Showing posts with label sports economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sports economics. Show all posts

Friday, February 25, 2022

What All The Pundits Are Getting Wrong About CFB Playoff Expansion

In the subculture that is major college football, big news broke earlier this month that the championship playoff at the sport's highest level, FBS, would not be expanding from the current 4-team format for the duration of the current contract.

from CBS Sports:

Many of us who follow the sport found this disappointing. In fact almost everyone weighing in on it including the people who decided the matter by voting against expansion expressed disappointment. So what's going on here?

Most pundits write it off as simply a group of people too petty and short-sighted to get past themselves and grasp the bigger picture. To be sure, that might actually be true. However, I think there may be something else at play. 

College football is in incredible flux. From the rise/revolt of the student athlete finally demanding and getting a fairer seat at the table to competitive pressures to realign into better and better deals, there is much uncertain about its future. 

I think it is fairly obvious that the current arrangement in college football is not sustainable. There are currently 130 teams in the division with four more planning to make the upgrade from the lower-division FCS. This is a league that ranges from Alabama to Kansas (winningest to losingest over the past 10 seasons). That is a big range.* The bottom of the league would typically be an extreme underdog to any opponent from the top of the league--perhaps on average a matchup between a top 20 team and a bottom 20 team would imply a +90% likelihood the favorite would prevail.

This is not a league with any sense of balance. Frankly, somebody has gotta go. Most of the members of the major conferences, the so-called Power Five, know this. As a group their teams are much better than the rest of the league, the so-called Group of Five. While some of the weakest teams are found in the Power Five (e.g., Kansas and Vanderbilt) and some of the strongest teams are found outside the Power Five (e.g., Central Florida, Boise State, and independent Notre Dame), these are exceptions. 

It is my contention that the major stumbling block to expansion of the CFP before 2026 is what kind of deal the Group of Five would get in the arrangement. If those conferences were granted slots in the playoff, they would hold a lot of bargaining power going forward. The teams within those conferences, especially the very good teams, would have much less incentive to move into a power conference. If nothing else, the buyout of those rights would grow astronomically. 

It has been at least rumored that the Power Five have offered to buy out the Group of Five from the CFP. This would line up with my hypothesis nicely. The elite teams and conferences see the writing on the wall. They know, I believe, that the highest division of college football should have perhaps 64 or so teams in it. 

They also know, I believe, that even if a field of ~130 teams continues, it very well might be one with a de facto two divisions (upper and lower). The lower teams would be there as sort of a relegation à la soccer. By no means in this arrangement should a lower-division team have anything but the slimmest of chances at a playoff berth. 

Any concession made today to a lower-tier team/conference, is very risky. As talent accumulates into the better teams/conferences, those entities have the luxury of wanting a bigger share of the spoils. Negotiations while the future of the league is still sorting itself out means deals can't come together--the lower-level teams/conferences want more than they can offer and the upper-level teams/conferences need more than they can get. 

I didn't see this clearly at first and expected an expansion to happen before the current contract's expiration in 2025. Now I understand it better if for no other reason than having to look hard to understand why a deal fell through. 







*If you don't agree that Kansas isn't a serious team (Texas Longhorns probably don't), then consider the other doormats over the past decade: UMass, New Mexico State, Connecticut. 

Sunday, January 23, 2022

Ranking College Football Programs - Discounted Win Percentage

[tl;dr - It is Ohio State, Alabama, and Oklahoma in the top 3 just about any way you cut it]

As the spring semester starts so too does the off season for college football. Inevitably this brings lots of prognostication for what is to come in the fall but also for a look back to assess the past--recent and long ago. With this are a million arguments about what are the greatest college football programs and who among the elite can claim Blue Blood status.

The website College Football News (CFN) says the best of them all is the Oklahoma Sooners. As much as I love that idea, I can see reasonable minds disagreeing. Undoubtedly any such lists will imply some hair-splitting considerations. What I really like about their approach is that it has a definitive methodology to it. It is not just some "experts" giving us their feel for the answers as if they could divine the truth free from bias. 

Of course all approaches will have bias. This would come in two varieties: assumption based and disposition based. One can create a formal algorithm (that is what I have done below) or one can derive a list from an informal algorithm weighing factors mysteriously within one's mind. While any method can be logically sound, generally speaking the less formal the process is, the more subject to bad reasoning or bad facts it will be. Assumption-based bias would be something like assigning too much weight to a certain factor. Disposition-based bias would be something like favoring a team for a reason not meaningful to the ranking itself.

Many attempts at this barstool debate are prone to bad math such as overcounting a metric since there will naturally be high correlation between commonly used measures (e.g., national championships and winning percentage). To prevent this, simpler is better if a simple approach can yield the desired effect. 

Back to CFN's approach, they use a very common and logical method, the inverse of the final AP Top 25 Poll each year to score teams. A first-place team would receive 25 points all the way through #25 receiving 1 point. Summing all the points by team creates the list in order. I do not disagree with their top 3 teams (OU, Alabama, and Ohio State), but the list can be criticized for its obvious shortcomings. For example, leaving out teams' scores when they finish just outside of the top 25 creates artificial distortion making it look like there is more separation within the list than actually exists. Of course there is no easy way to fix this. Additionally the AP poll is not itself without bias as some teams, especially those not typically perceived as being elite, may be systematically underrated. All of this makes this list, like so many others, subject to folly as one works down the list. Technically speaking our confidence in the outcome diminishes by an increasing degree from the top working down.

The CFN ranking is the "greatest programs of all time". As interesting as that is, it isn't necessarily what we commonly are thinking about when we seek to rank programs. Specifically, when we talk about the so-called "Blue Bloods", we are thinking of the best programs with emphasis to one degree or another on where they stand today. This opens up one additional criticism that this list and basically all lists like it suffer from: reverse-recency bias. Maybe we would term it "old-timer bias". This is the fact that these lists give equal weight to success in the distant past as they give to recent outcomes. And this is true whether they are derived from algorithms (assumption based) or expert opinion (disposition based). Of course many expert opinions can have the traditional recency bias problem (favoring the recent over the past), but often it is the traditional teams that get more love than they might deserve--I'm looking right at you Texas A&M and Michigan.

To get around this problem, I have created the model below. Borrowing from the foundational concepts of asset valuation where future cash flows are discounted back to present day (a dollar of earnings in ten years is worth less than a dollar today), I have created a model that gives more weight to recent performance than the same performance achieved in the past. 

Model

I believe the most straight-forward way to evaluate teams is the win-loss record. The only enhancement to this might be to include margin of victory*--a technique I have used and will update soon in an additional post. 

My model looks at each team's winning percentage by year and then discounts it by a factor for each year back it falls. So a win% in a given year would be worth less and less in the past the longer and longer ago it happened. Notice that I am using winning percentage so that basically there is no impact from the fact that teams play and have played a different number of games within a year and throughout the years--typically more games recently. 

I also have included a starting-year cutoff to stop counting results that are past a certain date, which is a changeable variable in the model (see below for the link). Even though a discount factor makes the past less and less valuable in assessing a total score, it might be that football changed so fundamentally we don't want any results before a certain date and the discount factor necessary to otherwise achieve this would be too big--it would make results fade away from importance too quickly.

For me the discount factor I settled on was 4% with a cutoff date of 1946. My reasoning was at a 4% discount rate a 100% win percentage season 18 years ago would be worth only about 50% today--the factor cuts it in half. 18 years is the typical age of an incoming college freshman football player--so there is some relevance, maybe, to the people playing the game.

My starting-year cutoff is 1946, which has historically been marked as a beginning point of college football. However, as I've said before, I am not sure how valid that is. One-platoon football was the rule in most of the 1950s and into the 1960s. Furthermore, racial integration into college football did not meaningfully arrive until the 1970s. 

These choices of discount factor and starting-year cutoff are both very arbitrary, but you see there is some logic to them. Importantly, the results do not seem to be sensitive to reasonable changes in either the discount rate or the starting-year cutoff date--the top three remain the same no matter what reasonable parameters are used.

One additional limitation this model has is that I did not look at all college football teams in creating it. Yet this is not the problem it may seem to be at least at the top end of the list (yes, this is of the same type of criticism I made of the CFN list above). Because I had to calculate from raw data the annual winning percentages of each team in the database, I limited it to the top 30 teams in winning percentage over the past 50 years (1972-2021). So, to be sure there are teams that with certain discount factors used (high ones) would find themselves otherwise in the list but are excluded. But this is quite limited to the very bottom of the list. Sorry Oklahoma State, your recent success would not get you very high in this ranking even if you had been good enough to make the list (OkState is 31st in win% over the 1972-2021 timespan for teams that were in D I-A (now FBS) football the entire time). Which brings up another team excluded, Boise State. They have had phenomenal winning teams since joining top-level college football in 1996. I made the decision to disallow them because of this limited time in the sample (the strength of their historic schedule might be another reason). 

Some Results

Using a discount factor of 4% and a starting year of 1946:


Using a discount factor of 4% and a starting year of 1972 (last 50 years):


Using a discount factor of 4% and no starting-year cutoff (all years included):


Using a discount factor of 0% 
and no starting-year cutoff (all years included):


Check out the model for yourself including changing the parameters as you see fit. Here are some of the results given a few parameter choices.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M-3q6zWtTAyCFDHEuU5z3eA6jIwRplxq/view?usp=sharing 


*MoV isn't completely stable over time, a potential criticism of that model, but since it has tended to increase in the past 50 years, I believe there is some natural recency premium built into that model. Regardless, it would be interesting to add into it a discounting factor, which I will do before publishing the updated results.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

What Does NIL Imply for Parity in College Football?

The evil empire known as the NCAA has now finally relaxed its rules on amateurism allowing college athletes to earn compensation off of their name, image, and likeness rights (henceforth, NIL). How sweet of them. It only took a rare 9-0 shutout loss at the Supreme Court to get them to change their ways. 

Cue the pearl clutching as the latest moral fear becomes a moral panic--God forbid someone in America would make money off of their talent.

Yes, times they are a changin', and for the better. There will be losers, though. Eventually, it is likely the ones losing advantage will be all of those who have been profiting off of players not being compensated. This list somewhat in order includes: coaches, administrators, athletes in all sports other than football and men's basketball (mixed bag here as there will be lots of NIL opportunities for many of them), fans, and the universities in general.

For this post I'd like to briefly discuss how this might affect competitive balance (aka, "parity") in college football and men's basketball. 

If by parity we mean anybody can beat anybody (i.e., "any given Sunday"), then the initial and perhaps enduring apparent result will be increased parity.*

If by parity we mean league continuity, then the apparent result will be decreased parity.

Let me explain. Allowing NIL compensation adds a dimension along which teams can compete. A classic analogy is when the CAB under the Carter administration ended price controls allowing airlines to compete on price. This was very good for consumers in the long run and very disruptive to airlines in the short run. 

In this same way NIL comp will add a competitive dimension to the competition for college athletes and thereby increase variance in those athletes' sports. An increase in variance means instability. That instability will have two features:
  1. It will give new and added opportunities for lesser, secondary teams to challenge incumbent blue bloods. Potentially Oklahoma State now has more opportunity to challenge Oklahoma in football.
  2. It will open up more risk of failure especially for lesser, secondary teams. This failure can be in the more obvious form of shutdown but also in the harder-to-perceive version of loss of status. Hypothetically the difference is Temple dropping football altogether or going down to a lower, true-amateur level versus Penn State falling from prominence. 
The first case will look like more parity. The second case will look like less to the causal observer. This is why I referred above to these being the "apparent result". I would guess that the second will come to dominate the narrative as many will long for the good old days when anybody could compete in college football and men's basketball. You know, back when Alabama always played Clemson for the national title . . .



*If you think complete parity is in any way desirable in sports, you don't understand sports in the least. Nobody gathers around to watch guys flip coins.




Friday, August 7, 2020

What To Root For

In late summer every football fan begins to dream about the season to come with aspirational hopes for one's team and general excitement for what autumn will bring. That is every normal late summer. 

But this is 2020. So, here we go. 

I am torn as to what I should want to see happen. On the one hand I do not think cancellation of the season is the prudent choice from a health perspective. I would rather see options kept alive as the developing situation continues to play out. And this is strengthened by two underlying convictions as controversial as they may be: the health risk is generally minimal and people should have the liberty to choose for themselves what risk they wish to face. 

Note that there is a wide gulf between being completely back to a regular football season and no football season whatsoever. Minimal fans with abundant spacing and many other procedures can be a prudent compromise. No fans initially with potentially many or full fan attendance later in the season is also a possibility (keep your options alive). 

The pandemic is not completely understood, but we know A LOT more about it today than 6 months ago. And we are a lot further along all the curves including toward herd immunity. In just about every action we take we are potential externalities for our fellow man. And do remember that those run in both flavors (positive and negative externalities) and to many varying degrees. Magnitude matters. 

Are we so certain that this disease is too misunderstood, too deadly or otherwise too harmful, too contagious, and simply too terrible for people to make their own choices about exposure? For many people the answer to that question is yes, which raises interesting questions about many other activities and diseases. I do not believe the evidence supports this point of view. If we cannot have football in any manner, then how different should the rest of our lives be? Trust me, I know how some are willing and eager to answer that question. 

My threshold for the use of force is much higher than that. Like Bryan Caplan, "I accept a strong presumption in favor of human liberty. You cannot rightfully shut businesses and order people to 'stay at home' out of an 'abundance of caution'. Instead, the burden is on the advocates of these policies to demonstrate that their benefits drastically exceed their costs..."

Who am I to say an elderly man living with terminal cancer should not come to a football game? I am referring to a specific, very devoted fan and personal friend. I believe he should have the freedom to make that choice. I am a strong believer in freedom, fair dealing, and justice. 

Deciding for others is an invitation for injustice. Unfair bargaining is a method of unfairly restricting the freedom of others. All of which brings me to the other hand . . . The players.

The general data for the typical college age-person shows very low health risk associated with COVID. While particular individual players very certainly have underlying conditions or other circumstances like close contact with at-risk people, most do not. For those that do, accommodation and excuse from the risk is very much the right thing to do. 

It is not the player's health risk per se that I believe gives rise to an "other hand" concern, but rather it is the general injustice of players not being compensated with the added burden of a health concern bringing this disparity into sharp relief. 

Most people when confronted with this idea ask the wrong question--"Why should we pay players?" The correct question is the opposite--"Why should we NOT pay players?" The default presumption in a free society is that people should be paid for their labor. If you want the services of another person, you should expect to do so by reaching a mutually agreeable arrangement.

"But the players have agreed to play, and they are paid. Haven't you of scholarships?" is the typical response. That response is as wrong as it is common. That "agreement" is made repeatedly in a very one-sided deal between the individual player on one side and a very powerful buyer of services on the other--college universities. These colleges act in concert under the rubric of a pure cartel organization--the NCAA. This is not a pejorative, emotional charge nor is it name calling. It is a very well established factual depiction. And the power and extent of the NCAA is supported explicitly and implicitly by government action at every level. This shouldn't be a surprise as cartels do not withstand the inevitable forces of competition and free markets without state support.

As a cartel the NCAA and its member institutions conduct themselves as a single buyer of college athlete services--the technical term for this is monopsony. This affords them considerable economic power and leverage, which they use to enforce an arrangement that is very good for themselves at the expense of the athletes. The reason why college football and basketball programs are limited to what they can provide athletes is because doing otherwise would unleash that terrible scourge upon the Earth unto the halls of college sport purity--the free market with its evil property rights and competition. More specifically, the athletic departments and universities and all those who individually benefit financially from the current arrangement would have to share. 

The most succinct way to explain why athletes are not currently paid what they are worth is to simply ask why would NCAA regulations on what athletes can earn be necessary if they were currently earning their market wage. The more detailed way is to do the economic analysis as sports economist Dr. David Berri among others have done repeatedly

About those scholarships . . . There are two very strong arguments against the common refrain that they’re getting a college education. The first is that that college education is something they could attain anyway and do so with little to no expense. Most of these players would be eligible for need or merit-based scholarships as well as grants that would cover the cost of college. The second is that that college education is in fact not worth very much to many of them. For many people college is not the right decision. We push way too many people through the college system inside and outside of sports. For many a different route through trade school or other education or flat out immediate pursuit of a job would be a better option.

There are many other bad arguments made in defense of the system that we know. These include:

What will happen to the schools who can't afford to pay? and This will just mean that football ends at many places and only the biggest programs will survive. While a radical change may and probably will result in a lot of disruption, the market is more dynamic than its opponents' imaginations. Plenty of room exists for true amateur and other types of football aside from a professional college league. And it is very wrong to assume that Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and other blue bloods in football as well as Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, and other blue bloods in basketball would benefit from a world where direct, open payments were able to be made to players. These programs benefit the most from a limit on the very important competition dimension of wage compensation. Alabama does not hurt for the top talent in football. Paying players would be a pure expense for them with little to no incremental benefit. Oh, and are you soooooo sure players aren't already being paid in many cases. Black markets of illicit payments to athletes are alive and thriving in this world of prohibition. And they do so with all of the horrible consequences associated with black markets.

How will they be paid? Will it be a free-for-all? Will players make different amounts? I don't know and I don't have to solve this problem to be correct about much higher compensation being the rightful world to strive for. I don't know how much the local grocery employee should make. I don't know how much the CEO of Exxon should make. Hell, I am not quite so certain about how much I should make. The market is a marvelous process that reveals this knowledge to us and constantly refines it. Let the market work.

No one wants to see college kids make that type of money. While this is not true as professional sports, entertainment in general, and many other areas of life attest--IT DOESN'T MATTER. An unfair deal is not made fair because a beneficiary (direct or indirect) prefers it. 

They aren't worth that much. Supposing you have ignored the vast research in this area including that referenced above, let me give you a simple example using a different sport as this will also defeat some of the false arguments that relate to worries about other sports and athletes. At my favorite university, The University of Oklahoma, Patty Gasso is an extremely good coach of the extremely good OU softball team. Coach Gasso makes about $1.2 million per year for her services. Of her many talents, two of them relate directly to athletes--recruitment and player development. So I ask, how good do you think Gasso's OU softball team would be if she were required to randomly pull her players from the pool of all female OU students and how well would the team do if the women selected to play were redrawn at random before each game? More to the point, how much would Coach Gasso be paid in this hypothetical? To the degree players add value above random replacement we get some idea about the added value talented players bring and are worth.

Title IX completely disallows this in fact or in economic result. This is Myth #6 in economist Andy Schwarz's 13 Excuses, Not Reasons: 13 Myths About (Not) Paying College Athletes

There are other bad arguments. Many play upon our biases and jealousies. These too must be called out for what they are. Two wrongs don't make a right. Frustration that there are great rewards for great, rare talents is common but unjustifiable. There is no reason or virtue in adhering to the rules of the past when those rules are revealed to be wrong for today.

Simply put, any argument justifying the current arrangement must address the central question--why should we NOT pay college athletes.

If ever there were a season to make a change, this is it. Beyond the pandemic and all the economic and health disruptions, we of course are in the midst of an opportunity to take a major leap forward in the name of justice. Perhaps 2020 will eventually come to be remembered as the year when significant racial progress started. When old institutions were challenged and remade. When we realized it doesn't just have to be this way because it has always been this way. 

This is another example of my theory that the pandemic has accelerated already present trends. In this case we may be witnessing some version of the universities of the Power 5 conferences separating themselves from the NCAA and beginning of the dissolution of the NCAA cartel. Let us hope a new cartel does not rise in its place. My optimism for change is tempered and I know that any new result will be with its flaws. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don't forsake progress for the fear or even the certainty that change will be flawed.

Perhaps a lost season is not required. Compromise with true pre-commitment to reform could be a way out. Let the universities call the players bluff, but also let the universities come back to the table with solutions. Make them put up contractual commitments, earnest money, and public promise of specific and explicit change. The road map at this point of the journey is quite blurry and very undecided. The most we can expect is to have a destination, boundaries for the eventual route to be found, and a burning of the bridge of retreat once the journey begins.

That is what I am rooting for.

I stand with the players. 

Saturday, January 18, 2020

My Plan for a Much Better College Football

Now that a season is behind us, let's dream of a better world. In this case I am limiting the thought experiment to the competitive structure of the college football game leaving aside the ever-important and (thankfully) increasingly popular discussions of allowing players to more fairly benefit financially from their contributions.

The three key features I would envision for the highest level of college football are:

  1. Create a true Power 5 - an elite 60-team top division of football comprised of FIVE 12-team conferences
  2. Continue the 12-game regular season - standardize 8 conference games and a maximum of 2 non-conference opponents outside of Power 5
  3. Crown a champion using an 8-team playoff  - conference title game winners get automatic playoff berth; 3 at large playoff teams determined by CFP committee (see below)
The CFP committee would be comprised of 25 members chosen by the conferences (each conference gets 5 members). The committee members' individual votes would be secret but the discussions in committee would be eventually fully released to the public after the season and playoff concluded. There would be no abstentions or exiting of the room when a member's affiliated school was discussed or any other charades to pretend there isn't bias. Rather, biases would be out in the open for all to examine and take into account. 

In regards to the establishment of a Power 5, we have to consider who is in and who is out. There are currently 130 FBS football teams (the highest level in college football). It is clear this is too many if we mean to group teams competitively. Just about any early-September match up reveals this outside of the handful of games designed to be competitive. Much of conference play itself reflects Have vs. Have Not. 

I would suggest a system where by teams bid to own a seat in the Power 5. The process might be something like the highest 60 bidders would pay the 60th highest bid amount plus 10% of their own bid amount into the pool. The bottom 70 teams would receive out of the pool 50% of their bid amount. Essentially, we would want to elicit from teams good information about how much they value football and how valuable football is to them. The remainder of the pool would be returned to the winning bidders in proportion to their bid size.

For example, say Texas is the top bidder at $200 million, Washington is the 60th bidder at $60 million, Kansas is the 61st bidder at one dollar less than $60 million, and Akron is the 130th bidder at $15 million. In that case Texas pays in $80 million ($60mil plus 10% of $200mil), Washington pays in $66 million, Kansas receives out $30 million (50% of ~$60mil bid), and Akron receives out $7.5 million.

Teams would be able to sell their seat with 50% of the sale price going to the selling team and the remaining 50% equally distributed to the other 59 seat-owning teams. Again, we want to know who should be in the Power 5 on an on-going basis and have a good incentive system to do so. Perhaps this is too capitalistic for American sports, which have always had a strong socialistic tendency as opposed to European sports where relegation rules soccer and revenue sharing and spending limits are less prevalent. But were dreamin' here . . .

A comment on the playoff to determine a champion every season: There exists a tension between a judgment-based approach (AP poll, BCS, CFP committee) and a merit-based approach (computer polls, conference champions feeding playoff). We can have a certain process of crowning a champion or a certain outcome of who is crowned. These two goals cannot both be realized in all cases. Usually there is a tradeoff between them. If we don't clearly define it ex ante, the ultimate criteria people want to use is fluid and subject to biases and inconsistencies. If we do clearly define the criteria out front, we tie our hands. Either approach has a degree of feature and bug. Remember before you condemn any outcome (actual or hypothetical) that we are dealing with sample sizes of 13 just to get into the playoff if we keep a 12-game season plus conference title game. For only the two teams in the championship game of an 8-team playoff do we even get to a 16-iteration test. We NEVER know as much about how good teams actually are as we think we do. In fact one could argue that in today's college football we know less than that implies given that so many games are nonsense gimmes against gravely inferior opponents. Because of this the only system I think we can justify is a structured conference feeder to a multi-team playoff. We can't possibly know who the best team is or even who the best teams are. The best we can do is define the process of earning a title and hope (with confidence) it matches up for who the best teams are most of the time.

Friday, October 25, 2019

What Do Weddings and College Football Have in Common?

Besides not going together as in: do not schedule your wedding in conflict with an OU football game and expect me to attend (the wedding).

Weddings, sporting events, and so much more are all subject to alternatives for the audience. And that competition is demanding that average is over.

Consider weddings first. They have to be getting more and more expensive and outlandish just to keep up--not just with each other but with the opportunity costs for the guests. The explicit cost of attending a wedding is time, travel, and gift. Since there is no admission fee to reduce, the only way a wedding can become more attractive is along the quality dimension (differentiation). In the extreme think about trying to get people to attend a Manhattan wedding. Of course it would have to be fabulous! The opportunity cost for guests would simply be too high to allow otherwise.

Now consider sporting events. They face opportunity costs from far substitutes (other leisure and non-leisure activities) and near substitutes (watching the game at home or a friend's house on a giant high-definition TV with no traffic, weather, cheaper food and drink, etc.). Sporting events do have admission fees which means these competitive forces are at work making college football et al. choose a strategy of differentiation (high quality, value-added experiences for select audiences) or low price (mass market to fill enormous venues). Over the long-term the latter strategy probably is suboptimal if not outright unfeasible given competitive pressures and expense demands. It might all become various first-class seating only at the highest levels of various sports.

Thinking back to weddings, people don't need the superficial opportunity to stay in touch that weddings once offered. Social media now provides this. With sports feeling like you are there and a part of it can be closely simulated through viewing on TV, interacting with others via social media or texting, and all the other media/internet follow up.

This goes a long way to explaining the wedding-industrial complex I pondered previously.

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

The Rational Fan: Managing Hopes and Constantly Adjusting Expectations

(I love the mirror image below the bars hinting at the symmetrical negative to any observable outcome.)
Consider the analogy of graphic equalizer meters on a old 70s-80s-era stereo--the ones that would show the recent high-point marks. I think this is a good symbol of the high-water-mark thinking that commonly clouds the judgment of sports fans. Specifically, an irrational (typical?) fan mistakes the best performance for the expected performance. The rational fan thinks in realistic terms where future expectations are influenced by past achievements but not set by them and mean reversion is always expected (eventually).

This would include updating for new information (e.g., a recent trend of wins or losses) when projecting the long-term expectation of winning. (i.e., Is recent performance simply an aberration and regression to the historic mean should be expected? Alternatively, has a new plateau been reached and future expectations must be appropriately adjusted?)

Consider also the emotional impact of a team's performance on a fan. The rational fan must contend with and accept the great irony that the more one's team wins, the more the wins tend to run together and the losses stand out, and vice versa. This is simply the law of diminishing marginal utility (not to be confused with the law of diminishing returns).

Irrational fan foresight is almost always myopic as they only see one side of what could be and probably do so in a vacuum. When an irrational fan imagines a play executed, he imagines an outcome determined by his conviction of the play’s potential success or failure. His judgment is probably additionally clouded by the play's potential excitement. If he would like to see a particular play call, he envisions a successful, if not the perfectly successful, outcome. If he disagrees with a play, he conceives of only its failure. A coach doesn’t get that luxury. Coaches should rationally weight the probability of success and the degree of success with the probability of failure and the degree of failure—what could be and how likely it is. Fans are allowed to dream, coaches are required to calculate. For coaches, magnitude matters.

So on any given play fans are liable to be deeply unsatisfied while coaches see the outcome as satisfactory toward a larger goal. But as should be expected, this is subject to error and unintended consequences. The error can be that coaches have bad incentives leading them to take less risk than they should (another example). The error can also be that fans expect too much. Back to the equalizer analogy, setting expectations on the abnormal high point causes fans to demand an unreasonable level of success. Fans can also be subject to what I would term conventional-wisdom bias--the primary source driving coaches to be overly conservative.

Also, when is a fan a true fan? Consider a convert. As opposed to religion, there is no long process filled with sacrifice and commitment culminating in a grand ceremony to becoming a team's fan. But perhaps there is such a process for becoming a "true" fan. Hence, the concept of bandwagon fans as illegitimate. It is only those who have been there through the tough times who can claim righteousness. For my teams I certainly feel this way.

Perhaps another way to look at it is that to be a true fan you have to feel physical pain when your team loses. Alternatively, you're not a team's true fan until the opponent's pain is your pleasure.

One more nostalgic image:

Saturday, May 4, 2019

Help Me Find a Difference


What is the logical difference in the following statements. In other words, why should I agree with some but not all or disagree with some but not all? 

To my children’s teachers: I really appreciate the service you provide, but your pay should be limited to a figure well below the result of the competitive market.

To my garbage manI really appreciate the service you provide, but your pay should be limited to a figure well below the result of the competitive market.

To my dentist: I really appreciate the service you provide, but your pay should be limited to a figure well below the result of the competitive market.

To my favorite restaurant’s cooking and waitstaff: I really appreciate the service you provide, but your pay should be limited to a figure well below the result of the competitive market.

To my favorite college team’s athletes: I really appreciate the service you provide, but your pay should be limited to a figure well below the result of the competitive market.

To my favorite college team’s coaches: I really appreciate the service you provide, but your pay should be limited to a figure well below the result of the competitive market.

To tease this out explicitly - being consistent would require either market-based wages for coaches and athletes or highly-restricted wages for both. Perhaps Dabo Swinney should make as much (and only as much) as the lowest-paid college football coach.


Also, arguments about the "competitive market" being an unrealistic ideal compared the "real world" are not relevant for the point I am making here. Yes, there are all kinds of problems with wages being less than optimal from an idealized competitive market perspective. So one could easily use this same implied argument to rally against the state's monopolistic control of education, cronyistic contracts for municipal sanitation, medical and other occupational licensing laws, minimum wages, etc.

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Ranking College Football Programs - 1970-2018

It is about time that I updated my previous work on ranking college football programs.

Recalling the methodology from before, I am attempting to answer who's better, who's best. I am limiting the data set to my generation (1970 through 2018) because it happens to coincide with what I believe is the modern era of college football. To rank the teams I use average margin of victory. Opinions could differ, but who are you to criticize? Join together with your like-minded brethren to create your own list. Just be objective rather than try to fool us again with some anyway, anyhow, anywhere to make your team come out on top.

The results are below and the spreadsheet with the full analysis is here.

Since 1970:


Since 1998 (BCS and College Football Playoff era):


Since 2014 (College Football Playoff era):


Tuesday, January 22, 2019

The Best Defense is . . .

The game of football has changed in the couple decades in a fundamental way. Nowhere is this more acutely witnessed than in the college game. And perhaps no team more demonstrates the odd juxtaposition than the Oklahoma Sooners.

Last year Oklahoma had a very poor defense looking at the traditional statistics. While these do not outright lie, they also do not tell the full picture. Oklahoma played in a league with very good and innovative offenses. And Oklahoma itself had one of the all-time great offenses last year. Their yards per play and points per play, to name just two meaningful statistics, were at near record levels. Keep in mind that historically most teams who have touched the type of numbers Oklahoma put up last year did so playing lower-tier opponents. In contrast Oklahoma played in one of the tougher conferences (those who find this to be a controversial statement ignore results and are caught up in old-world expectations of what football "should" look like), and they competed in the college football playoff against an exceptionally good Alabama team. The Oklahoma offense was Platonic while the Oklahoma defense was non-Platonic beyond all recognition.

While the Sooners are the extreme case, this combination of great offense and bad defense (albeit not necessarily on the same team) is a growing phenomenon throughout the sport. Teams with "old-world" offenses fail to reach the pinnacle within their leagues cough...Michigan... and teams with "old-world" defenses such as, sadly for me, Oklahoma look like two entirely different teams between when they possess the ball and when they do not. This resulted in Oklahoma parting ways with its defensive coordinator, Mike Stoops, after a disappointing loss to Texas mid season (in case you don't know, firing a coordinator mid season in what is otherwise a very promising season is a very rare event). After scrambling to fill the gaps to finish the year, Oklahoma has cleaned house bringing in a promising and perhaps innovative group to run the defense.

So far this is just me discussing my rather unremarkable and unoriginal observations. While I absolutely do not claim to have the answers, I think I do have an advanced framework for discovering the solution. Here we go...

To restate the premise: Defensive strategies and tactics desperately need to evolve since offenses have evolved at a much more rapid pace and in a more dynamic way for some time now.

Defense has a chance to catch up before offenses figure out that they don’t have to punt every time on 4th down. If offenses figure that out and continue to innovate in other ways, defenses are screwed. Case in point, offensive production is up remarkably over the past 19 seasons (2000 vs 2018). Across all FBS-division college football teams the average production is up meaningfully in the categories of yards per play (11%), points per play (14%), and points per game (12%). Maybe it is too late for defense?

Assuming this is not a lost cause, let's focus on a solution. The key is to be disruptive. Yes, that has always been the key. It’s just that the strategy of how to achieve that has changed over time. Back when running the football was the dominant offensive strategy, defenses needed to try to limit offenses to about 3 yards per play. Achieving that play in and play out is much more difficult today. Limit an opponent to a gain of 2 yards twice in a row (creating 3rd and 6), and you just don't feel like down and distance is on your side. A crude but probably telling stat: In the 2000 season just 10 teams went the season averaging gaining over 6 yards per play. In 2018 46 teams did.

Defensive strategy seems to have fallen into a losers games where defenses are trying to be very safe and limiting every play relying on the offense eventually making a mistake. "Just don't get beat deep..." goes the saying. The problem is offenses don’t take as many iterations (plays) to score as they used to, and they are more explosive. Hence, they don’t need to be as steadily productive as they did in the past.

Defensive strategy has to shift the probability back in its favor. The key is to increase volatility which increases disruption. If you will more likely eventually give up a score (and this is increasingly the case for all teams in nearly all situations), you might as well give it up right away having taken a big chance to stop it. Simply put: Just get the ball back--create failure or fail fast. Second and 11 is not as difficult for an offense to overcome as it was in the past. Likewise, defenses need to realize that second and 2 is not as bad a position to be in as it once was. Defenses need strategies and tactics that increase the probability of turnovers and tackles for large losses at the cost of increasing the probability of giving up meaningful offensive yardage gains and scores. The defensive mindset needs to begin with the assumption that everything is four-down territory--don't assume an offense will punt except in the most dire of positions.

A critical next step is to think terms of making an offense have as difficult a time scoring as possible regardless of what they do in trying to score. Defenses need to push offenses into making high-risk, low-reward decisions. Lowering an offenses chances of success is not entirely enough. Defenses must make offenses choose lower payout expected values. Think about an analogy with basketball. If defenses had their way, they would make offenses shoot every shot within a zone that is within about 0-5 feet inside the three point line. What is the football equivalent?

The most disruptive defense one could imagine from an NFL fantasy lineup would perhaps be the five best pass-rushing defensive linemen and six players among the strongest defensive backs or fastest linebackers. Notice that I am not saying the best run-stopping defensive linemen or the fastest defensive backs (cornerbacks or safeties) or the biggest linebackers. This group is going to blitz (send a disproportionate number of players rushing toward the quarterback) nearly every play. The remaining players are going to attempt to shut down the quarterback's options. What would it look like in result? Lots of small yardage given up, painful amounts of big plays given up, but all at the benefit of relatively many great defensive outcomes (turnovers, big yardage losses, etc.). Of course, that is a fantasy team. But perhaps we can get close to that by selecting for players in those molds and for plays in that fashion. Consider an analogy from baseball. There is a reason The Shift has become very popular--it shifts leverage in favor of the defense in a number of ways.

Why so aggressive--blitzing and otherwise? Start by thinking about how a defense is going to stop various types of plays used against it. Consider the most impactful offensive play, a deep pass down the field for either a touchdown or a very large gain. The first, best way to stop the play is to prevent the quarterback from throwing it in the first place. The second, best way to do it is to stop him from throwing it well while at the same time disrupting the receiver running the route. The third, best (worst) way is to have a defensive back covering the receiver being thrown to attempt to break up the play at the point of the catch. This holds not just for the deep pass but for all passes down the field. And by extension of the logic it holds for all plays.

Think about a running play. Where does the defense most want to attempt to stop a run? At or before the runner even begins, which would be in the offensive backfield. If the runner gets free for 9 yards as compared to 8 yards, the difference is very minimal. If the runner goes for 20 yards or 15 yards, again the difference is minimal. I am not saying it is not a big deal to give up large rushing plays. I am saying a combination of negative yardage running plays (-1 to -4, say) and positive, larger yardage running plays (9 to 20, say) is preferable to consistently yielding 3 to 8 yards each run. Don't try to make the offense fail small each down. Just one large failure (a turnover or a big loss on 3rd down or a big loss on 1st or 2nd down greatly reducing the offense's play options ) would be enough to allow the defense to win the drive.

The essence of my philosophy is a shift in the risk/reward and, hence, outcome dispersion for each defensive play and set of plays in a drive. Great defense should be torturous to watch for both teams' fans. For the offense and its fans it will look unpredictable and threatening--at any moment it might end the drive. For the defense's fans it will look unpredictable and haphazard--at any moment it might give up a score. Note the classic fan pessimism at play in both cases.

I admittedly do not have all the answers for how difficult it is to coach defense in football today. I just am on the lookout for the next innovators who I think will employ strategies and tactics very different from what has worked before. 

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Highly Linkable: Pay College Athletes Edition

With two important cases working their way through the courts (Jenkins v. NCAA and Alston v. NCAA), I continue to be optimistic that we are witnessing the beginning of the end for the government-protected, exploitative monopoly.

Just as Patrick Hruby explains in this Deadspin article, I have always found the argumentation along the lines "define specifically and prove explicitly how this change will work" to be shallow and weak. To argue that you lack the imagination to assume the market can devise a way to pay athletes, is no argument at all. As he concludes,
College athletes don’t need a pay-for-play plan, because pay-for-work isn’t a quantum leap. It’s just a small step in the direction of the world the rest of us already inhabit. The NCAA loves to talk about how college sports prepare players for The Game Of Life. There’s an easier and much more just way to do that.
As Ziggy might say, you'd have to have a Swiss cheese mind to not believe solutions will be discovered.

While we are on the topic of the ridiculous, Andy Schwarz takes apart the contention that most colleges couldn't afford to pay a market price for athletes.

But rest assured, Condoleezza Rice's commission fixed it all.

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

The State of Sooner Football

About nine months ago I began writing this post in rough form following a pair of painful and disappointing losses to begin the 2016 Sooner football season. I refined it a bit about midway through the season, but as prospects were improving, I put it back on the shelf not wanting to post something that seemed too critical during a season-comeback effort. The post is more about the long run trend than the short run noise (good or bad). With today's news it seems appropriate to consider the thought experiment...

Bob Stoops has chosen to retire. His contributions to OU have been tremendous. I am and always have been a very strong fan and supporter of Stoops--at times perhaps an apologist. I will miss him being on my team's sideline. He reawakened The Monster. He was an innovator. On the field and off the field he pursued and achieved excellence. Looking back at his tenure it is easy to pine for what could have been. But the fair reflection would be to consider that it is only because of what did happen are we as fans in a position to regret what could have been--his leadership brought OU to such heights that we could see mountain tops yet to climb. [sappy but true]

Here is the post I originally started last football season; the strong finish to the 2016 season, sadly Bob Stoops last, caused me to revise my priors somewhat...

Starting with the premise that OU's expectations of championship-level football have not been met during the last 8 years (2009-2016); what is the explanation? 

Make no mistake about it, the past 8 years have been at a VERY high level of success--what 95% of teams would consider completely satisfying and what >50% of teams could never dream of: 
  • 81-24 overall record--77%.
  • 5-3 bowl record (bowl game every year including 4 major bowls).
  • 1 national championship competed for (lost to Clemson in semifinals).
  • 4 conference titles; competitive (my view) 5 of 8 years (50%!!! but against a debilitated league).
  • Record breaking performances by both the team and individuals including several players competing for top national awards--the Heisman among them. (My views on the Heisman reflect why this is an after thought in this list.)
Yet the prior 10 years were stronger: 
  • 109-24 overall record--82%.
  • 4-6 bowl record (bowl game every year including 7 major bowls).
  • 4 national championships competed for (won against Florida St.; lost to LSU, USC, and Florida).
  • 6 conference titles; competitive 9 of 10 years (60%!!! against a very tough league)
  • Even more record breaking performances and quite a few more awards won including two Heismans, FWIW.
The records are both great and quite close except for the nuance that OU's contention for titles (national and conference) was much stronger. 

So, given the premise, I can think of three possibilities and two alternatives:

1. The Sooners have simply been unlucky the past 8 years.

2. They were lucky in the beginning of the Stoops era (the first 10 years before the last 8 years) and the ability to reach OU's lofty expectations simply was never there.
3. They were up to fulfilling expectations at the beginning of the Stoops era but now they have faded in capabilities (the game as passed them by).

Alternatively we could say:

4. The premise is bad because they actually have been competing at a championship level--just less completely as might be possible/desired (i.e., too few championships achieved).

5. The expectation was faulty (i.e., they shouldn't expect to compete at a championship level).

I hope for 1, fear 2, and slightly suspect 3, but I highly suspect 4 and strongly reject 5. That puts me in possibility 1 assuming the premise and alternative 4 if I can question it.

Assuming the premise, my guess is about 70% of all Sooner fans fall into possibility 1, about 10% fall into 2, and about 20% fall into 3. But these answers would have been significantly different if looked at right after the loss to Ohio State and a 1-2 start to the 2016 season.
 
Allowing for the alternatives, I would then guess that the assignment of Sooner fans would be about like this:

Possibility 
% of Fans
1
50%
2
7%
3
18%
4
20%
5
5%


The fans that don't jump from possibility 1 to possibility 4 once we allow the questioning of the premise probably have unrealistic expectations--they think their team should ALWAYS win. I am tempted to dismiss these folks as fans who think the winning team "just wanted it more". I am tempted to dismiss fans who jump to possibility 5 (presumably from possibilities 2 or 3) as fans who would be happier rooting for a much lesser team so as to increase the emotional gain from a win and decrease the emotional pain of a loss (i.e., no true Sooners).

All fans will make their own evaluations over the course of the Lincoln Riley era, though, probably not with the formality I bring to the matter. And the measure will be how does that era match up to all 18 amazing years under Stoops. I wish Bob the best and thank him for the happiness he brought me as a fan.

I wish Lincoln luck. I fully expect that he has what it takes to keep the Sooners' status as a contender, but satisfying The Monster takes more than ability. It takes luck.

Boomer Sooner!

Monday, April 11, 2016

Highly Linkable

I want to go to there.

For those of you pondering in your apartments 'why should I read in my shower when I could listen to a podcast in my tub', this edition of links is especially for you.

First of all, EconTalk has been on a tear lately. Three gems:
Marina Krakovsky on the Middleman Economy
Jayson Lusk on Food, Technology, and Unnaturally Delicious
Matt Ridley on the Evolution of Everything
Second, Bejamin Powell joins Free Thoughts to discuss Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy.

Third, Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick shares how Uber plans to kill Big Traffic. BTW, Lyft is getting in on the carpool action as well.

Now for those who prefer to click and read the way nature intended:

Kavin Senapathy writing in Forbes suggests we not get too excited about the prospects (and promises) of microbiome makeovers.

Leave it to Grumpy to throw cold water on the magical promises coming out of the Sanders for Tsar camp.

So a science professor claims to have discovered a hidden value accruing to certain members of a particular profession, and a history professor is pretty sure he knows how much several groups of people in a profession should be paid. Luckily, Andy Schwartz is here to disagree.

Phil Magness draws interesting parallels between failed economic modeling and failed climate modeling. The money paragraph (HT: Arnold Kling):
In a strange way, modern climatology shares much in common with the approach of 1950s Keynesian macroeconomics. It usually starts with a number of sweeping assumptions about the relation between atmospheric carbon and temperature, and presumes to isolate them to specific forms of human activity. It then purports to “predict” the effects of those assumptions with extraordinarily great precision across many decades or even centuries into the future. It even has its own valves to turn and levers to pull – restrict carbon emissions by X%, and the average temperature will supposedly go down by Y degrees. Tax gasoline by X dollar amount, watch sea level rise dissipate by Y centimeters, and so forth. And yet as a testable predictor, its models almost consistently overestimate warming in absurdly alarmist directions and its results claim implausible precision for highly isolated events taking place many decades in the future. These faults also seem to plague the climate models even as we may still accept that some level of warming is occurring.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Highly Linkable

So Jay Bilas of ESPN and Oliver Luck of Cosa Nostra the NCAA debated paying college athletes at an event hosted by FIRE. Andy Schwartz imagined what it would be like with a toddler included. Andy's version is right on the money--so to speak. And here is the actual debate.

Been traveling on the road again; hence, been listening to make productive the time as I go down the highway. Here are a few that stood out for mentioning:

Russ Roberts (EconTalk) interviewed Michael Matheson Miller on his film Poverty, Inc. I love the line: "Poor people are not poor because they lack stuff. Poor people are poor because they lack the institutions of justice."

James Altucher (The James Altucher Show) interviewed Brett McKay, creator of the site The Art of Manliness. I knew of the site (and liked it a lot), but I didn't know McKay was from Oklahoma and graduated from OU--as did I. I loved the discussion on minimalism.

Trevor Burrus and Aaron Ross Powell (Free Thoughts) interviewed Berin Szoka on net neutrality vs. Internet freedom. Admittedly, this one gets a bit too wonky for some, but I found it insightful. I loved the line: "The fundamental problem here is the FCC is writing rules that have real harms because they ban practices that could be good for users or for a variety of other reasons in order to deal with largely phantom problems."

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Highly Linkable

We begin with some short videos:


The NFL Draft was last week. Brian Burke re-examined Massey and Thaler's landmark paper "The Loser's Curse: Decision-Making & Market Efficiency in the NFL Draft" applying the new CBA. The findings are interesting in that there continues to be little to no surplus value at the top draft picks with a lot to be had in the second and third rounds. This is not what the typical football fan (or GM) wants to think. Just to illustrate, look at what the Buffalo Bills did.

The supply of land (like all resources) is not fixed in the long run (and the long run does not mean a long time from now)--so explains Don Boudreaux.

Warren Zola asks, "What IS the NCAA's mission?"

Arnold Kling has a new meme: Teaching Emergent Economics. Don't miss the first one on trade as a technology.

Sumner argues that investing is not like guessing the winner of a beauty pageant as suggested famously by Keynes.

I love this technique, The Mellow Heuristic, Bryan Caplan argues using for adjudicating intellectual disputes when directly relevant information is scarce. I discovered it for myself and have used it since late childhood. 

Never shy of asking the tough questions, Robin Hanson asks us to rank the sacred.

Would you/should you/could you pay for a dinner reservation--so asks Tim-I-am Harford.

Finally, some counter-conventional wisdom (AKA, stuff people are getting wrong):

  • Alex Tabarrok exposes what business journalists and some economists don't understand about efficiency wages--their idea that paying workers more works magic.
  • Terry Burnham empirically challenges the idea born of Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and echoed by Gladwell's David and Goliath that simply making problems harder to read improves test taker results.
  • Ken Popehat White breaks down what an emblematic McClatchy column on free speech gets wrong.
  • Alex Tabarrok appears again to show how Jon Stewart is wrong on many levels about education in Baltimore.
  • Scott Sumner says basically NOBODY understands the concept of "currency manipulation".

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Highly Linkable

I want to go to there.

I DON'T want to go back to there then.

Speaking of a then to be glad we are no longer in, Megan McArdle on bread bags as shoes.

How about going back to the days when a computer word processor could spell check your work but had no clue about what the correction should be (start at the 10:04 point for the "New Frontiers" part)? I knew Mr. Wizard's World well. I can remember each of these episodes like I watched them yesterday.

The people of these worlds are so tiny, I'm crushing their heads.

Here are a couple of reasons nobody likes me in my world . . .

  • I tend to look at sports discussions scientifically and logically rather than emotionally and indeterminately. Most people don't like that.
  • I acknowledge that I am not a grammar expert . . . or are I??? But I do love pointing out to people when grammar "rules" they believe in strongly are actually grammar myths not worth believing in. 
James Altucher would tell me not to bother with people who don't like me. He is right. I've been making my way through the interviews on his podcast that he summarizes here. They have ranged from mildly interesting to fascinating. Each has been rewarding in one way or another. A great example of learning by exposure to diverse points of view.

Here is a diverse point of view from Alex Tabarrok defending the company town.

Arnold Kling offers a diverse way of looking at the purpose of the study of economics.

Finally, Timothy Taylor has a different approach to understanding cooperation and competition.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Highly Linkable

Is that a Lite-Brite? No, it's NYC.

Have you heard the country song? It seems there is only one.

Five exam hacks to help you ace the final.

I tend to be an optimist about the future including and because of technology. I welcome the coming singularity. But I have to admit this concerned me and kinda shook me a little. More here.

How do you find something when a Google search isn't enough? Lifehacker suggests some options.

Looks like I need to change my views on flossing--and revise some other oral hygiene practices while I'm at it. (HT: Tyler Cowen)

The "coach who never punts", Kevin Kelley was interviewed recently on the AFA podcast. I predict in 10 years much of his heterodoxy will be orthodoxy.

Kevin Erdmann has a very good grip on housing policy. He Zoro's Shiller in a single paragraph and then proceeds to tear down all of the housing lobby's sand castles.

While we're calling out iconic economists, John Lee of Open Borders challenges Krugman greatly and Cowen to a lesser extent.

John Cochrane continues the craze taking on Keynesianism.

You might read this first before getting right to Pete Boettke answering Noah Smith's question on if economics swings left.

The zero-interest-rate environment succinctly explained with myths debunked by Scott Sumner.

Don Boudreaux offers some new year's advice on bad habits he wishes the government would break.

(UPDATE: housing policy link restored.)