Sports Law Analytics

Dan Stone and I recently finished a paper that tests the efficacy of minimum age rules in women’s professional tennis.  A copy of the paper will be posted on SSRN soon.  I also gathered data specific to the NBA and recently anazyzed such data using similar methods, but have yet to write up my results in paper format.  As soon as I do, I will post the paper on SSRN.

 The abstract for the tennis paper is below: 

Age is often used in law and public policy as a low-cost proxy for competency, maturity, and ability. Age is also used in numerous sport (and non-sport) labour markets to determine workplace eligibility. We exploit the enactment of the women’s professional tennis minimum age rule (AR) in 1995 to estimate the effects of ARs on short-run and long-run labour market outcomes.  We find no evidence that the AR has had a beneficial effect on players’ career longevity or success, and weak evidence that players subject to the AR actually had worse outcomes than those not subject to the rule. Our results suggest that sport governing bodies should revisit “one size fits all” eligibility rules that are paternalistic in nature.   

A couple of months ago, I published a short article about possible referee bias in the context of the NBA basketball.  I recently started work on two sequels using different data sets and asking different research questions.  The title of the first sequel is “Bias Blind Spot: The Case of NBA Referees.”  The second sequel is entitled “Perception is not Reality: Evidence from NBA Referees.”  In the course of updating my literature review, I came across three new articles that address similar issues in the sports context.  Sports treated include diving, gymnastics, and figure skating.  In addition, there is a relatively new paper by Dan Stone, Joe Price, and Marc Remer that focuses on NBA referees.  I also learned that the 2007 paper by Joe Price and Justin Wolfers that was featured in the New York Times is forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.  I read the Price/Wolfers working paper several years ago and look forward to reading the published version whenever it comes out. 

Wayne Odesnik’s guilty plea in connection with his attempted smuggling of HGH into Australia remains a developing story.  In the course of reading the news reports over the past several days, I have two questions:

1) Was Odesnik a: (i) user; (ii) dealer; or (iii) both?

2) Was the Australian customs agent who searched Odesnik’s bag tipped off beforehand that something nefarious was going on?  Or was it just a random search?

For the past decade, I have followed tennis-related doping stories closely.  In 2005, Katie Featherston and I wrote an article about drug testing in tennis that was published in the Marquette Sports Law Review.  However, today was the first day I have heard of a documented tennis case involving HGH.  Details here.

UPDATE (3/28/10) - Bonnie Ford of ESPN.com has an excellent follow-up story here.

The ex post facto inquiry into Andre Agassi’s drug revelations, to the extent there was such an inquiry, appears to be over.  Agassi detailed his past drug use (and subsequent cover-up that involved lying to doping authorities) in his autobiography released late last year.

Dave Berri and Martin Schmidt have a new book out.  It is called Stumbling on Wins.  I pre-ordered it from Amazon.com last month and should receive it this week.  The book promises to cover a lot of ground, but I am particularly interested in the aspect pertaining to the research use of data gleaned from the sports industry.  Unlike other industries, where data specific to employee performance and management decision-making is confidential and private, such data are plentiful in sports.  A paper published ten years ago by Cornell professor Lawrence W. Kahn describes this fact really well.  I have cited Kahn’s aforementioned paper in a number of my own articles.   

In advance of the book’s release this week, Dave Berri has an op-ed on Huffington Post that provides a preview.  I read Wages of Wins several years ago and look forward to reading the latest offering from Berri and Schmidt.

You heard it here first.  At some point in the next 30 years, competitive watersliding will be an Olympic sport.  Here is how it would work - competitors would race down a kilometer-long twisting tube that ends 50 meters above a huge pool.  Scores would be a subjective/objective composite.  The objective part would be based on speed.  Competitors would develop techniques to race down the tube as fast as possible.  The subjective part would be based on the execution (and degree of difficulty) of flips and twists mid-air above the pool after the tube ends.  The sport would combine the speed aspects of luge and the gymnastics aspects of diving.  The tubes would be clear so cameras could view the racers.  Also, much like lanes on a 400 meter track, 4-8 identical tubes would be lined up next to each other and racers would all start at the same time. 

If you think this idea is dumb, I have two words for you - “rhythmic gymnastics.”    

On April 2, 2010, I will serve as a panelist at a Vermont Law School conference focused on the legality of age eligibility rules in sports.  I will post conference details soon.  Mike McCann will moderate the panel.  Alan Milstein and Mike Zarren are the other panelists.  I will likely share some of the empirical results from my dissertation entitled “Precocity in Sports and the Efficacy of Age Eligibility Rules.”   

 UPDATE (3/19/10) - Details on the panel can be found here.

On March 5, 2010, I will deliver a speech entitled “The Dark Side of Sports - Gambling, Bias, and Corruption” at Pacific Lutheran University’s Wang Center Symposium. Conference details here.