A New Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado

CU-Boulder Department of Athletics explores creation of Sports Governance Center

August 31, 2015
The University of Colorado Department of Athletics is embarking on an ambitious new initiative between academics and athletics – the proposed creation of a Sports Governance Center (SGC), which would be among the first of its kind in the nation.

If approved, the SGC would be an innovative academic unit within Athletics, with a mission that would focus on teaching, research and service. The goal is to conduct leading research, education and outreach related to the governance of sport, including college athletics and professional sports.

A proposal for the center will be submitted in the spring to the Graduate School for approval, said CU Professor Roger Pielke Jr., who is spearheading the effort along with Athletic Director Rick George.

Public lectures and events related to the center are being planned in the fall and a 2000-level, three-credit course called Governance of Sport is in the works for spring. Pielke taught a similar course in the spring 2014.

The vision for the center focuses on the implementation of rules and the exercise of power as related to the governing of sports. The subject matter would run the gamut from concussion studies, to doping in sports, to the ongoing FIFA scandal and the role of the NCAA and big time athletes at the modern American university.

The center concept is the result of an initial collaboration between the athletic director and Pielke, an environmental studies professor whose research in recent years has focused on sports governance.

“This is another collaboration between athletics and our faculty,” George said. “Given the topics that are going on nationally in the NCAA with governance, it’s really the perfect time for us both to work together to better understand the issues.”

Pielke, who in 2002 led efforts to create the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research within the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at CU-Boulder, said the Sports Governance Center will further the goal of “better integrating athletics and academics on the Boulder campus.”

“The new SGC will also represent a significant step nationally in the currently-evolving role that college athletics play on major university campuses across the United States,” Pielke said.

Center organizers plan to announce affiliates from across the CU-Boulder campus including faculty members in business, medicine, law, engineering and social sciences, along with members of an external advisory board, in coming months.

Pielke said numerous faculty members and researchers across campus are already engaged in scholarship related to sports and the Sports Governance Center would help to support their work and foster new collaborations.

Pielke said one of the reasons the center’s creation is so exciting is because it is so interdisciplinary and would draw on the natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities. It is also very international, due to the fact that sports take place in every nation and are overseen by international organizations, such as the International Olympic Committee.

“Like any issue that is societal in nature, no single university department can adequately capture the complexity of this topic,” Pielke said. “We are focusing on a topic then using the resources of traditional disciplines to assemble the expertise we need.”

Contact:
Roger Pielke Jr., 303-735-3940
pielke@colorado.edu

Julie Poppen, (O) 303-492-4007 (M) 303-503-4922
julie.poppen@colorado.edu

- See more at: http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2015/08/31/cu-boulder-department-athletics-explores-creation-sports-governance-center#sthash.yCbNIotT.dpuf

Concussion Movie Trailer

Sebastian Coe's Conflicts of Interest at IAAF

Sebastian Coe is the recently elected president of the IAAF. His relationship with Nike, as a potential conflict of interest, has been well documented. Coe is reportedly paid in the "six figures" by Nike, which is presently linked to the ongoing FIFA investigations and under investigation for its Nike Project.

The Daily Mail provided further reason why there is at least the appearance of a conflict of interest:

But the association with Nike is more of an issue when there are other areas of concern. For instance, the decision by the IAAF to award Eugene — close to Nike's headquarters in Beaverton — the 2021 World Athletics Championships without a formal bidding process.

The president of European Athletics, Norway's Svein Arne Hansen, complained of a 'complete lack of process' on behalf of Gothenburg, who at least wanted the chance to bid.

I discovered this morning that Coe is also associated with Mondo SpA, the Italian company responsible for installing virtually all track surfaces for the Olympics and World Championships. Under IAAF ethics rules for conflict of interest, such a relationship with a supplier to IAAF is prohibited (here in PDF).

Coe's COI situations -- as unambiguously defined by the IAAF - provides a great test of the meaningfulness of ethics rules at IAAF. Are they there for show? Or are they taken seriously?

The full IAAF COI guidelines can be seen below.

Not Just More Fast Sprinters, It is Greater Longevity

This week I have been exploring a question. Why is it that more men (& women) are running faster times at the elite levels of sprinting? Data can provide some insight to this question, but probably cannot answer it definitively.

So far, I have established that there are more fast sprinters than ever and the age distribution of sprinters has increased dramatically (note: we have processed these data for women also, and will post in due course). There is also a notable break-point in 2007 when it seems clear that something changed in sprinting. But what?

The graph at the top of this post takes this analysis one step further by asking how many men broke 10 seconds in the 100m for the very first time (IAAF data readily available since 2002). For most years the data are fairly constant at 3-6 runners, with the exception of 2004 (1) and 2008 (10) and this year, 2015 (12). There is not a consistent World Championship or Olympic signal.

So part of the story in the record number of fast sprinters this year are that there are simply more fast runners in the mix for the first time. However, even accounting for the upsurge in fast runners in 2015 (say, 6-9 extra), there are still more fast runners than ever.

The other part of this story can be seen in the graphs below. These graphs take this pool of runners sunning sub-10 for the first time, and asks what their average ages are and shows the age distribution. Here is the data since 1999:

You can see that there is little change in the average, trending a bit younger, and also with the range across first-timers becoming a bit younger. The graph below looks at the period of the rapid increase in fast runners since 2007 and shows little evidence of change.

This tells us that another part of the story of more runners running faster than ever is greater longevity of runners. More runners who broke 10 seconds for the first time prior to 2015 are continuing to run at that speed than was the case in the past. So the total number of sub-10 runners accumulates.

Bottom line: The record number of fast runners in 2015 is partly due to more fast runners but part of it is also due to more fast runners running fast for more years.

So what explains this?

Better training and conditioning? Better use of legal supplements and performance enhancing substances and technologies? Undetected use of prohibited performance enhancing technologies?  Faster track technologies?  Other factors?

It is likely impossible to tease out the quantitative role of the various contributors to the record number of fast runners, which I'd speculate may each play some role in the observed trend since 2007.

Thanks to David Epstein (@davidepstein) and Ross Tucker (@scienceofsport), who I've learned a great deal from and whose analyses have helped to inspire this series. Thanks also to Torie Duke, student assistant extraordinaire for patiently responding to countless data requests. More analyses to follow. Comments welcomed.

Why is Kazakhstan in UEFA?

Why is Kazakhstan considered part of Europe soccer-wise?

— Grant Wahl (@GrantWahl) August 27, 2015

I have had this same question myself before. More generally, why does UEFA, the "European" federation, not resemble the EU? The EU has 28 members and UEFA 54, including Turkey, Israel, Russia and, yes, Kazakhstan.

My search for an answer took me to this neat paper:

Dietschy, P., Ranc, D., & Sonntag, A. (2009). Parallel Myths, Popular Maps: The Europe of Soccer. Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 1(2), 125-144.

Below are the relevant passages. In short, blame Charles de Gaulle.

and also...

Scale of Doping - Simple Math

Actual scale of doping in IAAF World T&F: 1933 Athletes (1043M & 890W) Best estimate of doping prevalence = 14-39% Implies 271-754 dopers.

— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) August 26, 2015

For my later use, posted here so I can find it easily.

Widening Age Distribution of Fast Sprinters (Men)

The graph above is an initial follow-up of yesterday's post on the intriguing increase of the number of men and women sprinters running exceedingly fast times. The graph shows the ages of each sprinter which appeared in yesterday's graph (note that some data points might represent more than one person). Note that the age data is available from 1999 (and for some reason 2001 is missing from the IAAF website - which is excellent for these purposes), and obvious 2015 is to date.

What is interesting about this graph is that the age distribution of sprinters running the 100m is less than 10 seconds has expanded. You can see this a bit more clearly in the graph below, which shows the average and +/- one standard deviation values for the data in the graph above.

What does the data show?

• From 2002-2007 100m men's sprinters became younger and the distribution of ages contracted.
• From 2007 to 2015 sprinters became older but the distribution of ages expanded (more so at the older end).

This is work in progress. 

We are asking and answering a few other questions of the data, and for women also. I'll post those up as they become available. There is nothing (yet) said here about causality, and I am fairly sure that this data will not lend itself to any firm conclusions. However, it can help us to ask some smart questions. Meantime, comments, questions welcomed.

Stay tuned more to come!

More Fast Sprinters than Ever

The graphs above show the number of athletes in IAAF competitions that ran under 10 seconds (men) and 11 seconds (women) each year since 1997. I picked 1997 as the starting date because that is when an initial version of the "athletes whereabouts" program was put into place under the IAAF.

From 1997 to 2007 there was a sharp drop in the number of men and women running under 10 seconds and 11 seconds respectively. But since then, something remarkable happened. The number of men running under 10 seconds increased from 6 to 27 (so far this year) and women from 4 to 20 (so far this year). I've added a linear trend (in red) to each graph.

You don't have to run any fancy statistics to see that the world of sprinting is qualitatively different from 2008 to 2015 than it was from 1997 to 2007. What it is cannot be gleaned from the numbers alone, but it is interesting.

This post inspired by posts at track-stats.com and John Mulkeen. Data courtesy IAAF.

Richard Conway Interviews Sepp Blatter

This is a very revealing interview with Sepp Blatter. It seems clear that he just does not understand what good governance actually entails. He sees himself as the head of a state. Really interesting and worth watching for FIFA followers.

Caffeine and Cycling

It should be obvious, but often isn't. The use of PEDs is not against the rules or norms of sport. The use of prohibited PEDs is.

See the video above for cyclists in the Vuelta a España 2015 talking about their coffee consumption. It is a lot. Cyclists drink coffee because it is a proven PED and its perfectly legal.

UPDATED: Qatar Gets a Bad Report Card on Human Trafficking from US State Department

UPDATED 4 Nov 2015 (to reflect the possibility of an action plan that adds two years to the Tier 2 Watch List status).

Every year the US government releases a report card of sorts on human trafficking around the world. The 2015 report is just out from the State Department and they do not have good news for Qatar, which has been dogged by continuing allegations over its treatment of workers who are building the infrastructure for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

The State Department ranks countries in of 4 tiers, as illustrated in the graphic below. For the second year in a row, Qatar received the second to bottom ranking, the "Tier 2 Watch List." The State Department gives Qatar some credit for some positive steps (at p. 285 here in PDF) but faults the nation on its implementation and reporting. Thus, Qatar remains near the botom of the rankings.

What that means under US law is that next year, 2016, Qatar will have to either produce an action plan, or if they don't, move up or move down. A country can be ranked as Tier 2 Watch List for only 2 consecutive years, which can be extended to 4 years if they produce an action plan. A country placed in Tier 3 may see US sanctions (source: US State in PDF):

[G]overnments of countries on Tier 3 may be subject to certain restrictions on bilateral assistance, whereby the U.S. government may withhold or withdraw non-humanitarian, non-trade-related foreign assistance. In addition, certain countries on Tier 3 may not receive funding for government employees’ participation in educational and cultural exchange programs. Consistent with the TVPA [Trafficking Victims Protection Act], governments subject to restrictions would also face U.S. opposition to the provision of assistance (except for humanitarian, trade-related, and certain development-related assistance) by international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. 

It is unclear what, exactly, a Tier 3 designation would mean for Qatar and its preparations for the 2022 World Cup, but it would clearly not be a good thing for the tiny nation, or for FIFA.

The US president can waive the ranking if it is determined to be in the interests of the United States. Anything is of course possible, especially in a lame duck presidency, but I think it hard to imagine that President Obama would give Qatar a pass if it does not show marked improvements in 2016. It does seem logical that Qatar would produce an action plan. On the other hand, Reuters reports that the Obama administration forced the State Department to change some of its 2015 rankings to help with its proposed trade agreement.

The bottom line here is that Qatar has effectively been given no more than 4 years year to improve the situation facing workers, or face considerable negative publicity (at least) and possible US and other sanctions. That will only make the World Cup 2022 more controversial than it already is, if you can believe that.

FIFA Reform Checklist for Aspiring Presidents

My latest contribution is up at Sporting Intelligence. In it I discuss the checklist (above) that I prepared to help put some substance into the FIFA presidential horse race.

Comments welcomed!

New, Explosive ARD Documentary on Doping

A new documentary by German broadcaster ARD provides further evidence of widespread doping in athletics. ARD, along with The Sunday Times, gained access to a trove of suspicious doping tests from a whistle blower:

The data, which belongs to the IAAF but was released by a whistleblower, reveals that a third of medals (146, including 55 golds) in endurance events at the Olympics and World Championships between 2001 and 2012 were won by athletes who have recorded suspicious tests, with the newspaper claiming none of those medals have been taken away.

WADA president Sir Craig Reedie said: "WADA is very disturbed by these new allegations that have been raised by ARD; which will, once again, shake the foundation of clean athletes worldwide."

You can view the documentary, in full and in English, at this link.