Posts

Paying College Players? The Proposal - Volume 2

A brief recap of the rules and decisions faced by the young men who leave high school and become college athletes is in order. Current Rules One and Done rule in basketball.   The NBA controls this, not the NCAA.   The NBA has a rule that a prospective player is required to be one year out of high school and at least 19 years of age to enter the NBA draft.    The National Hockey League and Major League Baseball allow a player to enter their league once they turn 18 years old.   However, MLB has a rule that once a player enrolls in a four year college they become ineligible to enter the MLB draft until their junior year or are at least 21 years old.   Junior college players, regardless of how many years of school remain eligible to enter the draft.    The National Football League (NFL) requires that a player be three years removed from high school before being eligible for the Rookie Draft.   This necessitates that a player show off their skills at the collegiate level.   This h
Post a Comment
Read more

Paying College Players? The Proposal - Volume 1

Image
When a collegiate sporting event takes place different people ask different questions.  The mother of the star play might ask, "is my Baby going to get hurt?" The teacher of the star player might ask, I wonder, "did he get that homework done?" The coach might ask, "is he going to come through?" The local beer company that sponsors the telecast is asking, "did we get good media exposure from this game?" The University Chancellor might ask, "How many prospective students are we going to get out of this telecast?" The lowly Economist (yeah, that’s me) asks, "How much extra value did this star player earn for everyone involved?” The truth is that when   NCAA college contracts were originally created, video games did not exist, videotaping was evolving from film and the internet was an imaginary concept.     Technology has allowed players to provide entertainment to a world wide audience so that athletic feats get pl
Post a Comment
Read more

What Omaha means at the line of scrimmage for the Broncos?

When you hear quarterback, Peyton Manning bark out "Omaha" at the line of scrimmage, what does it mean? Simple.   It means, “original play called.”   In other words, whatever the original play that was called in the huddle or scripted from the sidelines will be run. Is this an educated guess?   Well, yes, but it is what Economists do a lot of times when we look at data.  Here is why I made my educated guess. Because Peyton Manning is an avid play caller at the line of scrimmage and because he regularly calls audibles and then changes his call depending on how the defense changes their alignment, the offense players listening to Manning need a quick mechanism that redirects them to the original play called. My evidence of this finding is derived from my observation of several Denver Broncos games.    First, when “Omaha” is called it sometimes the play that follows is a running play, sometimes a passing play.   The running play that follows might be a run into the middl
Post a Comment
Read more

The Hamilton Plan for the Kansas City Chiefs

Image
How to Maximize the Value of the Current Roster and Recreate a Winner in 2013 This plan is constructed by Professor Timmy Hamilton who is an Economics Professor at Columbia College and Avila University.  He is a die hard Chiefs fan who watches every minute of every game and has a balding scalp to prove it.   Assumptions:  The teams in the NFL draft function in an Oligopoly Market and Game Theory can help establish Nash Equilibrium. The Cheifs currently have the #1, #34, #63, #96, # 127, # 160, and #191 picks.  The NFL Draft Value Chart  below provides data on player value.  Since this comes from the New England Patriots draft website and because Bill Belichick has a Masters in Economics, this is assumed to be built off of Historic Data and the values are a product of multiple regression analysis.  It shows multiple functions and is linear in some rounds, a parabala in others and a set of logorithmic equations in other rounds.
Post a Comment
Read more

Healthcare anyone? The Breakfast Analogy.

Image
In my last lecture on the Economics of Healthcare we got into a discussion on the latest plans that are floating around Washington. In order to simplify the concepts from an economic perspective, I created the breakfast analogy and here it is. Suppose that a discovery was made in the U.S. that few Americans were eating breakfast and this was causing malnutrition As a result there was total consensus that every American should have a nutritious breakfast. The media spells out the options: (1) A National Breakfast Program supplied by the Government, (2) A Government Supplied National Breakfast Insurance Program where the Government mandates a morning breakfast for everyone (this might include a Breakfast Voucher for low incomes) and (3) A National Breakfast Bank [Yes this is ol’ Prof Timmy’s invention]. Under Option (1) everyone who has the money for breakfast pays a fee into the government. The government in turn decides that breakfast was too important of a meal to be left to
Post a Comment
Read more

Quinoa

Image
Quinoa is a high protein grain from South America.  Here is my home made cooking  video  that shows how to use home grown tomatoes and basil to make a wonderful dish that supplements any lunch or dinner menu. I am not much in the kitchen, but this healthy dish is super simple and delish!
Post a Comment
Read more

Debt Ceiling? Well Timing is Everything.....Unfortunately

Image
What is a debt ceiling? A simple enough question. The answer is that it is a self imposed recognition that American politicians typically put in place higher government expenditures than tax revenues can pay for. The ceiling is simply a decision to borrow money to cover the difference. Anyone student who has sat in one of my Macro classes has heard me gripe about our never ending deficit and the need reduce our interest payments on our Federal deficit. In fact, reducing the deficit in the long run is not only a smart idea intuitively, but one that economists overwhelmingly support. The reason why is that each year interest payments on our debt take dollars that could be spent on schools, roads, social programs or military spending and pays interest to bondholders instead. The taxpayer gets nothing for this. No bridges, no new police cars, no wheelchairs, subsidies for innovation, no predator drones…nothing. However, there is a time and a place for everything. There is a huge diff
Post a Comment
Read more