Football and Research Money: Big Ten Wins

During a conversation the other night, we were debating the relative merits of the various university athletic conferences.

I work at Texas Tech, a member of the Big XII Conference. I grew up in Kansas City, which was the heart of the former Big 8 Conference. I also earned my master's degree at Kansas State, so I am partial to the Big XII. Bad news for me below.

My Ph.D. is from Indiana, and my first faculty position was at Ohio State, so I am partial to the Big Ten, too.

Some of my other colleagues are from Southeastern Conference schools, and I was talking smack about the traditional football powerhouse conference.

So I wondered how the conferences stack up academically. It's difficult to pick any one metric for academic success, but I decided to go with research funding. Research is the lifeblood of major universities, and funding fuels that research. I turned to the Center for Measuring University Performance and their 2007 Top American Research University Report.

So how do the conferences of the Bowl Championship Series stack up?

Well, it's not quite easy to tell. Apples and oranges, and something like that. Some university totals appear to include their medical school and some don't. So there's no total for Baylor University, which suggests they have less than $20 million in annual federal research funding. However, Baylor College of Medicine had $458,694 in research funding in 2005. To include or not include? Also, there is no amount for Boston College. Pittsburgh leads the Big East, and if it were not for Pitt (which surely includes their medical school), the Big East would average about half of the next lowest conference.

No matter Baylor's fate (I decided to exclude the medical college), the news is not good for the current top powers in football. The Big XII and SEC have the top four ranked teams in the land and five of the top seven. However, gridiron greatness does not translate to research power.

The Big XII is dead last among the six BCS conferences, and the SEC is fourth (if you include Baylor's medical school, the Big XII jumps to fourth).

The Big Ten, led by Michigan, leads the way. Although, the Big Ten is "down" this year, Michigan is the most successful program in college football. So these data may be spurious. Florida also tops the SEC in football and research dollars.

In rank order, here are the final data for average annual funding for each institution for 2005 and 2004.

Conference, Average Amount, Top Program
Big Ten, $477,259,000, (that school up north)
Pac 10, $422,266,000, UCLA
ACC, $296,778,000, Duke
SEC, $210,054,000, Florida
Big East, $209,668,000, Pittsburgh
Big XII, $201,376,000, Texas A&M

Bill Snyder a Wildcat Once More

For all the other problems in the world, my life is one of complete joy today. Bill Snyder is once again the head coach of the K-State Wildcats.

Welcome back, Mr. Snyder. We have missed you dearly.

This is an awesome day, and I'm wearing purple!

Gambling, Punting, and Unnecessary Risk

I enjoy listening to sports radio, but I have not done so often lately. I have preferred the quiet to the talk.

When I do listen, I notice that they spend quite a bit of time talking about betting on sports. That's wasted on me. I'm not a gambler. Moreover, the entire idea of gambling is foreign to me.

We live in West Texas, and I drive to New Mexico a couple of times per year. Usually around Roswell we see a billboard for Powerball lottery. Texas is not a Powerball state, so the jackpot amount usually is a surprise. When it's large, we usually drop a dollar.

People call the lottery a tax on people who are bad at math, but I would argue that these are exactly my kind of odds. I won't miss the dollar, and I'd be a lot better off with an extra $200 million. So spending an extra $3 a year is no trouble.

Conversely, doubling my money holds almost no interest. Whatever spare money I have has a purpose. And losing it for no good reason seems, well, stupid. And doubling it won't buy me a new house, a new car, or anything I really want. Thus the risk-reward ratio is quite poor.

This guiding principle extends to sports. I love Big Ten football. Woody Hayes. Three yards and a cloud of dust. And although I enjoy watching Texas Tech football, it is against my entire nature. I would have made a boring football coach.

I believe Jim Tressel when he says that the punt is the most important play in football. I believe that defense does win championships. I grew up watching Marty Schottenheimer's Kansas City Chiefs win 16-13 slugfests.

There's nothing like a tenacious defense and an ability to run the ball. You can close out games.

Last night, watching the Red Raiders get pummeled by Mobilehoma, coach Mike Leach's propensity to go for it on fourth down failed. Giving such a skilled opponent a short field was extremely costly.

This itself is an interesting study in risk. If you've ever played video game football, you occasionally find yourself ahead late in the game trying to protect a lead. Faced with certain defeat, your opponent is forced to repeatedly go for it on fourth down.

In my experience, this is almost impossible to defend. It seems that so much of football is designed to keep most runs short. So for the entirety of the game, holding your opponent to three straight 3-yard runs spells victory. They punt on 4th and 1.

However, nursing a 3 point lead with 2:30 to go, your opponent is going to try for that yard every time. And it's incredibly effective.

Yet so few take this gamble when it's not absolutely necessary. Imagine how difficult it would be to stop a team with a solid running attack and play action passing that always went for it on fourth and short. I'm not saying it would be effective in the long run, but I would hate to defend it.

In the end, it's a function of probabilities, and a well executed punt has better odds.

And these coaches are gambling with millions of dollars: their lucrative contracts.

Which brings us back to the entire issue of gambling.

Although I don't have the patience to fact check this, ESPN radio's Colin Cowherd said this week that sports gambling increases when the economy is bad. When you and your family need the money the most, you're most likely to flush it away.

In our lab, we spend a lot of time studying appetitive and aversive processes. Good things feel good, and bad things feel bad. This is universal. But for some people, good things feel so good that risks are ignored. And for others, bad things feel so bad that no risk is tolerable.

To me, gambling is simply a function of appetite and aversion. I don't have a high tolerance for risk, so it logically follows that I am not much of a gambler. But it also explains why people might be more likely to gamble during times of economic strife.

Imagine that you're a little bit hungry, but you'd have to run across a busy highway to get food. You probably would sit out the human Frogger. Now imagine that you're starving. No amount of traffic would prevent you from risking the highway. Eat or die. So the traffic does not increase your risk.

Perhaps you need that extra $100 so bad that you cannot see the folly of losing the $100 you do have.

So Las Vegas remains a mystery to me. It's a monument built to a god that I just don't understand.

ESPN College Gameday Brings Fun to Lubbock

Much fun is being had in Lubbock because ESPN's College Gameday show is in Lubbock for the Texas vs. Texas Tech match up.

Cynic Wes Wise said it would never happen.

Here I am with lab crew Wes Wise, Brandon Nutting, Wendy Maxian, and Kelli Brown.

Wreck 'Em!

Wreck 'Em: Tech 34, Oklahoma 27

Thanks to Wendy Maxian for the camera phone picture.

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Taking down the No. 3 team in the nation feels good.

Attention Boosters: Sam Bradley for Hire

Normally I am a sports jinx. Unless I work for a university. And then for some reason I am untouchable in rivalry games.

Roughly three years ago I accepted a job at Ohio State. Since that day:

Ohio State 37, Michigan 21, Nov. 20, 2004
Ohio State 25, Michigan 21, Nov. 19, 2005
Texas Tech 31, Texas A&M 27, Sept. 30, 2006
Texas Tech 35, Texas A&M 7, Oct. 13, 2007

May Lightning Strike Greedy NFL Network

Six months sped by since the last real football game.

Such a drought meant that even the meaningless Hall of Fame Game intrigued me. I was excited to watch it Sunday night.

Then I found out that it was on the stupid NFL Network.

Damn!

And I do not blame my cable provider at all for not carrying this upstart attempt at blackmail. One hundred percent of the blame falls upon the network.

This is just another example of wanton greed and total disregard for the fans.

Damn you, NFL Network. Damn, you Big Ten Network.

All special sports networks deserve to fail miserably, and I hope that their sponsoring institutions suffer for creating them.

Without fans, sports mean nothing. It's time for leagues to start respecting that.

Irvin's Touching Speech Wins Over Detractor

A story I wrote in 1998 about former NMSU head football coach Jim Hess, who was then a scout for the Dallas Cowboys. Hess was in El Paso, Texas, for a scrimmage between the Cowboys and the Oakland Raiders.

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There was a time when I hated Michael Irvin.

You see, growing up I never thought much about the Dallas Cowboys. They were in an NFC town, and I was born and raised in an AFC town.

If anything, I would have told you that the only real football team from Dallas was the Dallas Texans, who became the Kansas City Chiefs.

Then in July 1992, I moved to Phoenix. According to Google maps, it's a 1,067 mile drive from Dallas to Phoenix. So you might not expect to see many Cowboys fans there.

You'd be wrong.

I was amazed at the number of Cowboys fans. They were everywhere. Everywhere! To put it in perspective, the 1992 Cardinals averaged 33,911 fans in the seven home games that were not the Dallas Cowboys. For the Cowboys game, 72,439 people showed up.

And the Cowboys were good then, too. Damned good.

So as part of my fervent anti-bandwagon tendency, I ended up hating the Cowboys.

I was busy then, going to school, working, and getting married. There wasn't much Internet or sports radio to speak of then, so I didn't actually know much about the Cowboys and Irvin. And I certainly didn't read newspaper articles about them.

But I hated them.

Things got worse when I moved to New Mexico, which is really Cowboy country. Many of my friends from the NMSU student newspaper were Cowboys fans. They'd watch the games in the newsroom on Sunday afternoons.

I didn't see the games. As always, I was too busy working. Writing a column. Editing copy. Something.

Anyway, the Super Bowl victories fanned the flames. The hatred grew. I hated only the Oakland Raiders more than the Cowboys, as any Kansas City native will understand.

In some bit of irony, I covered a Raiders-Cowboys at the El Paso Sun Bowl in 1999 as sports editor of the Las Cruces Sun-News. As a journalist, I was forced to be neutral. Perhaps that began to soften the hate. Given the timeline, Irvin and I probably were on the same field that day. Sadly I just don't remember.

Fast forward to 2007, and in another small bit of irony, I'm living in Texas. I've grown to respect Irvin as I learned of his work ethic. It's hard to hate someone universally acclaimed as the hardest worker on the practice field.

Too many times these days, you read of millionaire prima donnas such as Allen Iverson who think that practice is beneath them.

Not so with Michael "The Playmaker" Irvin. His will to win was unmistakable. And I've just got to respect someone for whom the fire burns within.

Watching Irvin as a television analyst, I've gotten a bit more respect. Sure, he is guilty of catering to his cronies, but I enjoy listening to him. Perhaps due to his father's roots as a pastor, Irvin has an attention-grabbing speaking style.

Saturday night Irvin was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He spoke for 26 minutes. Newspaper accounts say that tears began to flow during minute 21. That's just like a sports writer to note the clock on crying, don't you think?

Irvin gave a moving, impassioned speech. He could have ducked his many off-field troubles. He did not. As if he were facing a strong safety in the middle of the field, Irvin lowered his shoulder and went right through the tough times.

On the same night, Barry "BALCO" Bonds tied Hank Aaron's record for career home runs at 755.

These men could not be more different. Bonds is aloof, arrogant, and a detractor to the locker room. And he will not address the steroid allegations.

Irvin led the locker room. He "never let the team have a bad practice," as team owner Jerry Jones acknowledged during his introduction of Irvin.

So on Saturday he stood in front of the crowd and acknowledged letting down his wife, his children, and his family and friends. He spoke of his struggles to be a better father every day.

I was touched.

The last few shreds of hate blew away last night. In there place are respect and empathy. Everyone knows what it is like to let down those you love, and hopefully every parent knows what it is like to want to be a better parent.

I hope that a lot of would-be 14-year-old athletes were watching last night and learned something.

NFL Markets Football to U.S. Hispanics

The free market does not discriminate. This story on the marketing of football caught my interest today.

Dr. Felipe Korzenny, of Florida State University, will give a lecture on Hispanic marketing at Texas Tech University on Feb. 9th. Our college is strongly involved in the growing area of scholarship.

By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ
The Associated Press

MIAMI - For 14-year-old Emanuel Arrosa, life is about playing or watching "futbol." Like millions of Hispanics whose passion is soccer, the son of Argentinian parents can't remember a time when he couldn't dribble a ball with his feet.

About American football, Arrosa is less enthusiastic. "It's OK, but it doesn't take the same agility. You just hit people."

Yet if the NFL can work its Super Bowl magic Feb. 4, Arrosa might join the growing legion of Hispanic fans who love the choreographed violence of American football as much as the fancy footwork of soccer. The NFL has stepped up efforts in recent years to market the sport to the children of Latin American immigrants, and as Super Bowl XLI approaches, the league is going all out in its bid to win over the Hispanic community.

Read more...

Why Do I Care About Coaching Searches?

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- It started with Roy Williams. Round 1. You remember, the time he promised to stay at Kansas. And then did. And then left a couple of years later for North Carolina.

I will always hate Dean Smith for that. He was a Kansan. He grew up a Jayhawk. He played at KU. Won a national title after playing in Phog Allen Fieldhouse. But in the end, his loyalty was with his adopted home state. So he guilted Roy Boy into leaving. In doing so, he denied Roy Williams the opportunity to have the legacy at Kansas that Smith enjoyed at Carolina.

Nonetheless, I sat glued to the Internet this morning waiting for Nick Saban to go to Alabama. The wait was killing me. And now I know. Having read the Internet and watched ESPN much of the day, Saban either did the right thing or is the worst thing to come around since the black plague.

Seems trivial now. But I wore out my F5 key this morning.

Ugh. Media dependency.

Football, Violence Chapter Published

Today marked a pleasant surprise. I received a copy of the book, "Handbook of Sports and Media," in which I have a chapter with former Indiana colleagues Dr. Walter Gantz and Zheng Wang.

The chapter outlines our investigation of the relationship between televised football and domestic violence (read more here). The project began more than 4 years ago, and it is excellent to see the volume in print (despite a copy editing problem with the authors and my affiliation).

If you are interested in sports and media from an academic perspective, I highly recommend the book, which is published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Now that my copy arrived, I can read the many other interesting chapters.

Officially, our citation is (according to the table of contents):

Gantz, W., Bradley, S. D., & Wang, Z. (2006). Televised NFL games, the family, and domestic violence. In A. A. Raney & J. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media (pp. 365-381). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Regrettable Side of the Super Bowl

Today people will gather at parties around the nation. According to today's Kansas City Star, Americans will consume more food today than any other day than Christmas. Antacid sales will spike 20 percent tomorrow. Americans also will consume thousands -- maybe millions -- of bottles of beer. And, sadly, more Americans will commit acts of domestic violence today.

Four years ago, in spring semester 2002, I was working as a research assistant for Walter Gantz, chair of the department of telecommunications at Indiana University. Walt had heard all of the rumors and urban legends linking the Super Bowl with domestic violence, and he wanted to use the tools of social science to examine whether a link really existed.

We attempted to get data from emergency rooms, women's shelters, and police departments. We could not muster much cooperation from the first two sources. They either did not keep date-specific information, or it was too difficult to obtain. However, we were able to get date-specific information on 911 domestic violence dispatches from 15 of the 30 police departments in NFL cities that we targeted. We ended up with 26,192 days of domestic violence data from the 15 cities.

We wanted to know whether the mere fact of a Super Bowl falling on a given day caused domestic violence to increase. We controlled for the city size (i.e., one would expect there to be more domestic violence in a large market compared to a small market), time of year, day of the week, and many other factors.

Along the way, I learned a lot about domestic violence. The truth is saddening. Domestic violence increases on the weekend (we are more likely to be together), and it increases in the summer (it is both hotter, and we have more time off of work). However, domestic violence really increases on holidays. Christmas. Thanksgiving. Labor Day. When we think of these holidays, we think of celebration. But the police reports tell another side of the story. We are also more likely to lash out against those whom we love.

In the final analysis, we were looking at 1,366,518 separate domestic violence dispatches. How many were statistically related to the Super Bowl? According to our analysis, 272 of those incidents were due to a Super Bowl falling on a given day (we also included the day following the Super Bowl to capture any 911 dispatches that happened after midnight since the Super Bowl starts so late on the East coast). In the total pool of incidents, this is a small fraction (.0199 percent); however, for those 272 individuals, the threat is very real.

If we look at all of the incidents on Super Bowl days, then those 272 incidents represent 6.5% of the total incidents for those days. This is no small increase -- especially for those involved. To put the Super Bowl in perspective, however, our analysis predicted that 1,238 incidents -- almost 1,000 more -- were due to Christmas.

In the end, the Super Bowl does not look like a Super villain. Instead, it looks a lot like a holiday. The Super Bowl puts more people together and sprinkles in alcohol. In the final piece, we wrote: "Viewed from this perspective, it appears that the Super Bowl has all of the elements to spark holiday-related domestic violence: increased expectations, close domestic interaction, and alcohol consumption. And unlike the other three major sports in America, this one game is for all the marbles, raising the stakes for those who care about the outcome. Although it goes against the hopes associated with any holiday, it appears that when one throws together a mix of people, expectations, anxiety, and alcohol -- and in many locales, in close quarters under wintry conditions -- a same and next day spike in violence is the result."

This study is being published as a chapter in an edited book:

Gantz, W., Bradley, S. D., & Wang, Z. (2006). Televised NFL games, the family, and domestic violence. In A. A. Raney & J. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

You can read more about an earlier version of the report in a news release from IU.