Coyote Blog

So where do government bureaucrats go to learn how to push the frontiers of mindless rules enforcement?   Well, there are certain enclaves of the private sector who are pretty good at strict enforcement of silly rules -- The RIAA comes to mind.  But where do leading brain-dead bureaucracies, like say, school boards, learn to push the frontiers of pettiness?  Perhaps the NCAA can help out:

Just hours after Oklahoma football recruit Herman Mitchell was shot to
death Friday in Houston, Adam Fineberg started raising money for
Mitchell's family.

But after raising $4,500, enough to cover almost half the cost of
Mitchell's funeral, Fineberg stopped. An OU compliance officer told him
his actions would constitute an NCAA rules violation against the
Sooners.

Now, Mitchell's mother likely will never receive that money.

That money is considered illegal financial assistance under NCAA
rules because Mitchell's brother is a sophomore fullback at Westfield
High School in Spring, Texas, and because Fineberg is an OU fan who
attends Sooner football games and solicited donations through an OU fan
Web site. [. . .]

OU spokesman Kenny Mossman said the an official with the
university's compliance office contacted Fineberg on Monday asking to
him halt his fundraising efforts until the OU received a rules
interpretation from the NCAA. That interpretation came Tuesday.

"This is not a permissible expense for OU or someone who could be
construed as an OU supporter," said Mossman, an associate athletic
director for communications. "We're not trying to be the bad guys, but
we have to play by their rules."

Because it's still a recruiting violation, even if the recruit is dead.  The NCAA said the college could apply for a waiver.  They shouldn't even have to -- the NCAA's reaction should have been to issue a waiver without even being asked.  This should have taken a conference call among the key decision-makers about 8 seconds to decide.

Update:  I may have been wrong by putting the NCAA over school boards, as a Colorado Springs school board has banned playing tag.  So I guess smear the queer is out (we actually called it Kill the Man with the Ball, but I am told that Smear the Queer is the more common and even less politically correct name).

A while back, I wondered if the highest paid public employee of every state was a university men's football or basketball coach.  Well, its not exactly answering the same question, but via the Sports Economist comes this article that head coaches beat the governors 49-1 in the salary sweepstakes.  Only the Alaska governor makes more money than the state university head coaches (probably because there is no college football in Alaska).  Governors probably have more job security, though.

Unlike my question, the author considers coaches at any college, public or private.  For example, my readers found that NY is probably an exception -- there are public employees paid higher than public university coaches.  This article comes to the opposite conclusion, but only because they use Syracuse University, which is a private institution.

The most important college football poll of the year is out, and the top five are as follows  (rank, team, #1 votes record so far, total points):

The rest of the list is here.

Many of you might notice that all of these teams have a record of 0-0.  So you might ask, "Coyote, are you crazy, why did you call this the most important poll of the year?"  Well, since I answered that last year, I will go back a year ago and quote myself:

In theory, voters in the college football polls each week come up
with their current ranking of teams, which in theory could be very
different from how they ranked things the previous week.  In practice,
however, voters start with their rankings of the previous week and then
make adjustments up and down for individual teams based on that week's
game results....

In effect, the college football rankings are a bit like a tennis ladder. Each
week, losers drop down 3-8 spots and all the winners and no-plays move up to
fill in the vacated spots. Sometimes a team will leapfrog another, but that is
rare and it is extremely rare to leapfrog more than 1 or 2 spots. In this sense, the
initial football poll is the most critical, since only those in the top 10-15
have any chance of moving up the ladder to #1.

In
effect, the pre-season poll is the baseline off which all future polls
start.  I haven't done the research, but you could probably refine my
statement in the previous paragraph to a set of rules such as:

• A three-loss team can never win the championship
• A two-loss team can win but only if they start in the top 5 of the pre-season poll
• A one-loss team can win but only if they start in the top 15
• An undefeated team can win even if they were left out of the
  initial top 25, but only if they play in a major conference.  A minor
  conference team, even undefeated, will not ever end up #1 unless they
  started the season in the top 25.

Again, the numbers in these rules may not be exactly right, but I
think they are directionally correct.  This is what I call my theory of
College Football Calvinism (the religion, not the cartoon character)
since one's ultimate fate is in large part pre-ordained by the polls
even before the season is born.  So, if your alma mater has any shot at
the title, you should hope your AD is out there in the summer lobbying
the writers like hell to up their pre-season poll standings. Every spot
you gain in the pre-season poll is one you don't have to win on the
playing field.

Phil Miller observes that the new Hawkeye football coach is now the highest-paid government employee in Iowa.  This is wildly unsurprising.  In fact, I renew my question that we never got a final answer on:  Is there any state in which a college athletics coach is NOT the highest paid public employee in the state?

Update:  Tim, who has a blog at Movementarian.com writes with lots more thoughts:

Being from Texas I tried to find some numbers on your question:

- David Lopez, chief executive of the Harris County Hospital
District, has agreed to a three-year deal that could pay him $500,000
annually and would make him the highest-paid county employee.    (
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4986829.html)

 

- Already, the retirement system's chief investment officer, Britt
Harris, is the highest-paid state employee (excluding higher-education
officials and athletic coaches, whose pay isn't tracked by the
comptroller's office). Harris earns a base salary of $480,000 and is
eligible for a maximum bonus of $360,000.  (
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/finance/entries/2007/06/15/bonus_babies_part_i_1.html
)

Other State's

Nevada: Public employees who repair Nevada's local streets and
highways, operate its city and county jails and fill nonteaching jobs
in its school districts are the best paid in the country when compared
with their counterparts in the other 49 states and the District of
Columbia, according to U.S. Census figures for 2001.  (http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/May-18-Sun-2003/news/21349243.html)

 

New York: Alain Kaloyeros, vice president and chief administrative
officer at the College of Nanoscale science and Engineering and an
expert in the field of nanotechnology, became the highest paid employee
after the State University of New York (SUNY) chancellor approved a
$142,000 per year raise, bringing his annual salary to $666,995, the
Associated Press reports. (
http://compensation.blr.com/display.cfm/id/155584)

However, based on football coaches in Texas alone (most of whom
make more than $1 mil), none of these other employees come close (just
as you predicted).  Even college basketball coaches are making alot of
money now.  In fact, before A&M's Gillespie bolted to Kentucky, he
was offered $1.75 million a year, up from $500k: (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=2832406) -- his replacement, Mark Turgeon, signed a deal worth $1.2 million/year.

 

Hell, even highschool football coaches make more than most other public employees:
http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:LIgABghniwwJ:www.statesman.com/sports/content/sports/stories/highschool/08/27salary.html+In+dollars,+coaches+beat+teachers&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

 

Note: this is one of the better articles covering this issue: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2006-11-16-coaches-salaries-cover_x.htm

 

Regarding the Nevada example above, UN basketball coach is raking in more dough than any of those employees as well: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=2912916

 

And for the record, I think the coaches that get a cut of ticket
revenues are in a conflict of interest, due to the fact that more than
90% of Div I schools fund athletics departments through student fees (
http://www.mises.org/story/2233#fn6)
and their sport typically get a large amount of promotion through
by the institution.  Then again, the entire collegiate enterprise is
backwards to begin with...

As most people know, the NFL doesn't want you to use the word "Superbowl" when hosting a party, sale, event, etc, and they aggressively enforce their trademark on this term.  In response, since all the country does in fact have parties, sales, events, etc. associated with the Superbowl, folks have adopted the euphemism 'the big game" in their communications. 

I observed that this not only pointed out some of the silliness in our intellectual property laws, but also was counter-productive for the NFL -- shouldn't they want people talking about and holding events for the Superbowl?  I suggested a simple licensing program that would raise a little money and probably work better for everyone:

The NFL needs to offer a one time use license each year for a bar or
other establishment to hold a Superbowl party and actually use
Superbowl in the promotion.  The license would of course be
non-exclusive, and would carry a myriad of restrictions on how you use
the name, etc.   The license could be purchased for a price that would
be cheap for a business, maybe $200, and could be purchased right over
the web.  It would actually be easier, I think, to go after violators
because the NFL could point to the existence of a legal licensing
program the violator could easily have participated in.  I would think
they could easily bring in a couple of million dollars, not to mention
saving them enforcement money and PR headaches.

The NFL has decided to go in a different direction.  It is trying to trademark the term "the big game" so that term can't be used either (HT Overlawyered).  I particularly liked this from the application:

Disclaimer NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE "GAME" APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN

Jeez, why not?  Who at the NFL is sleeping on the job here?

Well, that's what I get as a libertarian for trying to work within the system to make things incrementally better rather than going on one of my usual idealistic rants.  So I officially withdraw my previous suggestion in favor of a new one:  Trademarks should, at most, only give one the protection from someone else labeling a similar product with the trademarked name.  By trademarking Jif, P&G gets protection from another company selling peanut butter under the same name in the US.  However, any other use of Jif in communication should be entirely legal.  If I communicate to people that I am having Jif party, that communication is protected under the first amendment and P&G can't shut down my party.  If I want to put out a poster and sell it with Jif peanut butter labels and how they have changed over the past 100 years, I should have the right to do so.   Ditto if I want to print bumper stickers that say "Jif sucks."

Similarly, the NFL can be legally protected from having another group host a football game (and if I am in a generous mood, maybe any type of sporting event) and calling it the Superbowl.  And that is it.  They should not be granted an exclusive government monopoly to use the word Superbowl, or more ludicrously, "the big game":

posters, calendars, trading cards, series
of non-fiction books relating to football; magazines relating to
football, newsletters relating to football,notepads, stickers, bumper
stickers, paper pennants; greeting cards; printed tickets to sports
games and events; pens and pencils, note paper, wrapping paper, paper
table cloths, paper napkins, printed paper party invitations, paper
gift cards; paper party decorations, collectible cards; collectible
card and memorabilia holders, souvenir programs for sports events,...toys and sporting goods, namely, plush toys, stuffed toy
animals, play figures, golf balls, footballs, sport balls, toy banks,
playing cards, Christmas tree ornaments...Men's, women's and children's apparel, namely T-shirts, fleece tops, caps, headwear

And don't even get me started on Pat Riley's "Threepeat."

I'm not sure this one even needs comment, via Tom Kirkendall

A volunteer waitress and a widowed great-grandmother who tends bar at
the Lake Elsinore Elks Lodge are due in court later this month after
pleading not guilty to misdemeanor charges of operating an illegal
gambling operation.

Margaret Hamblin, 73, and 39-year-old Cari Gardner, who donates her
time as a waitress at the lodge, face up to one year in jail and a
$5,000 fine for allegedly running a $50 football pool [ed: yes, fifty whole dollars] at the facility,
the Press-Enterprise reported.

The charges stem from a Nov. 20 investigation by state Department of
Alcoholic Beverage Control agents into an anonymous tip that lodge
members bet on NFL games.

Behind the bar, the armed agents found an envelope with $5 from each
of the 10 members taking part in the pool. The person who came closest
to guessing the combined score of the Jacksonville Jaguars and the New
York Giants was to pocket the contents, according to the
Press-Enterprise.

"It was just regular 'Monday Night Football,' " said Hamblin, who
has tended bar for 40 years, six of them at the lodge. "We were sitting
at the bar, and the gang wanted to do something," she said, according
to the newspaper.

Timothy Clark, who heads the department's Riverside district, which
issued the citations, said football pools "are a violation of the law,
and we will take whatever we feel is appropriate action to ensure
compliance by our licensees," the newspaper reported.

I am not sure I find Nick Saban's $32 million contract with Alabama that surprising.  After all, Alabama considers itself a top-10 program but a series of rejections have made the job tainted goods.  When prestige won't sell, money is always the fall back.   And Saban has learned what most other college coaches have learned -- the NFL is a LOT of freaking work and stress compared to college.

My question is a different one.  My guess is that this makes Saban the highest paid state government employee in Alabama.  Is there any state where a college men's football or basketball coach is not the highest paid state official?

I am done with the Cardinals until they get an offensive line. I have written many times about the sad, failing strategy of drafting high-profile position players (particularly wide receivers) but paying no attention to the offensive line.  The Cardinals have one of the best receiving corps in the nation, have what looks to be a great young quarterback, has a top-notch running back, but did NOTHING over the winter to shore up what last year was a crappy O-line.  This is despite being $10 million under the cap!

And you saw it last night.  Commentators have criticized the coaches for getting too conservative in the second half of last night's debacle, and certainly that is true.  But a good team with a back like Edgerin James should be able to close out a game in the fourth quarter by pounding the ball on the ground.  And the Cardinals could not, with James averaging less than 1 yard per carry after the opening drive in the first quarter.

I give up.  I am tired of getting suckered onto the bandwagon.  Until the Bidwells crack open the wallet and focus some cap money on the O-line, I am back to rooting for the Broncos.

Update:  Greg Easterbrook piles on:

When my two football-crazed boys got up early this morning I said,
"Guys, Arizona was ahead by 20 and had the ball on the last play of the
third quarter." Immediately both said, "And the Cardinals lost." Not
only did Arizona blow a late 20-point lead at home in front of a
national television audience; the Bears committed six turnovers and the Cards still managed to lose. Arizona held Chicago to nine first downs and was plus-four
in turnovers, yet managed to lose. In the closing seconds, Arizona had
last year's Pro Bowl kicker lined up for a 41-yarder to win, and
trigger what would surely have been wild civic celebration, and still
lost. What's a stronger expression than "pitiful"? We must now twist an
old line and proclaim: Whom the football gods would destroy, they first
make Arizona Cardinals.

For lack of a better term, I call myself a libertarian with a small-l.  I do not, despite this term, feel much allegiance to the formal Libertarian Party.  I tend to like their platforms more than those of the major parties, but many of their candidates seem unserious to me.

Today I got my first press release from the local LP candidate for Governor.  And what is it about?  The LP candidate jumps into the fray on the Arizona 9/11 Memorial:

Libertarian nominee for Governor, Barry Hess weighs in on the only
thing Democrat Janet Napolitano and Republican Len Munsil can find to
disagree about - the great Arizona 9-11 memorial debate.

When asked for his input, Mr. Hess replied, "It doesn't surprise me
that this is all they can come up with to distinguish themselves as a
reason to vote for them.  The problem is that neither one of them ever
seems to posses the ability to go to the root of the issue.  The very
first thing they should have determined is, what is it?  Is it a
tribute to the innocent lives lost on 9-11, or is it a memorial of the
event?
                
If it is a tribute to the innocent
dead, then the politically-charged slogans are clearly misplaced and
should be removed.  If it is a monument memorializing a tragic event
that is surrounded by a multitude of dubious official explanations of
what actually happened when innocent lives were caught up in something
bigger than them and lost in a politically-induced inevitability, then
the outrage expressed in the slogans is well, and rightfully placed.
                
Why didn't the Republican or the Democrat first establish what it is
supposed to be?  Because they are both just using it as a soapbox, and
it's shameful they would each use it in an attempt to garner votes.
The public really should reflect on the fact that if these are the best
candidates the Republican & Democrat parties could come up with,
maybe neither is their best option for Governor."

When I read the first line, I thought Mr. Hess was going to rightly criticize the major party candidates for focusing on trivia.  But no, he jumps right in himself.  I'm not a big fan of how the memorial turned out, but while the memorial was officially sanctioned by the governor, it was at least all privately funded.  We seem to have many other issues in a state where the government is building the new Berlin Wall that I would think a good libertarian would be more concerned about.

Here would have been my response:

"While the major party candidates focus all their attention on the content of a single
piece of privately-funded sculpture in downtown Phoenix, Warren Meyer criticized both
candidates for their support of a government-funded half-billion dollar monument to
mediocre football and corporate welfare out in Glendale."

Postscript:  By the way, this government-funded facility is used for its core purpose just 11 days out of the year  (Fiesta Bowl, 2 pre-season games, 8 regular season games) which gives it an occupancy  of 3%.  Supporters will argue that it is used for other events (e.g. a home and garden show) but these events could be held at existing facilities costing 1/10 the amount of Glendale Stadium.  To somehow take credit for these other events is disingenuous, because their move to Glendale likely cannibalizes the revenue of some other government facility, like the convention center.  Most of the cost of the stadium -- visitor amenities, locker rooms, sliding roof, sliding grass floor, seats, etc -- are for football only.  More about why I hate the public funding of stadiums here.

Yes, that's what I said.  The pre-season college football rankings are absolutely the most important poll of the year, at least if you think your school has a chance to be #1 at the end of the year.  That can't be right, you say -- surely a poll taken before anyone has played a game is the least important. Here is my reasoning:

In theory, voters in the college football polls each week come up with their current ranking of teams, which in theory could be very different from how they ranked things the previous week.  In practice, however, voters start with their rankings of the previous week and then make adjustments up and down for individual teams based on that week's game results.  The result is as I described in the comment thread of this post at the Sports Economist:

In effect, the college football rankings are a bit like a tennis ladder. Each
week, losers drop down 3-8 spots and all the winners and no-plays move up to
fill in the vacated spots. Sometimes a team will leapfrog another, but that is
rare and it is extremely rare to leapfrog more than 1 or 2 spots. In this sense, the
initial football poll is the most critical, since only those in the top 10-15
have any chance of moving up the ladder to #1.

In effect, the pre-season poll is the baseline off which all future polls start.  I haven't done the research, but you could probably refine my statement in last sentence above to a set of rules such as:

• A three-loss team can never win the championship
• A two-loss team can win but only if they start in the top 5 of the pre-season poll
• A one-loss team can win but only if they start in the top 15
• An undefeated team can win even if they were left out of the initial top 25, but only if they play in a major conference.  A minor conference team, even undefeated, will not ever end up #1 unless they started the season in the top 25.

Again, the numbers in these rules may not be exactly right, but I think they are directionally correct.  This is what I call my theory of College Football Calvinism (the religion, not the cartoon character) since one's ultimate fate is in large part pre-ordained by the polls even before the season is born.  So, if your alma mater has any shot at the title, you should hope your AD is out there in the summer lobbying the writers like hell to up their pre-season poll standings. Every spot you gain in the pre-season poll is one you don't have to win on the playing field.

Well, yet another key international soccer match, this time the most important game of all, the World Cup Finals, was decided by penalty kicks.  Penalty kicks are the most absurd way to determine a championship that I can imagine.  They are barely one step removed from a coin toss in terms of their ability to really determine who the best team is.   Its like giving up on a baseball game in the 12th inning and settling it with a home run derby.

I understand that in regular matches and probably in pool play, logistics require that games not go on for hours and penalty kicks make sense.  But by the time you get to the quarterfinals, and certainly the finals, why can't they just play the freaking game until someone wins?  That's what they do in the Stanley Cup, and in US pro football -- each have ways of settling ties quickly for regular season games, but once crunch time comes, they play until there is a winner.  In Wimbledon, they settle sets with tie breakers but come the fifth set, they play until someone wins.  Its not like the stadium is booked for anything else the rest of the day.  And do they really think anyone in the stands is going to get tired and go home?  Pro hockey fans will tell you there is no more compelling time in their sport than overtime in a Stanley Cup Final.  How great would it have been to have just left the two teams on the field until one was a winner, even if that took two more hours?  I mean, they have waited four years for this moment, they can't put in a few more minutes on the field?

As an American non-soccer guy, I have really given this World Cup a chance.  I was in England for much of the tournament, so I not only watched but got to experience some of the excitement of the populous.  And I have, excluding the silly play-acting fake injury thing, mostly enjoyed the games.  But they lost me right at the end.  Settling their once-every-four-years world championships with ridiculous penalty kicks demonstrates to me that soccer types have no respect for their own game.  After just 30 minutes of overtime, they give up on their own game and have teams play a different game to determine a winner. So if they don't have respect for their own game, why should I have any?  Americans are never going to fall in love with a game that decides its championships with the moral equivalent of a coin flip.

Update:  First, though this post was applied to soccer, its not just a soccer rant.  I went on the same rant several years ago when the Olympic ice hockey gold was awarded with a shootout.

Second, I get it that the athletes are tired.  I'm not going to put my toe in the water on the "what sport requires the most athleticism" debate, except to say that soccer is right up there, with its 45 minutes of continuous play each half.  (But I will say that, having personally played rugby for years, rugby is right up there too -- one thing soccer aficionados don't acknowledge is how much physical contact and going down on the ground frequently -- for more than just a fake injury -- takes out of you above and beyond just continuous running.)

My point is that shoot-outs are a different game - they are not real soccer.  Yes they use the same equipment and have roughly the same goal (to get the ball in the net) but by that definition "horse" is real basketball.  Anyone up for settling an NBA finals after two overtimes with a game of horse?  The beauty of soccer is in the passing and the assists, in the clever footwork, in the wing trying to use his speed to turn the corner.  Where are those in a shootout?

If athletes are getting exhausted, it just increases the likelihood that someone will score and end the game, since it is as true in soccer as any other sport that fatigue hurts defense more than offense.  And this might stop teams that play a defensive game in overtime, who are clearly playing for the shootout.

And think of posterity.  No one is going to remember this World Cup final game except to say that Italy beat France on penalty kicks.  But what if the game went 3-1/2 hours in a grueling test of endurance before France finally punched it in, all the players too exhausted to celebrate.  People would talk about the match for years.  I'm not saying you play this way for every run of the mill international competition.  But wouldn't it be nice once every four years to actually decide the championship actually playing soccer, rather than horse?

Update #2: Per a couple of commenters, nothing in this post is meant to imply that sports that are more popular in the US are not without their flaws.  Silly set-piece fist fights in hockey and the unfairness of overtime rules in football (putting too much emphasis on winning the coin toss) come to mind immediately.

Not being much of a pro soccer fan, I have been surprised to find that the sport can be compelling, at least in stretches.  For example, the 30 minutes of overtime between Italy and Germany was quite exciting.

However, I think the sport should be ashamed at the state of affairs in its refereeing.  In any one game, you might see players rolling around on the ground faking injuries as many as 15 or 20 times.  It became a source of immense amusement for my son and I to see not only how much faking was going on, but how often the faking involved holding a body part that seemed unrelated to any contact  (e.g. holding their head as if they received a concussion when they were accidentally tripped).  If these were all real injuries, the field would look like Omaha beach by the end of the game.

Why do they do it?  Because the referees reward them for it, of course.  It was pretty clear that on many occasions acting and injury-faking turned accidental falls into penalties and minor penalties into yellow and red cards.  It's disgraceful.  I know refereeing is hard given the speed of today's athletes, but for god sakes soccer has got to be an order of magnitude easier to referee than say basketball or particularly American football. 

Even more, I wonder why fans tolerate the pretend injuries?  Can you imagine Pittsburgh Steelers fans fondly embracing a wide receiver that faked ankle injuries two or three times a game to try to get an interference call?

Most all the regulation goals in later games of the world cup have been
scored on penalty kicks.  It seems that the game has devolved into
lofting the ball into the box and then hoping to draw a penalty, sort
of like a hail Mary play at the end of a football game.  I would love
to see the game opened up a bit to allow more scoring of real goals in
regulation -- how about eliminating the offsides penalty?

Anyone who is still trying valiantly to take our Congress seriously can stop now:

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, chairman of the
Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, will conduct a
hearing next week about the BCS....

When asked to explain the timing of the hearings, a spokesman for
Barton referred to BCS history. Before this season, four of the seven
BCS years have resulted in championship game controversy.

"The BCS system was created to identify a broadly accepted national
champion, but 57 percent of the time it has failed to do so," Barton
said in the news release. "Most coaches who lose 57 percent of their
games would also lose their jobs. Yet that's what we settle for in
determining a champion today."

Wow, it must be the 30th Amendment:  Congress shall make no law abridging the right of Division 1 college football fans to have a clear national champion.  I wonder if this is just a ploy to get free Rose Bowl tickets?

Everyone in Congress.  Go home.  Now.  Don't come back.

I enjoy many professional sports casually, attending an event or two every year, but the NFL is by far my favorite.  In the pre-season, there was a lot of hype that maybe the long-time hapless Cardinals would be decent this year.  I knew better, even from the pre-season.   Heck, my 8-year-old daughter knew better.

We went to see the last pre-season game against Denver.  In that game, the Arizona starters played for quite a while against the Denver 2nd team, and got beaten up.  Specifically, they could not run the ball and in turn their defense could not stop the run.  So it was no surprise to see them get blasted in their first regular season game against the Giants. 

The problem with the Cards is this:  They have spent the last several years drafting high-profile position players, including spending a jillion 1st round picks on receivers.  Great teams got that way because they invested in their lines - both O and D, even when such picks might be less popular with the fans on draft day.  The Cards have instead focused on drafting "names" who might help sell season tickets in the new stadium.  This neglect is very apparent today.  It doesn't matter how good your position players are if there are no holes for the backs and the QB is getting plowed to the turf on every play.  This is a 5-11 team that is fortunately playing in the NFL's worst division, so they may eek out 7 wins.  You heard it here first.

By the way, if you are an avid football fan, I recommend two sites to you.  The first is Football Outsiders, who have taken a Bill-James-like approach to football stats, rethinking metrics to provide a better insight into what teams really are good.  Make sure to check out their DVOA rankings - basically they compare every teams performance on every play against other teams in the same situation (e.g. 3rd and 8 on their own 45).  The other site is Greg Easterbrook's always entertaining Tuesday Morning Quarterback column, providing large doses of football clear thinking and haiku.

There were two interesting court decisions today that each can be summarized as "the press does not have rights or legal privileges beyond those granted to any ordinary citizens"

The first case is the DC Circuit's decision to allow subpoena's of reporters about their sources in the Valerie Plame affair.

Appellants counter that Justice Powell could not have meant what the United States argues, as this would have given reporters no more protection than other citizens. However, they never make it clear why they are convinced that Justice Powell must have intended to give reporters more protection than other citizens. The Constitution protects all citizens, and there is no reason to believe that Justice Powell intended to elevate the journalistic class above the rest.

Much more here at Beldar.  I can't resist one quote from him:

And on its own, the DC Circuit's lengthy decision
today is absolutely fascinating for hard-core law wonks, especially
ex-judicial clerks. Indeed, I feel the urge to write several thousand
words about it "” dry quotes from the written opinions, connected by an
over-extended football metaphor, leavened with dollops of snark.

LOL.

The second case is in Maryland, where the state court determined that two Baltimore Sun reporters do not have the guaranteed right to a level of access to government officials and information beyond that given to a private decision.  As a citizen of that state, I might want to punish my elected representative at the polls if I thought they were trying to stifle criticism by managing the press poll too much; however, I agree with the court that the paper is not owed any legal redress.

I am sure we will hear cries tomorrow from editors about growing threats to the first amendment.  Don't be confused: These decisions are about press privilege, not press freedom.  Neither you nor I can ignore a federal subpoena, and neither should a reporter.

If you want to worry about the first amendment, read this:

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing.

Eeek.

Football Outsiders has their week 16 football rankings up here.  Previously, I explained why I like Football Outsiders here.

The amazing thing to me is just how bad Atlanta looks in these rankings, at number 19.  In fact, much of the NFC playoff mix looks bad, with ATL, SEA, and GB sitting at 19,20,and 21.  On the flip side, Buffalo and 5 and Baltimore at 7 could be the best teams to miss the playoffs.  Buffalo in particular has really been playing lights out, but they still need some help this week to make the playoffs given their really bad start and the strength of the AFC.

Interestingly, Buffalo gets in if they win and the Colts beat the Broncos.  The Colts are likely to play one of these teams in the first round.  If I were the Colts, I would much much much rather face the Broncos in the first round than the surging Bills.  Bledsoe may be a playoff question mark, but Plummer is even more so.  Therefore, the Colts, despite what Dungee is saying lately, have zero incentive to win this weekend and every reason to take a dive.

Football Outsiders has their week 14 football rankings up here.  Previously, I explained why I like Football Outsiders here.

The top 4 or 5 teams stay the same, though NE moves to the top, where they belong.  The amount the Philly ranking depends on special teams is still a concern, but no other team in the NFC even cracks the top 10, so Philly's route to the Superbowl looks pretty greased.  Note that while Rothlesberger gets the press, its the Pittsburgh defense that is doing the heavy lifting, moving to #1 in the league, ahead of even Baltimore. 

The underachiever award definitely goes to KC, which is apparently doing well on a play by play basis but can't win games.  Conversely, the overachieving goes to Atlanta, which falls in the middle of the rankings but is 10-3.

This weekend, another Heisman Trophy will be awarded, nominally for the "most outstanding college football player".  This is a joke.  The Heisman is in fact the award for "best college football player at an offensive skill position, preferably running back or quarterback, who plays for a nationally ranked program and has gotten plenty of TV exposure".

In the nearly 70 year history of the award, only 1 defensive player (Charles Woodson) ever won the award, and I think Woodson won only because he was a three-way player and scored a couple of dramatic special teams and receiving touchdowns in the last couple of games of the season.  In fact, of the nearly 350 finalists (the top five vote getters each year) only 20 have ever been defensive players.  In the ESPN highlight era (ie the last decade) no defensive player other than Woodson has cracked the top five in any year.  This belies the "best college football player" facade, since, last I checked, defense was about half the football game, and in many cases the more important half.  Heck, more Princeton and Yale players have won the Heisman (3) than defensive players (1).  And don't even ask about Offensive linemen or tight ends.  Even wide receiver is a bit iffy, with only two wins, so really you need to be a quarterback or a running back.

Football Outsiders has their week 13 football rankings up here.  Previously, I explained why I like Football Outsiders here.

Arizona is almost there, in its traditional spot!  It is second from the bottom, but unfortunately San Francisco has the bottom spot nailed down pretty solidly.  I find the Outsiders rankings particularly useful when they diverge from a team's record.  One case in point is the Rams, or Les Mouflons as the Tuesday Morning Quarterback calls them.  Their 6-6 record seems to hide the fact that they are a pretty bad team.  This makes sense, as they have won a couple, like the game with Seattle, that they should have lost.

On the other ends of the scale, its still Philly-NE-IND-PITT at the top.  I like the NE and PIT stats the best, as they have both nice defense and nice offense.  Philly's #1 ranking still worries me - its defense is a bit soft and a lot of their ranking comes from special teams, which are notoriously fickle.  People have jumped off the NE bandwagon a bit, but I still think they are the team to beat.

I find that most experienced managers have become experts at identifying and gaming flaws in measurement systems. The in and outs of measurement systems have always interested me, both in business and in sports (how about that segue-way?)

Those of you who are baseball fans may be familiar with Bill James. Bill James came to the conclusion that baseball stats really didn't say very much about what went on in a game, and were misleading in evaluating individual performance. He and people like him have asked questions like "is RBI production really a fair measure of individual performance (since it depends on teammates getting on base)" and "why are walks left out of traditional hitting stats". My post is really on football, but if these baseball questions interest you, check out the book Moneyball.

Much like these baseball stat pioneers, there are a number of people trying to rethink football statistics. For example, is total yardage given up a good measure of defensive productivity? Won't a mediocre defense on a team with a great offense that grinds out 8 minute drives sometimes look better on this stat than a good defense on a team with an offense that is always 3 and out? A site called Football Outsiders is one example of the search for better football understanding. If you are numerically inclined, and are tired of the "its all about execution, about taking it one game at a time" football analysis, check these guys out.