Category: Sports

Approximately a year ago,[1] I introduced the highly anticipated (by me) Misery Index, designed to assess how anguished various cities are (or should be) based on the performance of their professional sports teams.  I made several disclaimers, which still apply.[2]   The most important things to remember are that this is just for fun, the numbers aren’t precise, and the overall concept may not even be accurate – though I think it’s reasonable.

One obvious issue with my “analysis” is that it is city based.  Some cities have multiple teams in a single sport – Angels/Dodgers, Giants/Jets.  That the Cubs won the most recent World Series is good for Cubs fans and good for Chicago (according to the Misery Index), but might actually have added to the misery of some White Sox fans, not detracted from it.  There are too many combinations for me to consider them all, so I focused on cities with more than one professional team.[3]  I made that decision in part because I live in a sea of Cleveland fans, who were in the midst of a decades-long championship drought, which mercifully ended.

Four more championships have been contested since the Cavs won.  The Chicago Cubs, New England Patriots, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Golden State Warriors won the last four major league championships.  Those cities are not miserable and they weren’t before.  They have all won multiple championships in the last 20 years and are now the four least miserable cities in the country according to my hyper-sophisticated algorithm.

The Misery Index is available below.  It is based solely on the number and recency of professional sports championships.  I express no opinion about the air quality, traffic, education system, or any other characteristic of the cities on the list.

Column 1 is the city (pretty obvious) with the number of franchises in that city from 1950 through 2017.

Column 2 is the total number of championships won by that city.

Column 3 is the number of years since the last championship.

Column 4 is the cumulative seasons since the last championshiop.

Column 5 is a composite of columns 2, 3, & 4.

San Diego has won one championship (in the AFL) in the last 55 years.[4]  It has been 110 cumulative seasons since that shining moment.  Their football team recently packed up and moved to Los Angeles, joining the basketball Clippers, who left San Diego in 1984.[5]  San Diego’s professional sports misery is well-earned, matched (perhaps) only by Cleveland’s as the Browns were leaving town.

Buffalo isn’t far behind, with two AFL championships and a mere 106 cumulative seasons since the last one.  Because they have lake-effect weather, they are probably actually more miserable than residents of San Diego, but my system does not account for weather.

A championship-free Vancouver is third.  And the baseball Braves-propelled Milwaukee and Atlanta are fourth and fifth.  Buffalo also had a Braves team – in the NBA.

These five cities were among the six most miserable in my first rankings.  The Cavaliers win vaulted Cleveland well into the ranks of the non-miserable.  As proof that my system is reasonable, I can attest that there was no angst this year when the Cavs lost in the NBA finals.  Cleveland fans are no longer miserable, unless the only team they root for is the Browns.  Another big riser is Pittsburgh, whose consecutive Stanley Cup victories jumped them from 13th to 2nd (in non-misery).

Boston retained the top spot thanks to the Patriots adding another Super Bowl championship.  Oakland, Chicago, and San Francisco rounded out the first top five and remain in this top five as well.  It’s much harder to move down than to move up.  Long droughts can end suddenly, but they take time to accumulate.  Just ask the fine folks in Buffalo and San Diego whose misery has been building relentlessly year after year.  If they remain without a recent championship, Buffalo is destined to pass San Diego, which now has only one team.

Expect another update in about a year.

[1] June 9, 2016 at 10:06 p.m. to be exact

[2] The disclaimers are available at https://www.notesfromnokomis.com/?p=482 .

[3] My own favorite teams in the four major leagues are illustrative:  Boston Red Sox and Celtics, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Cowboys.

[4] The American Football League existed as an independent entity with its own championship for six years from 1960-1965.  It remained independent for the next four years.  During that time, its playoff winner played the playoff winner of the National Football League in the Super Bowl for the championship of professional football.  In 1970, the leagues merged.

[5] If you are unusually knowledgeable or nerdy (I am the latter), you don’t need me to tell you that the Chargers spent their first year in the AFL in Los Angeles.  So their recent move is a homecoming of sorts – just don’t tell that to San Diegans.

In college, I had a friend who infuriated me by insisting that all words be conclusively defined.  I considered constantly defining words obstructive; it certainly slowed down a discussion.  After law school and twenty plus years as a lawyer, I am now fully in Roger’s camp.  Words must be defined in order to have a constructive discussion.

Today’s, this week’s, this month’s word is “gambling.”  The standard dictionary definition of “gambling” is to play a game of chance for money.  http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gambling  It’s pretty straight forward.  No need to define any of the words in the definition, they are common words used according to our common understanding of them.

In case you aren’t a basketball fan, the reason “gambling” is the word of the day and the week and the month is because of the (men’s) NCAA Basketball Tournament.  It starts Thursday, despite the NCAA’s insipid insistence on scheduling play-in games on Tuesday and Wednesday, and it has become a national event.[1]  Some of you may recall that the NCAA tournament used to play second fiddle to the NIT (National Invitational Tournament), which the NCAA supplanted and then purchased.

Last year, approximately $9 billion was gambled on the tournament.  For comparison purposes, consider that roughly $4.2 billion was bet on the 2016 Super Bowl.    http://www.bettingsports.com/biggest-events-to-bet-on According to The Sporting News, The American Gaming Association estimates that approximately $10.4 billion will be on the line during this year’s tournament.   http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-basketball/news/ncaa-tournament-2017-record-amount-illegal-betting-office-pools/1an4gu7kt7gkt179p9ivcaszlv

There are many different games of chance associated with the tournament.  I have a friend who runs a survivor pool.  You pick a team to win on day one.  If they win, you advance, and select another team on day two.  You cannot select a team more than once.  I selected West Virginia to win on day one.

Another friend runs a traditional bracket pool.  You predict the winner of all 63 games in the tournament,[2] from day one through the championship. You accrue points based on the round.  A typical format allots one point for a correct first round prediction and doubles the per-game allotment for each round.  That means that each round is worth the same amount of points – because the points double, but the games halve.  There are 32 games in the first round worth one point each; there are two semifinal games, each worth 16 points.  It’s hard to win if you don’t get the 32 points from selecting the champion.  I’m counting on Kansas to run the table.

Another friend used to run a variant of the traditional bracket pool.  That pool awarded points based on the seed of the team and the round.  If a 1-seed won its first-round game (and no 1-seed has every lost its first-round game), it earned one point – 1 times 1, the seed times the round.  If an 11-seed won a first round game it was worth 11 points – 1 times 11, the seed times the round.  An 11-seed winning a third round game was a bonanza:  33 points.  Unfortunately that pool no longer exists, but it was fun while it lasted.

I have a friend who usually joins an auction pool.  Each team in the tournament is “purchased” in an auction.  Points are accrued, not unlike a traditional bracket pool.  A first round victory is worth 1/32nd (because there are 32 games) of 1/6 (because there are six rounds) of the total pool.  A second round win is worth 1/16 of 1/6 of the total pool.  Dominant teams have gone for several hundred dollars.  That probably won’t happen this year because there is no consensus powerhouse.

There are also pools based on points scored by players.  In one version, players are acquired in a draft.  Eight participants each draft eight players for a total of 64 players, providing nice symmetry with the tournament.  Another version allows each participant to select 10 players (total) from ten different seeds, meaning only one player from among the four 1-seeds, one from among the four 2-seeds, etc.

There are many other ways to gamble on the games, including betting on the winner at a sports book.  By far the most common way to bet on the tournament is to fill out a bracket, which the American Gambling Association estimates 40 million of us will do.  The AGA also estimates that 97% of the $10 billion or so that will be bet this year, will be wagered illegally.  We are a nation of scofflaws.[3]  Enjoy the games and the games

[1] Would it be crazy to propose that the Thursday and Friday afternoons of the tournament be combined to form a national holiday?  So much productivity is lost anyway that we might as well make it official.

[2] The formula to determine the number of games in any single elimination tournament is N – 1.  Thus, a 64-team tournament will have 63 games.  Because of the play-in games, there are officially 68 teams in the tournament, meaning that 67 games will be played.

[3] To close the circle (sort of), a “scofflaw” is a person who flouts the law, especially a law that is difficult to enforce.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scofflaw Arresting all of us for betting in a brackets pool might be slightly easier than arresting every driver who exceeds the speed limit.  After all, the tournament only happens once a year.

Five teams have been ranked in every single poll issued by the college football playoff committee.  Name these members of (current) college football royalty.  Recall that this is only the third year of the committee.  Two royal members are obvious, two more will surprise few.  The fifth is tough.  But that’s just here and now.  What about long-term college football royalty?  Which five teams have won the most games all time?  The answers are below.

Depending on the source, there are 193 countries in the world — at least that’s how many member states belong to the United Nations.  Three others have certain attributes of nation-states:  the Holy See (not Vatican City), Palestine, and Taiwan.  Let’s go with 193, it’s (not) a nice round number.  Again, depending on the source, 44 countries have a monarch, 16 of which are subjects of the British monarchy.  That means that 22.8% of the countries in the world have a monarch.  Who knew?

Only a few of the monarchs exercise complete control, including those of Brunei, Swaziland, Saudi Arabia, Vatican City, and Oman.  A few others have predominate control, such as those of Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bhutan.  Most are in the British mold – constitutional monarchies, where the monarch has a limited role.  Even so, some have considerable power.  For instance, though the King of Jordan isn’t the head of government, he can veto laws.

Some kings are incredibly rich.  The King of Thailand is worth $30 billion.  Although many Thai citizens have sought to delegitimize the king, the junta that controls the Thai government recently increased spending to uphold and preserve the monarchy to over $500 million a year.

The Sultan of Brunei is worth $20 billion.  He has been the absolute ruler of his country since it gained independence from the British in 1984.  The Brits have a thing for monarchs, they love their own and they have an obsession with putting others in place.  The Sultan is but latest in a series.

The king of Saudi Arabia is worth $18 billion and is another creature of the Brits.  The Saud family has deeper royal roots, but they date their modern claim to the crown only to the post-WWI era.  At that time, most of the land that comprises modern Saudi Arabia was a British protectorate.  The king isn’t even the richest member of the Saudi royal family, which is 15,000 strong.  One of the princes has invested well and is worth around $30 billion.

There are many ways to think about monarchs – power and wealth, but also length of rule.  The royal dynasty in Thailand has reigned since 1782.  The royal dynasty in Bahrain has reigned since 1793.  The two of them effectively sandwich the ratification of our constitution.

In declaring our independence, we had a few unkind things to say about the British king.  Not surprisingly, we didn’t embrace the concept of kingship, though George Washington was offered a crown.  Thankfully, he declined.  To protect us from ourselves (something we are not always good at), our imperfect founding fathers decided to take nobility and royalty and kings off the table.  They were so concerned about the issue that they addressed it twice in the Constitution of the United States.

Article 1, Section 9, states that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.”

Article 1, Section 10, states that “No State shall * * * grant any Title of Nobility.”

Without these clauses, the Adams family (two presidents), the Rockefeller family (massive wealth, though relatively less now, a VP candidate, a senator), the Roosevelt family (two presidents), the Kennedy family (a president, some senators, and others), the Bush family (a senator and two presidents, among others) and many others would likely have been granted noble titles.  The members of these families have enjoyed many of the perquisites of nobility – wealth, fame, power – but they have had (at some level) to earn it, not had it conferred by birth.  The prescience of our founding fathers was strong in this arena.

Our college football royalty also has to earn it.  The long-time powers certainly have advantages over the football equivalent of nouveau riche, but they have to produce year after year.  Nobody gives them wins just because they won a lot of games in the 1960s, unlike, say, the Kennedys who seem to win elections based on their success in the 1960s.

Answers:

Five teams have been in every college football playoff committee ranking, in no particular order:  Alabama & Ohio State (obvious), Clemson & Florida State (same conference, but still, not surprising), and Utah (tough).

Michigan (934), Yale (890), Nebraska (889), Ohio State (888), and Texas (879) have the most football wins in NCAA history.  If Nebraska wins its bowl game and Ohio State wins the national championship, there will be a three-way tie for second place.  Michigan’s spot on top seems secure for several (likely many) years.

Colin Kaepernick continues to kneel during the national anthem.  He has reported that he has received death threats about his protest.  Meanwhile, more unarmed black people have been shot and killed by police officers.

John Tortorella, the coach who believes he has the right to force players to stand during the national anthem, also believes that anyone critical of him should shut up.  After the US was eliminated from the World Cup of Hockey, he referred to critics as self-serving.  His criticism of them was, of course, perfectly appropriate, and not in the least self-serving.  He’s big on saying what he wants to say, not so big on others having an opinion contrary to his.

The Cubs continue to play well and against bad teams.  In their last 20 games, they are 12-8.  Among those games were ten against the sad sack Brewers and Reds and four against the Giants, who have a winning record despite having the worst record in baseball since the all-star break.

John Stumpf remains on the job and today picked up support from a professor who called for us to stop beating up on poor Wells Fargo and John Stumpf.  http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/22/stop-beating-up-on-wells-fargo-and-john-stumpf-commentary.html  He stated “This seems to be a rare case where Wells Fargo unintentionally dropped the ball.”  Please Professor, Wells Fargo didn’t drop “the” ball, they dropped over 2,000,000 balls and it was very intentional.  That’s a little worse than the hot potato footballs that players are dropping.

Speaking of which — a couple of you think my “ejected from the game and ball on the 50-yard line” proposal is a bit extreme.  Of course it is, purposely so.  It begets this philosophical question:  can it be appropriate to have a penalty that is so severe, so grossly disproportionate to the infraction that no infractions occur.

One example of this is Singapore, where spitting gum on the street or sidewalk carries a $700 fine.  The fine isn’t designed to discourage gum spitting, it is designed to eliminate it — and it works.  The country does not have the splatters of gum that besmudge so many sidewalks in the US.

My “proposal” (quotes because no person in a position to do anything about it will ever become aware of it) is not designed to discourage dropping the ball before crossing the goal line, it is designed to eliminate it.  If the NCAA or the NFL want to get serious about eliminating helmet to helmet hits or targeting, they should consider a grossly disproportionate penalty.  In the meantime, we continue to see players get pummeled into concussions because the rules are designed to discourage helmet to helmet contact, not eliminate it.

One of my intrepid friends forwarded my post about Central Michigan forfeiting their win over Oklahoma State to the President of Central Michigan University.  He has not responded.  But a couple of you did, asking about the rule that should have ended the game.  I thought it too complicated to include in the earlier post, but have a little room here, so:

The rules state that when a penalty occurs on the last play of a quarter, an additional untimed down will be played.  Oklahoma State had the ball as the clock wound to zero and threw the ball out of bounds.  The officials called intentional grounding.  Whether that was a good call is irrelevant for our purposes.  Because the last play of the quarter included a penalty, the officials allowed an untimed down.  They forgot about another rule, which states that the previous rule does not apply if the penalty results in loss of down, which intentional grounding does.  The bottom line is that the second rule canceled out the first rule, the game had concluded, and the additional untimed down should not have been allowed.

The President of Central Michigan can still score a public relations coup by forfeiting the game.  It would generate so much positive press about the university’s integrity and sportsmanship that CMU would benefit more than it will from the win.  The head football coach might beg to differ.

Last – Jerry Rice scored the most touchdowns in NFL history, 208.  He also attempted 11 passes and completed three, including one touchdown.

College football incites passion like no other sport.  The sectional rivalries, the long-term powerhouse programs, the upsets, the Heisman, the Playoff, and the various buckets, cups, and trophies that rivals play for, generate excitement like no other sport.  In a given weekend, so many games are played that it can be hard to keep track of all the goings-on.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s also hard for the officials to keep track of what is going on.  Last weekend, Oklahoma State lost a game on a play that occurred after the game was over.  By rule, the game had ended, but because the officials misapplied the rule, they allowed a play to take place after the clock had struck zero.  On that play, Central Michigan scored and “won” the game.

Oklahoma State was gracious in defeat.  They shouldn’t have been.  They should have protested, but to whom.  Nobody is in charge of college football as a whole.  Central Michigan had a chance, and still does, to address the situation honorably.  They should forfeit the game.  They didn’t win it fairly, so they shouldn’t take credit for doing so.

In 1940, something similar happened.  Cornell, which was undefeated and ranked second in the country, scored on a fifth down as the game was about to end.  http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/156300200/miami-duke-fifth-down-1940-cornell-dartmouth  After reviewing game film, Cornell determined that it had scored on a play that shouldn’t have happened.  They informed Dartmouth that they were forfeiting the game, changing the final score of the game from 7-3 to 3-0.  Cornell’s telegram stated “Cornell relinquishes claims to victory and extends congratulations to Dartmouth.”  How refreshing.  How unmodern.  Do not expect Central Michigan to embrace the sportsmanlike trail blazed by the Big Red.

This situation is different from some other recent officiating foibles that have affected outcomes.  For example, Miami scored a winning touchdown against Duke last November on a game-ending play that included eight laterals, a block in the back, and a player being down before he lateraled.  The officials made mistakes, but they were all related to discretionary calls, the types of calls that are routinely missed.  http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/156168618/acc-referees-suspended-duke-miami

Most blown calls are not on the last play of the game and are not quite so outcome determinative.  These missed calls are easier to excuse because the teams affected have time to recover and overcome the mistakes, just like they also have to overcome their own mistakes.

Oklahoma State did not have the opportunity to overcome the officials.  And they shouldn’t have had to.  The officials misapplied a rule and extended a completed game by one play.  That one play should be reversed by someone.  Is there anyone involved with the administration of college sports with the authority to do the right thing?  Barring that, Central Michigan should call Oklahoma State and forfeit the game.  They can keep the elation they felt upon “winning.”

According to the NCAA, its member institutions are committed to the “highest levels of integrity and sportsmanship.” http://www.ncaa.org/about/ncaa-core-values  Given this commitment to sportsmanship, Central Michigan should forfeit the win they did not earn.  I’m not going to hold my breath and you shouldn’t either.  The final score:  Central Michigan 1, Integrity and Sportsmanship 0.