Field Theory by Hadyn Green

So yesterday I made myself a fort out of couch cushions (stocked with chips and beer and a laptop) and did everything in my power to ignore the sunshine outside. Important sport was on the radiation-box and no wonderful summer’s day (the last of my holidays) was going to lure me away from it.

Couch-alot (which is what I called it) was to be my home from 10.30am until sometime after 5pm, barring bathroom breaks and snack excursions. Why? Because the NFL playoffs are on!

There was also cricket on, but I just can’t get into cricket on TV. As it is so far this summer I have only seen half of one game of 20/20. And we lost. Though Chris Gale was exciting.

The Christmas period is flush with sport. Down this end of the globe the game tends to be of the bat, ball and pad variety. Be it the pros with the Boxing Day tests/Twenty20s or the amateurs with the beach version, we all seem to get a cricket-mad at this time. Even me, um, sort of.

Those of you who are preparing to unload about how crappy the Black Caps are and wondering why I haven’t done any real coverage of them, will be happy to know that I am going to go to my first cricket game this year. I am wrangling my friends Dom and Shirley to take me to a game and point out the finer details for me. I will file a Gonzo-style report after the event.

And then rugby season starts an a few weeks. Yes, even for me that feels wrong.

What is the most important thing for you in a sports competition? If you answered "a close competition" then you are in agreement with most sports fans around the world. Even if the tournament itself is dominated by a few teams (like the English Premier League) fans like to see small teams run the big guys close (or even beat them). It makes the TAB interesting too.

You don't tend to see fans streaming out of the stadium when their team is up by less than one score with a few minutes left. In fact fans tend to leave early or lose interest only when the score is a real blow out (for either team).

But you know all this. In fact we discussed this before (you also want afternoon matches you can take the family to).

But how effective are the measures the various unions and league put in place to create competitiveness? The answer is a strong "somewhat"

A paper has been written that looks at just that question: Determining the evenness of domestic sporting competition using a generic rating engine. It'll be available in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports in January.

Paul at Offlode was nice enough to send me an abstract of the paper, but I'm not allowed to give you any excerpts. So I'm afraid you're going to have to put up with my interpretations.

At a very basic level the research team created an "engine" that could determine the evenness of a sports competition. They then correlated those evenness scores with factors the various competitions had brought in to even them up. So in essence the team was able to determine how effective things like salary caps and inverse drafts are at in actual evening things up.

And because you want to know, Major League Baseball is the most competitive competition (this year's World Series was a good example of that), football (soccer) is the most competitive sport and rugby is the least competitive sport.

And if you want to be as competitive as the MLB you don't bring in a salary cap…instead you bring in revenue sharing. Salary caps have been found to be good for stopping wealthy teams from stealing each other's players but not good for smaller teams. In fact the NBA was found to be less competitive after the introduction of the salary cap.

But revenue sharing allows so-called small market teams to compete for star players or to pay for rookies' development. The caveat is that revenue sharing benefits from teams that don't change. So if your tournament has a promotion/relegation system (like the EPL) then it won't really work.

And why is revenue sharing so important right now? Because we are in the middle of the fantastic wee credit crunch. When companies are laying off staff and asking the government for a bail-out suddenly sponsoring a sports team is very low on the priority list.

GM stopped paying Tiger Woods millions of dollars to be a spokesman. Citibank considered going back on its multi-million dollar naming rights for the new Mets Stadium in New York. The Sydney Spirit and the Cairns Taipans would both be dead if it wasn't for a rescue package after their sponsors pulled out (the Brisbane Bullets, the Sydney Kings and the Singapore Slingers are already gone for similar reasons, thankfully the Breakers have Burger King, go get a Whopper).

A year or so back Bay of Plenty had their sponsor, Western Bay Finance, go the way of all the other finance companies and so they were left with no sponsor. Now when the players run onto the field they each have a different sponsors name on the back because they can't find a single one.

Without some kind of revenue sharing we could be seeing a worse competition than just the same two teams winning each year. We could end up with only two teams in the competition.

And while I’m here I may as well mention, I knew I was right about stupid bonus points!

Competition points are awarded in sports tournaments to determine which participants qualify for the playoffs or to identify a champion. We use competition points to measure strength in a prediction model and choose points to maximize prediction accuracy. This allows us to determine the allocation of competition points that most appropriately rewards strong teams.

Our analysis focuses on Super Rugby, as the characteristics of this competition closely match our modelling assumptions.

We find that the current allocation of competition points does not ensure that the strongest teams qualify for the playoffs and suggest an alternative. Our findings have implications for other competitions.
Winchester, Niven (2008) "Shifting the 'Goal Posts': Optimizing the Allocation of Competition Points for Sporting Contests,"

I didn't know John Drake, I don't remember him as a player, in fact, I probably couldn't have picked him out of a line up. But I did know his voice.

It was the sane one that always gave the best commentary about the forwards and with very few commentator gaffes (though I do remember the first thing I heard him say was: [this game] is like poker, you gotta know when to hit and when to stand).

The Herald has posted an archive of Drake's material as well as a number of columnists chipping in with their memories.

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On to the cricket, because I will be drawn and quartered if I should mention rugby during the summer months. The West Indies travelled to Dunedin and luckily they were not greeted with smiling fans bearing "All White Here" placards.

As you may know I'm not a fan of the game but if I have to read about it (and I do), then I'm going to get my information from the horse's mouth. Not to call Ian O'Brien a horse. I was alerted to O'Brien's blog via Richard Irvine who was terrified that should it become popular the NZ Cricket PR folk would shut it down, and that almost happened.

But it's back in full swing and containing those interesting tit-bits of insight that only the players can bring:

Arrived at the ground this morning to be greeted by a helicopter hovering above the outfield. Not the normal thing to be seeing and we knew ‘Stanford' wasn't in town, so it could only mean one thing, the outfield is still wet. Someone forked out some cash to quicken the drying process up. Nice job!

And on the relationship between batsman and bowler, filled with veiled threats:

Normally when you hit a tail ender you check to see if they're ok; nothing of the sort out here today. That's fine with me, it's locked away…

Edwards follow through was getting longer and longer. Getting closer and closer to me, and not to see what I was going to be doing for tea!

At one point I pointed at the stumps and said, "Have a go at those." Edwards replied, "I'm having too much fun to worry about them." Ok, cool!

Ian O'Brien has done something no one else has been able to, he made interested in cricket.

I do have a quick post in the pipeline on the recent study looking at the competitiveness of various tournaments, but until then please consider this question that I saw on Twitter:

Does Willem Dafoe being in the Steinlager ad make it less awful?

It’s that time of year again. When the jolly man with the beard comes to spread joy to everyone!

I am of course referring to Samuel F. Scott and the Bunnies on Ponies who will be playing at The Annual Wellingtonista Awards (the TAWAs) next Thursday (18th). Last year’s awards were spectacular, and this year will be much the same.

Voting opened two weeks ago and we have almost 900 votes (last year had 500, the year before 50) and just like last year the competition is fierce. So make sure your vote counts, yes we can.

And then make sure you make it to the awards (Mighty Mighty, Thursday 18, 7pm, $10) because not only is there Bunnies on Ponies, there is also Lonesome Cowboy and the Lap Stealers, and the first 50 peeps through the door get gift bags and we’ve got spot prizes to give away too: with swag from Adidas, Epic Beer, Good Magazine, The Back Bencher, NZonScreen, Pretty Pretty Pretty, The Film Archive, Linden Leaves, SuperVery and Webstock as well as some other potential sponsors. (and if you are a sponsor and want to add some stuff drop me a line)

You know you want to come along.

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Emma’s post reminded me that I had written (and then lost on my hard drive somewhere) something about my favourite time of year: Christmas! Or rather, the time of the year that’s really busy, you give presents to each other and drink and eat waaaaay too much. I love it!

Obviously though people forget the reason for the season… um… Saturnalia?

Actually all I know is that when I constructed my Christmas list (used as a guide for family so I don’t get crap I have to pretend to like) I completely drew a blank. This is despite subscribing to Gizmodo, Engadget, Uncrate and other “want” oriented websites.

I had already mentioned casually to Amy how I would quite like things such as a science tshirt, and that I seriously need things like a big vinyl yeti. And while I do understand that it can be a perfectly enjoyable Christmas without USB “port” wine, I just can’t imagine how.

Yes it’s shallow but I really do love the giving/getting at Christmas. It’s so much fun spending time with people and making them happy with gifts and food and company. I’m an atheist so I get no spiritual enjoyment from the holiday; I just get a big kick out of the smiles.

So, I have to ask, what’s on your list?

As far as falls from grace go, OJ Simpson’s one was spectacular, long and very public. To mix my sporting metaphors: Simpson is the Greg Louganis of grace-falling.

When OJ entered the National Football League as the first pick of the 1969 draft he was a Heisman Trophy-winning running back from USC (a traditional football powerhouse). In 1973 he won the league MVP and became the first player to rush for 2,000yds in a season. When OJ retired in 1980 he was the second highest on the all-time rushing list and was inducted into the Pro-Football Hall of Fame in 1985. Even his nickname, The Juice, ranks as one of the best ever.

He was a big star at a time when professional football was really taking off in America. His personality and big smile was a big hit with advertisers and OJ was destined for off-field stardom as well.

He had bit-parts and cameos in TV shows even before joining the pro-leagues including a role in Roots in 1977. His roles in the Naked Gun films didn’t bring critical acclaim, but didn’t hurt either.

Then came the 90s. The murder trial. The police chase. The gloves. The incredibly strange media frenzy. The Juice became a polarising figure; he was not only a high profile celebrity accused of murder; he was also a black man, and this was, after all, only three years after the LA riots. More than half the US population watched the verdict on live television. And even after his acquittal the opinion that OJ had “gotten away with murder” was mainly held by whites. And of course then the hunt for “the real killers” began.

OJ by then had become a strange character and icon. As I write this I’m struck by how many catchphrases have come from the trial: the real killers, trial of the century, if the glove does not fit… etc.

Later Simpson was found guilty in a civil case for wrongful death and was ordered to pay $33,500,000 to the Goldman family. As this is where the fall accelerated.

With all of his earnings going to Goldmans, Simpson started trying for more and more TV appearances, earning money from the murder. All this mugging and winking at the camera culminated in the book “If I Did It” in which Simpson wrote how he would’ve killed Brown and Goldman … if he had done it. Naturally, the book was cancelled not long after it was announced due a very loud chorus of “WTF?” from the general population (interestingly the book was later released by the Goldman family)

But the fall wouldn’t end for The Juice until this weekend when Simpson was found guilty of “masterminding” a robbery in Las Vegas. He was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

Yet, OJ still has his fans. They followed him on the Gridiron, they bought the orange juice he peddled and they bought his jerseys. Go to a Buffalo Bills game today and you will see throwback jerseys with #32 and “Simpson” on the back. These people want to remember the man who carved through defences like butter and made them proud of their team. Not the bizarre rambling man in the blue prison uniform.