Newmark's Door

Duke men's basketball FAIL

My younger daughter, a Duke graduate and Duke basketball mega-fan, thinks this year's men's basketball poster reflects severely poor judgment.

I agree 100%.

"Who Said It: Dictator or NFL Coach?"

Heh. (I got 10 out of 12.)

Line of the week

"Don't think I'm overreacting to say that if the Yankees lose this series, Girardi should be fired. Then put in a rocket & shot into the sun."

Roger Federer does that scene from Remember the Titans

Pretty good. (Link via SI.com.)

Inefficiencies--when they exist--tend to disappear quickly in competitive markets

Buzz Bissinger argues Moneyball--if it ever actually worked--is dead.

Herb Brooks lives!

In case you missed it, here's a YouTube video of a four-year-old giving Herb Brooks's speech before one of the greatest upsets in sports history.

"How economists are tackling sports injuries"

I've always thought that it would be worth it to pro sports teams to spend a lot of money trying to understand and prevent injuries. They do. Kinda:

If injury incidences and outcomes were blind luck, then there would be nothing to do except focus on treatment. But they clearly aren’t. The RFU’s success with hamstrings is just one example. Simon Kemp knows rugby will always be dangerous, but he hopes that better conditioning might even help players come through some of the collisions which tear anterior ­cruciate ligaments.

“How?” I ask.

“We don’t know yet,” he replies

"Laird Hamilton: My Scariest Wave"

Over 100 feet.

"Six Degrees of Nolan Ryan: Network Science Ranks Baseball Greats"

From Wired, 8/4:

Arguing over who’s the better player is as much a pastime as baseball itself.

Pedro Martinez or Sandy Koufax? Barry Bonds or Mickey Mantle? Of course it’s impossible to say. You can’t compare players from different eras. Heck, it’s hard enough to compare them between teams, in the same season.

But that doesn’t stop stat junkies from trying. They use equations only slightly less complex than credit derivatives formulas, and no more comprehensible to outsiders than the nose-tapping, ear-tugging, cap-pulling signals of a third base coach.

The latest entry to this field of Monte Carlo simulations and regression analyses and optimization algorithms was posted last Thursday in arXiv, an informal online repository of papers devoted to high-energy physics and self-organizing systems and other such knuckle-balling disciplines.

The study’s authors used network science to crunch the results of every single at-bat between 1954 and 2008 — and thanks to a baseball version of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” it’s possible to compare players who never faced each other.

I don't know about the batters, but I think they've got the #1 relief pitcher and #1 starting pitcher right.

Poor Shaq

Shaquille O'Neil and his wife let their South Beach house go for a bit less than their asking price.