The Chronicle of Higher Education has a thoughtful article: What Yield Says About a College:
"As usual, some colleges had to do much more than others to fill their classes, a fact that complicates interpretations of yield.
For instance, two colleges may have ended up with identical yield rates. College A did not admit a single applicant early, but College B enrolled a third of its class through early decision, which guarantees a yield of virtually 100 percent for students in that pool.
“Any meaning that yield ever had is now gone, because the number can be manipulated,” says Daniel M. Lundquist, vice president for marketing and enrollment management at the Sage Colleges, in New York. “It’s a circus, and colleges all do admissions differently.”
How many applicants did a college have? How many did it admit? Did it use a waiting list? How big was its tuition-discount rate? And did its football team win the conference title last year?
The answers to such questions are necessary to put yield in context. Some universities, such as large flagships in the Midwest, have high yields because they face relatively little competition for students.
Other colleges see their yield rates drop as their appeal rises and they become more competitive with higher-ranked institutions. Take Dickinson College, whose yield was 26 percent this year, much lower than some of its highly selective competitors. “We could have a higher yield if we competed against lower-tier institutions,” says Robert J. Massa, vice president for enrollment and college relations. “I would rather have a lower yield and compete against top-tier institutions.”
"In some circles, yield is entangled with measures of prestige. U.S. News & World Report once factored yield rates into its rankings of colleges, but it stopped doing so in 2004 amid the debate over the growth of early decision. The magazine now publishes a list of the “most popular colleges,” based solely on yield rates. In the most recent list, Harvard was first, followed by Brigham Young University and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln."
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query "college football". Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query "college football". Sort by date Show all posts
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Unraveling of college athletic recruiting
At Stanford, when I meet student athletes I sometimes ask them when they first met a Stanford coach, and the earliest answer I've gotten so far is 8th grade. Here's a great NY Times story by Nathaniel Popper that confirms this isn't an extreme outlier.
Committing to Play for a College, Then Starting 9th Grade
"In today’s sports world, students are offered full scholarships before they have taken their first College Boards, or even the Preliminary SAT exams. Coaches at colleges large and small flock to watch 13- and 14-year-old girls who they hope will fill out their future rosters. This is happening despite N.C.A.A. rules that appear to explicitly prohibit it.
"The heated race to recruit ever younger players has drastically accelerated over the last five years, according to the coaches involved. It is generally traced back to the professionalization of college and youth sports, a shift that has transformed soccer and other recreational sports from after-school activities into regimens requiring strength coaches and managers.
...
"Early scouting has also become more prevalent in women’s sports than men’s, in part because girls mature sooner than boys. But coaches say it is also an unintended consequence of Title IX, the federal law that requires equal spending on men’s and women’s sports. Colleges have sharply increased the number of women’s sports scholarships they offer, leading to a growing number of coaches chasing talent pools that have not expanded as quickly. In soccer, for instance, there are 322 women’s soccer teams in the highest division, up from 82 in 1990. There are now 204 men’s soccer teams.
“In women’s soccer, there are more scholarships than there are good players,” said Peter Albright, the coach at Richmond and a regular critic of early recruiting. “In men’s sports, it’s the opposite.”
"While women’s soccer is generally viewed as having led the way in early recruiting, lacrosse, volleyball and field hockey have been following and occasionally surpassing it, and other women’s and men’s sports are becoming involved each year when coaches realize a possibility of getting an edge.
"Precise numbers are difficult to come by, but an analysis done for The New York Times by the National Collegiate Scouting Association, a company that consults with families on the recruiting process, shows that while only 5 percent of men’s basketball players and 4 percent of football players who use the company commit to colleges early — before the official recruiting process begins — the numbers are 36 percent in women’s lacrosse and 24 percent in women’s soccer.
At universities with elite teams like North Carolina and Texas, the rosters are almost entirely filled by the time official recruiting begins.
...
For girls and boys, the trend is gaining steam despite the unhappiness of many of the coaches and parents who are most heavily involved, many of whom worry about the psychological and physical toll it is taking on youngsters.
“It’s detrimental to the whole development of the sport, and to the girls,” Haley’s future coach at Texas, Angela Kelly, said at the Florida tournament.
:The difficulty, according to Ms. Kelly and many other coaches, is that if they do not do it, other coaches will, and will snap up all of the best players. Many parents and girls say that committing early ensures they do not miss out on scholarship money.
...
"The N.C.A.A. rules designed to prevent all of this indicate that coaches cannot call players until July after their junior year of high school. Players are not supposed to commit to a college until signing a letter of intent in the spring of their senior year.
"But these rules have enormous and widely understood loopholes. The easiest way for coaches to circumvent the rules is by contacting the students through their high school or club coaches. Once the students are alerted, they can reach out to the college coaches themselves with few limits on what they can talk about or how often they can call.
"Haley said she was having phone conversations with college coaches nearly every night during the eighth grade.
...
"Mr. Dorrance, who has won 22 national championships as a coach, said he was spending his entire weekend focusing on the youngest girls at the tournament, those in the eighth and ninth grades. Mr. Dorrance is credited with being one of the first coaches to look at younger players, but he says he is not happy about the way the practice has evolved.
“It’s killing all of us,” he said.
"Mr. Dorrance’s biggest complaint is that he is increasingly making early offers to players who do not pan out years later.
“If you can’t make a decision on one or two looks, they go to your competitor, and they make an offer,” he said. “You are under this huge pressure to make a scholarship offer on their first visit.”
"The result has been a growing number of girls who come to play for him at North Carolina and end up sitting on the bench.
...
"Once the colleges manage to connect with a player, they have to deal with the prohibition on making a formal scholarship offer before a player’s final year of high school. But there is now a well-evolved process that is informal but considered essentially binding by all sides. Most sports have popular websites where commitments are tallied, and coaches can keep up with who is on and off the market.
"Either side can make a different decision after an informal commitment, but this happens infrequently because players are expected to stop talking with coaches from other programs and can lose offers if they are spotted shopping around. For their part, coaches usually stop recruiting other players."
**************************
The article makes reference to a 2011 paper by Boston College Law professor Alfred Yen: Early Scholarship Offers and the NCAA
HT: Stephanie Hurder
Committing to Play for a College, Then Starting 9th Grade
"In today’s sports world, students are offered full scholarships before they have taken their first College Boards, or even the Preliminary SAT exams. Coaches at colleges large and small flock to watch 13- and 14-year-old girls who they hope will fill out their future rosters. This is happening despite N.C.A.A. rules that appear to explicitly prohibit it.
"The heated race to recruit ever younger players has drastically accelerated over the last five years, according to the coaches involved. It is generally traced back to the professionalization of college and youth sports, a shift that has transformed soccer and other recreational sports from after-school activities into regimens requiring strength coaches and managers.
...
"Early scouting has also become more prevalent in women’s sports than men’s, in part because girls mature sooner than boys. But coaches say it is also an unintended consequence of Title IX, the federal law that requires equal spending on men’s and women’s sports. Colleges have sharply increased the number of women’s sports scholarships they offer, leading to a growing number of coaches chasing talent pools that have not expanded as quickly. In soccer, for instance, there are 322 women’s soccer teams in the highest division, up from 82 in 1990. There are now 204 men’s soccer teams.
“In women’s soccer, there are more scholarships than there are good players,” said Peter Albright, the coach at Richmond and a regular critic of early recruiting. “In men’s sports, it’s the opposite.”
"While women’s soccer is generally viewed as having led the way in early recruiting, lacrosse, volleyball and field hockey have been following and occasionally surpassing it, and other women’s and men’s sports are becoming involved each year when coaches realize a possibility of getting an edge.
"Precise numbers are difficult to come by, but an analysis done for The New York Times by the National Collegiate Scouting Association, a company that consults with families on the recruiting process, shows that while only 5 percent of men’s basketball players and 4 percent of football players who use the company commit to colleges early — before the official recruiting process begins — the numbers are 36 percent in women’s lacrosse and 24 percent in women’s soccer.
At universities with elite teams like North Carolina and Texas, the rosters are almost entirely filled by the time official recruiting begins.
...
For girls and boys, the trend is gaining steam despite the unhappiness of many of the coaches and parents who are most heavily involved, many of whom worry about the psychological and physical toll it is taking on youngsters.
“It’s detrimental to the whole development of the sport, and to the girls,” Haley’s future coach at Texas, Angela Kelly, said at the Florida tournament.
:The difficulty, according to Ms. Kelly and many other coaches, is that if they do not do it, other coaches will, and will snap up all of the best players. Many parents and girls say that committing early ensures they do not miss out on scholarship money.
...
"The N.C.A.A. rules designed to prevent all of this indicate that coaches cannot call players until July after their junior year of high school. Players are not supposed to commit to a college until signing a letter of intent in the spring of their senior year.
"But these rules have enormous and widely understood loopholes. The easiest way for coaches to circumvent the rules is by contacting the students through their high school or club coaches. Once the students are alerted, they can reach out to the college coaches themselves with few limits on what they can talk about or how often they can call.
"Haley said she was having phone conversations with college coaches nearly every night during the eighth grade.
...
"Mr. Dorrance, who has won 22 national championships as a coach, said he was spending his entire weekend focusing on the youngest girls at the tournament, those in the eighth and ninth grades. Mr. Dorrance is credited with being one of the first coaches to look at younger players, but he says he is not happy about the way the practice has evolved.
“It’s killing all of us,” he said.
"Mr. Dorrance’s biggest complaint is that he is increasingly making early offers to players who do not pan out years later.
“If you can’t make a decision on one or two looks, they go to your competitor, and they make an offer,” he said. “You are under this huge pressure to make a scholarship offer on their first visit.”
"The result has been a growing number of girls who come to play for him at North Carolina and end up sitting on the bench.
...
"Once the colleges manage to connect with a player, they have to deal with the prohibition on making a formal scholarship offer before a player’s final year of high school. But there is now a well-evolved process that is informal but considered essentially binding by all sides. Most sports have popular websites where commitments are tallied, and coaches can keep up with who is on and off the market.
"Either side can make a different decision after an informal commitment, but this happens infrequently because players are expected to stop talking with coaches from other programs and can lose offers if they are spotted shopping around. For their part, coaches usually stop recruiting other players."
**************************
The article makes reference to a 2011 paper by Boston College Law professor Alfred Yen: Early Scholarship Offers and the NCAA
HT: Stephanie Hurder
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
College football playoffs on the horizon?
This is a bit dated but still interesting: Inside Higher Ed reports on Playoff Politics
"The move to a playoff does represent “a little bit of bowing” to pressure from fans and sports media who are dissatisfied with the system currently used to pick a Division I champion, Kansas State University President Kirk Schulz said. That system uses a combination of mathematical formulas and sportswriter and coaches’ polls to select the teams that will compete in the Bowl Championship Series title game – and it has come to questionable results more than once.
In the meantime, Big 12, SEC Agree to Pit Champions in Bowl
"The Big 12 and Southeastern Conference champions will meet in a new game starting after the 2014 season, unless one or both are selected to play in a planned four-team national playoff, the Big 12 announced today. If a champion reaches the playoff, another team from the same conference will be selected for the game. The bowl game’s location will be announced at a later date.
"The news comes as leaders of the Bowl Championship Series negotiate major-college football’s first playoff, which would replace the current one-game BCS championship and begin after the 2014 season. BCS leaders hope to have the new playoff format finalized by midsummer and discuss a new TV deal with ESPN, which has first negotiating rights, in October.
"The pact is reminiscent of the longstanding arrangement between the Big Ten and the Pac-12, whose champions usually meet in the Rose Bowl.
...
"The new bowl represents a potential threat to the Fiesta Bowl, which since the start of the BCS has pitted the Big 12 champion against an at-large team.
...
"The BCS’s 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick are meeting with their constituents about the particulars of the potential playoff, and will meet again June 20. If the four-team plan is approved, it will move to the BCS presidential oversight committee for approval in early July."
"The move to a playoff does represent “a little bit of bowing” to pressure from fans and sports media who are dissatisfied with the system currently used to pick a Division I champion, Kansas State University President Kirk Schulz said. That system uses a combination of mathematical formulas and sportswriter and coaches’ polls to select the teams that will compete in the Bowl Championship Series title game – and it has come to questionable results more than once.
This year, for instance, the system bypassed Big 12 Conference champion Oklahoma State University to pit Southeastern Conference champion Louisiana State University against that same conference’s runner-up, the University of Alabama (a repeat, furthermore, of a ridiculously hyped match-up earlier in the season dubbed the “game of the century”).
But there's far more at stake than just who gets into the national championship. The fate of the other four prized BCS bowl games -- the Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar Bowls -- hangs in the balance.
While all 12 conference commissioners have sat in on the meetings that are shaping the playoff, those who run the six BCS conferences make the most money and carry the most weight. And before the BCS did away with the “automatic qualifier” designation last month, which automatically placed the champion of each BCS conference into one of the four top bowls, they also had direct, lucrative ties to one of those five widely watched games. (It also likely played a role in the frenzy of conference realignment in recent years.)
So while commissioners like Larry Scott of the Pacific-12 Conference and Jim Delany of the Big 10 Conference have cited the tradition and sentimentality of the bowls as reason to keep them intact moving forward, there are also financial benefits to doing so. That's why talk of a tournament has revolved around keeping the bowls intact in some form, and tacking a four-team playoff onto that.
************In the meantime, Big 12, SEC Agree to Pit Champions in Bowl
"The Big 12 and Southeastern Conference champions will meet in a new game starting after the 2014 season, unless one or both are selected to play in a planned four-team national playoff, the Big 12 announced today. If a champion reaches the playoff, another team from the same conference will be selected for the game. The bowl game’s location will be announced at a later date.
"The news comes as leaders of the Bowl Championship Series negotiate major-college football’s first playoff, which would replace the current one-game BCS championship and begin after the 2014 season. BCS leaders hope to have the new playoff format finalized by midsummer and discuss a new TV deal with ESPN, which has first negotiating rights, in October.
"The pact is reminiscent of the longstanding arrangement between the Big Ten and the Pac-12, whose champions usually meet in the Rose Bowl.
...
"The new bowl represents a potential threat to the Fiesta Bowl, which since the start of the BCS has pitted the Big 12 champion against an at-large team.
...
"The BCS’s 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick are meeting with their constituents about the particulars of the potential playoff, and will meet again June 20. If the four-team plan is approved, it will move to the BCS presidential oversight committee for approval in early July."
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Unraveling
Many markets have trouble coordinating on the timing of transactions, and this has led to market failures in markets as diverse as the market for college football bowls, and the labor market for federal court clerks, and in various medical markets, such as (most recently) gastroenterologists and orthopaedic surgeons.
Why do transactions in some markets happen inefficiently early? Here are the concluding paragraphs from our recent NBER working paper Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation
by Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, M. Utku Unver - #15006 (LS)
" It has been known at least since Roth and Xing (1994) that many markets unravel, so that offers become progressively earlier as participants seek to make strategic use of the timing of transactions. It is clear that unraveling can have many causes, because markets are highly multidimensional and time is only one dimensional (and so transactions can only move in two directions in time, earlier or later). So there can be many different reasons that make it advantageous to make transactions earlier. There can also be strategic reasons to delay transactions; see e.g. Roth and Ockenfels (2002) on late bidding in internet auctions.
Thus the study of factors that promote unraveling is a large one, and a number of distinct causes have been identified in different markets or in theory, including instability of late outcomes (which gives blocking pairs an incentive to identify each other early), congestion of late markets (which makes it difficult to make transactions if they are left until too late), and the desire to mutually insure against late-resolving uncertainty. There has also been some study of market practices that may facilitate or impede the making of early offers, such as the rules and customs surrounding "exploding" offers, which expire if not accepted immediately.
In this paper we take a somewhat different tack, and consider conditions related to supply and demand that will tend to work against unraveling, or to facilitate it. There seems to be a widespread perception, in markets that have experienced it, that unraveling is sparked by a shortage of workers.
But for inefficient unraveling to occur, firms have to be willing to make early offers and workers have to be willing to accept them. Our experiment supports the hypothesis that a shortage of workers is not itself conducive to unraveling, since workers who know that they are in short supply need not hurry to accept offers by lower quality firms. Instead, in the model and in the experiment, it is comparable supply and demand that leads to unraveling, in which attention must be paid not only to the overall demand and supply, but to the supply and demand of workers and firms of the highest quality. This seems to reflect what we see in many unraveled markets, in which competition for the elite firms and workers is fierce, but the quality of workers may not be reliably revealed until after a good deal of hiring has already been completed."
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W15006
Postscript: Skip Sauer over at The Sports Economist has a post about a 9th grader offered a college football scholarship in what is becoming a seriously unraveled market.
Why do transactions in some markets happen inefficiently early? Here are the concluding paragraphs from our recent NBER working paper Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation
by Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, M. Utku Unver - #15006 (LS)
" It has been known at least since Roth and Xing (1994) that many markets unravel, so that offers become progressively earlier as participants seek to make strategic use of the timing of transactions. It is clear that unraveling can have many causes, because markets are highly multidimensional and time is only one dimensional (and so transactions can only move in two directions in time, earlier or later). So there can be many different reasons that make it advantageous to make transactions earlier. There can also be strategic reasons to delay transactions; see e.g. Roth and Ockenfels (2002) on late bidding in internet auctions.
Thus the study of factors that promote unraveling is a large one, and a number of distinct causes have been identified in different markets or in theory, including instability of late outcomes (which gives blocking pairs an incentive to identify each other early), congestion of late markets (which makes it difficult to make transactions if they are left until too late), and the desire to mutually insure against late-resolving uncertainty. There has also been some study of market practices that may facilitate or impede the making of early offers, such as the rules and customs surrounding "exploding" offers, which expire if not accepted immediately.
In this paper we take a somewhat different tack, and consider conditions related to supply and demand that will tend to work against unraveling, or to facilitate it. There seems to be a widespread perception, in markets that have experienced it, that unraveling is sparked by a shortage of workers.
But for inefficient unraveling to occur, firms have to be willing to make early offers and workers have to be willing to accept them. Our experiment supports the hypothesis that a shortage of workers is not itself conducive to unraveling, since workers who know that they are in short supply need not hurry to accept offers by lower quality firms. Instead, in the model and in the experiment, it is comparable supply and demand that leads to unraveling, in which attention must be paid not only to the overall demand and supply, but to the supply and demand of workers and firms of the highest quality. This seems to reflect what we see in many unraveled markets, in which competition for the elite firms and workers is fierce, but the quality of workers may not be reliably revealed until after a good deal of hiring has already been completed."
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W15006
Postscript: Skip Sauer over at The Sports Economist has a post about a 9th grader offered a college football scholarship in what is becoming a seriously unraveled market.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Antitrust, repugnance and expert testimony in NCAA case
My colleague Roger Noll gets top billing in this story about the courtroom plays being executed in a trial that touches on whether paying college athletes is repugnant: O'Bannon economist may be MVP
OAKLAND, Calif. -- The big names in the lawsuit against the NCAA are Ed O'Bannon, Oscar Robertson and Bill Russell, but the key to the plaintiffs' attempt to transform the NCAA is a 74-year-old economist named Roger Noll who has studied the sports industry for more than 40 years.
The tall and scholarly Stanford professor emeritus already has testified for nearly eight hours and will return for more on Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken. Noll's job for the players is to convince Wilken that the NCAA's refusal to allow college athletes to sell their names, images and likenesses is a violation of American antitrust laws.
ESPN reporter Tom Farrey (
Relying on exhaustive research and extensive experience testifying in court as an expert witness in antitrust trials, Noll must be able to show that the NCAA is using its stranglehold over college sports to deprive current and former college athletes of their fair share of the money produced by sales of live broadcasts of games, rebroadcasts, video games and other merchandise.
Noll has already shown that the NCAA's restrictions that prevent athletes from selling their names, images and likenesses limit competition in recruiting high school stars (the colleges cannot offer payment to the athletes for use of their names and so forth). He also has shown that the restrictions "distort the industry" and push huge revenue from football and men's basketball into coaches' salaries and palatial facilities.
He also responded on Tuesday to the NCAA's claim that the restrictions on athletes enhance "competitive balance" among NCAA teams by showing, with a compelling chart, that there has never been competitive balance in major college sports and that a small number of schools dominate top 25 lists and national championships.
Noll's research for his testimony is impressive. In a chart that demonstrated the current level of competition for high school stars, he showed the outcomes of recruiting efforts in football and basketball for the five power conferences and Notre Dame. According to Noll's research, for example, the Irish succeeded in 11 out of 17 attempts in 2012 to recruit four- and five-star high school athletes.
During the pretrial stage of the O'Bannon litigation, Noll prepared 750 pages of reports and testified in a pretrial interrogation that went on for four days and filled more than 1,500 pages.
Noll is no stranger to the courtroom. He was the star witness for the NFL Players Association when the players used antitrust litigation to establish free agency. Noll's testimony in a federal court in Minneapolis in 1991 was the key to a verdict from a jury that the NFL's restrictions on player movement violated antitrust laws.
This is not his first time in Wilken's courtroom, either. He testified before Wilken for the winning side in an antitrust trial involving HIV drugs.
The NCAA is responding to Noll's expertise with a cross-examination that began Tuesday and with its own economists, including James Heckman, a Nobel Prize winner from the University of Chicago. The NCAA's principal witness against Noll will be Daniel Rubinfeld, a professor at New York University. Noll and the O'Bannon legal team have already started their attack on Rubinfeld, offering excerpts from a Rubinfeld textbook that admit that the NCAA is a cartel, the first step in any antitrust trial.
Rohit Singla, the NCAA attorney assigned to the cross-examination of Noll, did not make much progress on Tuesday, with Noll repeatedly suggesting that Singla's questions were "vague and based on facts that do not exist."
Singla and the NCAA insist that the players have no ownership of their names, images and likenesses that would permit them to bargain for a share of television broadcasts. All ownership, the NCAA says, resides with the schools, the conferences and itself.
If the NCAA is correct and the players have nothing to sell, it remains unknown why the NCAA would restrict the players from selling what they have no right to sell. It's a question that Noll may address as he continues his testimony on Wednesday.
O'Bannon, Robertson and Russell were highly successful in competition on the basketball court, but Noll's testimony on economic competition in a courtroom will determine the fate of the NCAA's current way of operation.
Monday, March 24, 2014
The (changing) market culture of recruiting college athletes early
Luke Coffman pointed out this article: Flipping out--More recruits are decommitting as college choices become business decisions, whose URL reads like a summary of the article http://espn.go.com/college-sports/recruiting/football/story/_/id/10391907/examining-pre-signing-day-flipping-epidemic-college-football-recruiting
It starts with this:
"Dalvin Cook makes no apologies for the wild ride on which he took recruiters over the past two years.
"The five-star running back from Miami Central, who enrolled last month at Florida State, pledged in June 2012 to Clemson. He switched his commitment to Florida in April 2013 before flipping to the Seminoles during an ESPNU interview on New Year's Eve while practicing for the Under Armour All-America Game.
"Amid the indecision, he signed scholarship paperwork with Florida, FSU and hometown Miami"
The story goes on
"As recruiting continues to accelerate into the freshman and sophomore years, prospects often reach decisions without an understanding of their opportunities.
"We just keep recruiting until the first Wednesday in February every year," UCLA defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator Angus McClure said. "That's all you can do.
It starts with this:
"Dalvin Cook makes no apologies for the wild ride on which he took recruiters over the past two years.
"The five-star running back from Miami Central, who enrolled last month at Florida State, pledged in June 2012 to Clemson. He switched his commitment to Florida in April 2013 before flipping to the Seminoles during an ESPNU interview on New Year's Eve while practicing for the Under Armour All-America Game.
"Amid the indecision, he signed scholarship paperwork with Florida, FSU and hometown Miami"
The story goes on
"As recruiting continues to accelerate into the freshman and sophomore years, prospects often reach decisions without an understanding of their opportunities.
"We just keep recruiting until the first Wednesday in February every year," UCLA defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator Angus McClure said. "That's all you can do.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Unraveling of tech recruiting
Revenge of the Nerds: Tech Firms Scour College Campuses for Talent
"On college campuses these days, the top nerds are getting a taste of what it's like to be star jocks.
"For Maxwell Hawkins, a computer science and art major at Carnegie Mellon University, the moment came in March. A technology recruiting firm sent him a letter by FedEx urging him to drop out of his junior year and take his talents to work for a start-up.
... "The technology boom has created an acute shortage of engineers and software developers. The industry has responded by taking a page from the playbook of professional sports: identify up and comers early, then roll out the red carpet to lock them up.
"With the social media frenzy in full swing, promising students are now wrestling with decisions about whether to stay in school or turn pro.
...
"The National Basketball Association has a rule called "one and done" that requires players entering the draft to be 19 or have completed their freshman year of college. But some prospective programmers aren't even making it that far.
"Sahil Lavingia was a freshman at the University of Southern California in 2010 when he got an email from Ben Silbermann, chief executive and co-founder of the fast-growing online scrapbook Pinterest. Mr. Silbermann was looking for help building a version of Pinterest for the iPhone and happened upon a data tracking app developed by the self-taught Mr. Lavingia.
"Figuring the young student "seemed like a go-getter," Mr. Silbermann drove up to Berkeley from Silicon Valley to meet Mr. Lavingia, who was coming to the Bay Area for the USC-Berkeley football game. A few days later, Mr. Lavingia had an offer in hand and took a leave from school to take the job.
"Some companies are grabbing talented programmers even before they reach college. Luke Weber taught himself how to design computer games in high school and became one of the most popular contributors to Roblox Corp., a company that lets its subscribers play games developed by its users.
"After graduating, he attended a Roblox conference last June and met the head of the company's marketing department, who asked him if he wanted to shoot some videos to teach people how to make games. The videos turned into a design job, and now Mr. Weber, who has postponed plans to go to college, works three days a week for the company producing games and virtual goods for $25 an hour.
"At 18, he is the youngest employee of the company."
Monday, September 5, 2016
MIÉRT GYERE EL? von Neumann lecture in Budapest on Who Gets What and Why, Sept 6
MIÉRT GYERE EL?
"We cordially invite you to the 2016 John von Neumann Award Ceremony and the public lecture held by the awardee on the 6th September. The title of the lecture will be "Who Gets What and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design”. 2012 Nobel laureate Professor Roth is going to talk about the matching markets hidden around us, from kindergarten choice through kidney transplantations to college football, and about how to make them work.
The lecture is organized by Rajk László College for Advanced Studies with the contribution of Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (KTI). The lecture will be held in English."
**********
Here's a news story announcing the event
Alvin E. Roth kapja az idei Neumann János-díjat
Google translate: Alvin E. Roth will receive this year's John Von Neumann Prize
The students at Rajk László College, who choose the recipient of this annual award, have done a good job in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann_Award
"We cordially invite you to the 2016 John von Neumann Award Ceremony and the public lecture held by the awardee on the 6th September. The title of the lecture will be "Who Gets What and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design”. 2012 Nobel laureate Professor Roth is going to talk about the matching markets hidden around us, from kindergarten choice through kidney transplantations to college football, and about how to make them work.
The lecture is organized by Rajk László College for Advanced Studies with the contribution of Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (KTI). The lecture will be held in English."
**********
Here's a news story announcing the event
Alvin E. Roth kapja az idei Neumann János-díjat
Google translate: Alvin E. Roth will receive this year's John Von Neumann Prize
The students at Rajk László College, who choose the recipient of this annual award, have done a good job in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann_Award
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Report from the front on the war for talent
From a recent NY Times article on recruiting in Silicon Valley:
"Two executives at a small start-up who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it recently lost an intern when one of the biggest start-ups offered the candidate a 40 percent bump in stock options, potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — but only if the candidate accepted the job before hanging up the phone.
“The atmosphere is brutally competitive,” said Keith Rabois, a Silicon Valley veteran and chief operating officer at Square, where Mr. Firestone works. “Recruiting in Silicon Valley is more competitive and intense and furious than college football recruiting of high school athletes.”
...
"Tech recruiters have also expanded their searches. They still scout college campuses, particularly Stanford’s computer science department, where this year it was common for seniors to receive half a dozen offers by the end of first semester. But since college degrees are not mandatory, recruiters are also going to computer coding competitions and parties, in search of talent that is reminiscent of the dot-com mania."
Does anyone know some talented high school PHP, Ruby and Python programmers? (Or maybe they are already teaching those things in kindergarten?)
"Two executives at a small start-up who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it recently lost an intern when one of the biggest start-ups offered the candidate a 40 percent bump in stock options, potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — but only if the candidate accepted the job before hanging up the phone.
“The atmosphere is brutally competitive,” said Keith Rabois, a Silicon Valley veteran and chief operating officer at Square, where Mr. Firestone works. “Recruiting in Silicon Valley is more competitive and intense and furious than college football recruiting of high school athletes.”
...
"Tech recruiters have also expanded their searches. They still scout college campuses, particularly Stanford’s computer science department, where this year it was common for seniors to receive half a dozen offers by the end of first semester. But since college degrees are not mandatory, recruiters are also going to computer coding competitions and parties, in search of talent that is reminiscent of the dot-com mania."
Does anyone know some talented high school PHP, Ruby and Python programmers? (Or maybe they are already teaching those things in kindergarten?)
Friday, February 6, 2009
Networks and high school athletes
While the NCAA regulates the communication between high school and college coaches, it has more trouble regulating third-party networkers, the NY Times reports: College Recruiting’s Thin Gray Line. It isn't entirely clear who is extracting information rents from whom, but one worries about the high school players.
"“Recruiting for college football is obviously changing,” Prince said in a telephone interview. “It’s become much more like the basketball model. When that happens, you then have people who are intermediaries ...”"
HT Muriel Niederle
"“Recruiting for college football is obviously changing,” Prince said in a telephone interview. “It’s become much more like the basketball model. When that happens, you then have people who are intermediaries ...”"
HT Muriel Niederle
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Unravelling in college football
There are some big eighth graders out there.
LSU Gives Scholarship Offer To 8th Grader
"It's a scene that plays out on college campuses every single summer, although this offer was different for one main reason -- Dylan Moses has yet to start eighth grade.
"Considering the Tigers are only just starting to hand out offers to members of the Class of 2014, it came as a bit surprise for a 2017 prospect to get one."
And so did the University of Washington
"Washington made a splash in the recruiting world Wednesday, but don't bother checking the ESPN 150 for the newest Huskies commit. He won't be included in that list this year, next year or the one after that.
"It's highly unlikely a single Washington player still will be on the roster by the time Tate Martell makes an appearance in purple and gold, but after receiving a scholarship offer from the Huskies three weeks ago, the soon-to-be eighth-grade quarterback committed to coach Steve Sarkisian on Wednesday, Martell's father, Al, confirmed to ESPN.com.
"The Washington coaching staff is not able to confirm whether it has accepted the commitment from the 14-year-old Martell. Schools are not able to offer a written scholarship until Sept. 1 of a prospect's senior season, according to NCAA rules. Martell won't be able to sign a national letter of intent until Feb. 1, 2017."
HT: Vikram Rao
LSU Gives Scholarship Offer To 8th Grader
"It's a scene that plays out on college campuses every single summer, although this offer was different for one main reason -- Dylan Moses has yet to start eighth grade.
"Considering the Tigers are only just starting to hand out offers to members of the Class of 2014, it came as a bit surprise for a 2017 prospect to get one."
And so did the University of Washington
"Washington made a splash in the recruiting world Wednesday, but don't bother checking the ESPN 150 for the newest Huskies commit. He won't be included in that list this year, next year or the one after that.
"It's highly unlikely a single Washington player still will be on the roster by the time Tate Martell makes an appearance in purple and gold, but after receiving a scholarship offer from the Huskies three weeks ago, the soon-to-be eighth-grade quarterback committed to coach Steve Sarkisian on Wednesday, Martell's father, Al, confirmed to ESPN.com.
"The Washington coaching staff is not able to confirm whether it has accepted the commitment from the 14-year-old Martell. Schools are not able to offer a written scholarship until Sept. 1 of a prospect's senior season, according to NCAA rules. Martell won't be able to sign a national letter of intent until Feb. 1, 2017."
HT: Vikram Rao
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Chapter 4 of Who Gets What and Why, in the Milken Institute Review (with art work...)
The Milken Institute Review, Fourth Quarter 2015, has published an excerpt--Chapter 4--of Who Gets What and Why. It comes with illustrations, which aren't in the original. The chapter is mostly about unraveling, and includes discussion of college football bowls, the market for law school graduates, and medical fellowships...and why Oklahomans are called "Sooners," and fraternity and sorority recruitment is called "rush."
Book Excerpt--Who Gets What and Why
Here's the introduction to the excerpt, by Peter Passell
"Alvin Roth, the author of this excerpt from Who Gets What – and Why,* won a Nobel in economics in 2012 for his work on the “the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design.” I know, I know: that’s hardly an intro likely to induce you to dive right in. Most Nobels in economics, after all, are awarded for accomplishments that are too arcane for mere mortals to comprehend. And even the prize winners who do have something pressing to say to the public can rarely write their way out of that proverbial paper bag.
" But Roth and this book are spectacular exceptions. While he was really trained as a mathematician (his PhD is in a discipline called operations research), Roth’s vision has never strayed far from the practical. And he’s a natural-born writer to boot.
"Roth designs “matching markets,” where price alone can’t balance supply and demand – think of markets for everything from marriage to college admissions. Indeed, he’s even saved lives by helping to design an ingenious way to match more donated kidneys to needy patients.
"The chapter excerpted here will give you a taste of his fine mind and formidable ability to make complicated ideas comprehensible. — Peter Passell"
***********
See this earlier post with a video of the conversation about the book that Peter and I had in June: Peter Passell interviews me at the Milken Institute on Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design
The rest of the book can be found at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Who-Gets-What-Why-Matchmaking/dp/0544291131
Book Excerpt--Who Gets What and Why
Here's the introduction to the excerpt, by Peter Passell
"Alvin Roth, the author of this excerpt from Who Gets What – and Why,* won a Nobel in economics in 2012 for his work on the “the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design.” I know, I know: that’s hardly an intro likely to induce you to dive right in. Most Nobels in economics, after all, are awarded for accomplishments that are too arcane for mere mortals to comprehend. And even the prize winners who do have something pressing to say to the public can rarely write their way out of that proverbial paper bag.
" But Roth and this book are spectacular exceptions. While he was really trained as a mathematician (his PhD is in a discipline called operations research), Roth’s vision has never strayed far from the practical. And he’s a natural-born writer to boot.
"Roth designs “matching markets,” where price alone can’t balance supply and demand – think of markets for everything from marriage to college admissions. Indeed, he’s even saved lives by helping to design an ingenious way to match more donated kidneys to needy patients.
"The chapter excerpted here will give you a taste of his fine mind and formidable ability to make complicated ideas comprehensible. — Peter Passell"
***********
See this earlier post with a video of the conversation about the book that Peter and I had in June: Peter Passell interviews me at the Milken Institute on Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design
The rest of the book can be found at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Who-Gets-What-Why-Matchmaking/dp/0544291131
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Unraveling in college football
We're used to hearing of career decisions by very young basketball players, but there's been a tradition in football of waiting until players' adult weights could be estimated. But now (multiple readers point out to me), the Trojans of USC have recruited 13 year old quarterback David Sills to their entering class in 2015.
Unraveling has a fine sporting tradition.
Unraveling has a fine sporting tradition.
Tuesday, May 2, 2023
Payment to college athletes: Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) Deals
The recent changes in what college athletes can be paid for (and in their ability to transfer freely between schools) has made it profitable for some football players who are eligible for the NFL draft to remain in school. The NYT has the story:
How transfer, NIL rules thinned out NFL draft QB class: ‘It’s an anemic quarterback class’ by Kalyn Kahler
"the reason for the mid-to-late-round quarterback mass desertion has a lot to do with the growth of the transfer portal and name, image and likeness (NIL) deals.
"In April 2021, the NCAA changed its rules to allow transfers without sitting out a season. A little more than two months later, the NCAA announced its first-ever NIL policy, allowing college athletes to take deals with individual companies, like Bose, and sign deals with collectives affiliated with their schools.
"Collectives are generally made up of donor funds, and they offer contracts to athletes in return for services like autograph signings or event appearances. And in the second season of NIL, collectives are succeeding at incentivizing players at all positions to return to school, and most of all the most important position on the team.
“You’re not necessarily allowed to pay players to return. Like, that can’t be the reason,” said an executive for a collective affiliated with a West Coast university who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity in order to openly discuss details of the hush-hush world of NIL. “But you can talk about their potential when they come back, you’ll have significantly more NIL opportunities than maybe you had the prior year.
...
"You’re not exactly allowed to disclose what people are making,” said the West Coast collective executive. “It has not been laid out from the NCAA and a lot of schools on exactly what you can and can’t talk about. It’s very unclear in a lot of situations, so people naturally get uncomfortable because they don’t know the rules, especially coaches.”
"A veteran NFL agent who represented two draft-eligible Power 5 quarterbacks for their NIL deals said that one transferred to a new program this offseason with the understanding he would make a million-plus through that school’s collective. The agent said the other turned down an offer of more than a million in favor of a transfer to the best football situation, where he’s been promised an amount comparable to an NFL practice-squad salary (in the $200,000 range)."
***********
Related posts on (previously repugnant) payments to student athletes here.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Market for toilets: NYC marathon
Providing Toilets for 39,000 Runners
The NYC marathon is a peak load event:
"Gathering and placing 2,250 portable toilets for a one-day event — and then removing them almost immediately — is a daunting task. The marathon represents the third-largest annual assemblage of portable toilets in the country, behind the Rose Bowl college football game and parade and the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D. Placed side by side, the 4-foot-wide toilets would stretch 1.7 miles. "
Apparently portable potties have a natural life cycle:
"The average special-event life of a portable toilet, Malone said, is two years — shorter if it attends a lot of concerts — before it is assigned to duty at construction sites, the “bread and butter” of the business. "
The NYC marathon is a peak load event:
"Gathering and placing 2,250 portable toilets for a one-day event — and then removing them almost immediately — is a daunting task. The marathon represents the third-largest annual assemblage of portable toilets in the country, behind the Rose Bowl college football game and parade and the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D. Placed side by side, the 4-foot-wide toilets would stretch 1.7 miles. "
Apparently portable potties have a natural life cycle:
"The average special-event life of a portable toilet, Malone said, is two years — shorter if it attends a lot of concerts — before it is assigned to duty at construction sites, the “bread and butter” of the business. "
Monday, April 12, 2010
Unpaid workers: athletes and interns
Several blogs and news stories follow unpaid parts of the labor force, college athletes and student interns.
For Love of The Game (And The Money) from The Faculty Lounge by Kim Krawiec and Against the NCAA Cartel from The Volokh Conspiracy by Ilya Somin both consider the unpaid status of college athletes. The latter story explicitly mentions the high salaries of college coaches in basketball and football to indicate that these are profit making entertainment businesses despite the fact that the workers/players/students are unpaid.
There has also been a good deal of attention to the recent NY Times story headlined Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say
"With job openings scarce for young people, the number of unpaid internships has climbed in recent years, leading federal and state regulators to worry that more employers are illegally using such internships for free labor. "...
"Ms. Leppink said many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.
No one keeps official count of how many paid and unpaid internships there are, but Lance Choy, director of the Career Development Center at Stanford University, sees definitive evidence that the number of unpaid internships is mushrooming — fueled by employers’ desire to hold down costs and students’ eagerness to gain experience for their résumés. Employers posted 643 unpaid internships on Stanford’s job board this academic year, more than triple the 174 posted two years ago.
In 2008, the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that 83 percent of graduating students had held internships, up from 9 percent in 1992. This means hundreds of thousands of students hold internships each year; some experts estimate that one-fourth to one-half are unpaid. "
Some regulatory guidance from California: California Labor Dept. Revises Guidelines on When Interns Must Be Paid
"Many wage and hour regulators maintain that interns must be paid if their work is of “immediate advantage” to the employer, but the California agency’s top lawyer advised that such an advantage can be offset — and the intern not be paid — if the employer provides close supervision and lays out money for training.
Over all, the guidance from the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement was emphatic that for internships to be unpaid, they must be educational and predominantly for the benefit of the intern, not the employer. "
Some of these discussions have something in common with the discussions in the transplant community about compensation for donors.
For Love of The Game (And The Money) from The Faculty Lounge by Kim Krawiec and Against the NCAA Cartel from The Volokh Conspiracy by Ilya Somin both consider the unpaid status of college athletes. The latter story explicitly mentions the high salaries of college coaches in basketball and football to indicate that these are profit making entertainment businesses despite the fact that the workers/players/students are unpaid.
There has also been a good deal of attention to the recent NY Times story headlined Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say
"With job openings scarce for young people, the number of unpaid internships has climbed in recent years, leading federal and state regulators to worry that more employers are illegally using such internships for free labor. "...
"Ms. Leppink said many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.
No one keeps official count of how many paid and unpaid internships there are, but Lance Choy, director of the Career Development Center at Stanford University, sees definitive evidence that the number of unpaid internships is mushrooming — fueled by employers’ desire to hold down costs and students’ eagerness to gain experience for their résumés. Employers posted 643 unpaid internships on Stanford’s job board this academic year, more than triple the 174 posted two years ago.
In 2008, the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that 83 percent of graduating students had held internships, up from 9 percent in 1992. This means hundreds of thousands of students hold internships each year; some experts estimate that one-fourth to one-half are unpaid. "
Some regulatory guidance from California: California Labor Dept. Revises Guidelines on When Interns Must Be Paid
"Many wage and hour regulators maintain that interns must be paid if their work is of “immediate advantage” to the employer, but the California agency’s top lawyer advised that such an advantage can be offset — and the intern not be paid — if the employer provides close supervision and lays out money for training.
Over all, the guidance from the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement was emphatic that for internships to be unpaid, they must be educational and predominantly for the benefit of the intern, not the employer. "
Some of these discussions have something in common with the discussions in the transplant community about compensation for donors.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
A word for unraveling in Singapore: "Choping"
"Choping" is Singapore English slang for reserving something well in advance, i.e. a place in school for your child, etc. That is, it is one of the actions involved in the unraveling of markets, the process by which transactions are arranged increasingly far in advance of when they will be carried out. Sometimes this has been a cause of market failures that lead to new market designs, with a prominent example being medical labor markets.
In some cases, the unraveling of a market has caused serious inefficiencies, as when college football bowl games used to be decided before the end of the regular season (which made it harder to arrange the kind of championship games that draw high television viewership), or when gastroenterologists used to be hired long before they finished their internal medicine residencies (which caused the national market to collapse into lots of regional markets). But, in most unraveled markets, data are lacking to directly determine if a particular set of market arrangments and timing are inefficient.
Tyler Cowen at MR has a (characteristically) very interesting post on choping at Singapore food courts, where patrons reserve seats by placing tissue papers on them, and then go to stand in line to get their food. He suggests (maybe just to be contrarian) that this is efficient. As one of the comments to his post points out, this would be the case in a model in which having to look for a seat once you have your food is incomparably more costly than any other outcome. Of course it is easy to see how (with different parameters) reserving seats in advance could be inefficient (although still an equilibrium). E.g. if it takes 15 minutes to get your food, and 15 minutes to eat it, then each chair could serve four people in an hour if people looked for a chair after getting their food, but only two people per hour if people reserve a chair before getting on line.
The discussion of all this in the Singapore press is satisfyingly nuanced. After a demonstration against choping by some students (Wiping out bad habit of 'choping' seats with tissue pack), the Straits Times has a story (Is this rude?) that explains both points of view.
On the one hand:
"But many people reckon there is nothing rude about reserving one's spot with a packet of tissue paper. Indeed, Mr Wong, who arrived in Singapore last month, said: 'It is a practical and creative way to reserve seats instead of standing around with a tray of food turning cold.' "
On the other:
"Tissue 'choping' seems to be uniquely Singaporean. Housewife Ivy Ong-Wood, in her late 30s, a Malaysian now living in Hong Kong, told LifeStyle: 'At the tea cafes or cha chan tengs in Hong Kong, people queue outside and are told where to sit. In Malaysia, there is no problem getting seats at the food centres.' "
Whatever the truth of the matter, this will not be an easy equilibrium to displace. The story notes: "It is so pervasive that companies even have tissue packs specially made with the word 'chope' for marketing purposes. "
In some cases, the unraveling of a market has caused serious inefficiencies, as when college football bowl games used to be decided before the end of the regular season (which made it harder to arrange the kind of championship games that draw high television viewership), or when gastroenterologists used to be hired long before they finished their internal medicine residencies (which caused the national market to collapse into lots of regional markets). But, in most unraveled markets, data are lacking to directly determine if a particular set of market arrangments and timing are inefficient.
Tyler Cowen at MR has a (characteristically) very interesting post on choping at Singapore food courts, where patrons reserve seats by placing tissue papers on them, and then go to stand in line to get their food. He suggests (maybe just to be contrarian) that this is efficient. As one of the comments to his post points out, this would be the case in a model in which having to look for a seat once you have your food is incomparably more costly than any other outcome. Of course it is easy to see how (with different parameters) reserving seats in advance could be inefficient (although still an equilibrium). E.g. if it takes 15 minutes to get your food, and 15 minutes to eat it, then each chair could serve four people in an hour if people looked for a chair after getting their food, but only two people per hour if people reserve a chair before getting on line.
The discussion of all this in the Singapore press is satisfyingly nuanced. After a demonstration against choping by some students (Wiping out bad habit of 'choping' seats with tissue pack), the Straits Times has a story (Is this rude?) that explains both points of view.
On the one hand:
"But many people reckon there is nothing rude about reserving one's spot with a packet of tissue paper. Indeed, Mr Wong, who arrived in Singapore last month, said: 'It is a practical and creative way to reserve seats instead of standing around with a tray of food turning cold.' "
On the other:
"Tissue 'choping' seems to be uniquely Singaporean. Housewife Ivy Ong-Wood, in her late 30s, a Malaysian now living in Hong Kong, told LifeStyle: 'At the tea cafes or cha chan tengs in Hong Kong, people queue outside and are told where to sit. In Malaysia, there is no problem getting seats at the food centres.' "
Whatever the truth of the matter, this will not be an easy equilibrium to displace. The story notes: "It is so pervasive that companies even have tissue packs specially made with the word 'chope' for marketing purposes. "
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Girls' lacrosse camps and college admissions
College admissions begins early for high school and even middle school athletes, not just in big money sports like men's football and basketball, but for many sports, including women's lacrosse. Some of it starts with summer camps:
Northwestern Takes Game Directly to Eastern Recruits
"Northwestern has developed a following in the Northeast thanks to a pipeline built by Coach Kelly Amonte Hiller, who holds girls lacrosse camps in New York and Massachusetts each summer.
Northwestern Takes Game Directly to Eastern Recruits
"Northwestern has developed a following in the Northeast thanks to a pipeline built by Coach Kelly Amonte Hiller, who holds girls lacrosse camps in New York and Massachusetts each summer.
"Amonte Hiller, who also runs camps at Northwestern,
said her main focus was promoting the sport. But she is aware of the other
benefits, as more than half of her players during the past 11 years have been
former campers. Of the 34 current Wildcats, 24 are from New York, New Jersey or
Massachusetts.
...
"Coaches routinely run summer camps at their
universities. They are a way to raise money and visibility while serving as an
initial meet-and-greet with potential recruits.
"But it is uncommon for a coach to take a camp out of
state. Stacey Osburn, an N.C.A.A. spokeswoman, said basketball camps must be
held within 100 miles of the university, and a football camp must be held in the
university’s state or within 50 miles of its campus.
There are no restrictions for lacrosse camps, Osburn
said. And since high school lacrosse’s densest and most talent-rich areas are
still in the Northeast, out-of-town camps are an attractive option for coaches.
...
“The first camp I went to, Kelly came right up and
introduced herself,” said the senior midfielder Alex Frank, a Westwood graduate.
“It had a big impact, having that relationship with her when I was just entering
middle school. And as I got older, I knew what her coaching style was and I was
comfortable with her.”
"Wildcats midfielder Shannon Smith, a native of West
Babylon, N.Y., started attending Amonte Hiller’s camp on Long Island as a fifth
grader.
“Kelly would walk around to all the different fields
making sure she knew the kids,” said Smith, a 2011 Tewaaraton Award winner. “You
were always shocked how she knew a lot of the kids before camp even started.”
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Northwestern football players granted the right to form labor union
Here's the story: College Players Granted Right To Form Union
"CHICAGO — In a decision that has the potential to fundamentally reshape the N.C.A.A. and alter the relationship between universities and their athletes, a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board sided with a group of Northwestern football players Wednesday, calling them employees who have the right to collectively bargain."
Here's the link to the NLRB page with the decision
The parties have until April 9, 2014 to file with the Board in Washington, D.C. a Request for Review of the Decision.
Here's my post from Sunday with background.
"CHICAGO — In a decision that has the potential to fundamentally reshape the N.C.A.A. and alter the relationship between universities and their athletes, a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board sided with a group of Northwestern football players Wednesday, calling them employees who have the right to collectively bargain."
Here's the link to the NLRB page with the decision
The parties have until April 9, 2014 to file with the Board in Washington, D.C. a Request for Review of the Decision.
Here's my post from Sunday with background.
Friday, April 12, 2024
Gambling on sports, by and on athletes
Now that sports betting is legal, and apps allow people to bet on particular events within a game as it unfolds, there is concern that players could be (illegally) incentivized to under-perform in order to cause some bets to become winning bets.
The WSJ has the story:
America Made a Huge Bet on Sports Gambling. The Backlash Is Here. Less than six years after a Supreme Court ruling paved the way for widespread legal sports gambling in the U.S., sports leagues face an onslaught of scandals related to betting. By Joshua Robinson, , Jared Diamond, and Robert O'Connell
"American sports spent more than a century keeping gambling as far away as possible, in the name of preserving competitive purity and repelling scandal and corruption.
"Now, less than six years after the Supreme Court opened the door for states to embrace legal sports betting, major U.S. leagues are already confronting the darker sides of sports betting with alarming frequency. And at the heart of the problems is the population whose ability to bet on sports is the most severely curbed: the athletes themselves.
...
"The situation has become worrisome enough that National Collegiate Athletic Association president Charlie Baker on Wednesday amped up his organization’s call for a nationwide ban on bets on the performance of individual college athletes.
...
“All of the positive benefits and additional fan engagement that could potentially come from sports betting mean nothing if we’re not protecting the integrity of the game,” Marquest Meeks, MLB’s deputy general counsel for sports betting and compliance, said in an interview last summer.
"Gambling scandals have long tainted sports. The 1919 Black Sox scandal involved eight players accused of throwing the World Series for money. Baseball superstar Pete Rose received a lifetime ban for betting on baseball, a penalty that has blocked the game’s all-time hits leader from the Hall of Fame. Point-shaving scandals have periodically roiled college basketball, and NBA referee Tim Donaghy went to prison for betting on games he officiated.
...
"Odds are now openly discussed on live broadcasts. Ads for betting apps seem to appear during every commercial break and are plastered around stadiums and arenas. Sports leagues even have gambling-focused programming on their official networks.
...
"What’s at stake now is the promise that lies at the very center of the sports experience: Fans and participants must believe that what they are seeing is true. Yet as the leagues and the gamblers grow closer together, the mere suggestion that players could be motivated to manipulate outcomes has been enough to create fresh doubts.
...
"Since the prohibition on sports gambling was lifted, leagues that had once viewed betting as an existential threat to their integrity scrambled to partner with gambling companies and brought them into the tent. This winter, Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James became a brand ambassador for DraftKings, where he will dispense picks for football games. The NBA itself also announced a new feature designed to mesh the betting experience with live action: Fans watching games on League Pass, the flagship streaming platform, would be able to opt in to view betting odds on the app’s interface and click through to place wagers.
"Nothing, however, made the American marriage between sports and betting more public than what took place in the Nevada desert in February: The NFL held its first ever Super Bowl in Las Vegas.
...
“To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings,” [Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese] Haliburton said Tuesday evening, naming one of the league’s partners. “I’m a prop.” He was referring to so-called proposition bets, in which gamblers can place wagers on specific outcomes such as how many points a player scores or rebounds he grabs."
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