach away from other universities and the professional ranks.

At Alabama, that fan is tired of losing to Auburn. At Oklahoma where Bob Stoops makes more than $3 million to coach the football team , alums from Oklahoma want to revel in victories over Texas. Now and then, they expect a national championship. At Ohio State, Jim Tressel makes a few million to ensure that the Buckeyes stay competitive with Michigan.

What I didn't have room to explore in the piece is the role of large public universities in the escalating rewards to college football and basketball success. If you look at the top 20 teams in each sport, you'll see the dominance of large public universities with an occasional USC in football and Duke in basketball. Part of the reason for this is the political pressure large numbers of alums put on Presidents of universities and implicitly through politicians to have a successful team.

The other interesting topic is the NCAA. One reader came to the defense of the NCAA as a well-intentioned organization that tries to keep the game honest.

I disagreed.The NCAA relentlessly prevents universities from paying their players in any remote fashion. They have so much trouble keeping the market from working that they ban any scholarship athlete from taking any job of any kind while on scholarship. That's to prevent the restaurant owner from overpaying the busboy as a form of bribe.

What they did to Alabama in a recent recruiting scandal is what they do to every school that tries to reward any player. They punish them. Some see that as a virtue because it stops something we call "cheating." But what we call cheating is a natural consequence of trying to stop market forces from working. Because that avenue of competition is ruled out, colleges pay coaches large sums of money and build absurdly luxurious dorms and practice facilities as a way of attracting good players.

The NCAA is a cartel. It is a way to reduce competition among rivals. It has no moral compass, no intentions. Anything resembling a moral compass is hype, spin and PR that exploits the public's romance about university life. They're not evil, either. They're just a way to make life easier for colleges and their leaders who see football and basketball as a way to make money and to have goodies to hand out to supplicants who want access to good seats, and the opportunity to rub elbows with glamorous coaches and players. Expecting the NCAA to put the interests of students first is like expecting Congress to pass a law against "special interests." It just isn't in the nature of the beast.

The NCAA is a private, voluntary organization. IMost cartels die quickly because of the temptation to cheat on the agreement. The form that the cheating takes here, is to build luxurious dorms--there's no way to limit and monitor luxuriousness. If you could, they would. But that's mild. So why doesn't more cheating occur? One answer is that it does and that there's a lot more under the table payments going on than the NCAA discovers.

The other answer is that no one team can cheat. If one team refuses to abide by NCAA regulations, and leaves the NCAA, they have no one else to play against. You need a group of teams to defect and start their own league. The appeal of that is that by ignoring the NCAA, they could pay the best players and have the best teams and get even more TV money etc. But the risk is high and the overt payments to players might handicap viewership and fan interest for cultural and romantic reasons. Even so, a group of teams did defect in some sense a while back and get their own TV package. Notre Dame did it, too. And the BCS is a sort of cartel within the cartel--it essentially recognizes that not all cartel members are created equal and deserve equal treatment.

College sports is a big business. I have no problem with that. (Though whether it should be tax exempt is another question. The threat of removing that exemption does limit the venality.) But it is a big business built on the bizarre illusion that it's not a big business. It's a big business we like to pretend is a game.  To pretend it's a game and complain it acts like a business is human but illogical.

Pre-game thoughts

The Bears are big underdogs to the Colts on Sunday. Yet Allen St. John of the WSJ predicts the Bears will win:

Over the last 22 Super Bowls, 18 -- 86% of them -- were won by the team that came into the game after allowing fewer regular-season points. (In the 2004-05 regular season, the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles each allowed 260 points.) Not since the Denver Broncos won 1999's Super Bowl XXXIII has the team with the weaker defense emerged victorious.

And that's why the underdog Chicago Bears should defeat the Indianapolis Colts in Miami on Sunday. Lovie Smith's NFC Champion Bears allowed only 255 points during the regular season. That's third-best in the NFL -- and is a whopping 105 points fewer than the AFC Champion Colts allowed.

He adds this info:

Savvy fans may dismiss many of these numbers, arguing that the AFC was the far better conference this year. That may be true for the conferences, but it doesn't necessarily hold for this matchup. The Bears and Colts played five common opponents this season -- the New York Jets, New York Giants, Patriots, Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins. Indianapolis went 5-0 against these teams, while the Bears were 3-2. However, in those games, the Bears scored 114 points and surrendered only 75, outscoring their opponents by 39 points. The Colts? Despite their perfect record, they scored 128 but gave up 107, for a 21-point differential, just over half that of the Bears.

This somewhat savvy fan would point out that that was then and this is now. The Colts defense has been playing much better. But it is interesting how easy it is to think that the Colts are unstoppable and that Peyton Manning is a genius. We felt the same way about the Rams and Kurt Warner against the Patriots.

I have been thinking a lot about the difficulties of forecasting based on the past because I am reading Fooled by Randomness. Very thought-provoking.

As a final pre-game prep, listen to the last half of the Michael Lewis podcast. (And listen to the first half, too, where we talk about Moneyball. Pitchers and catchers report in less than two weeks.) Lewis's insights into the role of the left tackle have changed the way I watch football. Or read his book, The Blind Side. You still have two days.

Podcast with Michael Lewis

This week's EconTalk is with Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker, Moneyball, and The Blind Side. We talk about the hidden side of baseball and football, and a bunch of other stuff—the movie business, the corrupt nature of college football, the tragedy of the inner city and the seen and the unseen.

One of my favorite parts is when Lewis explains why Billy Beane (General Manager of the Oakland A's) gave him such incredible access and shared his trade secrets that Lewis revealed in Moneyball. Lewis says that Beane didn't think any one in baseball would read the book or take it seriously, an expectation that was basically right. But Lewis says that Wall Street people read the book (because of Liar's Poker) and some of those people knew baseball owners and told them they needed to stop paying so much attention to their scouts and pay more attention to statistics.

Next week's EconTalk guest is Robert Lucas talking about growth.

Blind Side

Just finished (in half a day) Michael Lewis's Blind Side, the story of...lots of things—the hidden side of football, race and class in the South, an inner-city kid's journey, how market forces move things in unexpected ways. It is not as analytical as Moneyball but the underlying story is more dramatic and it's very well told by Lewis. Along with all of the above, the book captures the poetry of athletic excellence, the sheer magnificence of the outlier—the man playing a boy's game. It reminds me a bit of The Courting of Marcus Dupree, an under-appreciated gem and the movie The Scout, Albert Brooks's offbeat portrait of the baseball scout who finds a player too good to be true.

Fans of economics will love the way Lewis talks about the evolution of football and how what fans see and often respect is only part of what is really going on. You'll also like how Lewis understands and explains how competition in the free agent market makes left tackles on the offensive line the second most highly-paid players in football. Who knew? These themes are the framework for the human drama that Lewis portrays and that makes up most of the book—the tale of an inner-city black kid who finds himself taken under the wing of a rich, white, emphatically Christian, driven, sports-loving family. If you like football at all, you will not be able to put this book down.

Are Professional Sports Competitive?

Michael Lewis's Moneyball lays tells the story of how the Oakland A's became successful. Part of the answer is that they appreciated the value of an undervalued asset, the ability to get on base via walk.

In this EconTalk podcast, Skip and I talk about whether this story is true and if it is true, how such an insight about the value of walks could lay undiscovered (or at least underutilized) for so long. One interesting part of the conversation is about just how competitive or uncompetitive the baseball industry is. It appears very competitive. Winners and losers are observable. Unsuccessful managers and general managers are fired all the time. Yet I argue that the costs of failure are very small. Mediocre franchises can be highly profitable because of the inherent monopoly power an owner has in the local market. Even worse, it is very hard to buy out a mediocre owner because the replacement must be approved by the other owners whose incentives in this situation are rather mixed.

The next Econtalk will be Monday with Clint Bolick talking about the virtues of judicial activism.

What's in a Name? asks this Cajun

I emphasize to every class I teach that the range of possible explanations for any phenomenon is far larger than the range of plausible explanations -- and the range of plausible explanations is larger than the number of genuinely compelling explanations.

For example, in the early 19th century, human population began to soar upward at a sustained trend never before observed in history.  One possible explanation for this faster population growth is that about 200 years ago people became more interested in sex.  Having more sex, they had more children.  Having more children means higher population.  QED.

Of course, this possible explanation isn't at all plausible, much less compelling.  So we reject it outright.

The largeness of the range of possible explanations for observed phenomena is fertile ground not only for genuine disagreement among people of integrity, but also for people who aren't so much seeking truth as they are seeking to score political points or moral-grandstanding points.

All sorts of examples come to mind.  One is the insistence by many folks that today's falling gasoline prices are caused by GOP-friendly oil producers who want to increase the chances that the GOP will keep control of Congress with the November elections.

Now I suppose that some people are so dim-witted as really to find merit in this explanation, but surely anyone with any sense at all dismisses this explanation as implausible in light of well-known facts about the world (for example, fewer hurricanes this year than predicted; an end, at least temporarily, to the war between Israel and Lebanon) sifted through even just an intuitive grasp of basic supply-and-demand analysis.

One of the silliest and, at the same time, potentially very divisive instances in which people (willfully?) adopt an implausible explanation for an observed phenomenon involves names for certain sports teams in the U.S.

There's an on-going debate in Washington, D.C., over the name of that city's professional (American) football team: The Washington Redskins.  (The Washington Post wants the team's name changed, arguing that it's a racial slur that demeans Native Americans.)

Yes, a possible explanation for this team's name is that it was adopted to insult Native Americans.  But how plausible is this explanation?  I find it ludicrous.  Sports teams, and their fans, want names that make them proud.  Can you imagine a sports team even (or especially!) in the early 20th century taking the nickname "Niggers" or "Kikes" or "Homos"?  These are awful slurs, thankfully less commonly used today than in the past, aimed at dismissing and demeaning a group of people simply because they are black, Jewish, or homosexual.

If you can't imagine (and I certainly can't) any team owner 80 years ago saying, "Hey, you know what?  Blacks are so looked down on, so much fun to spoof and make fun of and to demean with insulting names, that we'll name our team the 'Niggers.'  That'll really bring in the fans!" -- then why imagine that the name "Redskins" was adopted for a similar reason?

The far-more plausible explanation for the choice of the Redskins name was that it was believed that that name would be one that owners, players, and especially fans would take pride in.

Other facts support this more-plausible explanation.  The Redskins' emblem does not depict a weak or a stupid or a barbaric Native American.

More significantly, in my view, is the fact that other sports teams have names obviously designed to foster pride.  Should ranch-hands today be insulted by the name of the Dallas Cowboys?  Gold-miners insulted by the name of the San Francisco 49ers?  Steelworkers insulted by the name of the Pittsburgh Steelers?  Meatpackers insulted by the name of the Green Bay Packers?  Texans insulted by the name of the Houston Texans?  Northerners insulted by the name of the New York Yankees?  Sailors insulted by the name of the Seattle Mariners?  Greeks insulted by the name of the Michigan State Spartans?  Descendants of 19th-century industrialists insulted by the name of the Vanderbilt Commodores?

Should I be insulted by the name of the University of Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns?

Of course not.  So to continue to insist that "Redskins" is insulting is either not to think about the issue sensibly or to be so intent on finding racism that you find it even when it doesn't exist.

Poor Poor Pitiful Me

The poor Yankees. Turns out they're losing money. Bloomberg reports:

The New York Yankees are losing money even as they're winning games, General Manager Brian Cashman said.         

The team's highest-in-baseball payroll, revenue-sharing outlay and other expenses eclipse its revenue, Cashman said in an interview on Bloomberg radio's ``On the Ball,'' to be aired this weekend.         

``We're making a lot, but we're spending more than we're making,'' Cashman said. He declined to say how much the team is losing.

One possibility is that it's not true. Could it be that the comments are slightly self-serving rather than an open confession?

His comments come a week after the team broke ground for a $1.2 billion stadium project next to their current home in the Bronx that is funded mainly through municipal bonds. It's scheduled to open in 2009.

And now for a reality check:

The Yankees this year became Major League Baseball's first team worth more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine's annual valuation published in April. The team had a baseball- best $277 million in revenue, Forbes said.

So I guess that losing money thing, even if true is probably not a long-term problem. It's unusual for a money-losing asset to be worth ONE BILLION DOLLARS.

This assessment also conflicts with Cashman's assessment of the motives of his boss, George Steinbrenner, altruist:

Cashman said owner George Steinbrenner's desire to give fans a winning team led to New York's acquiring high-priced players including Alex Rodriguez, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Johnny Damon and, in July, Bobby Abreu.

More on the new stadium:

Cashman said the new stadium, which will triple the number of luxury suites to 60, is ``vital'' to helping the team return to profitability.         

The Yankees issued about $967 million of municipal bonds through the New York City Industrial Development Agency to help finance the stadium. The bonds are to be repaid with money from ticket and luxury box sales at the new stadium.         

``The team needs to be a viable enterprise,'' said Moody's analyst Thomas Paolicelli. ``There's only so much time where they can run a deficit before it would start impacting their obligations.''         

Paolicelli said Moody's will monitor the situation. He said bondholders are protected because the Yankees would risk foreclosure on the stadium if they didn't repay the debt. Also, he said, the team estimates that revenue from ticket sales and luxury boxes should be four times as much as the annual debt payments due bondholders.         

``We think the incentive to pay the bonds is going to be very strong,'' Paolicelli said.         

Unless they're losing money. Then they won't be able to pay. Then all the Mayor will have to do is threaten to foreclose. That will be very popular among all those Red Sox fans living in the Bronx. But the natives would probably get very restless.

In addition to the tax-exempt bonds, the taxpayers are chipping in a modest $200 million. (HT: Volokh Conspiracy.) Taxpayers must be comforted to know they're helping a worthy cause —a struggling small business like the Yankees.

For the record, the Yankees may be worth a billion bucks, but they have not won a World Series title in this millennium.

Sanderson on Soccer

Allen Sanderson finds fault with the current state of soccer. Along the way, he tries to explain some of the peculiarities of the game and how it's run using some economics.

One more reason to root for the Red Sox

Mike Lowell has lived long enough in the tolerant culture of the United States so that he's a little uneasy about saying so, but he's rooting for Castro to die. (HT: Zev Fredman)

Waiting for Snow in Havana is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read. It's a memoir about growing up in Havana in the early days of Castro's rule. It's a good week to read it.

Thugs and the NBA

I did not see any of the basketball games last night, but I heard that the Spurs rallied from something like a 17 point deficit and then lost in overtime to the Mavs.

The local sports radio station, WTEM, 980 had an interesting discussion between the two hosts, Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin. Czaban asked Pollin why a big lead in the NBA often gets turned around into a nail-biter. Pollin gave the standard answers that the shot clock allows more possessions, three-pointers let a team score quickly, a team gets complacent when it's ahead and a team gets desperate when it's down.

Czaban's claim was that the refs make sure that the team that's behind gets the benefit of the doubt when there's a close call. He then proceeded to document all the bad calls that went against Dallas and in favor of San Antonio. He emphasized that it wasn't a conspiracy on the part of the league to rig games. It was simply that referees who made the calls in favor of the team that's behind get chosen to referee in the future. He was also clear to emphasize that nail-biters don't happen every night--just because the referees try to keep the game close doesn't mean they can. This latter claim removes most of the empirical content from the hypothesis but not all of it. A careful study of videotape would be able to tell you whether referees are consistent throughout the game independent of the score.

What I like about the hypothesis is that it mirrors my hypothesis of how a thugocracy such as Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union is sustained. There's no such thing as an absolute dictator. Hitler didn't "run" Nazi Germany. The span of control was too great. So how do you keep people in line? You reward people who brutalize others. You don't need a memo telling people to brutalize others. You set up the carrots and sticks so that there's an incentive to be cruel.

So the NBA is like Nazi Germany. OK, not really. But the point is that subtle forms of incentives can steer behavior without explicit orders. Czaban isn't saying that the NBA is like professional wrestling because the whole thing is choreographed. It doesn't have to be choreographed.

One response to Czaban's claim is so what. It's entertainment. We like close games. So what's the big deal?

I have a different response. Fouls in basketball are essentially arbitrary and subjective. That inherently reduces the appeal of the game. But rather than try and improve the refs through some objective standard or monitor them with something akin to an electronic strike zone, why not simply get rid of them?

Get rid of the refs and let the players make the calls.

Would a game without referees degenerate into violence?

The experiment is run every day on the playgrounds and gyms of America. Fouls are self-monitored. The players call the fouls. If you call your opponent for a cheap foul, you get a reputation for being a baby. If you foul constantly, you get a reputation for being a thug. These two reputational forces keep violence in check. Would they work in the NBA where so much money is at stake?

I'm not sure. Maybe not. But some level of fouling would emerge from self-enforced games that would probably be different from what the NBA is like now. The game might be more physical. It might be less physical.

One problem with my idea is that you'd presume that the league has an incentive to create the level of fouling that is consistent with maximizing fan interest. And because fans like close games, the current system is optimal. Maybe. But there's no residual claimant for league profits. Maybe the Commissioner is rewarded implicitly when the game is popular and punished when it is not, so he has the right incentives to choose the right level of fouling.

There's also the problem that in a close game in a playoff final, the reputational incentives might be totally overwhelmed by the amount of money at stake.

So here's another idea. Let the coaches call the fouls. Give them ten fouls per half. It would speed up the game. And to keep coaches from calling non-fouls, fouls, let the refs have the ability to override the calls via video. What would emerge? I have no idea. I'd presume it would be a very different game and one that isn't as interesting to watch as the current game of NBA basketball. But it makes for an interesting thought-experiment about how norms emerge.

The Unseen Aspects of Fielding

One of the reasons I enjoyed Moneyball so much was the aspect of the seen and the unseen in baseball. Billy Beane leans heavily on statistics and notes the importance of the unseen or hard to see or hard to perceive the importance of factors like walks or doubles or how many pitches a batter takes. Baseball scouts overemphasize dramatic factors they can see that are tangible--home runs, fielding slickness, speed of a pitcher's fastball and overall athleticism.

This article in the Washington Post looks at a new book by John Dewan on fielding, a very difficult skill to quantify but where analysts have been making progress.

Are such skills measurable? Author John Dewan has come closer than anyone else to quantifying defense in his book "The Fielding Bible," but some skeptics suggest Dewan -- with an assist from noted stats guru Bill James, Dewan's business partner and friend -- has just tried to do something that can't be done...

Dewan's company, Baseball Info Solutions, employs "video scouts" who review every major league game, charting every batted ball and recording its direction, location, speed, type (line drive, fly ball, etc.) and result. Given any combination of those factors, a computer can spit out how frequently such a play is made by the average major leaguer at that position...

Some of the results are not surprising. Alfonso Soriano, for example, achieved a rating of minus-40 over the previous three years as a second baseman -- meaning he made 40 fewer plays than the average second baseman -- which ranked next-to-last behind only Bret Boone.

Derek Jeter, on the other hand, last season's American League Gold Glove winning shortstop, does not fare so well:

James, for instance, spends 4 1/2 pages near the front of the book explaining why Houston's Adam Everett is a far superior shortstop to Derek Jeter. In fact, Jeter, according to James, was "probably the least effective defensive player in the major leagues, at any position" over the last three years.

But what is seen is easier to accept than what is unseen:

"Some people think you can [quantify defense]. I don't really buy that myself," Dombrowski said. "I've looked at some of those new formulas. I'm not sure I would believe everything I've seen there. It's one of those things where, if you study [the players] yourself, you can have a better feel for those things than any numbers can tell you."

Stadiums, Broken Windows and more

In this Econtalk podcast with Skip Sauer of Clemson University, we talk about stadiums, the economics of sports leagues and the economics of college sports. Again, comments much appreciated. This earlier post is based on our discussion. You can subscribe to EconTalk by going to iTunes, searching for "EconTalk" and subscribing there. Feel free to use the comments section of this post for any reaction to the ideas in the podcast.

Socialism in Sports

(This post was inspired by a conversation with Skip Sauer of Clemson that should be posted as a podcast here some time next week.)

Baseball season is under way and I heard a radio talk show host say this morning that Pittsburgh has no chance to win the World Series this year or in the foreseeable future. He's probably right for two reasons. One possible answer is that the Pittsburgh's franchise is poorly run. But even if it were run brilliantly, the Pirates would have to overcome the disadvantage of being in a small market relative to the Astros, the Dodgers, the Mets or the Cardinals—teams that have bigger fan bases meaning more tickets and more (sometimes much much more) television revenue. There is not a perfect correlation between a team's payroll and its winning percentage but small payroll teams are on average less successful than high payroll teams.

Baseball does have some revenue sharing but it is small compared to football. So baseball teams from larger cities have an advantage over teams from smaller cities. What is the argument for leveling that playing field? After all, the same logic doesn't apply to say, manufacturing or financial services. We don't argue that because New York has a better financial services industry than Kansas City that Kansas City's financial services industry should get a subsidy from New York in order to level the playing field.

The difference is that sports is a zero sum game. There has to be a winner and a loser in every game. If the Yankees defeat the Royals and every team 11-0 every single game, there's no pleasure produced. Increasing that edge to 23-0 actuall produces less value. We only watch the Harlem Globetrotters because they make us laugh.

In sports, unlike manufacturing or ordinary industries, there's an inherent value in competitive balance to produce excitement and drama. So there's a case to be made for giving Kansas City some of the New York's revenue stream. One reason is that New York's revenue stream depends on the rest of the league—it can't just go out and play games without opponents. The second reason is that without competitive balance, the product does not produce enjoyment for the fans. Though Yankee fans certainly enjoy their 26 World Series championships, if they literally won every year or close to it, even Yankee fans would probably tire of winning.

The competitive analogy doesn't carry over to financial services. There's no reason to subsidize Kansas City and penalize New York. That discourages excellence and rewards mediocrity. Unlike the sports example, there is no value to competition per se but rather in what that competition produces—first rate financial services. Unlike baseball, performing twice as well as your competition produces additional benefits in financial services. If a New York financial firm falters either by charging too high a price or providing a poor product, new firms can enter the financial services market in New York and elsewhere to benefit the consumer. It doesn't bother us at all that Lexus keeps dominating the luxury car industry or FedEx the overnight mail business.

When a New York firm "outplays" a Kansas City firm in providing investment advice or when a California firm outperforms a firm in Maryland in providing good computer software, the consumer benefits. And it's true when a Chinese clothing manufacturer outperforms one in  South Carolina. Leveling the playing field by putting on tariffs or by subsidizing poor performers makes us poorer, not richer. It punishes success and deters innovation. It leads to higher prices and benefits producers in South Carolina and punishes consumers.

That having been said, sports socialism, especially pure egalitarianism is not a cure-all. Even if the Yankees share their revenue equally with other teams, the beneficiaries of that subsidy may decide to simply pocket it rather than making their teams more competitive.  Revenue sharing does reward mediocrity and punish excellence and as the amount of sharing grows, the potential harm from that perverse incentive gets worse.

Just because the NFL shares its revenues equally doesn't mean that every team has an equal chance to win. Some NFL teams have no chance of winning the Super Bowl. Some teams have little chance because their coaches aren't very good. But some have little chance because their owners are content to live off of the other teams. This tension is always present in sports leagues. For the fan, you want the owner of your team to care about more than the money and to be willing to give up profits for a higher chance of winning. A successful sports league picks needs to pick its owners wisely.

The Flutie Factor

It is commonly believed that Doug Flutie's November 23, 1984 touchdown pass to Gerald Phelan against Miami capping an thrilling 47-45 victory as time expired was responsible for boosting applications to Boston College in subsequent years. I even stupidly told someone yesterday that my memory was that applications had doubled or tripled in the next year.

Turns out they only went up 16% in 1984 and 12% the next year. This article from a Boston College magazine does a nice job chronicling the facts and how I wasn't the first to misremember them or misrepresent them. It also questions the existence of any bump at all:

So was the Flutie factor real? The answer is that Doug Flutie increased               applications to Boston College, but not nearly as much as the public and the media believe or as academic planners at some institutions seem to hope in justifying the millions of dollars they invest in football.
 
Applications to BC did surge 16 percent in 1984 (from 12,414 to 14,398), and then another 12 percent (to 16,163) in 1985. But these jumps were not anomalous for BC, which in the previous decade had embarked on a program to build national enrollment using market research, a network of alumni volunteers, strategically allocated financial aid, and improvements to residence halls and academic            facilities, says John Maguire '61, Ph.D.'66. The chairman of the board of Maguire Associates, a well-known enrollment management consulting firm, Maguire headed admissions at BC from 1971 to 1983. "Doug Flutie cemented things, but the J. Donald Monan factor and the Frank Campanella factor are the real story," he said, referring to BC's former president and executive vice president.
 
Michael Malec, a BC sports soci