Sports come with numbers

June 13, 2006 4:13 PM

How valuable is your favorite sports star to his or her team? Sports economics take center stage as the NBA finals are underway in the United States and World Cup fever has gripped the rest of the world. Malcolm Gladwell reviews the Wages of Wins, where “Freakonomics meets ESPN”
posted by msali (16 comments total)

I was wondering about this myself on the news of that NFL dude crashing a motorcycle without a helmet on. I mean how stupid do you have to be not to realize your body is worth millions and if you must ride a motorcycle in public, the least you can do is be safe by wearing a damn helmet and leathers.
posted by mathowie at 4:25 PM on June 13, 2006

OMG - Number 1 was the very first person to comment in my first FPP ever. My heart is seriously a-twitter.
posted by msali at 4:56 PM on June 13, 2006

You forgot about the quest for Lord Stanley.
posted by afx114 at 5:03 PM on June 13, 2006 [1 favorite]

NewYorkerFromLikeFourIssuesAgoFilter, now? Can I make an FPP on E. B. White's latest work?
posted by ChasFile at 5:07 PM on June 13, 2006

Can I make an FPP on E. B. White's latest work?

If it's a good one, I'd love that FPP. I say go for it. Oh wait. You were being facetious. Blast.
posted by JekPorkins at 5:25 PM on June 13, 2006

Wins are not the most important thing. Income is. How many games do you think Clemens (who just signed for 22 mil) is going to win for the Astros this year? What is the over/under in Las Vegas? I doubt very much that it is more than ten.

They hired him for PR purposes with the (largely stupid) fan base.
posted by bukvich at 6:25 PM on June 13, 2006

So... who's the best player, by their calculation?
posted by ph00dz at 8:35 PM on June 13, 2006

NewYorkerFromLikeFourIssuesAgoFilter, now?

Right, because surely everyone here has a subscription to The New Yorker. What are we, a bunch of philistines? And surely everyone keeps so up to date that they've already read every article in every issue by the time the next issue arrives.
posted by jjg at 9:01 PM on June 13, 2006

Gladwell, Meh.
posted by philosophistry at 10:15 PM on June 13, 2006

Right, because surely everyone here has a subscription to The New Yorker.

jjg is right. Just because my grandma sent me this two weeks ago doesn't mean it isn't a good post.

It just means she's cooler than metafilter (and, it seems, jjg).
posted by justgary at 11:24 PM on June 13, 2006

At work we were talking about what gamblers think a motorcycle crash does to the Steelers chances of winning the Super Bowl again.
posted by milkrate at 11:31 PM on June 13, 2006

ph00dz - So... who's the best player, by their calculation?

1. Kevin Garnett
2. Jason Kidd
3. Shawn Marion
4. LeBron James

Gladwell wrote 2 follow-ups to the New Yorker review: 1, 2
posted by pruner at 12:44 AM on June 14, 2006

Gladwell's NY article was frustrating-- he didn't even try to explain what the math was that the Stanford economists had done. I wouldn't be able to understand the raw math, but it would have been some good journalism to at least try. Plus, given that these economists are the first ones to try this kind of thing, surely they haven't done everything quite perfectly yet.

Gladwell's sleight of hand was really frustrating at times. He noted that a few extra ppg garnered extra votes for ROY. That's an interesting point, as far as it goes, but the media votes on that, not GMs! That says nothing about how players are wrongly valued.

bukvich is right-- wins is only part of the story from a front office's point of view.
posted by ibmcginty at 5:52 AM on June 14, 2006

bukvich is right-- wins is only part of the story from a front office's point of view.

The funny thing is that, in baseball at least, Bill James demonstrated 25 years ago that, except so far as they help win ballgames, individual stars don't have a big impact on attendance, which is generally the largest source of team income. People go out to see teams that win, or play in a nice ballpark (but the Shiny New Ballpark effect doesn't necessarily last very long anymore). Put a different way, from a pure revenue standpoint the only way Clemens is worth the ~$12 million or whatever pro-rated amount he'll be earning this year is if he gets them into the land of additional postseason revenue.

I note in the New Yorker article: "At home, attendance is primarily a function of games won. Basketball’s decision-makers, it seems, are simply irrational." So it's the same there too.
posted by nflorin at 8:17 AM on June 14, 2006

ChasFile was right. Lately there's stuff posted here from just about every issue of the New Yorker, usually more than one post drawn from the same issue. At least it could be relatively current.
posted by soyjoy at 10:15 AM on June 14, 2006

Right, because surely everyone here has a subscription to The New Yorker. What are we, a bunch of philistines? And surely everyone keeps so up to date that they've already read every article in every issue by the time the next issue arrives.

If you're that interested in dated New Yorker content, then perhaps your time would be better spent here than here.
posted by ChasFile at 5:00 PM on June 14, 2006