The Unwritten Book is Finally Written!
An in-depth analysis of: The sacrifice bunt, batter/pitcher matchups, the intentional base on balls, optimizing a batting lineup, hot and cold streaks, clutch performance, platooning strategies, and much more. Read Excerpts & Customer Reviews
The NFL pays out 53% of their revenue, and they want that reduced to 48%. The NBA and NHL pay out above 55%. It looks something like this:
NHL: 3 billion$ revenue, 1.3 billion$ to owners
NFL: 9 billion$ revenue, 4.7 billion$ to owners
Why does the NFL, with its extra 6 billion$ in revenue need to take 3.4 billion$ of that for themselves? What is it about the NHL business model that is more efficient than NFL?
After running the regressions, it does not appear that an athlete’s arrest has a statistically significant effect on his on-field performance, and none of the dummy variables used in my regressions could help explain any change existing in performance following an arrest (p-values > 0.05).
Someone can keep looking, and eventually they may find something, and then all we can conclude is that there IS some effect… but without establishing the degree to which the effect will exist. It’s going to be pretty small. It’s like clutch or anything else. It’s real, it exists, but it’ll hardly actionable.
And that’s really the difference between what a researcher finds and what the real world will ultimately need.
Could you imagine modern football players wearing only punter facemasks - or no facemasks at all - and then pulling their helmets off and fighting on the field? The same thing is defended as part of the game of hockey.
Could you imagine hockey players constantly diving whenever an opposing player even touches them in the offensive zone and having sportscasters describe “selling” a dive as an important skill? But this “is” soccer.
How about getting in your opponent’s face, yelling and screaming and beating your chest after you score? You’d get a penalty in football, and start a fight in hockey or baseball. In basketball, we see it all the time.
There are several articles of interest this month, including one from Andrew Thomas. I haven’t read any of these yet, but will do so momentarily. Please feel free to highlight any of these you find interesting or want to discuss.
Michael Oher is sick and tired of the gasbags on parade making character judgement calls. And he’s tweeting it directly to them and us. He’s calling them out, and I’m glad.
I remember when John Ziegler did his ridiculous presentation on Hockey Night In Canada, and Ron MacLean was having none of it. Ziegler left in a puff. It was beautiful. Roger Goodell has his Ziegler moment in the Wall Street Journal:
They signed a presumed 2 billion$ deal over 10 years with NBC and NBC Versus. That 200MM$ a year. Four years ago, NHL signed a 100MM$ a year (for 6 years) with CBC (in Canada). And that was for non-exclusive rights. Three years ago, they signed (for 6 years) with TSN (in Canada). I couldn’t tell for how much, but let’s guess also 100MM$.
So, that’s what the national TV market looks like: Canada = USA, even though Canada is one-tenth the population. In other words, there’s 10 times more TV hockey money per random Canadian than random American.
Interestingly, the NFL’s package I think is for 8 billion$ over 6 years, or 1.33 billion per year. That’s about 7 times larger than the Canadian hockey deal, which basically is in the ballpark.
Roughly speaking, NFL gets from Americans and NHL from Canadians some 5 to 7 cents dollars per resident. The NHL gets from Americans a bit over half a cent dollar per resident.
The TV networks gave the NFL money for televising games, even if those games cannot be televised due to lockouts. The NFL simply is saying “pay us for 5 years worth of games, and even if it’s not the first 5 calendar years, you’ll still get your money’s worth”.
That seems fine… except that guarantee can only happen if they have players. So, the NFL owners build a war chest based on the future performances of those very same players. Something sure seemed fishy. Finally, a Judge agreed:
Judge David Doty has ruled that the NFL’s agreement with the TV networks violates the CBA. There will be a hearing to determine whether there will be financial damages and to determine whether the league will have access to the money in the event of a lockout. As of today, the league doesn’t have access to the money and we’re not sure when the hearing will be.
All data is from Stanley Cup seasons 1987-2010, when the NHL had 4 rounds of best-of-7. Excluded is the 1995 Cup 48-game season (and naturally the lockout year). That gives us 22 Stanley Cups.
In each season, I ranked the teams by points (1 through 30). In all 22 seasons, the Stanley Cup was won by a team that finished in the top 8 in the standings. The team that led the league in points won 7 of the 22 Cups, or 31.8%.
Let’s focus on the teams that led the league. Here’s how many rounds they won:
4: 7 times (and won the Cup)
3: 1 times (lost in Finals)
2: 5 times (lost in Final 4)
1: 4 times (lost in Final 8)
0: 5 times (eliminated first round)
Boring stuff to skip
Suppose the #1 team has a 75.1% chance of winning each series. The chance of them winning 4 consecutive series is 75.1% ^ 4 = 31.8%. So, given 22 seasons, we’d expect 7 Stanley Cups, just like it really happened.
The #1 team made the Cup finals 8 of 22 seasons (or 36.4%). In order for that to happen, they’d have to have a chance of winning each series 71.4%.
The #1 team reached the Final Four 13 of 22 seasons (or 59.1%). In order for that to happen, they’d win each series 83.9% of the time.
The #1 team won at least one series 17 of 22 seasons (or 77.3%). That is its chance of winning that first series.
Putting it together, the #1 team has around a 77% of winning each series.
A three-round Cup run
If the NHL was down to a 3-series Cup run (8 teams, or 12 teams with byes for the top 4), the #1 team would need to win 3 series of 4-of-7. That would imply they’d win the Cup .77^3 = 46% of the time according to the boring stuff above.
An alternative way to look at it is that the 17 times that the #1 team entered the playoffs in the Final 8 round, they won 7 times. 7/17 = 41%.
Conclusion
An NHL fan is suggesting that the #1 team should win the Cup 32% of the time if they want a 16-team playoffs, and 41% of the time if they want an 8- or 12-team playoffs.
My question: how many MLB teams would you need in the playoffs in order to get a 32% or 41% chance of the #1 team in MLB of winning the World Series? How many in the NBA? The NFL?
Who wants to do the legwork on presenting the matching data for these sports?
It’s inevitable. What, you think that on this entire planet, the one thing that will remain untouched is the American professional jersey?
What I’m more interested in is which North American pro sports team will be the last to go. The obvious one is the Yankees, as I think even their Stadium naming rights would be the last to go as well. The Yankees IS the brand, unlike every other team. Who else can give them a run for last team? Montreal Canadiens maybe?
The NFL sure gets away with alot, be it limited steroid scrutiny, or in-your-face Cheerleader fan-voting, complete with a ranked list. But, they sure have nipped that “don’t celebrate in the end zone” social faux-pas in the bud.
If there’s one thing the Republican Party has taught me is that you need a catchy three-to-five word saying for whatever you do, because people prefer to rally around something than to try to understand it. So, in light of the NFL’s potential lockout, and this NFLPA Q&A with bloggers, how about “block the lock”, or “blockout the lockout”?
Note: NO political talk, nor my decision to not have any, in this thread. Will be deleted at will.
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