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Degree of Difficulty

More thoughts about sportswriting:

I remember once having a discussion with a guy who knew a lot about professional basketball. He said he had asked a big sample of NBA players who they felt would be the most formidable one-on-one opponent in the league. The answer was fairly unanimous: Vince Carter. Now that's surprising. Why Carter and not Kobe Bryant or LeBron James or any number of other, far more accomplished, offensive players? The answer, this guy told me, was the same in nearly every case: "you have no idea how hard it is to do the things that Carter does."

    I've always remembered that story, because it strikes me that applies to nearly every case where an outsider tries to make sense of an insider's perspective. We can see all the things that someone, in a different profession than us, does. What we cannot know is the relative difficulty of those tasks. I know a reverse slam is harder than a simple dunk. But how much harder? And how much harder again would a slam be if you had a defender drapped all over you?

This is a huge issue in the appreciation of sports. I remember watching Phil Mickelson at the PGA (or was it the U.S Open?). He was in the rough, just off the green, and chipped within a few feet of the hole. Ho-hum, I thought. He bogeyed the hole. But the color man was incredulous. Mickelson, he pointed out, had taken a FULL swing at a ball in an impossible lie and sent it 20 feet, to within an easy putt of the hole. I've never played golf, so I had no idea how hard that was, or why that was anything special. The announcer, though, had a completely different perspective.

One more example. My sister-in-law works as a chaplain in a nursing home. Every few weeks, someone who she has gotten to know dies. Can anyone who has never been in the situation of experiencing death with that regularity possible know what that feels like? My sister-in-law doesn't work long hours. She's doesn't get paid a lot of money. And she doesn't have a fancy doctorate. But I venture to say that only one in a 1000 people could do her job with any degree of diligence or sensitivity. In a way that you would have to do that job to appreciate, it's really really hard.

I think that misunderstanding over degree of difficulty issues is one of the major reasons for conflict between insiders and outsiders. We bridle at the school teacher who asks for a raise, because we don't realize--and we can never realize unless we've been a teacher ourselves--how hard being a school teacher is. Mickelson shoots 75 and says, afterward, he thought he had a great round and we scoff, but only because we don't know golf the way he does and we don't understand how insanely difficult that chip shot was.

I thought of this in trying to explain my prickliness a few weeks back over some of the criticisms directed at my "Risk Pool" article. I'm not usually thin-skinned in the face of critics. So why did I react the way I did? I think it was a degree of difficulty question. What I was saying, unconsciously, was not--"you don't understand how good that story was." It was, rather--"you don't understand how HARD that story was." Because, in truth, it was a really, really hard story. How on earth do you write 5000 words on pensions without putting your audience to sleep? It's pretty tricky, and what I wanted in my heart of hearts, I suppose, was for at least some appreciation of that effort. Even if it was a bogey, I wanted the announcer to point out what a great bogey it was.

I thought of this as well the other day when I read a long post on a sportsblog ripping into Bill Simmons. I know, I know, I'm totally in the tank for Simmons. But here's why: because the degree of difficulty of the kinds of columns he writes is sometimes off the charts. He recently did a really long account of a trip that he and two friends took to Green Bay. It was a kind of running diary. Was it the best thing he has ever done? No. Was it perfect? No. But here's the thing. As someone who writes for a living, I know something that a non-writer can't know, namely how hard a running diary like that is to write. Try it sometime. Getting the tone right, and making the prosaic interactions of a group of friends interesting and funny to an outsider audience is really really difficult. That's what I wanted to scream at the bloggers going after Simmons. You don't like that? Try pulling that off yourself sometime!

Anyway, back to sportswriters. (And I realize this has been a long digression.) Here's why I really really loved Michael Lewis's book. The degree of difficulty on telling the story of Michael Oher was really really high. Trust me. It was. It was all that I could think of when I was reading the book. I was like the announcer amazed at Mickelson's chip. And if you don't believe me, just try writing an emotionally moving. full-length account of an essentially pathologically shy, inarticulate teenager.

The Blind Side

I just had the pleasure of reading an advance copy of the new book by Michael Lewis, the author of, among other things, MoneyBall and Liar's Poker. It's called the The Blind Side.  It is simply sensational. It will be in bookstores October 2nd. 

It's about a teenager from the poorest neighborhood in Memphis who gets adopted by a wealthy white family, and who also happens to be an extraordinarily gifted offensive lineman. Simultaneously Lewis tells the story of the emergence of the left tackle as one of the most important positions in modern day football. I thought MoneyBall was fantastic. But this is even better, and it made me wonder if we aren't enjoying a golden age of sportswriting right now.

First, there's Bill Simmons over at espn.com.  Then there's David Foster Wallace. He wrote a piece for the New York Times magazine on Roger Federer a few weeks back, which was almost as good as the piece he wrote on the tennis player Michael Joyce a few years back--and which reminded me of how wonderful his voice is when he turns to sports. Then there's Lewis.

The three of them, of course, could be more different. Simmons is the ur-fan. Wallace is the intellectual. And Lewis? I'm not sure how to describe him, which is part of the genius of his books. It's not even clear to me that his books are about sports in the end, even though he takes sports as his subject. MoneyBall was really about discrimination. (I once tried to convince a university psychology professor that she should make MoneyBall recommended reading in her intro psych class.) And The Blind Side is as insightful and moving a meditation on class inequality in America as I have ever read--althought to put it that way, I realize, makes it sound deadly dull. It isn't. You should read it. 

NCAA Redux

     There is an adage in the legal world that difficult cases make bad law—that is, that it is foolish to draw general principles from exceptional circumstances. A number of readers have argued that this is just what I’ve done with the Bomar and McElrathbey examples. After all, most college athletes don’t cheat, and most college athletes aren’t the legal guardians of their little brothers. So why toss out a system that works perfectly well in most cases because of its failures on the margin?

     I think that’s a fair criticism. So let me try again. I don’t agree that Bomar and McElrathbey really are “difficult cases.” Although the particular circumstances in which they ran afoul of the NCAA are unusual, the reason for their predicament is not. In fact, I think, both cases point to a problem that runs through the NCAA’s treatment of just about everyone: the idea that a regulatory agency can have jurisdiction over the entire life of athlete.

     I made this point before, briefly. But it’s worth restating in more detail. McElrathbey is an athlete. He is also a student, a brother and, now the legal guardian of his younger brother. The NCAA’s formal mandate is to govern students in their capacity as athletes. But here, in forbidding McElrathbey from accepting outside donations to help him take care of his little brother, the NCAA has extended its jurisdiction to govern McElrathbey in his capacity as a brother and legal guardian.

     I think that’s outrageous. We all accept the fact that if we attend a high school or a college, that institution can impose a certain behavioral code on us when we are attending that school. But a high school that forbids its students to wear miniskirts or jeans or torn t-shirts cannot extend those restrictions to the way students dress when they aren’t at school. Authority is necessarily tempered by the question of jurisdiction.

     Bomar’s case raises the same issue. His ability as a football player made him a celebrity in Norman Oklahoma. Because of that celebrity, the car dealership that employed him was willing to pay him an extra several thousand dollars (the $18,000 figure initially quoted in some news reports, by the way, is wrong). Was that sleazy? Of course it was. Was it an underhanded way for a booster to get money to a star player? Totally. But working at a car dealership is not playing football, and football the only thing over which the NCAA rightfully has jurisdiction. Sure Bomar got paid for doing little or nothing. But the hallways of Oklahoma—like the hallways of every college in this country—are filled with students who for one reason or another got paid a lot of money on their summer vacation to do little or nothing. (I would include myself in this. In the summer of my junior year the Government of Ontario paid me to do almost nothing at a theater group called Toronto Workshop Productions. Let just say a good time was had by all).

     The NCAA would respond that they have to police Bomar and McElrathbey in all of their various roles and incarnations because they are defending an all inclusive ethic—amateurism. To be an amateur is like being a virgin. It’s not situational. It’s absolute. McElrathbey, the NCAA would say, has to understand that the requirements of amateurism, in his instance, are in unfortunate but unavoidable conflict with the freedom to accept outside financial assistance.

     Fine. In theory, I can buy that argument.

     But wait. Surely if you want to defend an absolute ethic, you have to defend it absolutely. That’s the way it was in the late 19th century, when the principles of amateur sport were first codified. Back then, the games were free. The coaches were volunteers, and certainly no one was pulling down millions of dollars from Bowl Game appearances. The amateur ideal applied to everyone.

      Now? It only applies to athletes. If I’m Oklahoma, I’m allowed by the NCAA to trade on the celebrity created by my football prowess and sign a $500,000 endorsement deal with Nike. But if I’m Oklahoma’s quarterback, I’m not allowed to trade on the celebrity created by my football prowess and make a few extra dollars in my part-time job. If I’m Clemson University, I can pay my men’s football coach $1.1 million a year in salary to coach an “amateur” athletic team. But if my cornerback wants to accept gifts from the public to help raise his little brother, he can’t. Why? Because he happens to play on that “amateur” football team. I repeat what I wrote in that last post. I cannot, for the life of me, make sense of that position.

     I’m not advocating the end of amateurism. I think the NCAA killed amateurism long ago, when it decided that this grand noble “ethic” applied only to athletes, and not the coaches and athletic departments and schools they play for.

Abolish the NCAA?

A reader, Marcus Detry, alerted me to the case of Ramon McElrathbey, and if you had any lingering doubts about the ridiculousness of the NCAA, this should dispel them.

The case is written up nicely by "The Wizard of Odds" but the gist of it is this. McElrathbey is a cornerback for the Clemson University football team. He is one of seven children. His mother is a crack addict, and his father has a gambling problem and is no where to be found. He grew up bouncing around foster homes. This summer, he decided--with his mother's consent--to take custody of his 11 year old brother. They now live in a cramped off campus apartment, as McElrathbey tries to be a student, athlete, brother and father simultaneously. When a story was published about McElrathbey in alocal paper, he was deluged with donations and gifts and offers to help. But of course Clemson had to step in and say no. Why? Because receiving any kind of  outside financial assistance, if you are an amateur college athlete, is against the NCAA's rules.

This is, of course, ridiculous. In fact, it is more than ridiculous: it is inhumane. At a certain point, aren't we better off without the NCAA altogether?

Coincidentally, David Berri, of "Wages of Wins" fame sent me a copy of the Presidential address at the Western Social Science Association meeting in Phoenix, this past weekend, by Jim Peach, who teaches at New Mexico State University. Peach's paper is  fascinating. (Sadly, I can't find it online. But here's hoping he posts it soon).  Peach points out that one of the principal reasons for the NCAA's existence--and for the 500 pages of rules it currently has on the books covering things like recruiting and outside assistance and roster limts and so on (those would be the same books, incidentally, that the NCAA threw at Ramon McElrathbey)--was to insure competitive balance among college teams. The reason you don't let colleges pay their athletes is that you fear that doing so will result in the rich schools getting all the best athletes, and the parity and competitiveness of the sport suffering.

Fair enough. But Peach then analyzes the competitive balance of the big-time college sports and finds that. . . the NCAA has done a terrible job at the very problem it was set up to solve. There is no competitive balance in big-time college athletics.  In Division I men's football, for example, over the past fifty years five teams account for a quarter of all top eight finishes, twelve teams account for more than half of all top eight appearances, and twenty-two teams account for three-quarters of  all top eight finishes.

     Peach then imagines what the world would be like if the NCAA didn't exist.  Here is a sampling of some of his conclusions. Does this sound like a better world to you?

.... If there were no NCAA restrictions on financial aid or academic eligibility standards, several things would probably occur.  First, alumni would probably donate more to college level athletics programs without the NCAA restrictions.  That is, they could donate freely either to the athletes or to the institutions of higher learning with an expectation that the money would be spent to improve their favorite team.

     Second, student athletes would probably be paid more than they are paid under the current system[1].  Indeed it is likely that if the NCAA financial restrictions were not in place, colleges and universities would need to compete openly with financial incentives for the services of prospective student athletes. 

     Third, there is little evidence that the NCAA rules and regulations have promoted competitive balance in college athletics and no a priori reason to think that eliminating the rules would change the competitive balance situation.. Would such price competition alter the distribution of playing talent among academic institutions?  No one knows for certain, but it is worth noting that the power schools in football were the power schools before the imposition of NCAA regulations.  From an economic perspective, open bidding for athletes is similar to the situation in Major League Baseball (MLB) when the reserve clause was eliminated and the era of free-agency began.  Sports economists rely heavily on the Rottenberg invariance principle when analyzing free agency[2].  Essentially, this principle suggests that free agency would not affect the distribution of talent but would affect the distribution of funds between owners and players.  There is also the possibility that eliminating the NCAA eligibility and financial restrictions might increase competitive balance, particularly in football.  In an unrestricted system, wages for first-team student athletes at non-power schools might be higher than wages for second or third team talent at the power schools.  So, it is possible that the distribution of student athlete talent could change.

     Fourth, colleges and universities could save a great deal of money.  The money cost of participating in the NCAA and in complying with its many regulations is a large but unknown figure.  University delegations to NCAA meetings consist of at least an Athletic Director, a university president (since 1997), a faculty representative, and others.  In addition, there is the on-going process and associated costs of enforcement and compliance on campus.  Even on a relatively small campus, this can involve full-time staff members and faculty over-sight committees.

     Fifth, university administrators would be forced to make hard decisions instead of relying on the protective shield of NCAA regulations.  What hard decisions?  Universities would be forced to establish their own academic eligibility requirements for student athletes.