NFL Moves to Referee Labor Deal

The NFL and the referee's are close to reaching an agreement.

Payroll Caps and Competitive Balance

Dave Berri's excellent article on payroll caps and competitive balance.

Steve Young and Economics

Steve Young stated that the NFL has "inelastic" demand.  How right he is, as we just saw in the paper on Inelastic Ticket Pricing in the NFL.

Here is the video:

2012 NCAA FBS Week 4

Florida State remains the top ranked team, with Alabama and Texas Tech at #2 and #3 respectively.

Rank	Team
1	Florida State
2	Alabama
3	Texas Tech
4	LSU
5	Georgia
6	South Carolina
7	Oregon
8	Arizona State
9	TCU
10	Kansas State
11	Mississippi State
12	Nebraska
13	West Virginia
14	Ohio State
15	Georgia Tech
16	Texas A&M
17	Oklahoma State
18	Notre Dame
19	Ohio
20	UCLA
21	Florida
22	Texas
23	Purdue
24	Fresno State
25	North Carolina

2012 NCAA FBS Top 25 for Week #3
2012 NCAA FBS Top 25 for Week #2

Vince Young

Not the normal post this morning.  I just read that Vince Young is declaring bankruptcy after earning $26 million over six years, and now there are some details of excessive spending.  As someone who has spent my life teaching young adults, this makes me sad for Mr. Young.

Opportunity Cost and the NHL Lockout

Yahoo Sports has a nice article on the opportunity cost of the current NHL lockout.

NCAA FBS Model Rankings in Iowa Now

I made the Iowa Now newsletter.

2012 NCAA FBS Top 25 for Week 3

Here is the ranking of the top 25 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams as of the end of week #3 (September 15, 2012).

Rank	Team
1	Florida State
2	Texas Tech
3	Oklahoma State
4	Alabama
5	LSU
6	Kansas State
7	Georgia Tech
8	Texas
9	Fresno State
10	West Virginia
11	Mississippi State
12	TCU
13	Arizona
14	South Carolina
15	Arizona State
16	Oregon
17	Georgia
18	Iowa State
19	UCLA
20	Notre Dame
21	Clemson
22	Stanford
23	Oklahoma
24	Baylor
25	Ohio State

2012 NCAA FBS Top 25 for Week #2

NHL and Competitive Balance

With the National Hockey League (NHL) a little over 24 hours from locking out their employees for the next season, and given that the NHL commissioner has stated that "[w]e've had seven years of incredible competitive balance", I thought that I would look at this statement.  Since the cancelled 2004-05 NHL season, here is the Noll-Scully measure of competitive balance using the binomial and trinomial distribution for both a sample and the population.

Binomial Distribution
Season	Sample		Population
2005-06	1.637		1.610
2006-07	1.600		1.573
2007-08	1.037		1.020
2008-09	1.369		1.346
2009-10	1.274		1.253
2010-11	1.308		1.286
2011-12	1.154		1.135
Trinomial Distribution
Season	Sample		Population
2005-06	1.993		1.959
2006-07	1.947		1.915
2007-08	1.258		1.237
2008-09	1.667		1.639
2009-10	1.562		1.536
2010-11	1.601		1.574
2011-12	1.415		1.391

Recently the NHL has been more competitive, thus supporting the NHL commissioner's statement.

NCAA Automatic Qualifier Conclusions

At the end of last month I blogged about the NCAA's criteria for a 7th automatic qualifying conference.  Using the NCAA's criteria (which I state here), I then calculated each conference rank for those three criteria.  For a conference to automatically qualify for a BCS bowl game, they would have to finish in the top 6 of the first two criteria and be within 50% of the top conference for the third criteria.  Here are the blogs about criteria #1 (with the final conference ranking), criteria #2 (with the final conference ranking) and criteria #3 (with the final conference ranking and values).

Let's see how the Mountain West Conference fared:  For the first criteria the Mountain West finished #4, but finished #7 for the second criteria and finished above 50% of the first conference (SEC) for the third criteria.  So, the Mountain West finished one spot short to become an automatic qualifier.

The NCAA also allowed a conference to petition an exception to the Presidential Oversight Committee if a conference finished in the top 7 in the first two criteria and the top 5 in the other of the first two criteria (which the Mountain West Conference achieved) and was within 33.3% of the SEC in the third criteria, which the Mountain West Conference achieved.  The Mountain West Conference petitioned for an exemption to the Presidential Oversight Committee and was refused.

But here's the rub:  while the Mountain West Conference does not meet the criteria for a seventh automatic qualifying conference, NEITHER does the ACC or the Big East which both are automatic qualifiers.

For the Big East conference, according to my calculations, they do not meet criteria #1 or #3, nor do they meet the criteria for the exemption that the Mountain West Conference DOES meet!

For the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), they fail to meet criteria #3, but do meet the exemption criteria.

So the ACC and Big East remain BCS automatic qualifiers, but are no better (ACC) or worse (Big East) than the Mountain West Conference.

2012 NCAA FBS Top 25 for Week 2

As I have done before, I will be ranking the top 25 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision teams for each week during the NCAA season.  Now that I have the data and each of the 124 football bowl subdivision teams have played at least one game, I can now run the complex invasion NCAA FBS production model to rank the teams.

Here is the top 25 ranking ending Sept. 8th 2012.

Rank Team 1 Florida State 2 Texas Tech 3 Mississippi State 4 Arizona State 5 Kansas State 6 Tennessee 7 Oklahoma 8 TCU 9 Alabama 10 Oklahoma State 11 USC 12 LSU 13 Ohio 14 BYU 15 South Florida 16 UCLA 17 Louisville 18 Georgia Tech 19 Ohio State 20 Minnesota 21 Mississippi 22 Notre Dame 23 North Carolina 24 Baylor 25 Utah State

NCAA Athletics and Academia

Recent article in the Iowa City Press Citizen on the relationship between athletic (football) success and academic performance variables.  Note that I am skeptical of the impact that athletics has on financial success.