Hoping For The Heisman

Like most things related to NCAA football (including the AP and USA Today polls), the Heisman Trophy is, for the most part, a popularity contest.  Voters decide beforehand who they want to win, and then spend the rest of the season trying to justify their initial choice.  Luckily for Stanford fans, this year the media almost unanimously crowned Andrew Luck the 2011 Heisman winner before the season started and, assuming Stanford continues to roll towards another BCS bowl game (or, better yet, the National Championship), it'll be hard for any of the other candidates to surpass him.  If Luck somehow does get passed up, though, it'll be Stanford head coach David Shaw's fault.

First, let me note that I'm not bashing David Shaw in this post.  I don't think that anyone can argue that he's doing anything other than a great job this season; the Cardinal are 7-0, haven't played a remotely close game yet, and are in position to do something no Stanford team - not even last year's Jim Harbaugh-led Orange Bowl winners - has done before.  Saturday's homecoming game versus a ranked Washington Huskies squad clearly proved that Shaw has his team ready to play against good competition, and that the Cardinal are far from a one-man Andrew Luck show.  Stanford ran for a school record 446 yards en route to a 65-21 demolishing of UW, and Shaw showed the country that his team has an excellent rushing game and a solid defense to complement its star quarterback.

But herein lies my problem with David Shaw.  Andrew Luck is a once-in-a-lifetime talent, not only for Stanford, but for college football as a whole.  Just as Stanford fans attached themselves to John Elway for years, going forward it might be Andrew Luck who we think of when we talk about the best, and most significant, player in Stanford history.  Having Luck win the Heisman this season will not only add to Luck's list of accolades, but will help Shaw's Cardinal team as well.  The ability to go into the homes of future QB recruits and tell them that he coached Andrew Luck to a Heisman Trophy will resonate with some kids as much, if not more so, than telling them he coached the team to a National Championship.  Getting Luck the Heisman will undoubtedly help the program solidify it's place alongside other national powers and help give the team an advantage with the media and potential recruits.

With the Stanford offense on the field, get ready for a running play.

David Shaw doesn't seem to realize this, though.  While pounding the ball via the run is nice and, as we learned against Washington on Saturday, can be extremely effective, it might be a shortsighted move.  Giving Luck more opportunities to throw, particularly in the red zone where touchdowns seem to come easily to Luck and his talented tight ends, will help build the QB's Heisman resume and, in turn, help Shaw pull in top talent down the road.  I know Shaw's first priority is to win games, but when the team is up by 2+ touchdowns why not let number 12 throw a little more?  Sure, there's a slightly increased injury risk, but he's on the field anyway and almost never gets touched.  Perhaps most importantly, having Luck's numbers skyrocket could actually have a huge impact on the team's success this season; if you think the poll voters wouldn't like to put the Heisman Trophy winner into the National Championship game again this year, you're kidding yourself.

The Grass Is Always Browner

When I make my first visit to a sports venue, I almost always find something to complain about.  If the traffic into our out of the stadium isn't a disaster, then the concessions are weak, the bathroom lines are long or the parking lot is flooded.  Every venue - even the awesome ones like AT&T Park, the RBC Center and Cowboys Stadium - have plenty of flaws.  What we don't step back and think about, though, is how much worse these entertainment experiences could be.  Last night I went to the Foo Fighters concert at Oracle Arena - the same arena that hosts the artists-formerly-known-as the Golden State Warriors.  While the venue was perfectly enjoyable when I was there for NBA basketball, the arena morphed into an over-priced, poorly-planned dump for the concert.

For those of you familiar with game theory, you've no doubt heard about how, during repeated interaction games, you're less likely to be screwed by your opponent.  Basically, when you know you'll be dealing with your opponent in the future, you're far less likely to push them around, even if you can, because you have an ongoing relationship to maintain.  For sporting events, the sales that happen between team / venue and fan are repeated interaction events - there are a lot of games out there, so the team has limited incentive to screw the fans if it expects them to come back later in the season.  For a concert, though, it's a one-shot deal.  The venue knows you're going to see your favorite band when they're in town no matter what (the Foo Fighters, my favorite, only come to Northern California once a year, and that's if they're on tour), so they're ready to take advantage of you however they can.

How does this manifest itself?  Well, whereas parking for a Warriors game is a quirky $18 (or at least it was last year), parking at the concert was a rather absurd $35.  While the concessions during the Warriors game were reasonably plentiful and moderately priced, concert-goers with general admission floor tickets had one meager stand selling hot dogs, pretzels and beers and no alternative option.  There was one men's room and one women's room available to the entire general admission population, which might have been adequate for the females but certainly not for a predominantly male crowd.  Had the red neon lights on the outside of the building not read "Oracle Arena," I would have doubted that it was the same place where I had enjoyed NBA basketball less than a year ago.  

The Foo Fighters were awesome (as usual).  The $35 for parking?  Not so much.

The NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL work hard to make sure that all of their venues meet at least a minimum set of standards that we, as fans, often take for granted.  Because these leagues and their teams receive feedback from their fans, they have an incentive to make the experience as positive as reasonably possible for their repeat customers.  Concerts, on the other hand, have no reason to do anything other than maximize profit.  The fact that, after all of those negatives, I still consider the Foo Fighters show to have been fantastic says everything you need to know - there's really nothing that these venues and concert promoters can do that will stop me from seeing Dave Grohl and Co. next time they're in my town.  So next time you're at one of the country's crappier arenas for a game (more on this next month when I make my triumphant return to Nassau Coliseum), be thankful that at least you're there for a league-backed sporting event.

Running Into Your Ex

There's a great Family Guy clip (video below) where the show pokes fun of the awkwardness of running into an ex-girlfriend.  In an effort not to seem bitter and petty, guys will appear overly-enthusiastic about bumping into a former flame and hearing all about how well she's doing - inside, though, you know he's wishing that her life had fallen apart so that he can feel like he was the thing keeping her from completely imploding.  This situation isn't unique to former boyfriends and girlfriends, though - a similar set of reactions can be expected from Stanford football fans after former coach Jim Harbaugh left the school for the NFL's San Francisco 49ers.

After Sunday's victory over previously undefeated Detroit, Harbaugh's 49ers are 5-1 and threatening to run away with the admittedly weak NFC West.  On the surface, Stanford football fans seem thrilled with the prospect of Harbaugh turning the 49ers around - everyone around the school talks about the coach positively and seems excited to celebrate his early success.  To be fair, some of this enthusiasm might be legitimate; there is, after all, a large overlap between Stanford students / alums and San Francisco 49ers fans.  Most Stanford supporters seem to agree that Harbaugh left the school on good terms, kept his promise of staying in the Bay Area (contrast this with former MLB pitcher Mike Hampton, who famously justified a mega contract with the Colorado Rockies by praising the Denver area's public school system), and played a large (if not the largest) role in bringing the school to the top-ten ranking it enjoys today.

But below the surface, you have to wonder if some of these smiling Stanford fans are, like the guy who bumps into his ex-girlfriend, silently rooting for Harbaugh's 49ers to fail.  As long as Harbaugh succeeds in the NFL, it is he who will receive all of the credit for everything Stanford football did last year and for much of what the team continues to do this season.  For all of the talk about the brilliant play of Andrew Luck, the solid head coaching debut of David Shaw and the emergence of the team's three-headed tight end monster, Harbaugh's early dominance of the NFL competition seems to suggest that he deserves the bulk of the credit for Stanford football's reemergence.  If Harbaugh can turn the 49ers around, does that mean he was the sole reason for Stanford's stunning turnaround over the past few seasons?  Had Harbaugh taken a job at Cal or Oregon State or Washington State, would it have been the Golden Bears or the Beavers or the Cougars currently destroying PAC-12 competition?  With Harbaugh to the NFL and Luck set to join him after this season, are the Cardinal destined to fall back to mediocrity by the middle of the decade?

Personally, I'm happy for Jim Harbaugh.  I have nothing against the 49ers and, with the exception of their upcoming game against the Giants at Candlestick Park, I wish them well.  But to the extent that a few Harbaugh failures would build some credibility for the Stanford football program and shift some of the credit from their former coach to their current staff and players, I'm all for that, too.  While I'll smile outwardly every time I see Harbaugh energetically celebrating after a big win, I have to admit that I'll smirk inwardly if Harbaugh's 49ers do happen to come apart at the seams.

Brandon Marshall: A Not-So-Tough Guy

With the NBA permanently temporarily cancelled, the sports world has been partially devoid of stupid comments made by professional athletes.  Statistical analysis proves that NBA athletes provide sports media with the vast majority of empty threats, unsubstantiated claims and worthless guarantees,* so it shouldn't come to a surprise that it's been a relatively quiet autumn so far.  That being said, we can always count on the NFL to pick up the slack with the NBA on hiatus - this week, it was Miami Dolphins WR Brandon Marshall who grabbed the headlines when he said he intends to get ejected during the second quarter of this Sunday's game against the New York Jets.  Here's an excerpt from Marshall's rant (more information via ESPN here):

"I'm not joking. I'm serious," Marshall told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "They're going to fine me. It's probably going to be like a $50,000 fine. But that quarter and a half that I'm out there, I'm going to play like a monster."

It's not completely clear why Marshall said what he did.  If we give him the benefit of the doubt, we can assume he was trying to come up with a witty rebuttal to the various people claiming that "he hasn't played with enough emotion in the first four games."  Or perhaps he's trying to pump up his teammates by showing them that he will do whatever it takes to inject some life into a winless team.  It's also possible that this could also be tied to Marshall's confirmed case of borderline personality disorder.  Then again, Occam's Razor would suggest that the simplest answer is the correct one, so perhaps Marshall is just an idiot.  Regardless of Marshall's intentions, I'm willing to bet that the end result will not be a good one.

First off, by publicly proclaiming his intentions to start a fight with various members of the Jets defense, Marshall has put a bullseye on his uniform for all of the referees and opposing players to stare at throughout the game.  When a player makes a public threat like this one, fans aren't the only ones reading it - you better believe that the refs will be looking to flag Marshall for even the smallest offenses, and that every Jets player will be looking to plant the wide receiver on his backside at every opportunity in order to provoke him into doing something dumb.  Additionally, Marshall's comments add yet another distraction to the locker room of a winless team already dealing with injuries (QB Chad Henne is out for the season) and other problems.

Brandon Marshall probably wants to show the world how tough he is by announcing his intentions to get into a fight during Sunday's contest.  But true football fans know that a truly tough player would never abandon him teammates by intentionally risking ejection or put his already-disadvantaged team in an even bigger hole by turning himself into a target for penalty flags.  If Marshall really wants to become the "monster" he says he can be, it's time for him to stop talking and start producing.  If the admittedly-talented Dolphins WR can focus his energy on the field, instead of continuing his history of becoming a distraction off of it, he might have a chance to do something that would really prove that he's tough - lead his winless team to a win over the heavily-favored Jets.

*I made this up, but is seens entirely believable, doesn't it?

Real Steel: A Review

I'll start off with a caveat: Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman, isn't exactly a sports movie. It's actually a film about robot boxing which, in the year 2027, has replaced human boxing as the preferred form of combat-for-sport because of people's desire to see increasing levels of brutality, carnage and pain that only robots can provide.  Amid this not-so-subtle critique of  Mixed Martial Arts is a film about relationships, fatherhood and most of all, remote-controlled fighting robots.  And since boxing is (sort of) a sport and, other than Moneyball, no one has made a widely-released sports movie in a while, Real Steel will have to count as a sports movie for the purposes of this blog post. 

Next, let me state the obvious.  Real Steel is a terrible movie according to the way films are traditionally judge by "legitimate critics."  As evidenced by it's mediocre 58% score on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is predictable, contrived and formulaic.  From the opening credits, you know exactly what's going to happen - against all odds, Jackman and his son, with whom he has been reunited due to the untimely death of the boy's mother, are going to build a fighting robot on a shoestring budget that can hang with - and ultimately defeat - bigger, stronger, faster and more expensive robotic competition.  That last sentence doesn't even merit a "Spoiler Alert!" tag because it's so painfully obvious.  If you can't guess the plot going into the movie, you've probably never seen an underdog-style sports movie before, and I pity you for that.

But fortunately for Real Steel, I don't judge my sports movies based on traditional movie ranking criteria.  In fact, when I see a sports movie, I want it to be predictable.  I want the underdog to slowly improve throughout the course of the movie, preferably through the lens of a well-timed and appropriately soundtracked montage, and in the end get a shot at the title.  Anything more "clever" would ruin a perfectly good, proven formula of sports movie success.  If it's been good enough for classics such as Major League, Rudy and The Mighty Ducks, you better believe it's good enough for Real Steel.  So not only did I avoid complaining about the corny dialog and unoriginal plot - I applauded it.  With Real Steel, I got exactly what I asked for.

Yes, I enjoyed Real Steel.  Don't judge me.

With all that being said, a new sports movie needs something to differentiate it from others that have come before it.  Warrior, for example, tried to take the classic boxing movie formula, cross out the word "boxing" and replace it with "MMA," and carve out a new niche for itself.  For me, this wasn't enough to make me want to see the film - I need more of a "hook" to get me to spend my $10.  Real Steel, on the other hand, added a futuristic element and some top-notch special effects to the sports movie recipe, and the resulting dish was solid.  Think Transformers meets Rocky and you have a decent feel for what Real Steel was all about.  Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? So don't feel bad if you, like me, have the urge to check out the movie in theaters.  Just make sure you're not expecting anything more than some cool visuals, some unintentionally-comical writing and a moviegoer-tested, studio-approved plot and you'll have a great time. 

Not Ready For The Big Time

On Saturday, while fasting for Yom Kippur, I headed down to Stanford Stadium for my first in-person look at the 2011 Stanford Cardinal football team.  I was excited not only to see the team in action, but also to be a part of what is a completely different fan atmosphere this season.  The buzz around Stanford's National Title hopes and Andrew Luck's Heisman Trophy candidacy can be heard all over Palo Alto and, unlike for most games last season, I knew that Saturday's crowd would be good.  Having secured a student ticket earlier in the week, I had a gameplan: check out the tailgating scene for a bit before zipping through the student entrance in time to see some pregame warmups and watch the team come charging onto the field.

While the tailgating scene was good - pretty lively and better than anything I saw on campus last season, despite the fact that Saturday's game was against lowly Colorado and lots of Stanford students were likely up in San Francisco for Fleet Week festivities - entering the stadium was a complete nightmare.  The company hired to man the turnstiles was clearly unprepared to deal with the large number of students arriving just prior to kickoff.  There was one meager entrance open to thousands of students, while the general admission gates were wide open but unwilling to scan student IDs.  As a result, there was a 45-minute backlog to get into the stadium, preventing the majority of the "Red Zone" - the Stanford student section - from getting into their seats before kickoff.  By the time I finally made it in, Stanford had just scored its second touchdown, and the first quarter was basically half over with the Cardinal leading 13-0.

 Once they were finally allowed in, over 50,000 fans packed Stanford Stadium on Saturday,

Stanford had a great opportunity to build on the early season buzz and momentum and create a great game experience for the fans, but stadium management blew it big time.  At any school with a solid fan base, the student section brings the noise, energy and enthusiasm.  Any fan of a school in the SEC or Big XII or Big Ten, where stadiums hold 70,000+ and many of those are students, can tell you the same.  What does it say about Stanford football, then, when stadium management can't figure out how to get the students into the stadium in an orderly and timely fashion?  To me, it says that while Stanford's football team is ready to compete with anyone in the country, the athletic department still has a long way to go if it wants to put Stanford football on the map.

To True To Be Good? An NBA Labor Proposal

With the NBA dangerously close to having to cancel regular season games for the first time in over a decade, basketball fans are finally starting to panic.  While over the summer the NBA labor negotiations took a firm back seat to the NFL labor strife, regular season baseball and women's World Cup coverage, reality is finally beginning to set in for sports fans and the media.  ESPN and other mainstream media outlets have begun to cover the NBA labor progress (or lack thereof) on a daily, rather than weekly, basis, and independent news outlets and bloggers are chiming in more heavily than ever.  Unfortunately, the NBA and the players association (NBPA) have made very little progress over the last few weeks, and the start of the season - if not the entire season - is officially in jeopardy.

Earlier this year, during a conversation about the NBA labor dispute, I verbally outlined my plan for saving the NBA for the first time.  At the time, I was encouraged to publish my thoughts, but hesitated to do so for two main reasons.  The secondary reason, which I masqueraded as the primary factor, is that I am professionally involved in the world of sports, and didn't want people thinking I was speaking out of turn on what has become a hotly contested issue.  The true primary reason, though, was that my proposal is so incredibly simplistic that I felt it couldn't possibly be taken seriously.  As we near the NBA's self-imposed drop dead date for starting the regular season on time, however, all of the NBA vs. NBPA debates I've heard have been bogged down by some combination of philosophy-based, accounting-based or economics-based disagreements.  Thus, I think it's time for me to try and steer us back to basics.

First, what do we know - or at least think we know - about the NBA labor dispute?  For one, the NBA is losing money.  How much money is up for debate, but I think both sides can agree that, in aggregate, the league has lost money over the last few seasons.  In other words, the teams are paying the players more money than they generate after subtracting non-player costs.  This is, obviously, not a sustainable business model.  Second, this is a very public debate.  While the fans don't have a direct say in the negotiations, the court of public opinion will undoubtedly sway the resulting agreement, if we ever get one.  This is why the owners portray the players as overpaid, greedy kids and why the players paint the owners as old, stuffy and exceedingly wealthy tyrants.  Both sides want the fans on their side to pressure the opponent into making a deal.  Third, the NBA and NBPA's attempts to fix a complex problem by bolting on additional layers of complexity haven't worked.  Amending a needlessly complicated Basketball Related Income (BRI) computation formula with even more convoluted mathematical adjustments won't build trust or get us to a deal any time soon.

So what if the NBA offered the players 100% of all revenues after deducting non-player expenses?  The NBA would convert the current revenue sharing model - which provides limited downside protection if expenses explode (which they have, for various reasons too numerous to cover here, over the last five years or so) - to a profit sharing model, and for a year or so give the players 100% of the pre-player-cost profits.  For one, this would assure the owners a cumulative breakeven (although individual teams might make or lose money, depending on where we end up on revenue sharing) - they wouldn't make money, but they wouldn't lose it either - which is an improvement over last season's reported $400 million loss.  Yes, the players would take a pay cut, but it would be hard to argue against the reduction in the court of public opinion.  After all, the owners would be offering the players everything for a season.  How could the players ask for more than 100% of the pie while keeping a straight face?  Over time, the owners would receive a small chunk of the profit (say up to 5%), and the players would retain most (95%) of the pre-player-expense pool.  This reduces the argument between the two sides from dozens of issues to only a few, and if the NBA and NBPA could agree on a reasonable list of legitimate expenses, they'd be much closer to a deal than they've been in years.  It's a crazy diversion from the current complex system - but might it be crazy enough to work?

Why would the sides not agree to this?  Well for one, the NBPA might not trust the NBA's spending policies - if the NBA spends too much, profits would be reduced and the player salaries would be negatively impacted.  The solution here is easy enough - cap the fixed expenses at some reasonable level (either a fixed amount or, more appropriately, as a percentage of revenue), above which the NBA would have to pay out of its own pockets.  This would encourage the league and teams to cut overhead, which is a good thing, and preserve a minimum guaranteed margin for the players.  The NBPA might also feel like this plan doesn't give the NBA league and teams enough incentive to grow revenue.  However, since the NBA will, after the first year, receive a portion of the profits, the incentive to grow the pie and make good deals should be there from day one - the NBA can't take a season off and expect to have success next year.  The NBA could also guarantee a revenue number for the first few years, which with reasonable effort they should be able to hit, or the profit sharing structure could be a waterfall, where at certain profit milestones the NBA begins to receive increasingly larger proportions of the incremental profit created.  The possibilities are numerous - once the two sides agree that this problem should be viewed as one of growing and sharing profits, not spending ruthlessly in a misguided attempt to grow revenue.

With such a system, the NBA and the NBPA would become something they claim to be but aren't - true partners.  Furthermore, the league would become an actual business, rather than a loose confederation of teams that seeks to please the players and fans at any cost.  The best way to align incentives among partners is through profit sharing, and until the league and the players come to terms with this and give up on a failed revenue sharing-based structure, it's going to be very hard for the sides to come to terms on an agreement that both sides will be happy with.  By framing the negotiation as a profit sharing proposal and offering the players 100% of the profits for the first season, the NBA can force the players to view the proposal as a gain of 100% of the profit pool, rather than as a loss of some piece of the revenue pie.  The sides may be tempted to stick with a revenue-based plan because more revenue means more power in the world of sports - the NBA likely wants to be seen as a legitimate peer to MLB and the NFL - but at this point a slightly smaller, well-managed and at-minimum-breakeven NBA is better than no NBA at all. While this plan is super-simple and, in and of itself, can't constitute the majority of a major Collective Bargaining Agreement, a profit sharing-based proposal can redefine the problem in terms that both sides can more readily agree on and understand.

Even after reaching a macro-level agreement, it's clear that the sides will have to go through the complicated process of determining how the player salary pool, however defined, will be distributed to the NBPA.  How much will rookies make?  How will existing contracts be amended?  What will the non-salary terms of contracts (length, guarantees, bonuses, etc.) look like?  Once the two sides agree on an overall formula for the player pool, though, we'll be much closer to making progress on these issues, and the NBA can potentially trade some of these issues that are important to the players (such as the continuation of guaranteed contracts, for example) in exchange for progress on a profit sharing plan.  In any event, it's clear to me that both parties need to take a step back from the current heated discussions about revenue and think about what's best for the sport of basketball.  This admittedly simple proposal gives the players the continued opportunity to dominate the NBA profitability landscape while giving the owners a chance to operate financially sustainable teams that are incentived to run more effectively, and most importantly aligns owner and player incentives in a way that is beneficial to both the NBA and the NBPA.

A Key Part of Seattle is Missing

When the Seattle Supersonics moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder, a lot of sports fans were devastated.  While Seattlites were understandably upset that their hometown basketball team was leaving for OKC, even non-Seattle natives seemed unreasonably critical of the move.  While I felt bad for Sonics fans - I certainly wouldn't want one of my favorite teams, like the Islanders, to move - I didn't exactly understand why this was such a big deal.  For one, sports teams move fairly regularly - this was hardly the first time a professional team left town, and isn't even new to Seattle (the Pilots left the city to become MLB's Milwaukee Brewers a few decades earlier).  Additionally, Seattle still has an MLB team, an NFL team, a rapidly growing MLS franchise and a consistently-competitive WNBA club.

Then again, until this weekend I had never been to Seattle, and thus couldn't understand why losing the Supersonics was such a big deal to the city.  On the way to downtown from the SeaTac airport, we passed by Century Link (formerly Qwest) and Safeco Fields, homes of the NFL's Seahawks / MLS's Sounders and MLB's Mariners, respectively.  While these looked like nice venues (we only drove past via the highway), they were, like many new stadiums, far from the city's downtown.  Later in our first day, though, we walked by Key Arena, the former home of Seattle's now-defunct NBA franchise, and I realized why losing the Sonics was such a blow to Seattlites.

Unlike Safeco and Century Link, Key Arena is part of a beautiful area in the heart of the city.  Located within close walking distance to the Space Needle, the venue is part of a much larger cultural complex that includes the EMP Museum of Music, Sci-Fi and Pop Culture, the Seattle Opera House and Symphony theater, the Pacific Science Center and a number of other cultural landmarks.  The area of the city surrounding the Space Needle is entirely dedicated to artistic exploration, with buildings dedicated to music, theater, science and technology, TV and movies and other artistic forms all connected by beautiful walkways, green spaces and public art displays.  Seattle has one of the nicest cultural centers that I've ever seen in a U.S. city, and Key Arena is right smack in the middle of it all.

From the Space Needle you can see that Key Arena is in the middle of Seattle's cultural hub.

When the Sonics played at Key Arena, Seattle was (perhaps unintentionally) making a statement that sports deserve to be considered an art form.  Fans attending a basketball game could spend an afternoon wandering through museums, enjoying the surrounding public parks and mingling with music, cinema and science afficionados in addition to traditional sports fans.  While the Mariners and Seahawks have beautiful new venues, what Key Arena seemingly lacks in ammenities (I can't really say - I've never been inside), it makes up for with a great location and culturally-relevant neighbors.  While to an outsider the loss of the Sonics might seem like no big deal, after spending time around the area I can understand why the team's departure was so hard to swallow.  If Seattle does get a new indoor arena someday, I really hope it's built right on top of the current Key Arena site.  There's no better opportunity for the city of Seattle to proclaim to the country that it not only loves basketball, but considers the game a form of true artistic expression.